), OBJECTIONS TO MR, DARWIN'S TZEORT OF THE ORIGIN _

OF SPREIES.

[The Archbishop of Dublin has received the following remarks, in answer to an inquiry he had made of a friend (eminent in the world of science) on the subject of Darwin's theory of the origin of species.]

Before writing about the transmutation theory, I must give you a skeleton of what the theory is :- 1st. Species are not permanent; varieties are the beginning of new species. 2d. Nature began from the simplest forms—probably from one form— the primmval monad, the parent of all organic life.

3d. There has been a continual ascent on the organic scale, till organic nature became what it is, by one continued and unbroken stream of on- ward movement.

4th. The organic ascent is secured by a Malthusian principle through nature,—by a battle of life, in which the best in organization (the best varieties of plants and animals) encroach upon and drive off the less per- fect. This is called the theory of natural selection.

It is admirably worked up, and contains a great body of important truth ; and it is eminently amusing. But it gives no element of strength to the fundamental theory of transmutation ; and without specific trans- mutation natural selection can do nothing for the general theory. The flora and fauna of North America are very different from what they were when the Pilgrim Fathers were driven out from old England; but, changed as they are, they do not one jot change the collective fauna and flora of the actual world.* 5th. We do not mark any great organic changes now, because they are so slow that even a few thousand years may produce no changes that have fixed the notice of naturalists.

6th. But time is the agent, and we can mark the effects of time by the organic changes on the great geological scale. And on every part of that scale, where the organic changes are great in two contiguous deposits of the scale, there must have been a corresponding lapse of time between the periods of their deposition—perhaps millions of years.

I think the foregoing heads give the substance of Darwin's theory ; and I think that the great broad facts of geology are directly opposed to it.

Some of these facts I shall presently refer to. But I must in the first place observe that Darwin's theory is not inductive,—not based on a series of acknowledged facts pointing to a general conclusion,—not a pro- position evolved out of the facts, logically, and of course including them. To use an old figure, I look on the theory as a vast pyramid resting on its apex and that apex a mathematical point. The only facts he pre- tends to adduce, as true elements of proof, are the varieties produced by domestication, or the human artifice of cross-breeding. We all admit the varieties, and the very wide limits of variation, among domestic animals. How very unlike are poodles and greyhounds. Yet they are of one species. And how nearly alike are many animals,—allowed to be of distinct species, on any acknowledged views of species. Hence there may have been very many blunders among naturalists, in the discrimi- nation and enumeration of species. But this does not undermine the grand truth of nature, and the continuity of species. Again, the varie- ties, built upon by Mr. Darwin are varieties of domestication and human design. Such varieties could have no existence in the old world. Some- thing may be done by cross-breeding ; but mules are generally sterile, or the progeny (in some rare instances) passes into one of the original crossed forms. The Author of Nature will not permit His work to be spoiled by the wanton curiosity of Man. And in a state of nature (such as that of the old world before Man came upon it) wild animals of differ- ent species do not desire to cross and unite.

Species have been constant for thousands of years ; and time (so far as I see my way) though multiplied by millions and billions would never change them, so long as the conditions remained constant. Change the conditions, and old species would disappear • and new species might have room to come in and flourish. But how, and by what causation ? I say by creation. But, what do I mean by creation ? I reply, the operation of a power quite beyond the powers óf a pigeon-fancier, a cross-breeder, or hybridizer ; a power I cannot imitate or comprehend ; but in which I can believe by a legitimate conclusion of sound reason drawn from the laws and harmonies of Nature,—proving in all around me a design and

purpose, and a mutual adaptation of parts, which I can comprehend,— and which prove that there is exterior to, and above, the mere phe- nomena of Nature a great prescient and designing cause. Believing this, I have no difficulty in the repetition of new species.

But Darwin would say I am introducing a miracle by the supposition. In one sense I am ; in another I am not. The hypothesis does not sus-

pend or interrupt an established law of Nature. It does suppose the in- troduction of a new phenomenon unaccounted for by the operation of any known law of Nature ; and it appeals to a power above established laws, and yet acting in conformity with them.

* It is worth remarking that though no species of the horse genus was found in America when discovered, two or three fossil species have been found there. Now, if these horses had (through some influence of climate) been transmuted into tapirs or buffaloes, one might expect to see the ten- dency at least towards such a change in the numerous 'herds of wild horses —the descendants of those brought from Europe—which are now found in both South and North America. The pretended physical philosophy of modern days strips Man of all his moral attributes, or holds them of no account in the estimate of his origin and place in the created world. A cold atheistical materialism is the tendency of the so-called material philosophy of the present day. Not that I believe that Darwin is an atheist; though I cannot but re- gard his materialism as atheistical. I think it untrue, because opposed to the obvious course of Nature, and the very opposite of inductive truth. And I think it intensely mischievous. Let no one say that-it is held together by a cumulative argument. Each series of facts is laced together by a series of assumptions, and re- petitions of the one false principle. You cannot make a good rope out of a string of air bubbles.

I proceed now to notice the manner in which Darwin tries to fit his principles to the facts of geology.

I will take for granted that the known series of fossil-bearing rocks or deposits may be divided into the Palteozoic, the Mesozoic, the Tertiary or Neozoic and the Modern, the Fens, Deltas, &c.' &c., with the spoils of the actual flora and fauna of the world, and with wrecks of the works of Man.

