PROFESSOR TYNDALL'S ADDRESS.
Address delivered before the British Association, assembled at Belfast; with additions, by John Tyndall, F.R-S., President. London: Longmans, Gbeen, and Co., 1874. [CONTIHTTED.] If Darwin, like Bruno, rejects the notion of creative power acting after human fashion, it certainly is not because he is unacquainted with the numberless exquisite adaptations on which this notion of a supernatural artificer has been founded. His book is a, repository of the most startling facts of this description. Take the marvellous observation which he cites from Dr. Criiger, where a bucket
with an aperture, serving as a spout, is formed in an orchid. Bees visit the flower: In eager search of material for their combs they push each other into the bucket, the drenched ones escaping from their involuntary bath by the .spout. Here they rub their backs against the viscid stigma of the flower and obtain rgfcio,'- then against the pollen-masses, "Wal^h are thus stuck to the back of the bjto and carried away. .'When the bee,
so provided, flies to another flower, or to j the same flower a second time, and is pushed by its comrades into the bucket, and then crawls out by the passage, the pollen-mass upon its back necessarily comes first into contact with the riscid stigma,' which takes up the pollen; and this is how that.orchid is fertilized. Or take this . other case of the* Catasetum. 'Bees visit these flowers in order to gnaw the labellum; in doing this they inevitably touch a long, tapering, sensitive projection. This, when touched, transmits a sensation or vibration to a certain membrane, which is instantly ruptured, setting free a spring, by which the pollen-mass is shot.forth' like an arrow in the right direction, and adheres by its viscid^ extremity to the back of the bee.' In this way the fertilizing pollen is spread abroad. It is the mind thus stored with the choicest materials of the ideologist that rejects teleology, seeking to refer these wonders to natural cases. Thej illustrate, according to him, the method of nature, not the 'technic' of a manlike Artificer. The beauty of flowers is due to natural selection. Those that distinguish themselves by vividly contrasting "colours from the ■urrounding. 11 green. leaves are most readily seen, most frequently visited by insects, most often fertilized, and hence most favoured by natural selection. Coloured berries also readily attract the attention of birds and beasts, which feed upon them, spread their manured seeds abroad, thus giving trees and shrubs possessing such berries a greater chance in the struggle for existence. With profound analytic and synthetic skill, M* Darwin investigates the cellmaking instinct of the hive-bee. His method of dealing with it is representative. He falls back from the more' perfectly to the less perfectly developed instinct—from the hive-bee to the humble bee, which uses its own cocoon as a comb, and to classes of bees of intermediate •kill, endeavouring to show how the passage might be gradually made from the lowest to the highest. The saving of wax is the most important point in the economy o£ bees. Twelve to fifteen pounds of dry sugar are said to be needed for the secretion of a single pound of wax. The quantities of. nectar necessary for *the wax must therefore be vast; and every improvement of^ccmstructive" in-~ stirict which resjiWin the saving of wax is a djj»o<rprofifto the insect's life. The time that would otherwise be devoted to. the making of wax is now devoted to the gathering and storing of honey for winter food. He passes from the humble bee with its ruffle cells, through the Melipona with its more artistic cells, to the hive-bee with its astonishing architecture. The bees place themselves at equal distances apart upon the wax, sweep and excavate equal spheres round the selected points. The spheres intersect, and. the planes of intersection are built up with thin laminae. Hexagonal cells are • thus formed. This mode of treating such questions is, as I have said, representative. He habitually retires from the .more perfect and complex to" the less perfect and simple, and carries you with him through stages. of perfecting; adds increment to increment of infinitesimal change, and in this way gradually breaks down your reluctance to admit that the exquisite climax of the wnoler could be a result of natural selection. .-.., ..,.• Mr Darwin shirks no difficulty; and, saturated as the subject was with his own thought, he must have known better than his critics the weakness as .well as the strength of his theory. This of course would be of little avail were his object a temporary dialectic victory instead of the establishment of a truth which ho means to be everlasting. But he takes no pains to disguise the weakness he .has discerned ; nay, he takes every pains to bring it into the' strongest light. His vast resources enable him to cope with objections started by himself and others, so as to leave the final impression upon the reader's mind that, if they" be not completely answered, they certainly are • Hf 't "filial. Their negative force.being thus "- <Sestroyfd, you are free to be influenced by the rast positive mass of evidence he is able to bring.before you. This.largeness of knowledge, and readiness of ~ resource render Mr Darwin the most terrible of