Henry Blanc - "A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia"

I. Windslow Ayer - "The Great North Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details"

Margaret Sidney - "Five Little Peppers Grown Up"

Morris Jastrow - "The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

On the Genesis of Species

S >> St. George Mivart >> On the Genesis of Species




A cumulative argument thus arises against the prevalent action of "Natural
Selection," which, to the mind of the Author, is conclusive. As before
observed, he was not originally disposed to reject Mr. Darwin's fascinating
theory. Reiterate endeavours to solve its difficulties have, however, had
the effect of convincing him that that theory as the one or as the leading
explanation of the successive evolution and manifestation of specific
forms, is untenable. At the same time he admits fully that "Natural
Selection" acts and must act, and that it plays in the organic world a
certain though a secondary and subordinate part.

The one _modus operandi_ yet suggested having been found insufficient, the
question arises, Can another be substituted in its place? If not, can
anything that is positive, and if anything, what, be said as to the
question of specific origination?

Now, in the first place, it is of course axiomatic that the laws which
conditioned the evolution of extinct and of existing species are of as much
efficacy at this moment as at any preceding period, that they _tend_ to the
manifestation of new forms as much now as ever before. It by no means
necessarily follows, however, that this tendency is actually being carried
into effect, and that new species of the higher animals and plants are
actually now produced. They may be so or they may not, according as
existing circumstances favour, or conflict with, the action of those laws.
It is possible that lowly organized creatures may be continually evolved at
the present day, the requisite conditions being more or less easily
supplied. There is, however, no similar evidence at present as to higher
forms; while, as we have seen in Chapter VII., there are _a priori_
considerations which militate against their being similarly evolved. {226}

The presence of wild varieties and the difficulty which often exists in the
determination of species are sometimes adduced as arguments that high forms
are now in process of evolution. These facts, however, do not necessarily
prove more than that some species possess a greater variability than
others, and (what is indeed unquestionable) that species have often been
unduly multiplied by geologists and botanists. It may be, for example, that
Wagner was right, and that all the American monkeys of the genus cebus may
be reduced to a single species or to two.

With regard to the lower organisms, and supposing views recently advanced
to become fully established, there is no reason to think that the forms
said to be evolved were new species, but rather reappearances of definite
kinds which had appeared before and will appear again under the same
conditions. In the same way, with higher forms similar conditions must
educe similar results, but here practically similar conditions can rarely
obtain because of the large part which "descent" and "inheritance" always
play in such highly organized forms.

Still it is conceivable that different combinations at different times may
have occasionally the same outcome just as the multiplications of different
numbers may have severally the same result.

There are reasons, however, for thinking it possible that the human race is
a witness of an exceptionally unchanging and stable condition of things, if
the calculations of Mr. Croll are valid as to how far variations in the
eccentricity in the earth's orbit together with the precession of the
equinoxes have produced changes in climate. Mr. Wallace has pointed
out[229] that the last 60,000 years having been exceptionally unchanging as
regards these conditions, specific evolution may have been {227}
exceptionally rare. It becomes then possible to suppose that for a similar
period stimuli to change in the manifestation of animal forms may have been
exceptionally few and feeble,--that is, if the conditions of the earth's
orbit have been as exceptional as stated. However, even if new species are
actually now being evolved as actively as ever, or if they have been so
quite recently, no conflict thence necessarily arises with the view here
advocated. For it by no means follows that if some examples of new species
have recently been suddenly produced from individuals of antecedent
species, we ought to be able to put our fingers on such cases; as Mr.
Murphy well observes[230] in a passage before quoted, "If a species were to
come suddenly into being in the wild state, as the Ancon sheep did under
domestication, how could we ascertain the fact? If the first of a
newly-born species were found, the fact of its discovery would tell nothing
about its origin. Naturalists would register it as a very rare species,
having been only once met with, but they would have no means of knowing
whether it were the first or the last of its race."

But are there any grounds for thinking that in the genesis of species an
_internal_ force or tendency interferes, co-operates with and controls the
action of external conditions?

