Theory of Evolution.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 22, 21 October 1907, Page 10

Theory of Evolution.

, 1 4 — : — : HOW DARWIN IS BEING MISREPRESENTED.' Anything more preposterous than tho theory of ovolution disseminated in tho works of contemporary men of letters, including novelists and poets, affirms Professor E. Ray Lankostor, can scarcely bo imagined. " Tho 'larger proportion of educated people ovon at tho present day have not botboyond Penlita's view of nature." They accept confidingly the interpretations of evolution upon which literary tho first rank to-day baso their optimism or their pessimism as the case may bo. ' This makes the work of tho scientific toacher peculiarly difficult. Ho must devoto his energies largely to. correcting tho misrepresentations of evolutionary thought with which tho best curront literature is filled. If popular poets and popular novelists would try to ascertain what Darwinism is and what tho word evolution means, tho scientific ideas of educated and cultivated peoplo, says Professor Lankester, would bo less grotesque. •An Instance in Point. In selecting Paul Bourget, the illustrious I 1 rench novelist, as an instance in point, Professor Lankostor declares that the admiration for that most brilliant of Academicians is now excessive ; and- can nover grow less "Paul Bourget," lie says, "is not only a charming writer of modern novels, but claims to bo a psychologist, a title which perhaps may be conceded to evory author who writes of human character. His works are so deservedly esteemed and his erudition is, as a rule, so unassailable.that, in selecting him as /an oxample of tho frequent misrepresentation among literary men of Darwin's doctrine, he trusts that his choico may bo regarded as. a testimony of his respect for Bourget's art." But in tho most recent of his novels, published under tho titlo, "A Divorce," Professor Lankoster finds Paul Bourgot saying that "the struggle between species, that mflexible law of animal universo, has its exact equivalent in the world of ideas. Certain mentalities constitute voritablo intellectual .specios that cannot ondure sido by side. The " Ugliness of Nature." It ought to be unnecessary to say that nis inflexible law of the animal universe , tho struggle between species, is quite unknown to zoologists, to biologists, to evolutionists, although it is a matter of courso to poets and novolists now living. The struggle for existonco to which Darwin assigned importance is not a strugglo between diir'erent species, but one between closely similar- members of the same species. Tho struggle between species is by no means universal. In fact, it is very raro. The clever novelist, again, thinks it scientific to assume that tho struggle between a beast of prey which seeks to nourish- itself and the buffalo which defends its lifo with its horns is the struggle for existence as Darwin understood it. •This is scarcely less absurd than tho purely poetical idea that naturo is beautiful. Nothing has done more to eliminato tho beautiful from our earth than naturo. Tho brilliant plumage of the bird, the graceful forms of motion in extinct mammals, tho once' lovely contours of our ; eroded coast lines, to all these things nature is indifferent and oven hostile. Many well-informed people rofer to "the beauty of naturo" as if it were a demonstrable fact. The scientifically established truth points to tho ugliness of naturo. Leave nature to herself and somo of the loveliest plant and animal forms would either perish or bo distorted into something hideous. , ' Superman. Neither the poet nor tho novelist, in these days of talk about " superman," seems to know that in tho strugglo for existence the obscure an dthe feeble tend, very frequently, t osurvivo. Tho very inferiority of an organism, under our humane system, will often givo it an advantago over strong competitors. A more objectionablo misinterpretation , of the doctrine of tho survival of the fittest in tho struggle for ..existence'is that, mado by literary men who 'declare, according to their bias, that science rightly teaches" that tho gross quality measured by wealth and strongh can alone survivo and. should therefore alone bo cultivated, or that science (and especially Darwinism) has done serious injury to the progress of mankind by authorising this teaching. Both are wrong. -Wrong, too, are tho poets and novelists who assume that tho struggle for oxistenco among tho members of a species in natural conditions is anything liko tho strugglo for advancement or wealth among human beings. What is known in economics - as competition can never bo* understood by analogies drawn from the evolutionary strugglo for existence. In a word, tho nomenclature of literary men today is out of date, a scries of misleading exprossions inherited from tho days of blank ignorance.