Moreover, I conceive
that the judicial calmness which so strongly characterises the whole
book, the absence of all passion, the air of extreme and anxious
caution which pervades it throughout, are rather the result of
training and artificially acquired self-restraint than symptoms of a
cold and unimpassioned nature; at any rate, whether the lawyer-like
faculty of swearing both sides of a question and attaching the full
value to both is acquired or natural in Darwin's case, you will admit
that such a habit of mind is essential for any really valuable and
scientific investigation.
C. I admit it. Science is all head - she has no heart at all.
F. You are right. But a man of science may be a man of other things
besides science, and though he may have, and ought to have no heart
during a scientific investigation, yet when he has once come to a
conclusion he may be hearty enough in support of it, and in his other
capacities may be of as warm a temperament as even you can desire.
C. I tell you I do not like the book.
F. May I catechise you a little upon it?
C. To your heart's content.
F. Firstly, then, I will ask you what is the one great impression
that you have derived from reading it; or, rather, what do you think
to be the main impression that Darwin wanted you to derive?
C. Why, I should say some such thing as the following - that men are
descended from monkeys, and monkeys from something else, and so on
back to dogs and horses and hedge-sparrows and pigeons and cinipedes
(what is a cinipede?) and cheesemites, and then through the plants
down to duckweed.
F. You express the prevalent idea concerning the book, which as you
express it appears nonsensical enough.
C. How, then, should you express it yourself?
F. Hand me the book and I will read it to you through from beginning
to end, for to express it more briefly than Darwin himself has done
is almost impossible.
C. That is nonsense; as you asked me what impression I derived from
the book, so now I ask you, and I charge you to answer me.
F. Well, I assent to the justice of your demand, but I shall comply
with it by requiring your assent to a few principal statements
deducible from the work.
C. So be it.
F. You will grant then, firstly, that all plants and animals
increase very rapidly, and that unless they were in some manner
checked, the world would soon be overstocked. Take cats, for
instance; see with what rapidity they breed on the different runs in
this province where there is little or nothing to check them; or even
take the more slowly breeding sheep, and see how soon 500 ewes become
5000 sheep under favourable circumstances. Suppose this sort of
thing to go on for a hundred million years or so, and where would be
the standing room for all the different plants and animals that would
be now existing, did they not materially check each other's increase,
or were they not liable in some way to be checked by other causes?
Remember the quail; how plentiful they were until the cats came with
the settlers from Europe. Why were they so abundant? Simply because
they had plenty to eat, and could get sufficient shelter from the
hawks to multiply freely. The cats came, and tussocks stood the poor
little creatures in but poor stead. The cats increased and
multiplied because they had plenty of food and no natural enemy to
check them. Let them wait a year or two, till they have materially
reduced the larks also, as they have long since reduced the quail,
and let them have to depend solely upon occasional dead lambs and
sheep, and they will find a certain rather formidable natural enemy
called Famine rise slowly but inexorably against them and slaughter
them wholesale. The first proposition then to which I demand your
assent is that all plants and animals tend to increase in a high
geometrical ratio; that they all endeavour to get that which is
necessary for their own welfare; that, as unfortunately there are
conflicting interests in Nature, collisions constantly occur between
different animals and plants, whereby the rate of increase of each
species is very materially checked. Do you admit this?
C. Of course; it is obvious.
F. You admit then that there is in Nature a perpetual warfare of
plant, of bird, of beast, of fish, of reptile; that each is striving
selfishly for its own advantage, and will get what it wants if it
can.
C. If what?
F. If it can. How comes it then that sometimes it cannot? Simply
because all are not of equal strength, and the weaker must go to the
wall.
C. You seem to gloat over your devilish statement.
F. Gloat or no gloat, is it true or no? I am not one of those
"Who would unnaturally better Nature
By making out that that which is, is not."
If the law of Nature is "struggle," it is better to look the matter
in the face and adapt yourself to the conditions of your existence.
Nature will not bow to you, neither will you mend matters by patting
her on the back and telling her that she is not so black as she is
painted. My dear fellow, my dear sentimental friend, do you eat
roast beef or roast mutton?
C. Drop that chaff and go back to the matter in hand.
F. To continue then with the cats. Famine comes and tests them, so
to speak; the weaker, the less active, the less cunning, and the less
enduring cats get killed off, and only the strongest and smartest
cats survive; there will be no favouritism shown to animals in a
state of Nature; they will be weighed in the balance, and the weight
of a hair will sometimes decide whether they shall be found wanting
or no.
