Читать книгу Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative (Vol. 1-3) - Spencer Herbert - Страница 8

[2] Since this was written (in 1857) the advance of paleontological discovery, especially in America, has shown conclusively, in respect of certain groups of vertebrates, that higher types have arisen by modifications of lower; so that, in common with others, Prof. Huxley, to whom the above allusion is made, now admits, or rather asserts, biological progression, and, by implication, that there have arisen more heterogeneous organic forms and a more heterogeneous assemblage of organic forms.

[3] For detailed proof of these assertions see essay on "Manners and Fashion."

[4] The argument concerning organic evolution contained in this paragraph and the one preceding it, stands verbatim as it did when first published in the Westminster Review for April, 1857. I have thus left it without the alteration of a word that it may show the view I then held concerning the origin of species. The sole cause recognized is that of direct adaptation of constitution to conditions consequent on inheritance of the modifications of structure resulting from use and disuse. There is no recognition of that further cause disclosed in Mr. Darwin's work, published two and a half years later—the indirect adaptation resulting from the natural selection of favourable variations. The multiplication of effects is, however, equally illustrated in whatever way the adaptation to changing conditions is effected, or if it is effected in both ways, as I hold. I may add that there is indicated the view that the succession of organic forms is not serial but proceeds by perpetual divergence and re-divergence—that there has been a continual "divergence of many races from one race": each species being a "root" from which several other species branch out; and the growth of a tree being thus the implied symbol.

[5] "Personal Narrative of the Origin of the Caoutchouc, or India-Rubber Manufacture in England." By Thomas Hancock.