Chapter III: Present State of the Darwinian Theories (2)

But much is still wanting, before the followers of an evolution theory dare to use ethnology directly as a primitive history of the development of mankind, prepared and preserved for them. Especially the before-mentioned objection of the Duke of Argyll--that the lowest savages of our time can just as well be depraved as be men who remained stationary in the process of development--has here increased weight. Moreover, even with the savages of to-day, a rude state of their tools and a low condition of their mental and moral life are not so nearly parallel as to allow unrestricted conclusions to be drawn. Finally, we still know too little about the state of culture of the savages; and the deeper and higher the intellectual and ethical possessions of mankind are, the presence of which among the savages is in question, the more uncertain is our knowledge.

This is especially true of the most important question in this connection--the question as to the existence {93} or absence of an idea of God, and the different stages of development of religious ideas. While some assume as an established fact, that there are savage tribes without any idea of God or any religion, and even give the names of these tribes, especially of some from the interior of South America; while Sir John Lubbock systematically enumerates seven stages of religious development, from atheism to the connection of religious with moral conceptions, and lets each single race run through these stages in an identical series until it either remains on one of the seven stages or arrives at the highest: yet, on the contrary, other equally trustworthy scientists assert that there is not a single human race without some idea of religion and of a God--indeed, not a single race without a monotheistic presentiment--and that all heathenism, down to its most degenerate stages, consists not so much in a non-recognition of a God as in ignoring him. They call especial attention to the difficulty of getting acquainted with the ideas of a savage tribe without living with it through many years and being intimate with its language and customs, and especially without enjoying the unrestricted confidence of the tribe. Mutual misunderstandings, a suspicious reserve, evasive and untrue answers to questions, are entirely unavoidable without those conditions. At any rate, the fact deserves attention, that those who have been longest and most active among savages, and who enjoyed their confidence to the fullest extent, all reached this result: they found them not only not without religion, but also not without a presentiment of the monotheistic idea of God. Livingstone, for instance, expressed this idea decidedly of all the African tribes {94} with which he became acquainted; and Jellinghaus gives the same evidence in regard to the Kols in South Asia.

The _anatomic_ results of ethnology are more favorable to the descent theory, although they too lead no farther than to the conclusion that the skull-forms of the lowest tribes represent a lower stage of formation than those of the higher, and that these lower skull-forms are relatively nearer to the ape-form than the higher, but that they are still separated from it by a wide interval.

It appears, then, that even ethnology does not lead us essentially nearer the solution of the question than archæology and geological anthropology.

The relatively strongest support to the evolution theory is given by _comparative philology_; and since language is the most important and most decisive of all the distinctive characteristics which separate man and animal[5], this science deserves especial consideration.

In the realm of the natural sciences, the enormous progress of palæontology on the one hand and of systematic zoölogy and botany on the other took place step by step together, and thus prepared the way for Darwin's idea--which, from the rich material of analytical investigations, only tries to draw the simple synthesis, and to show at the same time in the zoölogical and botanical _system_ a representation of the zoölogical and botanical _history of development_. In quite an analogous way, a process took place in the linguistic realm which in independent investigations prepared the way for Darwinism, and now, since Darwin's theory has sought {95} acknowledgment in the realm of natural history, brings again Darwin's ideas to the support of philology.

Linguistic and ethnographic investigations, especially the linguistic works of the missionaries, long ago resulted in gathering rich material from the storehouse of the language of races now living, and the latest works in the realm of historical, etymological, and comparative philology had traced the branches and twigs of the better known languages to stems and roots lying far back. The result of the comparison soon became the same as in the realm of the organic world: what presented itself in the system of the living languages as a lower form, seemed to represent itself as the older and more original form also in the history of languages. Therefore, all the prominent linguistic investigators found themselves more and more urged to accept a theory which declares language, this entirely specific characteristic of man, to be subject to the same laws of development from the simpler and most simple forms as the world of the organic. Long ago so celebrated a man as Jacob Grimm,--"Ueber den Ursprung der Sprache" ("The Origin of Language"), Berlin, Dümmler--following the footsteps of Wilhelm von Humboldt, had established a theory, according to which language is "not created, but produced by the liberty of the human will;" and judging from many of his Darwinistic utterances concerning the origin and development of language, he had traced its development in such a way as to arrive at the conclusion that artless simplicity in the unfolding of the senses is the first period of its appearance.

The scientists divide all the languages of the earth into three great groups: first, the monosyllabic, {96} isolating, radical, or asynthetic languages; second, the agglutinant, terminational, or polysynthetic languages; third, the inflectional languages. They are of the opinion that even the languages of highest rank--the inflectional--very probably took a starting-point from the asynthetic languages, and a course of development through the agglutinants, and that in like manner the agglutinants have behind them an asynthetic period. Thus they trace all the languages back to certain _roots_, which are more or less common to the different groups of languages.

