Creation and Its Records

CHAPTER V.

_THE CRE­ATION OF LIV­ING MAT­TER_.

We now come to _Liv­ing_ Mat­ter; di­rect­ing at­ten­tion, first, to that el­emen­tary form of life as ex­hib­it­ed in sim­ple pro­to­plasm and in the low­er forms of or­gan­ism, and then to the per­fect forms of bird and beast. In each case, we shall find the same ev­idence of De­sign and In­tel­li­gence, the same proof of “con­trivance” and pur­pose, which we can­not at­tribute to the mere ac­tion of sec­ondary caus­es.

The sim­plest form in which LIFE is man­ifest­ed is in a vis­cid gelati­nous sub­stance with­out colour or form, called _Pro­to­plasm_. Wher­ev­er there is life there is pro­to­plasm. Pro­to­plasm, as be­fore re­marked, lies just un­der the bark in trees, and is the ma­te­ri­al from which the growth of the wood and bark cells and fi­bres pro­ceeds. Pro­to­plasm, is al­so present in the mus­cles and in the blood, and wher­ev­er growth is go­ing on.

But pro­to­plasm al­so ex­ists by it­self; or, more prop­er­ly speak­ing, there ex­ist liv­ing crea­tures, both plant and an­imal, which are so sim­ple in struc­ture, so low in or­ga­ni­za­tion, that they con­sist of noth­ing but a speck of pro­to­plasm. Such a crea­ture is the mi­cro­scop­ic _amoe­ba_. Some­times these lit­tle specks of pro­to­plasm are sur­round­ed with beau­ti­ful­ly formed “si­li­cious shells--a skele­ton of ra­di­at­ing _spic­ulae_ or crys­tal-​clear con­cen­tric spheres of exquisite sym­me­try and beau­ty.[1]” The sim­plest _amoe­ba_ how­ev­er, has no def­inite form; but the lit­tle mass moves about, ex­pands and con­tracts, throws out pro­jec­tions on one side and draws them in on the oth­er. It ex­hibits ir­ri­tabil­ity when touched. It may be seen sur­round­ing a tiny par­ti­cle of food, ex­tract­ing nu­tri­ment from it and grow­ing in size. Ul­ti­mate­ly the lit­tle body sep­arates or splits up in­to two, each part thence­forth tak­ing a sep­arate ex­is­tence.

[Foot­note 1: Pro­fes­sor All­man.]

Now it is claimed that such a lit­tle or­gan­ism con­tains the po­ten­tial­ity of all life; that it grows and mul­ti­plies, and de­vel­ops in­to high­er and high­er or­gan­isms, in­to all (in short) that we see in the plant and an­imal world around us. This, it is ar­gued, is all done by nat­ural caus­es, not by any di­rec­tion or guid­ance or in­ter­ven­tion of a Di­vine agen­cy.

Here we must stop to ask how this pro­to­plasm, or sim­plest form of or­gan­ic life, came to ex­ist? How did it get its _life_--its prop­er­ty of tak­ing nour­ish­ment, of grow­ing and of giv­ing birth to oth­er crea­tures like it­self?

The de­nier of cre­ation replies, that just in the same way as, by the laws of affin­ity, oth­er inan­imate sub­stances came to­geth­er to pro­duce the earth--salts and oth­er com­pounds we see in the world around us--so did cer­tain el­ements com­bine to form pro­to­plasm. This com­bi­na­tion when per­fect­ed has the prop­er­ty of be­ing alive, just as wa­ter has the prop­er­ty of as­sum­ing a sol­id form or has any oth­er of the qual­ities which we speak of as its prop­er­ties.

Now it is per­fect­ly true that, treat­ed as a sub­stance, you can take the gum­my pro­to­plasm, put it in­to a glass and sub­ject it to anal­ysis like any oth­er sub­stance. But sim­ple as the sub­stance ap­pears, com­po­si­tion is re­al­ly very com­pli­cat­ed. Pro­fes­sor All­man tells us that so dif­fi­cult and won­der­ful is its chem­istry, that in fact re­al­ly very lit­tle is known about it. The best ev­idence we have, I be­lieve, makes it tol­er­ably cer­tain that pro­to­plasm con­sists of a com­bi­na­tion of am­mo­nia, car­bon­ic acid, and wa­ter, and that ev­ery molecule of it is made up of 76 atoms, of which 36 are car­bon, 26 hy­dro­gen, 4 ni­tro­gen, and 10 oxy­gen.[1]

But no chemist has ev­er been able ei­ther to ac­count the­oret­ical­ly for such a com­po­si­tion, still less to pro­duce it ar­ti­fi­cial­ly. It is urged, how­ev­er, that it may be on­ly due to our clum­sy ap­pa­ra­tus and still very im­per­fect knowl­edge of chem­istry, that we were un­able ar­ti­fi­cial­ly to make up pro­to­plasm.