To begin then, with the Palmozoic rocks. Surely we ought on the transmutation theory, to find near their base great deposits with none but the lowest forms of organic life. I know of no such deposits. Owen contends that life began with the infusorial forms. They are at any rate well fitted for fossil preservation ; but we do not find them. Neither do we find beds exclusively of hard corals and other humble organisms, which ought, on the theory, to mark a period of vast duration while the primteval monads were working up into the higher types of life. Our evidence is, no doubt, very scanty ; but let not our opponents dare to say that it makes for them. So far as it is positive, it seems to me point- blank against them. As we ascend in the great stages of the Palteozic series (through Cambrian, Silurian, Devonian, and Carboniferous rocks) we have in each a characteristic fauna ; we have no wavering of species, —we have the noblest cephalopods and brachiopods that ever existed; and they preserve their typical forms till they disappear. And a few of the types have endured, with specific modifications, through all succeed- ing ages of the earth. It is during these old periods that we have some of the noblest icthic forms that ever were created. The same may be said, I think, of the carboniferous flora. As a whole, indeed, it is lower than the living flora of our own period ; but many of the old types were grander and of higher organization than the corresponding families of the living flora; and there is no wavering, no wanting of organic definition, in the old' type. We have some land reptiles (batrachian), in the higher Palteozoic periods, but not of a very low type ; and the reptiles of the permian groups (at the very top of the Palteozoic rocks,) are of a high type. If all this be true, (and I think it is,) it gives but a sturdy grist for the transmutation-mill, and may soon break its cogs.

We know the complicated organic phenomena of the Mesozoic (or Oolitic) period. It defies the transmutationist at every step. Oh! but the document, says Darwin, is a fragment. I will interpolate long pe- riods to account for all the changes. I say, in reply, if you deny my con- clusion grounded on positive evidence I toss back your conclusions, de- rived from negative evidence—the inflated cushion on which you try to bolster up the defects of your hypothesis. The reptile fauna of the Mesozoic period is the grandest and highest that has lived. How came they all to die offi or to degenerate ? And how came the Dinosaures to disappear from the face of Nature, and leave no descendants like them- selves, or of a corresponding nobility ? Did they tire of the land, and become Whales, casting off their hind-legs ? And, after they had lasted millions of years as whales, did they tire of the water, and leap out again as Pachydemics ? I have heard of both hypotheses ; and I cannot put them in words without falling into terms of mockery. This I do affirm, that if the transmutation theory were proved true in the actual world, and we could hatch rats out of the eggs of geese, it would still be difficult to account for the successive forms of organic life in the old world. They appear to me to give the lie to the theory at every turn of the pages of Dame Nature's old book.

And now for a few words upon Darwin's long interpolated periods of geological ages. He has an eternity of past time to draw upon ; and I am willing to give him ample measure ; only let him use it logically, and in some probable accordance with facts and phenomena. I place the theory against facts viewed collectively. 1st. I see no proofs of enormous gaps of geological time, (I say nothing of years or cen- turies,) in those cases where there is a sudden change in the ancient fauna and flora. I am willing, out of the stock of past time, to lavish millions or billions upon each epoch, if thereby we can gain rational results from the operation of true causes. But time and "natural selection" can do nothing if there be not a vera cause working in them. [Note—see re- mark on Time, in the Annotations on Bacon's Essays.] I must confine myself to a few of the collective instances.

2d. Towards the end of the carboniferous period, there was a vast ex- tinction of animal and vegetable life. We can, I think, account for this

extinction mechanically. The old crust was broken up. The sea bottom

underwent a great change. The old flora and fauna went out; a new flora and fauna appeared, in the ground now called Permian, at the base of the new red sandstone, which overlie the carboniferous . I take the

fact as it is, and I have no difficulty. The time in which all this was brought about may have been very long, even upon a geological scale of

time. But where do the intervening and connecting types exist, which are to mark the work of natural selection ? We do do not find them. Therefore the step onwards gives no true resting-place to a baseless theory; and is, in fact, a stumbling-block in its way. 3d. Before we rise through the new red sandstone, we find the muschel-kalk (wanting in England, though its place on the scale is well-known) with an entirely new fauna : where have we a proof of any enormous lapse of geological time to account for the change ? We have no proof in the deposits themselves : the presumption they offer to our senses is of a contrary kind.

4th. If we rise from the muschel-kalk to the Lies, we find again a new fauna. All the anterior species are gone. Yet the passage through the

upper members of the new red sandstone to the Lisa is by insensible gradation, and it is no easy matter to fix the physical line of their de- marcation. I think it would be a very rash assertion to affirm that a

great interval took place between the formation of the upper part of the new red sandstone and the Lies. Physical evidence is against it. To support a baseless theory, Darwin would require a countleis lapse of ages

of which we have no commensurate physical monuments; and he is un- able to supply any of the connecting organic links that ought to bind to- gether the older fauna with that of the has. "Y I need hardly go on any further with these objections. But I cannot conclude without expressing my detestation of the theory, because of its unflinching materialism ;—because it has deserted the inductive track, the only track that leads to physical truth ;—because it utterly repudiates final causes, and thereby indicates a demoralized understanding on the part of its advocates. In some rare instances it shows a wonderful cre- dulity. Darwin seems to believe that a white bear, by being confined to the slops floating in the Polar basin, might be turned into a whale; that a Lemur might easily be turned into a bat ; that a three-toed Tapir might be the great grandfather of a home ! or the progeny of a horse may (in America) have gone back to the tapir. s>. But any startling and (supposed) novel paradox, maintained very boldly and with something of imposing plausibility, produces, in some minds, a kind of pleasing excitement, which predisposes them in its favour ; and if they are unused to careful reflection, and averse to the labour of accurate investigation, they will be likely to conclude that what is (apparently) original, must be a production of original genius, and that anything very much opposed to prevailing notions must be a grand discovery,—in short, that whatever comes from "the bottom of a well" must be the "truth" supposed to be hidden there.