To the question that now arises--_How did these roots originate?_--the linguists give us three different answers. The onomatopoetic theory, called by Max Müller the Wow-Wow Theory, traces them to imitations of the sound (W. Bleek, G. Curtius, Schleicher, Wedgewood, Farrar); the interjectional theory, called by Max Müller the Pooh-Pooh, or Pah-Pah Theory, traces them to expressions of the senses (Condillac); a third theory declares the roots to be phonetic types (Max Müller, Lazar Geiger, Heyse, Steinthal); while it is still an open question, whether the attempts at explanation of these types must here come to a stand-still for the present, as Max Müller thinks, or whether, according to Lazar Geiger, we can trace the first root-expressions especially to impressions of light and color.

The reasons from which Max Müller, in his "Lectures on the Science of Languages" (Vol. I, Lect. IX), rejects the first two theories and proves the third, are quite convincing. Even if, in a purely hypothetical way, a language could be thought of _in abstracto_, the roots of which only consist in imitations of sounds or interjections, still in the _really existing_ languages, {97} so far as we can trace back and uncover their roots, the roots imitating sounds and the interjectional roots form only a small and entirely isolated minority, which neither shares in, nor is capable of development; they stand like "dead sticks in a live hedge." By far the greater number of roots, and all which are capable of development, express abstractions from visible objects, conditions and activities, and therefore presume a human intelligence, reflecting with self-consciousness, which formed and used the roots.

Now Max Müller sees, back of this period, still open to science, in which the root-elements of the human languages were fixed, a long period of exuberant and unhindered growth of the elements of language, in which the roots were separated from the multitude of nascent tones by elimination or natural selection in the struggle for existence. In this realm, which is no longer open to investigation, the naturalistic and the linguistic friends of the evolution theory are now in entire accord. Wilhelm Bleek, in his small, but very noteworthy essay, "Ueber den Ursprung der Sprache" ("Origin of Language"), Weimar, Böhlau, 1868, p. 11, uses this ingenious figure: what the animal world possesses analogous to language, takes about the same position as, in the art of printing, the block-print does in relation to printing with movable types. On page 12, he sees in the communication of the emotions among animals the sources from which under favorable conditions (in consequence of which the separation of language into articulated parts became possible) human language might have originated. This idea, which is closely joined to the interjectional theory, Darwin meets {98} with a related idea, depending upon the onomatopoetical theory, when he says, in his "Descent of Man": "Since monkeys certainly understand much that is said to them by man, and when wild, utter signal-cries of danger to their fellows, may not some unusually wise ape-like animal have imitated the growl of a beast of prey, and thus told his fellow-monkeys the nature of the expected danger? This would have been a first step in the formation of language."

But philology, from the point where it goes farther back in search of the roots of language, leaves the safe ground of knowledge and commits itself to the fluctuating ocean of conjectures; and since also the scientific evolution theory has only a hypothetical value, the support of a hypothesis in the one science by a hypothesis in the other naturally adds no weight to its probability, either for the one or the other. Besides, we must not overlook the fact that the very point in the history of the development of languages on which the investigation, as it looks backwards, must at present pause--namely, the existence of linguistic roots--presumes a faculty of abstraction which can not be thought of without self-consciousness.

Therefore archæology, comparative ethnography, and comparative philology, show us quite clearly a _development_, but not an _origin_ of mankind through development. Yet they do show an already existing development of mankind; for all three sciences lead back to starting-points, where mankind already existed with all the essential attributes of mankind, and leave us without answer to our questions as to the conditions lying still farther back. Their results we can {99} without difficulty harmonize with a theory which supposes mankind to have originated by evolution, provided such a theory could be confirmed from another side; but they agree just as well with a contrary theory, which excludes the origin of mankind by gradual development.

Taking, thus, everything into consideration, we come to the conclusion that the evolution theory, like the descent theory, is so far only a hypothesis--and, indeed, a hypothesis which as such has a much more problematical character than the descent theory. For while in regard to the latter we had to say that we have either this explanation or none of the origin of the higher species, with the evolution theory there is not even room for this alternative. For even in case of its failure, a descent of one species from another through heterogenetic generation is certainly very possible. Besides, it is not only possible, but even probable, that both theories--that of heterogenetic generation and that of gradual development--may have to share with one another in the explanation of the origin of species; and even that, especially for the lowest species and for the beginnings of the main types, primitive generation also has its share in the establishment of the paternity.

