Pre-Darwinists (6) Erasmus Darwin

Erasmus Darwin

Introduction

Zoönomia

The Temple of Nature

Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802), paternal grandfather of Charles Darwin and maternal grandfather of Francis Galton, had a medical degree from Edingburgh Medical School and practiced as a physician. In the beginning with little success, but later Darwin became quite successful, and King George III even offered him the position as Royal Physician, but he declined.

Darwin wrote extensively about medicine and botany, invented several mechanical devices, including a minute, artificial bird, and he even wrote evolutionary poems.

No wonder that Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley in the Preface to Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus (1818) could write:

The event on which this fiction is founded has been supposed, by Dr. Darwin, and some of the physiological writers of Germany, as not of impossible occurrence. I shall not be supposed as according the remotest degree of serious faith to such an imagination; yet, in assuming it as the basis of a work of fancy, I have not considered myself as merely weaving a series of supernatural terrors. The event on which the interest of the story depends is exempt from the disadvantages of a mere tale of spectres or enchantment. It was recommended by the novelty of the situations which it develops; and, however impossible as a physical fact, affords a point of view to the imagination for the delineating of human passions more comprehensive and commanding than any which the ordinary relations of existing events can yield.

The gory details about Erasmus Darwin's love life can be read on the Wikipedia page.

Darwin was a member of the Lunar Society, which according to the Wikipedia article was a "discussion club of prominent industrialists, natural philosophers and intellectuals who met regularly between 1765 and 1813 in Birmingham, England". Antoine Lavoisier and Bemjamin Franklin frequently corresponded with members of the society, and all in all, the society was very influental in promoting Enlightenment ideas in England.

While an evolutionist, Darwin maintained God as the first cause, and in the poem The Temple of Nature, Nature is described as the daughter of God and just like God's Wisdom in Proverbs 8, she is the actual creator, an expression of divine Love and Sympathy. More precisely, God had established the natural laws, by which not only nature, but also human society was regulated, and, therefore, by studying nature, we can learn how to improve society.

The same idea was put forth in the earlier work Zoönomia, where Darwin employs an analogy between the development of a living organism from a 'living filament', which grows by absorbing nutrients from its environment, and the origin of life from an original living filament, from which new forms have grown successively and in the process changed their environment; that is Darwin sees geological history as a result of biological history.

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Zoönomia

Erasmus Darwin's most important scientific work is Zoönomia; or the Laws of Organic Life (1794-96), called Zoönomia for short.

It is dedicated to "the candid and ingenious Members of the College of Physicians, of the Royal Philosophical Society, of the Two Universities, and to all those, who study the Operations of the Mind as a Science, or who practice Medicine as a Profession". As this dedication together with the subtitle of the book indicate, psychology was for Darwin part of physiology.

In Section XIV, "Of the Production of Ideas", Darwin writes:

Some philosophers have divided all created beings into material and immaterial: the former including all that part of being, which obeys the mechanic laws of action and reaction, but which can begin no motion of itself; the other is the cause of all motion, and is either termed the power of gravity, or of specific attraction, or the spirit of animation. This immaterial agent is supposed to exist in or with matter, but to be quite distinct from it, and to be equally capable of existence, after the matter, which now possesses it, is decomposed.

Note here the interesting mentioning of the "power of gravity" together with the "spirit of animation", where by the latter is meant, in dualistic metaphysique, the soul that moves the physical body around, but it is also the receiver of sensual impressions. That is, the soul is both moved by and the mover of the body. That the spirit of animation can exist separate from the body is supported by analogy:

Nor is this theory ill supported by analogy, since heat, electricity, and magnetism, can be given to or taken from a piece of iron; and must therefore exist, whether separated from the metal, or combined with it. From a parity of reasoning, the spirit of animation, would appear to be capable of existing as well separately from the body as with it.

Darwin then proceeds to say that all these powers might not be immaterial, but may consist of matter of a finer kind, and that only God, the ultimate cause of all motion, need to be immaterial, so he clarifies:

By the words spirit of animation or sensorial power, I mean only that animal life, which mankind possesses in common with brutes, and in some degree even with ve3getables, and leave the consideration of the immortal part of us, which is the object of religion, to those who treat of revelation.