antagonists. Accomplished naturalists have levelled • heavy and sustained criticisms against him—not always with the view of fairly weighing his theory, but with the express intention of exposing its weak points only. This does not irritate hinj; He treats every objection with a soberness and thoroughness which even Bishop Butler might be proud to imitate, surrounding each fact with its appropriate detail, placing it in its proper relations, and usually giving it a significance which, as long as it was kept isolated, failed to appear. This is done without a trace of ill-temper. He move? over the subject with t^e passionless strength of a glacier; and the grinding of the rocks is not always without a counterpart in the logical pulverization of the objector. But though in handling this mighty theme ail passion has been stilled, there is an emotion'of the intellect; incident to the discernment o.f new truth which often oolours and warms the pages of Mr Darwin. His success has been great; and this implies not only the solidity of his work, but the preparedness of the public mind for such a revelation. On this head a remark of Agassiz impressed me more, than anything else, riprung from a race 'of, ijheQlQgiws, this celebrated man Qombateol to the last the theory of natural selection. One of the many times I had the pleasure of meeting him in the United States was at Mr Winthrop's
beautiful residence at Brookline, near Boston. Rising from luncheon, we all halted as if by a common impulse in front of a window, and continued there a discussion which had been started at table. The maple was in its autumn glory; and the exquisite beauty .of the scene outside seemed, in my case, to interpenetrate without disturbance tho intellectual action. Earnestly, almost sadly, Agassiz turned, and said to the gentlemen standing round, 'I confess that I was not prepared to see this theory received as it has been by the best intellects of our time. Its success is greater than I could have thought possible.' In our day grand generalizations have been reached. The theory of the origin of species is but one of them. Another, of still wider grasp and more radical significance, is the doctrine of the Conservation of energy, the ultimate philosophical issues of which are as yet but dimly seen—that doctrine which ' binds nature fast in fate' to an extent not hitherto recognized, exacting from every antecedent its equivalent consequent, from every consequent its equivalent antecedent, and bringing vital as well as physical phenomena under the dominion of thn.t law of causal connexion which, so far as the human understanding as yet pierced, asserts itself everywhere in nature. Long in advance of all definite experiment upon the subject, the constancy and indestructibility of matter had been . affirmed; and all subsequent experience justified the affirmation. Later researches extended the attribute of indestructibility to force. This idea', applied in the first instance to ignorganic, rapidly embraced organic nature. The vegetable world, though drawing almost all its nutriment from invisible sources, was proved incompetent to generate anew either matter or force. Its matter is for the most part transmuted ga? ; its force transformed solar force. The animal world was proved to be equally uncreative; all its motive energies being referred to the combustion of its food. The activity of each animal as a whole was proved to be the transferred activity of its molecules. The muscles were | shown to be stores of mechanical force, potential until unlocked by the nerves, and then resulting in muscular contractions. The speed at which messages fly to and fro along. the nerves was" determined, and found to be, not as had been previously supposed* equal to that of light or electricity, but less than the speed of a flying eagle. This was the work of the physicist: then .came the conquests of the comparative anatomist and physiologist, revealing the structure of-every animal, and the function of every organ in the : whole biological series, from the lowest zoophyte up to man. The nervous system had been made the object of profound and continued study, the wonderful, and, at bottom entirely mysterious, controlling power which it exercises over the whole organism, physical and mental, being recognized more and more. Thought could not be kept back from a subject so profoundly suggestive. Besides the physical life dealt with by Mr Darwin, there is a psychical life, presenting similar gradations, and asking equally for a solution. How are the different grades and order of Mind to be accounted for ? What is the principle of growth of that mysterious power which on our planet culminates in Reason? These are questions which, ■thbugb.fr". not~" thrusting-44icmselve5~-bo-forcibly upon the attention of the general public, had not only occupied many reflecting minds, but had been formally broached by one of them before the { Origin of Species' appeared. . , (To be continued J
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Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 1970, 28 April 1875, Page 3
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1,696PROFESSOR TYNDALL'S ADDRESS. Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 1970, 28 April 1875, Page 3
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