The evolution theory could only pass beyond the rank of a hypothesis, if we should succeed in showing the impelling forces of such an origin of species through development. Such an attempt can be made in two ways--the metaphysical and the scientific-empirical. The first, the metaphysical, although it may be justified in its general principles, will always, from the point at which it attempts to approach the concrete questions as {100} to the origin of single species, expose itself to the fate of being _a priori_ rejected by science as unjustified, and of being _a posteriori_ confuted by facts--a fate which it has richly and clearly experienced in the first half of our century. But the discussion of the metaphysical way does not belong to the present purely scientific part of our investigation; it will, however, be shortly taken up again in Book II. The other way, the scientific-empirical, will have to be looked upon as correct when it can show the impelling forces of development in such powers and laws as are either still active to-day or at least have their points of connection in powers and laws active to-day. Such an attempt is the selection theory. We have already in Chap. II, § 1 and 2, given an outline of this theory, and have only yet to discuss its present state of tenability.

§ 3. _The Theory of Selection._

The selection theory also is not entirely without support in the realm of observed facts. How simply it explains the fixedness of the differences of closely related species arising from their geographical and climatical home! how simply the similarity of the color of many animals from the color of their abode, through which they have protection against persecution! how simply the so-called _mimicry_--_i.e._, the similarity of certain species in form and color with form and color of entirely different species in the midst of which they live, a similarity which often gives them protection against persecution! The best known examples of this, in our regions, are the spinning caterpillars, which in a state of rest look strikingly like a twig of a tree or a shrub on which {101} they live. In other regions there is a multitude of the most striking freaks of nature of this kind--for instance, butterflies and other insects, which at rest look like the leaves of plants under which they live; butterflies living among other butterflies which, by an offensive odor, are protected against persecution, and although they are themselves a favorite food for birds, carrying the form and color of that badly-smelling family of butterflies. We can also add the orchideæ, and their resemblance to bees, flies, butterflies, spiders, etc. A. R. Wallace and Darwin themselves recur often to these striking appearances.

But herewith we have mentioned nearly every support which the selection theory has on the ground of observed facts. More numerous and more weighty are the objections to it. First of all, we have to state that the selection theory no longer enjoys that protection which the descent and evolution theories can justly claim, against the main objection, mentioned in Chap. III, § 1, to all the ideas of descent, development and selection. That main objection is the permanence of species, observed through thousands of years; and the defense with which the descent and evolution theories successfully weaken it, is the statement of the fact that, since man appeared, no new species has originated, and that therefore the principle of the generation of species seems to have come to a stand-still. Now this fact is no longer in favor of the selection theory, but directly repugnant to it. For the selection theory expressly declares the origin of species through agencies that are all active still, and, therefore, if they really suffice to explain the origin of species, would not only have to generate new species, {102} but also to develop _all_ the existing species. All those circumstances which, according to the selection theory, have led to change of species, are just as active to-day as they are supposed to have been from the beginning of organic life; and the effect which we observe is not change but permanence of species. The individuals still have individual qualities; they still have the tendency to inherit, in addition to the qualities of the species, those of the individual; the individuals still change their abode, and therewith also their conditions of life; a natural selection still takes place in the struggle for existence; and what is the result? From an observation stretching over thousands of years, we find nowhere an effect of natural selection going farther than alterations in growth and color and purely external changes in form. All the dispositions of organisms and their reciprocal action aim not at increasing the individual differences, but at reducing them to the average character of the species. When the species change their abode or their conditions of life, they either perish or remain constant; at least, with the exception of the slight modifications before mentioned. Even those alterations which artificial breeding produces, have a tendency to return to the original species: as soon as cultivated plants and domestic animals are left to themselves, they run wild, _i.e._, they reassume their original qualities. Even the bastard-formations either cease to be fertile, or, remaining fertile, finally return to one or the other stem-form of the originally crossed species. Nor can we oppose to these facts the consideration that the period of time during which mankind has observed the organisms is too short. For the permanence of very many {103} species can be traced through thousands of years, and the shortness of the period of our observations is amply counterbalanced on the one hand by the multitude of species from all parts of the organic systems which come under our notice, on the other by the immense alterations in the conditions of existence to which man submits plants and animals. How great, for instance, are the alterations in the conditions of existence which tropical plants undergo in our hot-houses and gardens! And the only alteration they show is that they are stunted and only bear blossoms with difficulty and fruits with still greater difficulty.[6] Now, if the ever-active selection principle does not produce in thousands of years even minimum alterations which can be observed, science certainly is justified in doubting for the present the asserted effect of that principle.