That is, for Darwin science and religion are, what have come to be known as "non-overlapping magisteria". They are still integrated, though, since the object of science is to discover the natural laws, impressed by God on nature, and therefore, the status of God as the first mover is not questioned.

Material bodies cannot exist at the same time at the same place. Darwin uses the example of pressing an ivory ball between his hands; the ball will resist being compressed. Since the spirit of animation is able to move physical objects, such as limbs of animals, and it is itself moved by matter such as light and odour, the spirit of animation must have the property of solidity, at least be able to assume that property; otherwise it would simply pass through or be passed through:

If the spirit of animation was always necessarily penetrable, it could not influence or be influenced by the solidity of common matter; they would exist together, but could not detrude each other from the part of space, where they exist; that is, they could not communicate motion to each other. No two things can influence or affect each other, which have not some property common to both of them; for to influence or affect another body is to give or communicate some property to it, that it had not before; but how can one body give that to another, which it does not possess itself?—The words imply, that they must agree in having the power or faculty of possessing some common property. Thus if one body removes another from the part of space, that it possesses, it must have the power of occupying that space itself: and if one body communicates heat or motion to another, it follows, that they have alike the property of possessing heat or motion.

That is, if the spirit of animation displaces a physical object, it must itself be able to occupy the now vacant space. By the same principle, Darwin concludes that the spirit of animation must be able to possess other material properties:

Hence the spirit of animation at the time it communicates or receives motion from solid bodies, must itself possess some property of solidity. And in consequence at the time it receives other kinds of motion from light, it must possess that property, which light possesses, to communicate that kind of motion; and for which no language has a name, unless it may be termed Visibility. And at the time it is stimulated into other kinds of animal motion by the particles of sapid and odorous bodies affecting the senses of taste and smell, it must resemble these particles of flavour, and of odour, in possessing some similar or correspondent property; and for which language has no name, unless we may use the words Saporosity and Odorosity for those common properties, which are possessed by our organs of taste and smell, and by the particles of sapid and odorous bodies; as the words Tangibility and Audibility may express the common property possessed by our organs of touch, and of hearing, and by the solid bodies, or their vibrations, which affect those organs.

That is, the spirit of animation must have the ability to take on the properties of the external stimuli. The point here being that our senses do provide a reliable impression of the external world - assuming it exists, that is. Because we can experience all the same impressions without any immediate external stimuli, such as in dreams; however, Darwin states, in our waking hours we can compare the impressions from one sense with that of others:

Thus if the idea of the sweetness of sugar should be excited in our dreams, the whiteness and hardness of it occur at the same time by association; and we believe a material lump of sugar present before us. But if, in our waking hours, the idea of the sweetness of sugar occurs to us, the stimuli of surrounding objects, as the edge of the table, on which we press, or green colour of the grass, on which we tread, prevent the other ideas of the hardness and whiteness of the sugar from being exerted by association. Or if they should occur, we voluntarily compare them with the irritative ideas of the table or grass above mentioned, and detect their fallacy. We can thus distinguish the ideas caused by the stimuli of external objects from those, which are introduced by association, sensation, or volition; and during our waking hours can thus acquire a knowledge of the external world.

That is, when we are awake, an imagined stimulus from one sense will not be combined with associated stimuli from other senses, because there are external stimuli for those sense, and these take precedence. With the example given, we may imagine tasting the sweetness of sugar, but seeing the green grass instead of white sugar tells us that there really is no sugar. Again, this appears to be based on the same argumentation of solidity as above, at least by analogy. The stimulus of the green grass pushes away the associated whiteness of the sugar.

In Section XV, "Of Classes of Ideas", Darwin writes about free will:

In respect to freewill, it is certain, that we cannot will to think of a new train of ideas, without previously thinking of the first link of it; as I cannot will to think of a black swan, without previously thinking of a black swan. But if I now think of a tail, I can voluntarily recollect all animals, which have tails; my will is so far free, that I can pursue the ideas linked to this idea of tail, as far as my knowledge of the subject extends; but to will without motive is to will without desire or aversion; which is as absurd as to feel without pleasure or pain; they are both solecisms in the terms. So far are we governed by the catenations of motions, which affect both the body and the mind of man, and which begin with our irritability, and end with it.