[Foot­note 1: Nichol­son (“Zo­ol­ogy,” p. 4) gives for Al­bu­men, which is near­ly iden­ti­cal with pro­to­plasm--Car­bon, 144; Hy­dro­gen, 110; Ni­tro­gen, 18; Oxy­gen, 42; Sul­phur, 2. These fig­ures near­ly equal those in the text, be­ing those fig­ures mul­ti­plied each by 4 (ap­prox­imate­ly) and with­out the trace of sul­phur.]

And of course there is no an­swer to a sup­po­si­tion of this sort. Nev­er­the­less there is no sort of rea­son to be­lieve that pro­to­plasm will ev­er be made; nor, if we could suc­ceed in unit­ing the el­ements in­to a form re­sem­bling pro­to­plas­mic jel­ly, is there the least rea­son to sup­pose that such a com­po­si­tion would ex­hib­it the ir­ri­tabil­ity, or the pow­ers of nu­tri­tion and re­pro­duc­tion, which are es­sen­tial­ly the char­ac­ter­is­tics of _liv­ing_ pro­to­plasm. It is not too much to say that, af­ter the close of the con­tro­ver­sy about spon­ta­neous gen­er­ation, it is now a uni­ver­sal­ly ad­mit­ted prin­ci­ple of sci­ence that life can on­ly pro­ceed from life--the old _omne vivum ex ovo_ in a mod­ern form.[1]

But here the same sort of ar­gu­ment that was brought for­ward re­gard­ing the pos­si­bil­ity of mat­ter and its laws be­ing self-​caused, comes in as re­gards life.

[Foot­note 1: _See_ “Cri­tiques and Ad­dress­es,” T.H. Hux­ley, F.R.S., p. 239. So much is this the case, that it is re­al­ly su­per­flu­ous, how­ev­er in­ter­est­ing, to re­call the ex­per­iments of Dr. Tyn­dall and oth­ers, which fi­nal­ly demon­strat­ed that wher­ev­er pri­mal an­imal forms, bac­te­ria and oth­er, “mi­crobes,” were pro­duced in in­fu­sions of hay, turnip, &c., ap­par­ent­ly boiled and ster­il­ized and then her­met­ical­ly sealed, there were re­al­ly germs in the air en­closed in the ves­sel, or germs that in one form or an­oth­er were not de­stroyed by the boil­ing or heat­ing. Dr. Bas­tian's ar­gu­ment for spon­ta­neous gen­er­ation is thus com­plete­ly over­thrown. _(See_ Drum­mond, “Nat­ural Law,” pp. 62-63.)]

The ar­gu­ment in the most di­rect form was made use of by Pro­fes­sor Hux­ley, but it is dif­fi­cult to be­lieve that so pow­er­ful a thinker could se­ri­ous­ly hold to a view which will not bear ex­am­ina­tion, how­ev­er neat­ly and bril­liant­ly it may go off when first launched in­to the air. The ar­gu­ment is that life can on­ly be re­gard­ed as a fur­ther prop­er­ty of cer­tain forms of mat­ter. Oxy­gen and hy­dro­gen, when they com­bine, re­sult in a new sub­stance, quite un­like ei­ther of them in char­ac­ter, and pos­sess­ing _new_ and dif­fer­ent prop­er­ties. The way in which the com­bi­na­tion is ef­fect­ed is a mys­tery, yet we do not ac­count for the new and pe­cu­liar prop­er­ties of wa­ter (so dif­fer­ent from those of the orig­inal gas­es) as aris­ing from a prin­ci­ple of “aqu­os­ity,” which we have to in­voke from an­oth­er world. The an­swer is that the ar­gu­ment is from anal­ogy, and that there is not re­al­ly the re­motest anal­ogy be­tween the two cas­es. It is true that, as far as we know, elec­tric­ity is nec­es­sary to force a com­bi­na­tion of the req­ui­site equiv­alents of oxy­gen and hy­dro­gen in­to wa­ter. But though we do not know why this is, or what elec­tric­ity is, we can re­peat the pro­cess as of­ten as we will. But mark the dif­fer­ence; the wa­ter once ex­ist­ing is ob­vi­ous­ly on­ly a new form of mat­ter, in the same cat­ego­ry with the gas­es it came from: it nei­ther in­creas­es in bulk, nor takes in fresh el­ements to grow, and give birth to new drops of wa­ter. But pro­to­plasm has some­thing quite dif­fer­ent--for there may be dead pro­to­plasm and liv­ing pro­to­plasm, both iden­ti­cal to the eye and to ev­ery chem­ical test. In ei­ther con­di­tion, pro­to­plasm, as such, has _prop­er­ties_ of the same na­ture (though not of the same kind) as those of wa­ter, oxy­gen gas, or any oth­er mat­ter; it is col­or­less, heavy, sticky, elas­tic, and so forth; but be­sides all that (with­out the aid of elec­tric­ity or any phys­ical force we can ap­ply) one has the pow­er of pro­duc­ing more pro­to­plasm--gath­er­ing for it­self, by virtue of its in­her­ent pow­er, the ma­te­ri­als for growth and re­pro­duc­tion.

