Darwiniana - Essays by T. H. Huxley Book

DARWINIANA ESSAYS BY THOMAS H. HUXLEY - 1893 - PREFACE - I HAVE entitled this volume Dsrwiniaiia because the pieces republished in it either treat of the ancient doctrine of Evolution, rehabilitated and placed upon a sound scientific foundation, since and in consequence of, the publication of the Origin of Species or they attempt to meet the more weighty of the unsparing criticisms with which that great work was visited for several years after its appearance or they record the iinpressioli left by the personnlity of Mr. Darwin on one who had the privilege and the happiaess of e ijoyingh is friends1.1ip for some thirty years or they endeavour to sum np his work and indicate its enduring influence on the course of scientific thought. Those who take the trouble to read the first two essays, pltblished in 1859 and lSGO, will, I think, do me the justice to admit that my zeal to secure fair play for Mr. Darwin, did not drive me into the position of a mere advocate and that, while doing justice to the greatliess of the argument I did not fail to indicate its weak points. 1 have never seen any reason for departing from the position which I took up in these two essays and the assertion which I sometimes ineet with nowadays, that I have recanted or changed my opinions about Mr. Darwins views, is quite unintelligible to me. As I have said in the seventh essay, the fact of evolution is t, o my mind sufficiently evidenced by palzeontology and I remain of the opinion expressed in the second, that until selective breeding is definitely proved to glve rise to varieties infertile with one another, the logical foundation of the theory of natural selection is incomplete. We still remain very much in the dark about the causes of variation the apparent inheritance of acquired characters ill sonie cases and the struggle for existence within the organism, which probably lies at the bottom of both of these phenomena. Some apology is due to the reader for the reproduct, ion of the Lectures to Working Men in their original state. They were taken down in shorthand by Mr. J. Aldous Mays, who requested me to allow him to print them. I was very much pressed with work at the time and, as I could not revise the repokts, which I imagined, moreover, vould be of little or no interest to any but my auditors, I stipulated that a notice should be prefixed to that effect, This was done but it did not . . prevent a considerable diffusion of tk cli ttlc book in this country and in the United States, nor its translation into more than one foreign language. Moreover Mr. Darwin often urged me to revise and expand the lectures into a syste natic popular exposition of the topics of which they treat. I have more than once set about the task but the proverb about spoiling a horn and not making a spoon, is particularly applicable to attempts to remodel a piece of work which may have served its immediate purpose well enough. So I have reprinted the lectures as they stand, with all their imperfections on their heacls. It would seem that many people niust have found them useful thirty years ago and, though the sixties appear now to be reckoned by many of the rising generation as a part of the dark ages, I am not without some grounds for suspecting that there yet remains a fair sprinkling even of philosophic thinkers to whom it may be a profitable, perhaps cven a novel, task to descend . from the heights of speculation and go over thc A B C of thc great biological problcin as it was set before a body of shrewd artisans at that remote epoch. HODESLEA EA , HTBOOBKB, April 71h, 1893. CONTENTS I PAGE THE DARWIXIAN HYPOTHESIS l8591 . . . . . . I . . 1 11 TIIJC ODIGIN OF SPECIES l8601 . . . . . . . . ...Read More