Thus not only are the _facts_ directly opposed to the autocracy of the selection principle; but _logic_ is also none the less so. For, under the most favorable circumstances, selection would only explain the _preservation_ and perhaps also the _increase_ of useful qualities and organs, _if_ the same are already in existence and have shown themselves useful to the individual; but would not explain their _origination_. This would rather most emphatically be left to _chance_. According to the strict selection theory, it would be _pure chance_ that among the thousands and thousands of individual qualities of the individuals of a species, such qualities are always existing as offer advantages to the individual in his struggle for existence. And it would be a second series of chances, which from generation to generation would {104} have to coincide with the first, that among the individual qualities advantageous to the individual and making it victorious in the struggle for existence, there should be found always just those qualities which develop the species and raise it to a higher rank and order in the zoölogical and botanical systems. But the total of improbabilities which would have to be overcome continually in this theatre of chance, would in the course of generations necessarily amount to infinity. Thus, in the very beginning, insuperable doubts arise as to how we can explain from two causes the world of organisms which is so richly, beautifully, and systematically arranged. The first of these causes is the inclination to individual alteration, inherited indeed in the organisms, but in itself absolutely indifferent, for the systematical idea in the framework of the organic systems and for the progressive element in the development. The other is the struggle for existence and natural selection, which approaches the organisms purely from without like individual variability, must as a whole appear a necessity, but in each single case in the concrete mixture of coinciding circumstances, would seem a work of chance for the individual which is to be changed.

Moreover, it is a demonstrable impossibility to explain the origin of just those organs and members in the structure of organisms which are systematically the most significant and functionally the most important, by means of natural selection. It is true that many of these organs and members, in their perfected state, offer to the organism an immense advantage over lower organisms; but if they had been originated through gradual development, they would have been in their first {105} beginnings and earlier stages of development at least quite indifferent, often directly obstructive to the individual in its struggle for existence, and therefore would have been called into existence and developed by agencies which had an effect directly counteracting natural selection. How high, for instance, stand the vertebrates above the invertebrates! Yet how could the first deviation from the ganglionic system of the nerves of the invertebrates to the cerebro-spinal system of the vertebrates have occurred?--and, especially, how could the first deposit of the vertebral column have procured any benefit to the individual in the struggle for existence? We quote this objection from Karl Planck's "Wahrheit und Flachheit des Darwinismus," ("Truth and Platitude of Darwinism"), Nördlingen, Beck, 1872.

Still more striking is the insufficiency of the selection theory for the explanation of the origin of the organs of motion in the higher classes of vertebrates. A. W. Volkman says of it, in his instructive lecture, "Zur Entwickelung der Organismen," ("Development of the Organisms") Halle, Schmidt, 1875, p. 3 ff.: "Without doubt, animals with extremities will come from animals which lacked extremities. Now if the metamorphosis originated in the course of one generation, the animals with extremities would have an advantage over the rest, which ought to show itself in the natural selection; but if the development of an extremity needs 10,000 generations, the individual in which the process of the development begins produces 1/10000 of the extremity and the advantage, resulting therefrom is reduced to zero. For an organ can only be of advantage when it performs its functions; and on {106} the first of the 10,000 stages of development the extremity can not perform its functions. Just think of the cetacea! Of the hind extremity, only its carrier, the pelvis, has been developed; and even this is only represented by the two hip-bones, hanging in the flesh. As to the python, the hind extremities are more complete, but they lie hidden under the skin, and therefore are of no use for local movement. Such examples show that in the history of the development of an organ thousands of years may pass, and numerous generations may arise and disappear, until it reaches that grade of perfection where it is of use to its owner. How therefore, can we look upon such an organ, when finally it is perfect, as a product of selection in the sense of Darwin?"

We find the scientific objections to the selection theory collected in detail in the before-mentioned works of Wigand, Blanchard, His, von Baer, and especially in Mivart's "Genesis of Species," (London, MacMillan, 1871); and it is a praiseworthy testimony of Darwin's love of truth, that lately he himself, the originator of the selection theory, willingly admits these weak points in his theory,[7] while Häckel and many of his followers {107} in Germany still stoutly reject every doubt of the autocracy of the selection principle.

In summing up all we have said thus far about the theories of descent, of evolution, and of selection, we still find all three solutions of the scientific problems to be hypotheses, but hypotheses of very different value. The idea of descent has the most scientific ground; it will, as a permanent presupposition, govern all scientific investigations as to the origin of species, even if it does not exclude the idea of an often-repeated primitive generation of organisms--especially of those that stand still lower in development. More uncertain and less comprehensive is the position of the evolution theory; in all likelihood, the idea of an origin through development will have to share the sovereignty with the idea of origin by leaps through metamorphosis of germs. Still more unfavorable is the state of the selection theory. It possesses the merit of having started the whole question as to the origin of species; it may explain subordinary developments; natural selection may have coöperated as a regulator in the whole progress and the whole preservation of organic life. Ed. von Hartmann, in his essay, "Truth and Error of Darwinism," (Berlin, Duncker, 1875), on page 111, compares its functions with those of the bolt and coupling in a machine; but that the driving principle which called new species into existence lay or originated _in_ the organisms, and did not approach them from without, seems to be confirmed more and more decidedly with every new step of exact investigation as well as of reflection.

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