Ethel Duncan Romanes

“ This year I never expected to be more than one in which to gain experience, for embryo grafting, as it has never been tried by anybody, cannot be learned about except by experiments. But as I am a young man yet, and hope to do a good deal of 'hammering,' I shall not let Pangenesis alone until I feel quite sure that it does not admit of being any further driven home by experimental work; and even if I never get positive results, I shall always continue to believe in the theory. ”

“ There was one such line of advance in the life of George Romanes, of which it may be hard to speak, but wrong, perhaps, to be wholly silent. Few men have shown more finely the simplicity and patience in sustained endeavour which are the conditions of attainment in the quest of truth. It is easy to see how the training and habits of a mind devoted to natural science may render faith more difficult, and cross or check the venture of the soul towards the things eternal and unseen. ”

“ According to Weismann and yourself, it is natural selection that has brought about sexuality 'for the sake of better results in the offspring,' by making them more variable or plastic. But how can natural selection act prophetically? Unless the variability is of use to the individuals at each stage of its advance, it cannot come under the sway of natural selection, however advantageous it may eventually prove to the type. But, if one thinks about it, how can such variability be of any use to the individual? Observe, beneficial variability is quite different from beneficial variation. ”

“ How in the world can 'force' act without any material on which to act? Yet, unless we assume that it can, the whole discussion is either meaningless, or else assumes the truth of some such theory as 'Pangenesis.' In other words, as it must be 'unthinkable' that force should act independently of matter, the doctrine of its persistence can only be made to bear upon the question of heredity, by supposing that there is a material connection between corporeal and germinal cells—i.e. by granting the existence of force-carriers, call them gemmules, or physiological units, or what we please. ”

“ But although I cannot endure to picture your house or your household as the scene of such a death, I can derive some consolation from the thought that he died as few men in the history of the world have died—knowing that he had finished a gigantic work, seeing how that work has transformed the thoughts of mankind, and foreseeing that his name must endure to the end of time among the very greatest of the human race. ”

“ All that has been effected by our recent discovery of a particular case of causality in the selection principle is to throw back the question of design, in all the still outstanding provinces of Nature, to the question—What is the nature of natural causation? Or, again, to quote Mr. Aubrey Moore, 'Darwinism has conferred upon philosophy and religion an inestimable benefit by showing us that we must choose between two alternatives: either God is everywhere present in Nature, or He is nowhere.' This, I apprehend, puts the issue into as small a number of words as it well can be put. ”

“ There are none so blind as those who will not see. Where can your powers of 'observation' have been when you can still remark that I ignore the facts of hybridisation? I can only repeat that from the first I have regarded them as evidence of the utmost importance as establishing a highly general correlation between separate origin of allied species and absence of cross-sterility. In fact, for the last five years I have had experiments going on in my Alpine garden, which I helped in founding for the very purpose of inquiring into this matter. ”

“ If you assume that the result of carrying them through would be destructive of physiological selection by proving that fertile hybrids are, as a rule, fully fertile, and also (which is very important) that in any cases where experiment may show them to be so, further experiment would fail to show that isolation has not been effected in any other way (as by pre-potency, differences of insect fertilisation, &c.) —in short, if you assume that fertility is as complete between the two associated species as it is within each species, how is it conceivable that they should continue to be distinct? ”

“ No account which science can give, by discovery or conjecture, of the method of creation, can ever weaken the argument which lies from the universality of law, order, and beauty in the universe to the universality of mind. The mind of man looks forth into nature, and finds nowhere unintelligible chance, but everywhere an order, a system, a law, a beauty, which corresponds, as greater to less, to his own rational and spiritual intuitions, methods, and expectations. ”

“ My dearest James,—This theory, of the Non-Inheritance of Acquired Characters, is that nothing that can happen in the lifetime of the individual exercises any influence on its progeny; effects of use or disuse, for example, cannot be inherited, nor, therefore, can any adaptation to external conditions which are brought about in individual organisms. Natural selection thus can only operate in spontaneous variations of germ-plasm, choosing those variations which, when 'writ large' in the resulting organisms, are best suited to survive and transmit. ”

“ Of course it may be denied that all laws do follow from the persistence of force. And this is what I mean by the distinction between a scientific and a logical proof. For in the last resort all scientific proof goes upon the assumption that energy is permanent, so that if from this assumption all natural laws and processes admit of being deduced, it follows that for a scientific cosmology no further assumption is required; all the phenomena of Nature receive their last or ultimate scientific explanation in this the most ultimate of scientific hypotheses. ”

“ All is not lost, and everything is possible, so long as the mind refuses to doubt the reality of the light that has come, perhaps, as yet only in broken rays. Of such justice and loyalty George Romanes set a very high example. ”