If di­rect­ly wa­ter was called in­to ex­is­tence it could take in nour­ish­ment, and di­vide and go on pro­duc­ing more wa­ter--and if some wa­ter could do this, while oth­er wa­ter (which no avail­able test could dis­tin­guish from it in any oth­er re­spect) could not, then we _should_ be per­fect­ly jus­ti­fied in giv­ing a spe­cial name to this pow­er, and call­ing it “aqu­os­ity” or “vi­tal­ity” or any­thing else, it be­ing out of all anal­ogy to any­thing else which we call a “prop­er­ty” of mat­ter.

In the in­tro­duc­tion of LIFE in­to the _aeon_ of or­gan­ic de­vel­op­men­tal his­to­ry, we have a clear and dis­tinct pe­ri­od, as we had when _mat­ter_ came in­to view, or when _the change_ was ush­ered in which set the cos­mic gas cool­ing and liq­ue­fy­ing, and turn­ing to sol­id in var­ious form.

The fact is that ev­ery or­gan­ic form, whether plant or an­imal, de­rived from the pro­to­plas­mic com­pounds of car­bon-​dixoide, am­mo­nia and wa­ter, is, as Mr. Drum­mond puts it,[1] “made of ma­te­ri­als which have once been in­or­gan­ic. An or­ga­niz­ing prin­ci­ple, not be­long­ing to their king­dom, lays hold of them and elab­orates them.”

[Foot­note 1: “Nat­ural Law,” p. 233.]

Thus by the in­tro­duc­tion of LIFE we have a vast­ly en­larged hori­zon. Be­fore, in the or­gan­ic world, we had on­ly the “prin­ci­ple” of so­lid­ify­ing or crys­tal­liz­ing, liq­ue­fy­ing, and turn­ing to gas or vapour, ev­er stop­ping when the state was at­tained. Or if a com­bi­na­tion was in progress, still the re­sult was on­ly a re­ar­range­ment of the same bulk of ma­te­ri­als (how­ev­er new the form) in sol­id, liq­uid, or gas, but no in­crease, no nu­tri­tion, no re­pro­duc­tion. In the or­gan­ic world we have some­thing so dif­fer­ent, that whether we talk of “prop­er­ty” or “prin­ci­ple,” the things are en­tire­ly dis­tinct.

The es­sen­tial dif­fer­ence, stat­ed as re­gards the mere facts of ir­ri­tabil­ity or mo­tion, nu­tri­tion and re­pro­duc­tion, is so grand­ly suf­fi­cient in it­self, that one al­most re­grets to have to add on the oth­er facts which fur­ther em­pha­size the dis­tinc­tion be­tween _life_ and any _prop­er­ty_ of mat­ter. But these fur­ther facts are high­ly im­por­tant as re­gards an­oth­er part of the ar­gu­ment. For while what has just been said al­most demon­strates the ne­ces­si­ty of a Giv­er of Life from a king­dom out­side the or­gan­ic, the fur­ther facts point ir­re­sistibly to the con­clu­sion that we must pred­icate more about the Giv­er of Life that we can of an ab­stract and un­known Cause.