The point here is the analogy between a physical sensation such as feeling pleasure or pain, which must have been excited by the senses, and the will as dependent on desire or aversion; that is, the will is dependent on emotions.

In Section XVI, "Of Instinct", Darwin writes:

But all those actions of men or animals, that are attended with consciousness, and seem neither to have been directed by their appetites, taught by their experience, nor deduced from observation or tradition, have been referred to the power of instinct. And this power has been explained to be a divine something, a kind of inspiration; whilst the poor animal, that possesses it, has been thought little better than a machine!

The irksomeness, that attends a continued attitude of the body, or the pains, that we receive from heat, cold, hunger, or other injurious circumstances, excite us to general locomotion: and our senses are so formed and constituted by the hand of nature, that certain objects present us with pleasure, others with pain, and we are induced to approach and embrace these, to avoid and abhor those, as such sensations direct us.

That is, instinct is not a "divine something" that controls a machine (the body); instinctive behavior is provoked by certain stimuli and consists in certain reactions to them. Just as David Hume, and, for that matter, Aristotle, Darwin operates with the "hand of nature" in a creative rôle without here giving any precise description of, how that hand has operated. With Richard Dawkins we might today say that it is the hand of The Blind Watchmaker; but Darwin doesn't go into any details here. In The Temple of Nature, however, he gives some more details about that hand of nature.

In Section XXXIX, "Of Generation", Darwin writes:

I conceive the primordium, or rudiment of the embryon, as secreted from the blood of the parent, to consist of a simple living filament as a muscular fibre; which I suppose to be an extremity of a nerve of loco-motion, as a fibre of the retina is an extremity of a nerve of sensation; as for instance one of the fibrils, which compose the mouth of an absorbent vessel; I suppose this living filament, of whatever form it may be, whether sphere, cube, or cylinder, to be endued with the capability of being excited into action by certain kinds of stimulus. By the stimulus of the surrounding fluid, in which it is received from the male, it may bend into a ring; and thus form the beginning of a tube. Such moving filaments, and such rings, are described by those, who have attended to microscopic animalcula. This living ring may now embrace or absorb a nutritive particle of the fluid, in which it swims; and by drawing it into its pores, or joining it by compression to its extremities, may increase its own length or crassitude; and by degrees the living ring may become a living tube.

Notice here that this "living filament", as Darwin calls it, is supposed to be an "extremity of a nerve of loco-motion," that is, it obeys the laws of motion described above and is therefore "endued with the capability of being excited into action by certain kinds of stimulus." As the embryon acquires new organs, it also acquires new sensibilities to stimuli and therefore a new mode of action:

With every new change, therefore, of organic form, or addition of organic parts, I suppose a new kind of irritability or of sensibility to be produced; such varieties of irritability or of sensibility exist in our adult state in the glands; every one of which is furnished with an irritability, or a taste, or appetency, and a consequent mode of action peculiar to itself.

That is, this living filament, first produced by the male parent, changes dependent on the nutrive particles in the fluid, wherein it is inserted, thus acquiring new organs that in turn may respond to new stimuli. This leads Darwin to suggest that life might have a similar origin, from such a living filament. It is not quite common descent, since Darwin doesn't assume that there was only one, but maybe a few of them that crossed with each other, and from these hybrids the many species now existing have come.

Darwin mentions other ways for organisms to aquire properties, both before and after their birth, and that even those acquired after the birth are inherited. Adding to that the great age of the earth again leads Darwin to suggest that life might have arisen from a few living filaments, originally endued with the ability to acquire news parts:

From thus meditating on the great similarity of the structure of the warm-blooded animals, and at the same time of the great changes they undergo both before and after their nativity; and by considering in how minute a portion of time many of the changes of animals above described have been produced; would it be too bold to imagine, that in the great length of time, since the earth began to exist, perhaps millions of ages before the commencement of the history of mankind, would it be too bold to imagine, that all warm-blooded animals have arisen from one living filament, which THE GREAT FIRST CAUSE endued with animality, with the power of acquiring new parts, attended with new propensities, directed by irritations, sensations, volitions, and associations; and thus possessing the faculty of continuing to improve by its own inherent activity, and of delivering down those improvements by generation to its posterity, world without end!

