Sir E. Ray Lankester

“ DEGENERATION.
It is the misfortune of those who study that branch of science which our President has done so much to advance—I mean the science of living things—that they are not able, in the midst of a vast assembly, [1] to render visible to all eyes the actual phenomena to which their inquiries are directed. Whilst the physicist and the chemist are able to make evident to the senses of a great meeting the very things of which they have to tell, the zoologist cannot hope ever to share with those who form his audience the keen pleasure of observing a new or beautiful organism ”

“ In proportion as the whole of the past evolution of civilised man, of which we at present perceive the outlines, is assigned to its causes, we and our successors on the globe may expect to be able duly to estimate that which makes for, and that which makes against, the progress of the race. The full and earnest cultivation of Science—the Knowledge of Causes—is that to which we have to look for the protection of our race—even of this English branch of it—from relapse and degeneration. ”

“ The unprejudiced, all-questioning spirit of childhood may not inaptly be compared to the tadpole tail and eye of the young Ascidian: we have to fear lest the prejudices, pre-occupations, and dogmatism of modern civilisation should in any way lead to the atrophy and loss of the valuable mental qualities inherited by our young forms from primæval man.
There is only one means of estimating our position, only one means of so shaping our conduct that we may with certainty avoid degeneration and keep an onward course. We are as a race more fortunate than our ruined cousins—the degenerate Ascidians. ”

“ It is of the utmost importance for the progress and well-being of science that this should be understood; that the eager practical spirit of the inventor who gains large pecuniary rewards by the sale of his inventions should not be confounded with what is totally different and remote from it, namely, the devoted, searching spirit of science, which, heedless of pecuniary rewards, ever faces nature with a single purpose—to ascertain the causes of things. ”

“ We may be thankful that at the present day we are not likely, in the domain of biology, to make the mistake (which has been made under other circumstances) of substituting the mere inspection and cataloguing of natural objects for that more truly scientific attitude which consists in assigning the facts which come under our observation to their causes, or, in other words, to their places in the order of nature. ”

“ No one ventures to deny, at the present day, that every human being grows from the egg in utero, just as a dog or a monkey does; the facts are before us and can be scrutinised in detail. We may ask of those who refuse to admit the gradual and natural development of man’s consciousness in the ancestral series, passing from ape-like forms into indubitable man, “How do you propose to divide the series presented by every individual man in his growth from the egg? At what particular phase in the embryonic series is the soul with its potential consciousness implanted? ”

“ For us it is possible to ascertain what will conduce to our higher development, what will favour our degeneration. To us has been given the power to know the causes of things, and by the use of this power it is possible for us to control our destinies. It is for us by ceaseless and ever hopeful labour [62] to try to gain a knowledge of man’s place in the order of nature. When we have gained this fully and minutely, we shall be able by the light of the past to guide ourselves in the future. ”

“ So great is the value of hypothesis, so essential to scientific discovery, that the most skilled and highly-trained observer may spend his life in examining and scrutinising natural objects and yet fail, if he is not guided by hypothesis, to observe particular facts which are of the uttermost importance for the explanation of the causes of the things which he is studying. ”

“ We have seen that degeneration, or the simplification of the general structure of an animal, may be due to the ancestors of that animal having taken to one of two new habits of life, either the parasitic or the immobile. Other new habits of life appear also to be such as to lead to degeneration. Let us suppose a race of animals fitted and accustomed to catch their food, and having a variety of organs to help them in this chase—suppose such animals suddenly to acquire the power of feeding on the carbonic acid dissolved in the water around them just as green plants do. ”

“ Science is that knowledge which enables us to demonstrate so far as our limited faculties permit, that the appearances which we recognise in the world around us are dependent in definite ways on certain properties of matter: science is that knowledge which enables, or tends to enable us, to assign its true place in the series of events constituting the universe, to any and every thing which we can perceive. ”

“ Nature, it has been said, gives no reply to a general inquiry—she must be interrogated by questions which already contain the answer she is to give; in other words, the observer can only observe that which he is led by hypothesis to look for: the experimenter can only obtain the result which his experiment is designed to obtain.
For a long time the knowledge of living things, of plants and of animals could hardly be said to form part of the general body of science, for the causes of these things were quite unknown. ”

“ It is the more remarkable whilst the possibility of a degeneration—a loss of organisation making the descendant far simpler or lower in structure than its ancestor—has been admitted for a few exceptional animals, that the same hypothesis should not have been applied to the explanation of other simple forms of animals. The hypothesis of Degeneration will, I believe, be found to render most valuable service in pointing out the true relationships of animals which are a puzzle and a mystery when we use only and exclusively the hypothesis of Balance, or the hypothesis of Elaboration. ”

“ With regard to ourselves, the white races of Europe, the possibility of degeneration seems to be worth some consideration. In accordance with a tacit assumption of universal progress—an unreasoning optimism—we are accustomed to regard ourselves as necessarily progressing, as necessarily having arrived at a higher and more elaborated condition than that which our ancestors reached, and as destined [60] to progress still further. On the other hand, it is well to remember that we are subject to the general laws of evolution, and are as likely to degenerate as to progress. ”

“ Science is certainly not any and every kind of knowledge. Knowledge of literature, of the beautiful things which have been written or otherwise produced by human ingenuity, is not science. Knowledge of the various manufacturing processes in use by civilised men is not science ”