The orig­inal pro­to­plasm, when dead, is undis­tin­guish­able by the eye, by chem­ical test, or by the mi­cro­scope, from the same pro­to­plasm when liv­ing; and liv­ing pro­to­plasm, again, may be ei­ther an­imal or veg­etable. Both are in ev­ery re­spect (ex­ter­nal­ly) ab­so­lute­ly iden­ti­cal. Yet the one will on­ly de­vel­op in­to a _plant_, the oth­er on­ly in­to an _an­imal._ Nor does it di­min­ish the sig­nif­icance of the fact to say that the dif­fer­en­ti­ation is _now_ fixed by hered­ity. If we sup­pose pro­to­plasm to be on­ly a for­tu­itous com­bi­na­tion of el­ements, what sec­ondary or com­mon nat­ural cause will ac­count for its ac­qui­si­tion of the fixed dif­fer­ence? It is true that some forms of plants ex­hib­it some func­tions that close­ly ap­proach the func­tions of what we call an­imal life; but, as we shall see present­ly, there is no ev­idence what­ev­er that there is any bridge be­tween the two--we have no proof that a plant ev­er de­vel­ops in­to an an­imal. Here is one of the gaps which the the­ory of Evo­lu­tion, true as it is to a cer­tain ex­tent, can­not bridge over; and we must not over­look the fact. We shall re­vert to it here­after.

Can it be be­lieved, then, that pro­to­plasm, as the ori­gin of life, is self-​caused, and self-​de­vel­oped? And this is not all. I must briefly re­mind my read­ers that the way in which an­imal pro­to­plasm deals with the el­ements of nu­tri­tion is quite op­po­site to that which plant pro­to­plasm fol­lows. I might, in­deed, have men­tioned this at an ear­li­er stage, when I men­tioned Pro­fes­sor Hux­ley's com­par­ison of the chem­ical ac­tion in the for­ma­tion of wa­ter with what he as­sumed to be the case in the for­ma­tion of pro­to­plasm. When wa­ter is formed, the two gas­es dis­ap­pear, and an _ex­act­ly equal weight_ of wa­ter ap­pears in their place; but if liv­ing pro­to­plasm is en­abled to im­bibe liq­uid or oth­er nu­tri­ment con­tain­ing am­mo­nia, wa­ter, and car­bon­ic acid, there is no dis­ap­pear­ance of the three el­ements and an equiv­alent weight of liv­ing pro­to­plasm ap­pear­ing in its place. Pro­to­plasm con­sumes the oxy­gen and sets free the car­bon­ic acid. Both kinds of pro­to­plasm do this, un­til ex­posed to the light; and then a dif­fer­ence is ob­served; for un­der the in­flu­ence of light, an­imal pro­to­plasm alone con­tin­ues to act in this way, and veg­etable pro­to­plasm be­gins at once to de­vel­op lit­tle green bod­ies or cor­pus­cles in its cells, and af­ter­wards acts in a to­tal­ly op­po­site way, tak­ing the car­bon in­to its sub­stance and giv­ing off the oxy­gen.[1]

[Foot­note 1: Cer­tain _fun­gi_ seem to af­ford an ex­cep­tion to this. The above is, I be­lieve, true as a the­oret­ical ac­tion of plants and an­imals in pro­to­plas­mic form. But prac­ti­cal­ly, in all high­er de­vel­op­ments of ei­ther kind, oth­er dis­tinc­tions come in­to play; e.g., that plants can make use of in­or­gan­ic mat­ter, gas­es, and wa­ter, and elab­orate them in­to or­gan­ic mat­ter. An­imals can­not do this, they re­quire more or less sol­id food--al­ways re­quir­ing “com­plex or­gan­ic bod­ies which they ul­ti­mate­ly re­duce to much sim­pler in­or­gan­ic bod­ies. They are thus me­di­ate­ly or im­me­di­ate­ly de­pen­dent on plants for their sub­sis­tence” (Nichol­son, “Zo­ol­ogy,” 6th ed. p. 17). It is per­haps with ref­er­ence to this that in the Book of Gen­esis the Cre­ator is rep­re­sent­ed as giv­ing _plant_ life to the ser­vice of man and an­imals--while noth­ing is said of the prey­ing of _Car­nivo­ra_ and _In­sec­tivo­ra_ on an­imal life.]