“ My quarrel is with the term self-adaptation, which seems to imply causes of a non-naturalistic kind. Which, of course, is quite a different thing from doubting whether the naturalistic explanation given by Darwin is adequate to meet all the facts. I am myself more and more given to question 'the all-sufficiency of natural selection,' and this, whether or not use-inheritance is one of the supplementary factors. But that there are some hitherto undiscovered factors of this kind where many of the phenomena of adaptation are concerned, I am more and more disposed [332] to suspect. ”

“ So, of course, by 'other theory' I did not mean that physiological selection was in my opinion the only theory of the origin of species. Everywhere throughout the paper, from the title-page to the conclusion, I represented it as an 'additional suggestion,' a 'supplementary hypothesis,' &c., &c. Sexual selection is in my view (as it is also in Darwin's, Wallace's, and doubtless that of all evolutionists) one of the 'other theories that have been propounded on the origin of species.' So is Lamarck's theory, which was considered by Darwin as more or less 'supplementary' to natural selection ”

“ A propos to this point, I do not believe that anyone yet has half done justice to natural selection in respect of its action subsequent to the formation of species—at least, not expressly. But I must shut up. ”

“ Darwin's great work has had on every department of science, of literature, and also of art. Thirty-six years have passed away since the publication of the 'Origin of Species,' and we have lived to see that again tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis. Now we see that a man can fully accept the doctrine of evolution, and yet can also believe in a personal God and in the doctrines which logically follow on such a belief. ”

“ Variations are often indefinite in cultivation, especially after several years. Therefore to secure a useful race artificial selection is necessary. On the other hand, variation is definite in Nature, all the seedlings varying in one and the same direction, i.e. towards equilibrium with the environmental forces. Darwin knew of this fact, and you have abundantly described it. But Darwin failed to see that this definite variation in Nature is the rule, and not the exception. Hence, as he admits, natural selection is not wanted at all [i.e. if all variations are definite in Nature] . ”

“ Now, you cannot possibly doubt that the first expectation is realised in nature; as between allied [205] species sterility does occur in all degrees, from there being no such sterility at all in very many cases, to there being absolute sterility in other cases. Therefore, in stating this fact as a fact, I am not playing at 'heads I win and tails you lose,' nor 'begging the whole question at the outset.' Any 'question' really arises only with regard to the second expectation—viz. whether there is a general correlation between degrees of mutual fertility and degrees of topographical isolation. ”

“ For surely, be there as much self-adaptation in Nature as ever you please, it would still be those individuals (or incipient types) which best respond to stimulation (i.e. most adaptively do so) that, other things equal, would survive in the struggle for existence, and so be naturally selected. In other words, I do not see why you should accept natural selection as regards 'vigour' of seedlings, and nowhere else. ”

“ Supposing, for the sake of argument, that twenty years hence I publish one hundred instances [202] of allied species which grow intermixed in common areas, proving by experiment that in all the cases there is some comparative degree of sterility between them (if only due to pre-potency of their own pollen) , would you regard this as making in favour of physiological selection? Or are you already prepared to admit that such must be the case, since otherwise the species A and B could not exist without fusion into one? ”

“ J. Romanes.
Dear Darwin,—Criticism of an intelligent kind is what I feel most in need of, and therefore it is no merit on my part to like it when it comes.
The point about the combined action of natural and physiological selection is, after all, a very subordinate one, and, as I said in 'Nature' some weeks ago, is the most highly speculative and least trustworthy part of the theory. Moreover, it is the only part that is directly opposed to an expressed conclusion in the 'Origin,' though, even here, the opposition is not real. ”

“ It is only far on in life, I think, that a man comes to realise either the vast importance of things which are not held with absolute certainty, or the mysterious and complex nature of the act of faith, and the discipline of obscurity, and the way in which real spiritual progress may be going on where the mind seems only to be holding on, as it were, with fear and trembling. ”

“ I can see no good reason why a man of science should not be a poet. Lord Bacon surely shows in his Essays that he had the poet in him. It all depends upon the way of going about it, and on the man's keeping himself, as man, above his pursuit, as Emerson well said long ago.
I do not quite apprehend your estimate of Darwin, nor of Darwin's works, in p. 119. This is no doubt due to my ignorance. I knew him little, but my slight intercourse with him impressed me deeply as well as pleasurably.
With sincere thanks, I remain, dear Mr. Romanes, faithfully yours,
W. E. Gladstone. ”

“ For my own part I have always felt that the two most precious things in life are faith and love, and more and more the older that I grow. Ambition and achievement are a long way behind in my experience, in fact out of the running altogether. ”

“ Romanes resided in 18 Cornwall Terrace, which his mother gave up to him, and these eleven years were perhaps the brightest and most fruitful of his life.
It is difficult to give any just idea of the extreme happiness and pleasantness of the home life and of outward circumstances; happiness which only seemed to increase as years went on. He grew more boyish, more playful, and seemed to have an endless capacity for enjoyment, for friendship, for happiness of the best and purest kind. ”

“ Time will prevent me from treating very fully of instinct in my lecture, but when I come to write the book for the International Science Series on Comparative Psychology, I shall try to say all that I can on instinct. ”