The Aristotelean idea here of a first cause, when that is thought of as a deity, that had set it all in motion is also called providentionalism referring to that the deity by its providence has set up conditions that would lead to the intended purpose without further intervention from the deity. The opposite idea is thus called interventionalism referring to that the deity directly controls events from time to time.

Darwin refers to David Hume's posthumous book Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779):

The late Mr. David Hume, in his posthumous works, places the powers of generation much above those of our boasted reason; and adds, that reason can only make a machine, as a clock or a ship, but the power of generation makes the maker of the machine; and probably from having observed, that the greatest part of the earth has been formed out of organic recrements; as the immense beds of limestone, chalk, marble, from the shells of fish; and the extensive provinces of clay, sandstone, ironstone, coals, from decomposed vegetables; all which have been first produced by generation, or by the secretions of organic life; he concludes that the world itself might have been generated, rather than created; that is, it might have been gradually produced from very small beginnings, increasing by the activity of its inherent principles, rather than by a sudden evolution of the whole by the Almighty fire.—What a magnificent idea of the infinite power of the Great Architect! the Cause of Causes! Tarent of Parents! Ens Entium!

In Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Hume writes:

But what is this vegetation and generation of which you talk? said Demea. Can you explain how they work, and lay out the details of that fine internal structure on which they depend?

I can do that, replied Philo, at least as well as Cleanthes can explain how reason works, or lay out in detail the internal structure on which it depends! But I don’t need to go into all that: it is enough that when I see an animal, I infer that it arose from generation, and am as sure of this as you are when you infer that a house arose from design. The words ‘generation’ and ‘reason’ serve merely to label certain powers and energies in nature. We know the effects of these powers, but have no grasp of their essence; and neither of them has a better claim that the other to be made a standard for the whole of nature.

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Now it can’t be denied that order in nature is found by experience to come from vegetation and generation, as well as from reason. It is for me to choose whether to base my system of cosmogony on the former rather than on the latter. The choice seems entirely arbitrary. And when Cleanthes asks me what the cause is of my vegetative or generative faculty, I am equally entitled to ask him what causes his reasoning principle. We have agreed to pass up these questions on both sides, and in our present context it is in his interests to stick to this agreement. Judging by our limited and imperfect experience, generation has some privileges over reason: for we see every day reason arise from generation - for example, my reason, which has in its causal ancestry my parent’s begetting of me - but never see generation arise from reason.

Demea and Philo together with Cleanthes are the participants in the dialogues (or trialogues, as they would then more properly be called), where Philo most represents Hume himself. Philo's point here is that our experience cannot tell us whether the universe was caused by reason or by generation; but at least he can claim that his own reason arose by generation, while we never see generation arise from reason.

Also Philo, even if accepting the universe to have come around by divine design, claims that this does not imply the existence of only one god:

And what shadow of an argument, continued Philo, can you produce, from your hypothesis, to prove that God is onebeing? A great many men join together to build a house or ship, to found and develop a city, to create a commonwealth; why couldn’t several gods combine in designing and making a world? This would only serve to make divine activities more like human ones. By sharing the work among several gods we can reduce still further the attributes of each one of them; we can get rid of that extensive power and knowledge which we have to suppose the one God to possess (if there is only one) - that extent of power and knowledge which, according to you, serves merely to weaken the argument for God’s existence. And if such foolish, vicious creatures as men can often unite in forming and carrying out one plan, how much could that be done by those gods or semi-gods whom we may suppose to be quite a lot more perfect than we are?

So, Hume might not have been the best choice as a supporter of Darwin's theory. However, Darwin is not concerned with such argumentation and therefore proceeds:

For if we may compare infinities, it would seem to require a greater infinity of power to cause the causes of effects, than to cause the effects themselves. This idea is analogous to the improving excellence observable in every part of the creation; such as in the progressive increase of the solid or habitable parts of the earth from water; and in the progressive increase of the wisdom and happiness of its inhabitants; and is consonant to the idea of our present situation being a state of probation, which by our exertions we may improve, and are consequently responsible for our actions.

