August Weismann

“ In earlier times the beauty, the splendour of colour, and the fragrance of flowers were regarded as phenomena created for the delight of mankind, or as an outcome of the infinite creative power of Mother Nature, who loves to run riot in form and colour. ”

“ The instinct in this case does not express itself as in the chicken by the rapid lowering of the head and seizing the food, but in quite a different combination of movements, in running after and grasping the fleeing victim. But that is not all that is included in the instinctive action in the case of the cat, for there is also the whole wild and gruesome play, the familiar letting go and catching again, the passionate growling of satisfaction which, in its wildness, reminds us much more of a blood-thirsty tiger than of a tame domestic animal. ”

“ We are familiar with our big grass-green grasshopper, and we know how easily it is overlooked when it sits quietly on a high grass-stem, surrounded by grasses and herbage; the light grass-green of its whole body protects it most effectively from discovery: for myself, at least, I must confess that in a flowery meadow I have stood right in front of one, and have looked close to it for a long time without detecting it. ”

“ When I say that the theory of descent is the most progressive step that has yet been taken in the development of human knowledge, I am bound to give my reasons for this opinion. It is justified, it seems to me, even by this fact alone, that the Evolution idea is not merely a new light on the special region of biological science, zoology and botany, but is of quite general importance. ”

“ This was the state of affairs when, in 1858, Darwin's book on The Origin of Species appeared, and hoisted the flag of evolution afresh. The struggle that ensued may now be regarded as at an end, at least as far as we are concerned—that is, in the domain of science. The doctrine of descent has gained the day, and we can confidently say that the Evolution theory has become a permanent possession of science that can never again be taken away. It forms the foundation of all our theories of the organic world, and all further progress must start from this basis. ”

“ The conception of an evolution of the world of life upon the earth reaches far beyond the bounds of any single science, and influences our whole realm of thought. It means nothing less than the elimination of the miraculous from our knowledge of nature, and the placing of the phenomena of life on the same plane as the other natural processes, that is, as having been brought about by the same forces, and being subject to the same laws. ”

“ It is, therefore, a fallacious objection to say that a species, whose existence was threatened, would, considering the slowness of the process of selection, have died out altogether before it could have acquired effective protection by mimicking an immune species. The assumption is false—the widespread, hazy idea that the process of natural selection can only begin when the existence of the species is threatened. On the contrary, every species utilizes every possibility of improvement; and every improvement for which variation supplies the necessary material is possible. ”

“ The manifold diversity of colour and form adaptation is so great among insects, to which protection from their enemies is so necessary, and especially among butterflies, that I should never come to an end if I were to try to give even an approximate idea of it. Let us, therefore, turn now from such cases to a higher—the highest—grade of adaptation, that in which there is not only a mimicry of special and complex coloration, but in which the whole animal has become like some external object, and is thereby secured from discovery. ”

“ Life, in fact, is like a continuous stream, the larger and smaller waves of which are particular species and individuals. Only a few decennia ago a morphologist, who was rightly held in high esteem, could champion the idea that the mature ovum of animals was lifeless material, which had to be quickened in order to develop, but now such a theory is untenable, since we have become aware of the phenomena of maturation in the ovum, and know that most important vital processes, the reducing divisions, take place at the time of maturation, quite independently of fertilization. ”

“ Even so distinguished a specialist on the Protozoa as Bütschli argues that organisms are not perpetua mobilia, and when one remembers the physicist's theory of the impossibility of a perpetuum mobile this looks at first sight like a formidable objection. But does the organism always remain the same as long as it lives, like a pendulum which friction causes to swing more and more slowly till ultimately it comes to a standstill? ”

“ When we look at one of the lowest forms of life, such as an Amœba or a single-celled Alga, and reflect that, according to the theory of evolution, the whole realm of creation as we see it now, with Man at its head, has evolved from similar or perhaps even smaller and simpler organisms, it seems at first sight a monstrous assumption, and one which quite contradicts our simplest and most certain observations. ”

“ In his Philosophie zoologique, published in 1809, Lamarck set forth a theory of evolution whose truth he attempted to vindicate by showing—as Treviranus had done before him—that the conception of species, on the immutability of which the whole hypothesis of creation had been based, was an artificial one, read into nature by us; that sharply circumscribed groups do not exist in nature at all; and that it is often very difficult, and not infrequently quite impossible, to define one species precisely from allied forms, because it is connected with these on all sides by transition stages. ”

“ A modern opponent of the selection theory (Eimer) has suggested that the marking of the lateral veins, and other resemblances to a leaf in Kallima, represent nothing more than the pattern which was present in any case, inherited from ancestors, and which in the course of time arranged itself in a particular manner according to internal developmental laws. Not selection—that is, adaptation to surroundings—but the internal developmental impulse has brought about the resemblance to the leaf. It is astonishing how a preconceived idea can blind a man and weaken his judgment! ”

