Henry Cadwalader Chapman

“ In a word, no one can show where the Inorganic world ends and the Organic begins, the transition being so gradual. The objection is therefore groundless that the study of life is entirely different from that of all other phenomena, and that one can learn little about it. On the contrary, we have every reason to expect that in time we shall have a Science of Life, or Biology, a Science which will bear the same relation to Zoology and Botany that History does to mere Chronicle ”

“ Necessarily the offspring will exhibit marked improvement in beauty of form, development of talent, and powers of defense, if the fathers are always selected from those who approach nearest the standard of excellence.
Having illustrated now, we hope sufficiently well, the selection brought about by man and nature, let us see how they differ and in what they agree. Man selects knowingly, with an object; making use of variations, he modifies for his own advantage. Nature eliminates blindly, without an object, the organisms surviving being better fitted for existence through some advantage. ”

“ Occasionally we find animals so badly organized as to make it incredible that they should have appeared on the earth as such originally. In speaking of the Sloth, Cuvier observes, "One finds them so little related to ordinary animals, the general laws of living organizations apply so little to them, the different parts of their body seem to be so much in contradiction with the rules of co-existence that we find established in the whole animal kingdom, that one could really believe that they are the remains of another order of things." ”

“ We propose in this essay to bring together, in as popular a manner as possible, some of the evidence in favor of this theory, endeavoring to show that the different plants and animals are linked together by transitional forms; that there has been a progress from the simple, lowly organized, to the highly complex forms of life; that the transitional stages through which a plant or an animal passes in the development from its primitive to its adult condition are permanently retained in the lower forms of life ”

“ We see, therefore, that the development of the chick and the mammal is the same, while the difference between their eggs is not an essential one,—the nutriment for the mammalian egg being furnished from time to time, while that for the bird's egg is supplied at once in the form of yolk. A homely illustration of this difference is that of a man who receives his yearly food from day to day, and of one who receives his yearly food at once. ”

“ Supposing the theory of the Evolution of Life to be true, the important question to be decided is not whether there are any transitional forms or links between man and this or that kind of animal,—though of course the discovery of such links would be weighty additional evidence,—but whether man is an animal, whether the difference between man and the members of the animal kingdom is one of kind or only of degree. Since man has a backbone, he is a vertebrate, and, as he is suckled when young, he is a mammal. ”

“ No study illustrates better than Geology not only the advantage but the absolute necessity of general knowledge for the thorough understanding of any particular subject. Geology means literally a discourse on the earth. ”

“ If we now compare the mental powers of the higher animals, such as those of the Horse, Dog, Elephant, Monkeys, with those of such savages as we have mentioned, and these with the most cultivated of men, we come to the conclusion that the difference is certainly much less between the higher animals and the lower races of mankind than between these and men like Shakspeare, Newton, Hunter, Voltaire, La Place, Cuvier, Goethe, Gauss, Müller. ”

“ While the causes of many variations as well as their transmission to posterity are obscure or unknown, it seems very probable that changes in Nutrition are the causes of all variations, the term Nutrition including the effects of Food, Climate, Social Relations, Use and Disuse, Correlation of Organs, etc.; while the facts of Inheritance are to be explained by the laws of Generation, of which as yet few are known. No doubt at some future day Nutrition and Generation will be shown to be simply physical and chemical phenomena. ”

“ Huxley observes, "The man who should know the true history of the bit of chalk which every carpenter carries about in his breeches-pocket, though ignorant of all other history, is likely to have a better conception of this wonderful universe, and of a man's relation to it, than the most learned student who is deep-read in the records of humanity and ignorant of those of Nature." ”

“ Finally, to many persons, complex structures like the eye and ear are insuperable objections to the theory of Natural Selection, it seeming incredible to those who are unacquainted with Comparative Anatomy that such organs could have arisen through the Survival of the Fittest caused by the action of a blind, objectless, working Nature. The eye is usually studied in a most developed state, as in man, for example; but the visual organ of some of the lower animals is only a pigment spot, more or less sensitive to the rays of light, but incapable of forming the image of an external object. ”

“ Darwin explains these striking facts by showing that the harmonizing of the color of an animal with its surroundings is useful to it. For those animals being unobserved are favored in the struggle for existence, seizing more easily their prey, or escaping from their enemies more readily, than those not so favored. ”

“ Paleontology has answered that objection by supplying the missing links, such as the intermediate forms which bind together the Rhinoceros and the Horse, the Hippopotamus and the Pig, the Whale and the Seal, the Reptiles and Birds, the Ganoid fishes and Batrachia, etc. Not only are the fossils invaluable, therefore, to the Evolutionist without reference to their age, but the order in which they have appeared, and their relative age so far as it is possible to determine it, are in perfect harmony with the conclusions we have drawn from the structure of living plants and animals. ”

“ The life-processes, the absence of amylum and chlorophyll, are such important facts in the economy of the Fungi that some naturalists deny that they are plants at all, and wish to place them in the intermediate kingdom referred to in the preceding chapter. The reproduction of the Fungi, and the many transitional forms hardly distinguishable from Algae and Lichens, influence most botanists in regarding them as very aberrant, but still members of the vegetal kingdom.
Most Fungi are parasitic in their mode of existence, living at the expense of the plant or animal on which they are found. ”

“ The nature of the inquiry is the same: the study of the growth of a crystal differing from that of a plant or an animal not in kind but only in degree; the investigation being in each case the redistribution of matter, for there is nothing in the crystal that did not pre-exist in the saline solution, nothing in the plant that was not derived from the seed or the soil, nothing in the chicken that did not pre-exist in the egg or in the air. The ultimate cause of the so-called Vital Force is as unknowable as the cause of all other kinds of Force. ”