“ At the same time, it would appear to be sufficient, even for the purposes of the theologian, to hold that whatever the two above-mentioned series of living things contain or imply, they do so as the result of a natural and uniform process of development, that there has been one “miracle” once and for all time. It should not be a ground of offence to any school of thinkers, that Darwinism, whilst leaving them free scope, cannot be made actually contributory to the support of their particular tenets. ”

“ It seems worth while, in order to secure a calm and unprejudiced consideration for the teachings of Darwinism, to point out to such persons that, as a matter of fact, whatever views we may hold with regard to a soul and the Christian doctrines, they cannot be in the smallest degree affected by the admission that man has been derived from ape-like ancestors by a process of natural selection, so long as the demonstrable fact, not denied by any sane person, is admitted, namely, that every individual man grows by a process of natural modification from a homogeneous egg-cell or corpuscle. ”

“ Fact upon fact was observed and recorded by students of plants and [10] animals, but having no hypothesis as to the causes of what they were studying, the naturalists of twenty years ago, and before that day, though they collected facts, made slow progress and some strange blunders. Suddenly one of those great guesses which occasionally appear in the history of science, was given to the science of biology by the imaginative insight of that greatest of living naturalists—I would say that greatest of living men—Charles Darwin. ”

“ Though we may rightly object to the attempt which is sometimes made to decry the modern teachings of biology [3] as not being “exact science,” yet we may boldly admit the truth of the assertion that we biologists are largely occupied with speculations, hypotheses, and other products of the imagination. All true science deals with speculation and hypothesis, and acknowledges as its most valued servant—its indispensable ally and help-meet—that which our German friends [2] call “Phantasie” and we “the Imagination.” Our science—biology—is not less exact ”

“ The theologian is content in the case of individual development from the egg to admit the facts of individual evolution, and to make assumptions which lie altogether outside the region of scientific inquiry. So, too, it would seem only reasonable that he should deal with the historical series, and frankly accept the natural evolution of man from lower animals, declaring dogmatically, if he so please, but not as an inference of the same order as are the inferences of science, that something called the soul arrived at any point in the series which he may think suitable. ”

“ Science cannot be identified with knowledge of any particular class of objects, however detailed that knowledge may be. It is a common mistake to consider all knowledge of raw products, of living objects or other natural objects, as necessarily “science.” The truth is, that a man may have great knowledge of these things as so many facts, and yet be devoid of “science.” ”

“ It is not possible to class this with the other phenomena which I have enumerated as Degeneration, since there is no modification of an adult structure, but simple arrest, and retention of the larval structure in all its completeness. I should call the phenomenon exhibited by axolotl “arrest” or “super-larvation” rather than degeneration.
The result of super-larvation is in so far similar to that of those changes to which it is desirable to restrict the term “degeneration,” that it may be classed under “simplificative evolution” as opposed to “elaborative evolution.” ”

“ Just as the breeder can slowly change the proportions of the animals or plants on which he operates, so in inconceivably long periods of time has this struggling of varieties, and the consequent [17] natural selection of the fittest, led to the production, from shapeless primitive living matter, of all the endless varieties of complicated plants and animals which now people the world. Countless varieties have died out, leaving only their modified descendants to puzzle the ingenuity of the biologist. ”

“ Whilst we are thus justified by the direct testimony of fossil remains in accounting for some living forms on the hypothesis that their peculiar conditions of life have been such as to maintain them for an immense period of time in statu quo unchanged, we have no reason for applying this hypothesis, and this only, to the explanation of all the more imperfectly organised forms of animal or plant-life. ”

“ The most frequent and objectionable misuse of the word ‘science’ is that which consists in confounding science with invention—in applying the term which should be reserved for a particular kind of knowledge to the practical applications of that knowledge. ”

“ A certain number of thoughtful persons admit the development of man’s body by natural processes from ape-like ancestry, but believe in the non-natural intervention of a Creator at a certain definite stage in that development, in order to introduce into the animal which was at that moment a man-like ape, something termed “a conscious soul,” in virtue of which he became an ape-like man. It appears to me perfectly legitimate and harmless for individuals to make such an assumption if their particular form of philosophy or of religion requires it. ”

“ Such things as electric lighting and telegraphs, the steam-engine, gas, and the smoky chimneys of factories, are by a certain school of public teachers, foremost among whom is the late Oxford Professor of Fine Art, persistently ascribed to science, and gravely pointed out as the pestilential products of [6] a scientific spirit. They are, in fact, nothing of the kind. American inventors and electric lamps, together with all the factories in Sheffield, might be obliterated without causing a moment’s concern to a single student of science. ”

“ In such respects we have at least reason to fear that we may be degenerate. Possibly we are all drifting, tending to the condition of intellectual Barnacles or Ascidians. It is possible [61] for us—just as the Ascidian throws away its tail and its eye and sinks into a quiescent state of inferiority—to reject the good gift of reason with which every child is born, and to degenerate into a contented life of material enjoyment accompanied by ignorance and superstition. ”

“ This testing is an essential part of the process. “If my guess be true, then so-and-so as to which I can decide by inspection or experiment, must be true also,” is the form which the argument takes, and the inquiry is thus brought to a point where observation can decide the truth of the hypothesis or first guess. In every-day life we have often to be content without fully testing the truth of our guesses, and hurry into action based on such unverified suppositions. ”