It is here contended that there are such grounds, and that though
inheritance, reversion, atavism, Natural Selection, &c., play a part not
unimportant, yet that such an internal power is a great, perhaps the main,
determining agent.

It will, however, be replied that such an entity is no _vera causa_; that
if the conception is accepted, it is no real explanation; and that it is
merely a roundabout way of saying that the facts are as they are, while the
cause remains unknown. To this it may be rejoined that for all who believe
in the existence of the abstraction "force" at all, other than will, {228}
this conception of an internal force must be accepted and located
somewhere--cannot be eliminated altogether; and that therefore it may as
reasonably be accepted in this mode as in any other.

It was urged at the end of the third chapter that it is congruous to credit
mineral species with an internal power or force. By such a power it may be
conceived that crystals not only assume their external symmetry, but even
repair it when injured. Ultimate chemical elements must also be conceived
as possessing an innate tendency to form certain unions, and to cohere in
stable aggregations. This was considered towards the end of Chapter VIII.

Turning to the organic world, even on the hypothesis of Mr. Herbert Spencer
or that of Mr. Darwin, it is impossible to escape the conception of innate
internal forces. With regard to the physiological units of the former, Mr.
Spencer himself, as we have seen, distinctly attributes to them "an
_innate_ tendency" to evolve the parent form from which they sprang. With
regard to the gemmules of Mr. Darwin, we have seen, in Chapter X., with how
many innate powers, tendencies, and capabilities they must each be
severally endowed, to reproduce their kind, to evolve complex organisms or
cells, to exercise germinative affinity, &c.

If then (as was before said at the end of Chapter VIII.) such innate powers
must be attributed to chemical atoms, to mineral species, to gemmules, and
to physiological units, it is only reasonable to attribute such to each
individual organism.

The conception of such internal and latent capabilities is somewhat like
that of Mr. Galton, before mentioned, according to which the organic world
consists of entities, each of which is, as it were, a spheroid with many
facets on its surface, upon one of which it reposes in stable equilibrium.
When by the accumulated action of incident forces this equilibrium is {229}
disturbed, the spheroid is supposed to turn over until it settles on an
adjacent facet once more in stable equilibrium.

The internal tendency of an organism to certain considerable and definite
changes would correspond to the facets on the surface of the spheroid.

It may be objected that we have no knowledge as to how terrestrial,
cosmical and other forces can affect organisms so as to stimulate and
evolve these latent, merely potential forms. But we have had evidence that
such mysterious agencies _do_ affect organisms in ways as yet inexplicable,
in the very remarkable effects of geographical conditions which were
detailed in the third chapter.

It is quite conceivable that the material organic world may be so
constituted that the simultaneous action upon it of all known forces,
mechanical, physical, chemical, magnetic, terrestrial, and cosmical,
together with other as yet unknown forces which probably exist, may result
in changes which are harmonious and symmetrical, just as the internal
nature of vibrating plates causes particles of sand scattered over them to
assume definite and symmetrical figures when made to oscillate in different
ways by the bow of a violin being drawn along their edges. The results of
these combined internal powers and external influences might be represented
under the symbol of complex series of vibrations (analogous to those of
sound or light) forming a most complex harmony or a display of most varied
colours. In such a way the reparation of local injuries might be symbolized
as a filling up and completion of an interrupted rhythm. Thus also
monstrous aberrations from typical structure might correspond to a discord,
and sterility from crossing be compared with the darkness resulting from
the interference of waves of light.

Such symbolism will harmonize with the peculiar reproduction, before
mentioned, of heads in the body of certain annelids, with the facts of
serial homology, as well as those of bilateral and vertical symmetry. {230}
Also, as the atoms of a resonant body may be made to give out sound by the
juxtaposition of a vibrating tuning-fork, so it is conceivable that the
physiological units of a living organism may be so influenced by
surrounding conditions (organic and other) that the accumulation of these
conditions may upset the previous rhythm of such units, producing
modifications in them--a fresh chord in the harmony of nature--a new
species!