“ However that may be, the important fact is that "all organic individuals become in the course of their life, through adaptation to different conditions of existence, unlike one another, although the individuals of one and the same species remain mostly very similar." ”

“ Darwin quotes Mr. Bates as stating that the male of the European field-cricket "has been observed to place itself in the evening at the entrance of its burrow, and stridulate until a female approaches, when the louder notes are succeeded by a more subdued tone, whilst the successful musician caresses with his antenna; the mate he has won." Ornaments of the male animal, like the cock's comb, the peacock's tail, the gorgeous plumage of the paradise bird, the brilliant color of the male butterfly, are made use of, like the weapons and musical tones just mentioned, in obtaining the female. ”

“ But as the differentiation of the simple into the complex, of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous, of which the development of race and language is an example, has been fully discussed by Mr. Herbert Spencer in his different works, we therefore pass on to the consideration of the objection, that while the origin of races, of languages, of the stars, etc. is a legitimate object of study, the origin of plants and animals is an inquiry of an entirely different nature,—a subject about which man can learn nothing. ”

“ Mineralogy distinguishes the different rocks of which the crust of the earth is composed, while Botany and Zoology supply the means by which the life of bygone days is revivified, enabling us to interpret the structure and relations of plants and animals long since extinct. ”

“ Supposing the animal kingdom is really represented by a tree, of which the main branches, twigs, and leaflets are the orders, families, and species into which animals are divided, common features of structure in these groups must not be sought at the ends of the branches which are far apart, but at the point where the branches diverge. ”

“ Modern orchestration is so complicated that one would hardly believe that it could have been developed out of the simple jingle of barbarians. Astronomers think it highly probable that our solar system was once a chaotic mass, and that from this the planets were thrown off, the central body becoming later the Sun. This theory, which is commonly known as the Nebular Hypothesis of La Place, naturally suggests the name of Kant, the famous philosopher of Königsberg, who first distinctly enunciated the view of the gradual development of the solar system, and the doctrine of Evolution in general. ”

“ Notwithstanding the differences in size, color, form, reproduction, and habitat seen in this brief survey, the structure of Algae, Fungi, and Lichens has always appeared to be the same, cellular. When we compare plants apparently so distinct as mushrooms, mildews, encrusting matter of rocks, greenish layers of ponds, sea-weed, etc., the closest examination rarely reveals more than a combination of cells, no Alga, Fungus, or Lichen offering us the distinction of stem, leaves, vessels, or flowers observed in the higher plants. ”

“ Those who are ignorant of the early stages of plants and animals will hardly believe that beings so different as sea-weed, oaks, star-fishes, mollusca, guinea-pigs, rabbits, dogs, and men begin their life in the same way; yet Fig. 160 represents equally well the cell, or primitive stage, of any of the plants or animals just mentioned. Confining ourselves for the present to the animal kingdom, let us examine the cell, or the egg, of a mammal,—that of a rabbit (Fig. 160) , guinea-pig, or man, for example. ”

“ The idea of birds coming from reptiles is suggested by the following facts: 1st, existing birds have much in common with existing reptiles; 2d, birds and reptiles, at an early period of their existence, cannot be distinguished from one another, as in the case of the embryo chicken and turtle; 3d, the most ancient bird (Archeopteryx) is very reptilian, while certain extinct reptiles (Dinosauria) are very bird-like. These statements are facts accepted by naturalists, whether they are evolutionists or not; they seem to us to harmonize in warranting the conclusion that birds are modified reptiles. ”

“ Basing the investigation on the facts of Anatomy, Embryology, and Geology, the genealogy of the animal and vegetal kingdoms has, in this manner, been more or less made out, the indefinitely remote ancestors of all plant and animal life being represented by the Monera, structureless, infinitely small, jelly-like beings, belonging neither to the animal nor to the vegetal kingdom. ”

“ Supposing the Worms to be the origin of these four divisions of the animal kingdom, an interest is excited in them not exceeded by any other group. One must expect then to meet with great difficulties in making a satisfactory arrangement of these organisms, to meet with structures that foreshadow much more complete types, to find many similar forms as well as individuals so different as to make it nearly impossible to say whether they belong to the Worms at all. ”

“ The doctrine of the Evolution of Life has this, then, in its favor: that it is a comprehensive theory of Life,—a theory on which can be based a scientific Ethics and a scientific Politics; and as all happiness depends on duty to one's self (Ethics) , and therefore duty to one's neighbor (Politics) , it follows that a theory which offers a basis for the development of these social sciences must immeasurably benefit mankind. ”

“ Every one is aware of the great difference in size and color exhibited by the male and female of birds, butterflies, etc., of male animals being armed with weapons, like the horns of deer, the cock's comb, etc. Mr. Darwin supposes these organs to have arisen through what he calls Sexual Selection. Thus, at breeding-time the number of male deer exceeds that of the female; hence there is invariably a fight, and the deer with the biggest horns gets the better of his rivals: naturally their posterity will be characterized by large horns. ”

“ We see further examples of this principle in the receding of the forehead and jaws, which are only exhibited by the skulls of the higher races in their embryonic or undeveloped condition, in the learning of the child to walk, and in the development of speech. The erect position of man is often regarded as an objection to his having descended from a lower animal. But as it is evidently an advantage for man to use his hands for grasping, etc., but his feet to stand and walk upon, we can understand how, through the Struggle for Existence, etc., this division of labor was brought about. ”

“ By the Evolution of Life we mean the slow and gradual development of life as distinguished from its special and sudden creation; that plants and animals are the modified descendants of pre-existing organisms, not the unchanged posterity of similar forms of life originally specially created. ”