Philology and Darwinism

Abstract

IN NATURE, NO. 30, I attempted to show that the analogy between Mr. Darwin's teachings as regards plants and animals, and the conclusions of comparative philologists, broke down, when we compared man's conscious influence on plants, &c., to his more and more enlightened control of language. Man's influence on organic forms tends to produce variety, while, with increase of knowledge, language is becoming more uniform. Mr. Ransom (No. 32) replied that the difference I insisted on seemed imaginary; and if man's object was to produce uniformity in plants or animals, that then the domesticated species would be likely to become less varied than the wild species of the family. Now it seems to me that if man had any such intention, no care on his part could produce permanent types yielding so little divergence in the individuals during enormous time as those produced by nature; a permanence so marked that geology only throws light on the law of evolution, in anything like a direct way, through the study of the mammalia (see Prof. Huxley's recent address on the progress of Palæontology), and even with regard to the mammalia naturalists of high standing refuse to see anything but permanent and all but uniform types, necessitating the hypothesis of special creation. How man could obtain by any possible efforts (and with some breeds his aim is uniformity) to maintain species as invariable as nature has done, is what is hard to conceive.