But it may be again objected that to say that species arise by the help of
an innate power possessed by organisms is no explanation, but is a
reproduction of the absurdity, _l'opium endormit parcequ'il a une vertu
soporifique_. It is contended, however, that this objection does not apply,
even if it be conceded that there is that force in Moliere's ridicule which
is generally attributed to it.[231] Much, however, might be said in
opposition to more than one of that brilliant dramatist's smart
philosophical epigrams, just as to the theological ones of Voltaire, or to
the biological one of that other Frenchman who for a time discredited a
cranial skeletal theory by the phrase "Vertebre pensante."[232]

In fact, however, it is a real explanation of how a man lives to say that
he lives independently, on his own income, instead of being supported by
his relatives and friends. In the same way, there is fully as real a
distinction between the production of new specific manifestations entirely
_ab externo_, and by the production of the same through an innate force and
tendency, the determination of which into action is occasioned by {231}
external circumstances.

To say that organisms possess this innate power, and that by it new species
are from time to time produced, is by no means a mere assertion that they
_are_ produced, and in an unknown mode. It is the negation of that view
which deems external forces alone sufficient, and at the same time the
assertion of something positive, to be arrived at by the process of
_reductio ad absurdum_.

All physical explanations result ultimately in such conceptions of innate
power, or else in that of will force. The far-famed explanation of the
celestial motions ends in the conception that every particle of matter has
the innate power of attracting every other particle directly as the mass,
and inversely as the square of the distance.

We are logically driven to this positive conception if we do not accept the
view that there is no force but volition, and that all phenomena whatever
are the immediate results of the action of intelligent and self-conscious
will.

We have seen that the notion of sudden changes--saltatory actions in
nature--has received countenance from Professor Huxley.[233] We must
conceive that these jumps are orderly, and according to law, inasmuch as
the whole cosmos is such. Such orderly evolution harmonizes with a
teleology derived, not indeed from external nature directly, but from the
mind of man. On this point, however, more will be said in the next chapter.
But, once more, if new species are not manifested by the action of external
conditions upon minute indefinite individual differences, in what precise
way may we conceive that manifestation to have taken place?

Are new species now evolving, as they have been from time to time evolved?
If so, in what way and by what conceivable means?

{232}
In the first place, they must be produced by natural action in pre-existing
material, or by supernatural action.

For reasons to be given in the next chapter, the second hypothesis need not
be considered.

If, then, new species are and have been evolved from pre-existing material,
must that material have been organic or inorganic?

As before said, additional arguments have lately been brought forward to
show that individual organisms _do_ arise from a basis of _in_-organic
material only. As, however, this at the most appears to be the case, if at
all, only with the lowest and most minute organisms exclusively, the
process cannot be observed, though it may perhaps be fairly inferred.

We may therefore, if for no other reason, dismiss the notion that highly
organized animals and plants can be suddenly or gradually built up by any
combination of physical forces and natural powers acting externally and
internally upon and in merely inorganic material as a base.

But the question is, how have the highest kinds of animals and plants
arisen? It seems impossible that they can have appeared otherwise than by
the agency of antecedent organisms not greatly different from them.

A multitude of facts, ever increasing in number and importance, all point
to such a mode of specific manifestation.

One very good example has been adduced by Professor Flower in the
introductory lecture of his first Hunterian Course.[234] It is the
reduction in size, to a greater or less degree, of the second and third
digits of the foot in Australian marsupials, and this, in spite of the very
different form and function of the foot in different groups of those
animals.

A similarly significant evidence of relationship is afforded by processes
of the zygomatic region of the skull in certain edentates existing and
extinct.

{233}
Again, the relation between existing and recent faunas of the different
regions of the world, and the predominating (though by no means exclusive)
march of organization, from the more general to the more special, point in
the same direction.

Almost all the facts brought forward by the patient industry of Mr. Darwin
in support of his theory of "Natural Selection," are of course available as
evidence in favour of the agency of pre-existing and similar animals in
specific evolution.