Hume might not have agreed quite with this; but Darwin's idea is that God is made even greater by being "the cause of causes", than if he had created everything directly, and he sees an analogy between this and "the improving excellence observable in every part of the creation", and he even derives personal responsibility from it: "our present situation being a state of probation, which by our exertions we may improve, and are consequently responsible for our actions". That is, evolution for Darwin is also moral evolution, whereby is meant that we have the choice to improve our state of probation and therefore are responsible for that state ourselves.

Recapitulating this section, Darwin writes:

1. A certain quantity of nutritive particles are produced by the female parent before impregnation, which require no further digestion, secretion, or oxygenation. Such are seen in the unimpregnated eggs of birds, and in the unimpregnated seed-vessels of vegetables.

2. A living filament is produced by the male, which being inserted amidst these first nutritive particles, is stimulated into action by them; and in consequence of this action, some of the nutritive particles are embraced, and added to the original living filament; in the same manner as common nutrition is performed in the adult animal.

That is, the nutrition of the "living filament" is produced by the mother, but the filament itself is produced by the father. Therefore, Darwin claims, it is primarily the father that determines the form of the new animal. However, he ackowledges some exceptions from this rule:

5. In some cases by the nutriment originally deposited by the mother the filament acquires parts not exactly similar to those of the father, as in the production of mules and mulattoes. In other cases, the deficiency of this original nutriment causes deficiencies of the extreme parts of the fetus, which are last formed, as the fingers, toes, lips. In other cases, a duplicature of limbs are caused by the superabundance of this original nutritive fluid, as in the double yolks of eggs, and the chickens from them with four legs and four wings. But the production of other monsters, as those with two heads, or with parts placed in wrong situations, seems to arise from the imagination of the father being in some manner imitated by the extreme vessels of the seminal glands; as the colours of the spots on eggs, and the change of the colour of the hair and feathers of animals by domestication, may be caused in the same manner by the imagination of the mother.

Talk about a fertile imagination!

In General, therefore, the living filament begins with the propensities of the father; but these may be modified by the nutrition from the mother:

6. The living filament is a part of the father, and has therefore certain propensities, or appetencies, which belong to him; which may have been gradually acquired during a million of generations, even from the infancy of the habitable earth; and which now possesses such properties, as would render, by the apposition of nutritious particles, the new fetus exactly similar to the father; as occurs in the buds and bulbs of vegetables, and in the polypus, and tænia or tape-worm. But as the first nutriment is supplied by the mother, and therefore resembles such nutritive particles, as have been used for her own nutriment or growth, the progeny takes in part of the likeness of the mother.

Some hereditary propensities can be produced in one or two generations, though Darwin is not here clear about how that comes around:

Other similarity of the excitability, or of the form of the male parent, such as the broad or narrow shoulders, or such as constitute certain hereditary diseases, as scrophula, epilepsy, insanity, have their origin produced in one or perhaps two generations; as in the progeny of those who drink much vinous spirits; and those hereditary propensities cease again, as I have observed, if one or two sober generations succeed; otherwise the family becomes extinct.

And then there's the imagination that can alter the filament:

This living filament from the father is also liable to have its propensities, or appetencies, altered at the time of its production by the imagination of the male parent; the extremities of the seminal glands imitating the motions of the organs of sense; and thus the sex of the embryon is produced; which may be thus made a male or a female by affecting the imagination of the father at the time of impregnation.

In its further development, the filament, as a fetus, may be affected by the nutrients and oxygen supplied by the mother, as it acquires the organs for them:

7. After the fetus is thus completely formed together with its umbilical vessels and placenta, it is now supplied with a different kind of food, as appears by the difference of consistency of the different parts of the white of the egg, and of the liquor amnii, for it has now acquired organs for digestion or secretion, and for oxygenation, though they are as yet feeble; which can in some degree change, as well as select, the nutritive particles, which are now presented to it. But may yet be affected by the deficiency of the quantity of nutrition supplied by the mother, or by the degree of oxygenation supplied to its placenta by the maternal blood.

The point here being that the development of the filament is dependent on the quantity and quality of the available nutrition, including oxygen.

What goes for this filament, goes for life in general:

9. As the habitable parts of the earth have been, and continue to be, perpetually increasing by the production of sea-shells and corallines, and by the recrements of other animals, and vegetables; so from the beginning of the existence of this terraqueous globe, the animals, which inhabit it, have constantly improved, and are still in a state of progressive improvement.