Not on­ly then has each kind of pro­to­plasm its own mys­te­ri­ous char­ac­ter im­pressed on it, and is com­pelled to act in a cer­tain way; but still fur­ther, each par­ti­cle of an­imal and veg­etable pro­to­plasm, when di­rect­ed in­to its _gen­er­al_ course of de­vel­op­ment as _plant or an­imal_, will again on­ly obey a cer­tain course of de­vel­op­ment in its own line.

But we must pro­ceed a step fur­ther; for those who would be­lieve in the suf­fi­cien­cy of un­aid­ed Evo­lu­tion, bid us bear in mind how very el­emen­tary the dawn of in­stinct or the be­gin­ning of rea­son is in the low­est forms which are classed as an­imal, and how very small is the gap[1] be­tween some high­ly or­ga­nized plants and some an­imal forms, and ar­gue there­fore that they may just­ly re­gard the dis­tinc­tion as of mi­nor im­por­tance, and hope that the “miss­ing link” will be yet dis­cov­ered and proved. At any rate, they min­imize the dif­fer­ence, and urge that it is of no ac­count if at least they can es­tab­lish the suf­fi­cien­cy of a proved de­vel­op­ment ex­tend­ing un­bro­ken from the low­est to the high­est an­imal form. And hav­ing fixed at­ten­tion on this side, no doubt there is a long stretch of smooth wa­ter over which the pas­sage is unchecked.

[Foot­note 1: At the risk of rep­eti­tion I will re­mind the read­er that na­ture con­tains _noth­ing like_ a pro­gres­sive scale from plant to an­imal. It is _nev­er_ that the high­est plant can be con­nect­ed with the low­est an­imal as in one se­ries of links. The an­imal king­dom and the plant king­dom are ab­so­lute­ly apart. Both start from sim­ilar el­emen­tary pro­teina­ceous struc­tures; and both pre­serve their de­vel­op­ment up­wards--each ex­hibit­ing _some_ of the fea­tures of the oth­er. It is at the bot­tom of each scale that re­sem­blance is to be found, _not_ be­tween the top of one and the low­est mem­bers of the oth­er.]

The Evo­lu­tion the­ory is that all the dif­fer­ent species of an­imals, birds, and oth­er forms of life have been caused by the ac­cu­mu­la­tion and per­pet­ua­tion of nu­mer­ous small changes which be­gan in one or at most a few el­emen­tary forms, and went on till all the thou­sands of species we now know of were de­vel­oped.[1] It _is_ a fact that all or­gan­ic forms have a cer­tain ten­den­cy to vary. I need on­ly al­lude to the many va­ri­eties of pi­geons, hors­es, cat­tle, and dogs which are pro­duced by vary­ing the food, the cir­cum­stances of life and so forth, and by se­lec­tive breed­ing.

The con­tention then is: giv­en cer­tain orig­inal sim­ple forms of life, prob­ably ma­rine or aquat­ic--for it is in the wa­ter that the most like­ly oc­cur--these will grad­ual­ly change and vary, some in one di­rec­tion, some in an­oth­er; that the changes go on in­creas­ing, each crea­ture giv­ing birth to off­spring which ex­hibits the stored-​up re­sults of change, till the var­ied and fin­ished forms--some rep­tile, some bird, some an­imal--which we now see around us, have been pro­duced. And at last man him­self was de­vel­oped in the same way. All this, ob­serve, is by the ac­tion of just such or­di­nary and nat­ural caus­es as we now see op­er­at­ing around us--changes in food and in cli­mate, changes in one part re­quir­ing a cor­re­spond­ing change in oth­ers, and so on.

[Foot­note 1: The read­er may find this ad­mirably put in Wal­lace, “Con­tri­bu­tions to the The­ory of Nat­ural Se­lec­tion,” p. 302.]

Na­ture con­tains no sharply drawn lines. Plants are dif­fer­ent from an­imals; but there are an­imals so low down in the scale of life that it is dif­fi­cult to dis­tin­guish them from plants. Pi­geons are dis­tinct from pheas­ants, but the line at which the one species ends and the oth­er be­gins is dif­fi­cult to draw. This fact seems to in­vite some the­ory of one form chang­ing in­to oth­er. Ac­cord­ing­ly the evo­lu­tion­ist ex­plains the work­ing of the pro­cess which he as­serts to be suf­fi­cient to pro­duce all the var­ious forms of life in our globe.