“ How is it possible for the organism to produce germ-cells, that is, cells which contain the complete germ-plasm with all its determinants, when the building up of the body in ontogeny, according to our theory, involves a disintegration or segregation of the determinant-architecture into smaller and smaller groups? It is impossible that specific determinants should arise de novo, just as an animal cannot arise otherwise than from its germ, nor a cell otherwise than from a cell, nor a nucleus otherwise than from an already existing nucleus. ”

“ If we wished to attack the problem of heredity at its roots we should first of all have to try to understand the process of life itself as a series of physico-chemical sequences. Perhaps this will be achieved up to a certain point in the future, but if we were to wait for this we should in the meantime have to abandon all attempts at a theoretical interpretation of the phenomena of development and heredity, and might indeed have to postpone them to the Greek Kalends. ”

“ But in the science of nature every new solution implies the cropping up of a new riddle, and we are immediately confronted with the problem, Why should nature, in the course of evolution, have interpolated this process of the mingling of different hereditary substances almost everywhere in the organic world? This, however, is a problem which we cannot attack until we have first made ourselves more fully acquainted with the phenomena of inheritance, and have attempted to reason back from these to the nature of the hereditary substance. We must, in short, think out a theory of heredity. ”

“ Only after we have made ourselves acquainted with his teaching shall we try to test its foundations, and to see how far this splendid structure stands on a secure basis of fact, and how deeply its power of interpretation penetrates towards the roots of phenomena. We shall examine the forces by which organisms are dominated, and the phenomena produced, and thereby test Darwin's principles of interpretation, in part rejecting them, in part accepting them, though in a much extended form, and thus try to give the whole theoretic structure a more secure foundation. ”

“ We see from all this that natural selection is vastly more powerful than artificial selection by Man. In the latter, only one character at a time can be caused to change, while natural selection may influence a whole group of characters at the same time, as well as all the stages of development. Through the weeding out of the individuals which are annually exterminated, it is always on an average the 'fittest' which survive, that is to say, those which have the greatest number of bodily parts and rudiments of parts in the fittest possible condition of development at every stage. ”

“ The opponents of the theory of sexual selection attach too much importance to isolated cases; they imagine that each female must make a choice between several males. But the theory of sexual selection does not demand this, any more than the theory of natural selection requires the assumption that every individual of a species which is better equipped for the struggle for existence must necessarily survive and attain to reproduction, or, conversely, that the less well equipped must necessarily perish. ”

“ For it thus supplies the keystone in the arch of our interpretation of nature and gives it unity; for the first time it makes it possible to form a conception of a world-mechanism, in which each stage is the result of the one before it, and the cause of the succeeding one.
How deeply all our earlier opinions are affected by this doctrine will become clear if we fix our attention on a single point, the derivation of the human understanding from that of animal ancestors. What of the reason of Man, of his morals, of his freedom of will? may be asked, as it has been, and still is often asked. ”

“ Every cell contains idioplasm, since every cell-nucleus contains chromatin, but I call the idioplasm of the germ-cells germ-plasm, or the primary-constituent-substance of the whole organism, and the complexes of primary constituents necessary to the production of a complete individual—whose presence we have just shown to be theoretically necessary—I call ids. In many cases these 'ids' might be synonymous with chromosomes, at least in all the cases in which the chromosomes are simple, that is, are not composed of several similarly formed structures. ”

“ Every one knows in a general way what is meant by the doctrine of descent—that it is the theory which maintains that the forms of life, animals and plants, which we see on our earth to-day, have not been the same from all time, but have been developed, by a process of transformation, from others of an earlier age, and are in fact descended from ancestors specifically different. ”

“ Very gradually at first, and step by step, there develop from this single cell, the ovum, more and more numerous cells; this mass of cells segregates into different groups, which differentiate further and further, until at last they form the perfect man. This occurs in the development of every human being, and we are merely unaccustomed to the thought that it means nothing else than an incredibly rapid ascent of the organism from a very low level of life to the highest. ”

“ Charles Darwin championed, in the main, the same fundamental ideas as had been promulgated by his grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, by Treviranus, and by Lamarck: species only seem to us immutable; in reality they can vary, and become transformed into other species, and the living world of our day has arisen through such transformations, through a sublime process of evolution which began with the lowest forms of life, but by degrees, in the course of unthinkably long ages, progressed to organisms more and more complex in structure, more and more effective in function. ”

“ We are standing in the midst of a flood-tide of investigation, which is ceaselessly heaping up new facts bearing upon the problem of evolution. Every theory formulated at this time must be prepared shortly to find itself face to face with a mass of new facts which may necessitate its more or less complete reconstruction. ”

“ In individuals these lowlier series make their appearance again during development. The contrasts in the solar system between planets and sun are repeated in plants and animals, and, as light is the principle of movement, animals have the power of independent movement in advance of the plants which belong to the earth.'
Obviously enough, this is no longer the study of nature; it is nature-construction from a basis of guesses and analogies rather than of knowledge and facts. Light is the principle of motion, and as animals move, they correspond to the sun, and plants to the planets! ”