That is, the habitable parts of the earth are increased by life itself, and likewise life inhabiting the earth has improved progressively. Life is here seen as one organism, a first great egg made living by divine love:

This idea of the gradual generation of all things seems to have been as familiar to the ancient philosophers as to the modern ones; and to have given rise to the beautiful hieroglyphic figure of the προτον ωον, or first great egg, produced by NIGHT, that is, whose origin is involved in obscurity, and animated by ερος, that is, by DIVINE LOVE; from whence proceeded all things which exist.

Darwin's Aristotelean way of thinking, of course, pops up again in the Conclusion of the section, where he states that "Cause and effect may be considered as the progression, or successive motions, of the parts of the great system of Nature." This chain of cause and effect leads bavk to God as the first cause:

6. This perpetual chain of causes and effects, whose first link is rivetted to the throne of GOD, divides itself into innumerable diverging branches, which, like the nerves arising from the brain, permeate the most minute and most remote extremities of the system, diffusing motion and sensation to the whole. As every cause is superior in power to the effect, which it has produced, so our idea of the power of the Almighty Creator becomes more elevated and sublime, as we trace the operations of nature from cause to cause, climbing up the links of these chains of being, till we ascend to the Great Source of all things.

Darwin, therefore, is not denying a creator, only that the creator has specially created all species right from the start. This in turn leads him to reject that it is blind chance that has constituted the material world, since the Creator has endowed matter with the properties necessary to form the combinations:

Hence the modern discoveries in chemistry and in geology, by having traced the causes of the combinations of bodies to remoter origins, as well as those in astronomy, which dignify the present age, contribute to enlarge and amplify our ideas of the power of the Great First Cause. And had those ancient philosophers, who contended that the world was formed from atoms, ascribed their combinations to certain immutable properties received from the hand of the Creator, such as general gravitation, chemical affinity, or animal appetency, instead of ascribing them to a blind chance; the doctrine of atoms, as constituting or composing the material world by the variety of their combinations, so far from leading the mind to atheism, would strengthen the demonstration of the existence of a Deity, as the first cause of all things; because the analogy resulting from our perpetual experience of cause and effect would have thus been exemplified through universal nature.

That is, God is indeed designer or architect, but he has designed the world so it will assemble itself without his continous direct intervention.

Darwin ends the section with quoting Psalms 19:1-5 and 104:24:

The heavens declare the glory of GOD, and the firmament sheweth his handywork! One day telleth another, and one night certifieth another; they have neither speech nor language, yet their voice is gone forth into all lands, and their words into the ends of the world. Manifold are thy works, O LORD! in wisdom hast thou made them all. Psal. xix. civ.

For Erasmus Darwin therefore, nature was still seen as the handywork of God, though indirectly: God as the architect or designer and Nature as the implementer of the divine architecture according to God's laws impressed upon Nature.

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The Temple of Nature

The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society: a Poem, with Philosophical Notes (1802) is a poem in four canta with additional thirteen "philosophical notes".

According to the Preface, the aim of this poem is "simply to amuse by bringing distinctly to the imagination the beautiful and sublime images of the operations of Nature in the order, as the Author believes, in which the progressive course of time presented them". The style of the poem mimics classical Greek poetic style, which the Preface explain by "[i]n the Eleusinian mysteries the philosophy of the works of Nature, with the origin and progress of society, are believed to have been taught by allegoric scenery explained by the Hierophant to the initiated".

Accordingly, Canto I, "Production of Life", starts with:

I. By firm immutable immortal laws
Impress'd on Nature by the Great First Cause,
Say, Muse! how rose from elemental strife
Organic forms, and kindled into life;
How Love and Sympathy with potent charm
Warm the cold heart, the lifted hand disarm;
Allure with pleasures, and alarm with pains,
And bind Society in golden chains.

Here we again meet the Great First Cause, who has impressed "firm immutable immortal laws" on "Nature" - nature here thought of as a being, a goddess. And we also meet the keywords 'Love' and 'Sympathy'.