Af­ter stat­ing this more in de­tail than we have pre­vi­ous­ly done, we shall be in a bet­ter po­si­tion to judge if the pro­cess (which in the main we have no de­sire to de­ny or even to ques­tion) can dis­pense with _guid­ance_ and the fix­ing of cer­tain lines and lim­its with­in which, and of cer­tain types to­wards which, the de­vel­op­ment pro­ceeds. That is our point.

It is hard­ly nec­es­sary to il­lus­trate the enor­mous de­struc­tion of life which goes on in the world. Even among the hu­man race, the per­cent­age of in­fants that die in the first months of their life is very large. But in the low­er forms of life it is tru­ly enor­mous. On­ly con­sid­er the myr­iads of in­sects that per­ish from hunger or ac­ci­dent, and from the prey­ing of one species on an­oth­er. If it were not so, the world would be over­run by plagues of mice, of birds, of in­sects of all kinds, and in­deed by crea­tures of ev­ery grade. The term “strug­gle for ex­is­tence” is, then, not an in­apt one. All forms of liv­ing crea­tures have to con­tend with en­emies which seek to prey up­on or to de­stroy them, with the dif­fi­cul­ty of ob­tain­ing food, and with what I may call the chances of na­ture--cold, storms, floods, dis­ease, and so forth.

Now, it is ob­vi­ous that if some crea­tures of a giv­en kind pos­sess some ac­ci­den­tal pe­cu­liar­ity or mod­ifi­ca­tion in their for­ma­tion which gives them (in one way or an­oth­er) an ad­van­tage over their fel­lows, these im­proved spec­imens are like­ly to sur­vive, and, sur­viv­ing, to have off­spring.

It is this per­pet­ua­tion of ad­van­ta­geous changes, orig­inal­ly in­duced by the cir­cum­stances of en­vi­ron­ment, that is in­di­cat­ed by the term “nat­ural se­lec­tion.” Na­ture choos­es out the form best suit­ed to the cir­cum­stances which sur­round it, and this form lives while the oth­ers die out. And this form goes on im­prov­ing by slow suc­ces­sive changes, which make it more and more fit for the con­tin­ual­ly chang­ing cir­cum­stances of its life.

Sub­or­di­nate al­so to this nat­ural se­lec­tion is the prin­ci­ple that bright colour and oth­er spe­cial qual­ities may be de­vel­oped in the males of a race, be­cause in­di­vid­uals with such ad­van­tages are more at­trac­tive, and there­fore more eas­ily find mates, than dull-​coloured or oth­er­wise less at­trac­tive in­di­vid­uals.

Of each of these prin­ci­ples I may give a sim­ple ex­am­ple. Sup­pos­ing a species of bird with a soft slen­der beak to be placed on an is­land, where the on­ly food they could ob­tain was fruit en­closed in a hard or tough shell or cov­er­ing. Sup­pos­ing some birds ac­ci­den­tal­ly pos­sessed of a beak that was short­er and stouter than the oth­ers', these would be able to break open the shell and get at the fruit, while the oth­ers would starve. Some of the de­scen­dants of the birds with the stout beaks would in­her­it the same pe­cu­liar­ity, and in the course of sev­er­al gen­er­ations there would thus arise a species with short and strong, per­haps curved, beaks just fit­ted to live on fruits of the kind de­scribed. In a sim­ilar way the webbed feet of birds that swim were de­vel­oped by their aquat­ic habits. And so with the long slen­der toes of the waders, which are so well fit­ted for walk­ing over float­ing aquat­ic plants.

Of the oth­er prin­ci­ple, sex­ual se­lec­tion, a fa­mil­iar ex­am­ple is the bright and showy colour­ing of the male birds of many species: the fe­males of their species, as they need pro­tec­tion while help­less­ly sit­ting on their eggs, are dull-​coloured like the bark of trees or the sand, among which their nests lie hid.

Some of the Hi­malayan pheas­ants ex­hib­it this pe­cu­liar­ity to a marked de­gree. Orig­inal­ly, it is said, the male bird, which was more bright­ly coloured than the rest, got mat­ed more eas­ily by the pref­er­ence shown to him for his bright colour.

The ques­tion is, can we sup­pose all this to go on, by self-​caused laws and con­cur­rence of cir­cum­stances, with­out a pre-​ex­ist­ing de­sign for the forms to reach or an ex­ter­nal guid­ance in the pro­cess­es?