Giordano Bruno was burnt in the year 1600 A.D.; he was a Pantheist;
therefore Darwin's theory is wrong.
And finally, as a clinching argument, in one of the neighbouring
settlements there is a barrel-organ which plays its psalm tunes in
the middle of its jigs and waltzes. After this all lingering doubts
concerning the falsehood of Darwin's theory must be at an end, and
any person of ordinary common sense must admit that the theory of
development by natural selection is unwarranted by experience and
reason.
The articles conclude with an implied statement that Darwin supposes
the Polar bear to swim about catching flies for so long a period that
at last it gets the fins it wishes for.
Now, however sceptical I may yet feel about the truth of all Darwin's
theory, I cannot sit quietly by and see him misrepresented in such a
scandalously slovenly manner. What Darwin does say is that sometimes
diversified and changed habits may be observed in individuals of the
same species; that is that there are eccentric animals just as there
are eccentric men. He adduces a few instances and winds up by saying
that "in North America the black bear was seen by Hearne swimming for
hours with widely open mouth, thus catching - almost like a whale -
insects in the water." This and nothing more. (See pp. 201 and
202.)
Because Darwin says that a bear of rather eccentric habits happened
to be seen by Hearne swimming for hours and catching insects almost
like a whale, your writer (with a carelessness hardly to be
reprehended in sufficiently strong terms) asserts by implication that
Darwin supposes the whale to be developed from the bear by the latter
having had a strong desire to possess fins. This is disgraceful.
I can hardly be mistaken in supposing that I have quoted the passage
your writer alludes to. Should I be in error, I trust he will give
the reference to the place in which Darwin is guilty of the nonsense
that is fathered upon him in your article.
It must be remembered that there have been few great inventions in
physics or discoveries in science which have not been foreshadowed to
a certain extent by speculators who were indeed mistaken, but were
yet more or less on the right scent. Day is heralded by dawn, Apollo
by Aurora, and thus it often happens that a real discovery may wear
to the careless observer much the same appearance as an exploded
fallacy, whereas in fact it is widely different. As much caution is
due in the rejection of a theory as in the acceptation of it. The
first of your writers is too hasty in accepting, the second in
refusing even a candid examination.
Now, when the Saturday Review, the Cornhill Magazine, Once a Week,
and Macmillan's Magazine, not to mention other periodicals, have
either actually and completely as in the case of the first two,
provisionally as in the last mentioned, given their adherence to the
theory in question, it may be taken for granted that the arguments in
its favour are sufficiently specious to have attracted the attention
and approbation of a considerable number of well-educated men in
England.