Now the new forms must be produced by changes taking place in organisms in,
after or before their birth, either in their embryonic, or towards or in
their adult, condition.

Examples of strange births are sufficiently common, and they may arise
either from direct embryonic modifications or apparently from some obscure
change in the parental action. To the former category belong the hosts of
instances of malformation through arrest of development, and perhaps
generally monstrosities of some sort are the result of such affections of
the embryo. To the second category belong all cases of hybridism, of cross
breed, and in all probability the new varieties and forms, such as the
memorable one of the black-shouldered peacock. In all these cases we do not
have abortions or monstrosities, but more or less harmonious forms often of
great functional activity, endowed with marked viability and generative
prepotency, except in the case of hybrids, when we often find even a more
marked generative impotency.

It seems probable therefore that new species may arise from some
constitutional affection of parental forms--an affection mainly, if not
exclusively, of their generative system. Mr. Darwin has carefully
collected[235] numerous instances to show how excessively sensitive to
various influences this system is. He says:[236] "Sterility is independent
of general health, and is often accompanied by excess of size, or {234}
great luxuriance," and, "No one can tell, till he tries; whether any
particular animal will breed under confinement, or any exotic plant seed
freely under culture." Again, "When a new character arises, whatever its
nature may be, it generally tends to be inherited, at least in a temporary
and sometimes in a most persistent manner."[237] Yet the obscure action of
conditions will alter characters long inherited, as the grandchildren of
Aylesbury ducks, removed to a distant part of England, completely lost
their early habit of incubation, and hatched their eggs at the same time
with the common ducks of the same place.[238]

Mr. Darwin quotes Mr. Bartlett as saying: "It is remarkable that lions
breed more freely in travelling collections than in the zoological gardens;
probably the constant excitement and irritation produced by moving from
place to place, or change of air, may have considerable influence in the
matter."[239]

Mr. Darwin also says: "There is reason to believe that insects are affected
by confinement like the higher animals," and he gives examples.[240]

Again, he gives examples of change of plumage in the linnet, bunting,
oriole, and other birds, and of the temporary modification of the horns of
a male deer during a voyage.[241]

Finally, he adds that these changes cannot be attributed to loss of health
or vigour, "when we reflect how healthy, long-lived, and vigorous many
animals are under captivity, such as parrots, and hawks when used for
hawking, chetahs when used for hunting, and elephants. The reproductive
organs themselves are not diseased; and the diseases from which animals in
menageries usually perish, are not those which in any way affect their
fertility. No domestic animal is more subject to disease than the sheep,
yet it is remarkably prolific.... It would appear that any change in {235}
the habits of life, whatever these habits may be, if great enough, tends to
affect in an inexplicable manner the powers of reproduction."

Such, then, is the singular sensitiveness of the generative system.

As to the means by which that system is affected, we see that a variety of
conditions affect it; but as to the modes in which they act upon it, we
have as yet little if any clue.

We have also seen the singular effects (in tailed Lepidoptera, &c.) of
causes connected with geographical distribution, the mode of action of
which is as yet quite inexplicable; and we have also seen the innate
tendency which there appears to be in certain groups (birds of paradise,
&c.) to develop peculiarities of a special kind.

It is, to say the least, probable that other influences exist, terrestrial
and cosmical, as yet un-noted. The gradually accumulating or diversely
combining actions of all these on highly sensitive structures, which are
themselves possessed of internal responsive powers and tendencies, may well
result in occasional repeated productions of forms harmonious and vigorous,
and differing from the parental forms in proportion to the result of the
combining or conflicting action of all external and internal influences.

If, in the past history of this planet, more causes ever intervened, or
intervened more energetically than at present, we might _a priori_ expect a
richer and more various evolution of forms more radically differing than
any which could be produced under conditions of more perfect equilibrium.
At the same time, if it be true that the last few thousand years have been
a period of remarkable and exceptional uniformity as regards this planet's
astronomical relations, there are then some grounds for thinking that
organic evolution may have been exceptionally depressed during the same
epoch.

