Page - 17 - in The Origin of Species

HISTORICAL SKETCH 17 "puissance mysterieuse, indeterminee ; fatalite pour Ics uns ; pour les autres, volonte providentielle, dont Taction inces- sante sur les etres vivants determine, a toutes les epoques de I'existence du monde, la forme, le volume, et la duree de chacun d'eux, en raison de sa destinee dans I'orde de choses dont il fait partie. C'est cette puissance qui harmonise chaque membre a I'ensemble, en I'appropriant a la fonction qu'il doit remplir dans I'organisme general de la nature, fonc- tion qui est pour lui sa raison d'etre."* In 1853 a celebrated geologist, Count Keyserling ('Bulletin de la Soc. .Geolog./ 2nd Sen, torn. x. p. 357), suggested that as new diseases, supposed to have been caused by some miasma, have arisen and spread over the world, so at certain periods the germs of existing species may have been chem- ically afifected by circumambient molecules of a particular nature, and thus have given rise to new forms. In this same year, 1853, Dr. Schaaffhausen published an excellent pamphlet ('Verhand. des Naturhist. Vereins der Preuss. Rheinlands,' &c.), in which he maintains the devel- opment of organic forms on the earth. He infers that many species have kept true for long periods, whereas a few have become modified. The distinction of species he explains by the destruction of intermediate graduated forms. "Thus living plants and animals are not separated from the extinct by new creations, but are to be regarded as their descendants through continued reproduction." A well-known French botanist, M. Lecoq, writes in 1854 ('Etudes sur Geograph. Bot.,' torn. i. p. 250), "On voit que nos recherches sur la fixite ou la variation de I'espece, nous conduisent directement aux idees emises, par deux hommes justement celebres, Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire et Goethe." Some * From references in Bronn's ' Untersuchungen iiber die Entwickclungs- Gesetze,' it appears that the celebrated botanist and palxontologist Unger published, in 1852, his belief that species undergo development and modifi- cation. Dalton, likewise, in Pander and Dalton's work on Fossil Sloths, ex- pressed, in 182 1, a similar belief. Similar views have, as is well known, been maintained by Oken in his mystical ' Natur-Philosophie.' From other references in Godron's work ' Sur I'Espece,' it seems that Bory St. Vincent, Burdach, Poiret, and Fries, have all admitted that new species arc con- tinually being produced. I may add, that of the thirty-four authors named in this Historical Sketch, who believe in the modification of species, or at least disbelieve in separate acts of creation, twenty-seven have written on special branches of natural history or geology.