Natural Selection and Quantifiable Proportions among Animals
The concordance in the quantitative proportions among animals is one of the tremendous laws of nature. The settings in which species live and die occur within definite limits where no obstructions preclude their bigger distribution leads to the further theory that these limitations were ascribed to them from the start. We could make the final conclusion that the order which predominates in nature is intended, that it is influenced by the limitations determined out on the first day of creation, and that it has been retained unchanged through epochs with no other modifications than those which the higher intellectual abilities of man allow him to impose on a few animals more closely affiliated with him.
These notions of some of the most eminent and influential thinkers of the pre-Darwinian age appear to us now to be altogether obsolete and even positively silly; but they notwithstanding show the mental condition of even the most modern section of scientists on the topic of the nature and origin of species. Many render it clear that despite the extensive knowledge and adroit reasoning of Lamarck, and the more popular exposition of the matter by the author of the Vestiges of Creation, there had never been a acceptable explanation of the ancestry of any one species from another. Such preeminent naturalists as Geoffroy Saint Hilaire, Professor Grant, Dean Herbert, Von Buch, and others, expressed their belief that species sprang up as mere assortments, and that the species of each genus were all descended from one common ancestor. But not one of them explained the law or the method that created the modifications. This was still “the great mystery.”
Finally, the additional inquiry of how far this common ancestry could be extended didn’t come up for discussion at all. It was trusted that, although the first step on the road of “transmutation of species” had so far not been realized, and it was quite useless to speculate how far it could be possible to move in the same direction or where the road would ultimately lead.
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