Now, as to the fact that sudden changes and sudden developments have {236}
occurred, and as to the probability that such changes are likely to occur,
evidence was given in Chapter IV.

In Chapter V. we also saw that minerals become modified suddenly and
considerably by the action of incident forces--as, _e.g._, the production
of hexagonal tabular crystals of carbonate of copper by sulphuric acid, and
of long rectangular prisms by ammonia, &c.

We have thus a certain antecedent probability that if changes are produced
in specific manifestation through incident forces, these changes will be
sensible and considerable, not minute and infinitesimal.

Consequently, it is probable that new species have appeared from time to
time with comparative suddenness, and that they still continue so to arise
if all the conditions necessary for specific evolution now obtain.

This probability will be increased if the observations of Dr. Bastian are
confirmed by future investigation. According to his report, when the
requisite conditions were supplied, the transformations which appeared to
take place (from very low to higher organisms) were sudden, definite, and
complete.

Therefore, if this is so, there must probably exist in higher forms a
similar tendency to such change. That tendency may indeed be long
suppressed, and ultimately modified by the action of heredity--an action
which would increase in force with the increase in the perfection and
complexity of the organism affected. Still we might expect that such
changes as do take place would be also sudden, definite, and complete.

Moreover, as the same causes produce the same effects, several individual
parent forms must often have been similarly and simultaneously affected.
That they should be so affected--at least that several similarly modified
individuals should simultaneously arise--has been seen to be a generally
necessary circumstance for the permanent duration of such new
modifications.

It is also conceivable that such new forms may be endowed with {237}
excessive constitutional strength and viability, and with generative
prepotency, as was the case with the black-shouldered peacock in Sir J.
Trevelyan's flock. This flock was entirely composed of the common kind, and
yet the new form rapidly developed itself "_to the extinction of the
previously existing breed_."[242]

Indeed, the notion accepted by both Mr. Darwin and Mr. Herbert Spencer, and
which is plainly the fact (namely, that changes of conditions and incident
forces, within limits, augment the viability and fertility of individuals),
harmonizes well with the suggested possibility as to an augmented viability
and prepotency in new organic forms evolved by peculiar consentaneous
actions of conditions and forces, both external and internal.

The remarkable series of changes noted by Dr. Bastian were certainly not
produced by external incident forces _only_, but by these acting on a
peculiar _materia_, having special properties and powers. Therefore, the
changes were induced by the consentaneous action of internal and external
forces.[243] In the same way then, we may expect changes in higher forms to
be evolved by similar united action of internal and external forces.

One other point may here be alluded to. When the remarkable way in which
structure and function simultaneously change, is borne in mind; when those
numerous instances in which nature has supplied similar wants by similar
means, as detailed in Chapter III., are remembered; when also all the
wonderful contrivances of orchids, of mimicry, and the strange complexity
of certain instinctive actions are considered: then the conviction forces
itself on many minds that the organic world is the expression of an
intelligence of some kind. This view has been well advocated by Mr. Joseph
John Murphy, in his recent work so often here referred to.

{238}
This intelligence, however, is evidently not altogether such as ours, or
else has other ends in view than those most obvious to us. For the end is
often attained in singularly roundabout ways, or with a prodigality of
means which seems out of all proportion with the result: not with the
simple action directed to one end which generally marks human activity.

Organic nature then speaks clearly to many minds of the action of an
intelligence resulting, on the whole and in the main, in order, harmony,
and beauty, yet of an intelligence the ways of which are not such as ours.

This view of evolution harmonizes well with Theistic conceptions; not, of
course, that this harmony is brought forward as an argument in its favour
generally, but it will have weight with those who are convinced that Theism
reposes upon solid grounds of reason as _the_ rational view of the
universe. To such it may be observed that, thus conceived, the Divine
action has that slight amount of resemblance to, and that wide amount of
divergence from what human action would be, which might be expected _a
priori_--might be expected, that is, from a Being whose nature and aims are
utterly beyond our power to imagine, however faintly, but whose truth and
goodness are the fountain and source of our own perceptions of such
qualities.

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