“ As the fertility of a species is a definite quantity, so also will its elimination be definite, or, as we may say, when the normal number under uniform conditions of life remains constant, the ratio of elimination will also remain constant. Each species is therefore subject to a perfectly definite ratio of elimination which remains on the average constant, and this is the reason why a species does not multiply beyond its normal number notwithstanding the great excess of the food-supply, and notwithstanding the fertility which, in all species, is sufficient to lead to boundless multiplication. ”

“ But just as it is unnecessary to erect a new glass factory for each new house that is built, so the development of each individual does not require the establishment each time of those numberless life-factories—the constellations—whose business it is to produce anew the wheels, levers, springs, and cylinders of the developmental machinery at each stage, for they are all provided for in the germ-plasm, and it is only on this account that they are capable of hereditary variation. ”

“ Every animal has a great many such 'instincts,' which lead it, indeed force it, to act appropriately towards an end, without having any consciousness of that end. For how should the butterfly know what flying is, or that it possessed the power of flight at all, or who could have shown the predatory wasp, when she wakened from the pupa sleep to quite a new kind of life, all that she had to do in order to procure food for herself and to secure shelter and nourishment for the brood which was still enclosed within her ovary? ”

“ Darwin had the good fortune to be a free investigator, and to be able to retire, on his return from his travels, to a small property at Down in Kent, there to live for his family and his work. Here he followed up the idea of evolution which he had already formulated, and it has always seemed to me the most remarkable thing about him, that he was able to keep in mind and work up the hundreds of isolated inquiries that were eventually to be brought together to form the main fabric of his theory. ”

“ There are not special determinants of the size of a cell, others of its specific histological differentiation, and still others of its duration of life, power of multiplication, and so on; there are only determinants of the whole physiological nature of a cell, on which all these and many other 'characters' depend. For this reason alone I should object to the assumption that the determinants of the germ are ready-made histological substances. That is as unlikely as that their groups in the germ-plasm are 'miniature models' of the finished parts of the body. ”

“ Thus we see that the capacity for boundless multiplication inherent in every species is limited by the co-existence of other species; there is, metaphorically speaking, a continuous struggle going on between species, plant and animal alike; each seeks as far as possible to multiply, and each is hemmed in by the others and as far as possible prevented from doing so. The 'struggle' is by no means only the direct limitation of the number of individuals, which consists in the use of one species by another as food, as in beasts of prey and their victims, or locusts and plants ”

“ We now understand how the purposefulness, which we meet with everywhere among organisms, can have arisen without the direct interference of a Power working intentionally towards an end—simply as the outcome and result of the survival of the fittest. The two forms of the processes of selection, 'natural selection' in the narrower sense, and 'sexual selection,' dominate, so to speak, all parts and all functions of the organism, and are striving to adapt these as well as possible to the conditions of their life. ”

“ Whether one of the abundant males is devoured sooner or later is immaterial to the persistence of the species, since one male is sufficient to fertilize several females. The death of a single female, on the other hand, implies a loss of several hundred descendants to the species. It is, therefore, intelligible that, in species already somewhat rare, the female must first of all be protected; that is to say, that all variations tending in the direction of her protection would give rise to a process of selection resulting in an augmentation of the protective characters. ”

“ But neither he nor Erasmus Darwin were at all clear as to how the use of an organ could bring about its variation and transformation. The latter only says that, for instance, the snout of the pig has become hard through its constant grubbing in the ground; the trunk of the elephant has acquired its great mobility through the perpetual use of it for all sorts of purposes; the tongue of the herbivore owes its hard, grater-like condition to the rubbing to and fro of the hard grass in the mouth, and so on. ”

“ When we admit that the fit adaptation of the organism, as far as we understand it, must depend upon processes of selection, we may refer this 'functional adaptation' also to primitive processes of selection, which prevailed at the very beginning of life upon our earth, and represented, so to speak, the first adaptation that was established, but we can say nothing with certainty in regard to this matter as long as we do not understand the essence of assimilation. ”

“ We see, then, that the much-persecuted and easily injured butterflies make use of a poisonous substance (in the widest sense) , prepared in the plant for its own protection, and, wherever their own metabolism makes it possible, they use it to protect themselves. We need not wonder, therefore, that so many butterflies are immune, nor that among the numerous palatable species a small proportion have endeavoured to become like the protected species, as far as natural selection was able to bring such a resemblance about. ”

“ In these lectures, therefore, we have not merely to show on what grounds we make this postulate of an evolution process, and to marshall the facts which necessitate it; we must also try to penetrate as far as possible towards the causes which bring about such transformations. For this reason we are forced to go beyond the limits of the theory of descent in the narrow sense, and to deal with the general processes of life itself, especially with reproduction and the closely associated problem of heredity. The transformation of species can only be interpreted in one of two ways ”

“ Darwin refers the origin of these secondary sexual characters to processes of selection quite analogous to those of ordinary natural selection, only that in this case it is not the maintenance of the species which is aimed at, but the attainment of reproduction by the single individual. The males are to some extent obliged to struggle for the possession of the females, and every little variation which enables a male to gain possession of a female more readily than his neighbour has for this reason a greater likelihood of being transmitted to descendants. ”