Chapter V: An Insoluble Problem

That Darwin was a great natural philosopher and a good and wise man admits of no question, but to us, at this distance, it seems strange enough that he should have thought that he had hit upon the key to the origin of species in the slow and insensible changes which he fancied species underwent during the course of the geologic ages, and should thus have used the phrase as the title of his book. Had he called his work the "Variability of Species," or the "Modification of Species," it would not have been such a misnomer. Sudden mutations give us new varieties, but not new species. In fact, of the origin of species we know absolutely nothing, no more than we do about the origin of life itself.

Of the development of species we know some of the factors that play a part, as the influence of environment, the struggle for existence, and the competitions of life. But do we not have to assume an inherent tendency to development, an original impulse as the key to evolution? Accidental conditions and circumstances modify, but do not originate species. The fortuitous plays a part in retarding or hastening a species, and in its extinction, but not in its origin. The record of the rocks reveals to us the relation of species, and their succession in geologic time, but gives no hint of their origin.

Agassiz believed that every species of animal and plant was the result of a direct and separate act of the Creator. But the naturalist sees the creative energy immanent in matter. Does not one have to believe in something like this to account for the world as we see it? And to account for us also?--a universal mind or intelligence

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man.

Agassiz was too direct and literal; he referred to the Infinite Mystery in terms of our own wills and acts. When we think of a Creator and the thing created as two, we are in trouble at once. They are one, as fire and light are one, as soul and body are one. Darwin said he could not look upon the world as the result of chance, and yet his theory of the origin of species ushers us into a chance world. But when he said, speaking of the infinite variety of living forms about us, that they "have all been produced by laws acting around us," he spoke as a great philosopher. These laws are not fortuitous, or the result of the blind grouping of irrational forces.