A few stanzas later we enter the garden of Eden:

II. Where Eden's sacred bowers triumphant sprung,
By angels guarded, and by prophets sung,
Wav'd o'er the east in purple pride unfurl'd
And rock'd the golden cradle of the World;
Four sparkling currents lav'd with wandering tides
Their velvet avenues, and flowery sides;
On sun-bright lawns unclad the Graces stray'd,
And guiltless Cupids haunted every glade;
Till the fair Bride, forbidden shades among,
Heard unalarm'd the Tempter's serpent-tongue;
Eyed the sweet fruit, the mandate disobey'd,
And her fond Lord with sweeter smiles betray'd.

This mixture of biblical and Greek mythology may certainly not be to the amusement of everybody. Still, the biblical story of the Garden of Eden is certainly not denied, just enhanced with a few embellishments. A note to the fourth line says, "Cradle of the world, l. 36. The nations, which possess Europe and a part of Asia and of Africa, appear to have descended from one family; and to have had their origin near the banks of the Mediterranean, as probably in Syria, the site of Paradise, according to the Mosaic history." Darwin continues saying that this "seems highly probable from the similarity of the structure of the languages of these nations, and from their early possession of similar religions, customs, and arts, as well as from the most ancient histories extant." So, again, Darwin accepts the biblical account.

Two stanzas later begins the description of The Temple of Nature:

Here, high in air, unconscious of the storm
Thy temple, Nature, rears it's mystic form;
From earth to heav'n, unwrought by mortal toil,
Towers the vast fabric on the desert soil;
O'er many a league the ponderous domes extend,
And deep in earth the ribbed vaults descend;
A thousand jasper steps with circling sweep
Lead the slow votary up the winding steep;
Ten thousand piers, now join'd and now aloof,
Bear on their branching arms the fretted roof.

The Temple of Nature is, of course, nature herself, not a part of nature and not something outside of nature. The steps of the temple is the tracing backwards of the progression of Nature, both inorganic matter and life, all the way back to the first cause.

The altar of Nature is set in Eleusis, which is of course neither biblical nor scientific, but part of the poem.

Addressing the muse, the hierofant Urania says:

"First, if you can, celestial Guide! disclose
From what fair fountain mortal life arose,
Whence the fine nerve to move and feel assign'd,
Contractile fibre, and ethereal mind:

"How Love and Sympathy the bosom warm,
Allure with pleasure, and with pain alarm,
With soft affections weave the social plan,
And charm the listening Savage into Man."

That is, she asks the muse to explain how mortal life began, how nerves, muscle fibres, and mind came around, and how "Love and Sympathy" weave the social plan turning savages into civilized humans.

The muse begins her answer with:

"God the First Cause! — in this terrene abode
Young Nature lisps, she is the child of God.
From embryon births her changeful forms improve,
Grow, as they live, and strengthen as they move.

This is the same story as in Zoönomia; but there are a few details worth noticing. In Proverbs 8 we read the story of Wisdom:

Pro 8:23 I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, Before the earth was.

Pro 8:24 When there were no depths, I was brought forth, When there were no fountains abounding with water.

Pro 8:25 Before the mountains were settled, Before the hills was I brought forth;

Pro 8:26 While as yet he had not made the earth, nor the fields, Nor the beginning of the dust of the world.

Pro 8:27 When he established the heavens, I was there: When he set a circle upon the face of the deep,

Pro 8:28 When he made firm the skies above, When the fountains of the deep became strong,

Pro 8:29 When he gave to the sea its bound, That the waters should not transgress his commandment, When he marked out the foundations of the earth;

Pro 8:30 Then I was by him, as a master workman; And I was daily his delight, Rejoicing always before him,

Pro 8:31 Rejoicing in his habitable earth; And my delight was with the sons of men.

The pre-existing Wisdom, possibly the inspiration of the Logos Hymn in the Gospel of John, is also the child of God, and as v. 30 states, she was the "master workman", when God created the world. It's the same idea that Darwin employs, just in a more modern setting - whereby I refer to the evolutionary ideas, not his sensual romanticism.

The priestess continues:

"Ere Time began, from flaming Chaos hurl'd
Rose the bright spheres, which form the circling world;
Earths from each sun with quick explosions burst,
And second planets issued from the first.
Then, whilst the sea at their coeval birth,
Surge over surge, involv'd the shoreless earth;
Nurs'd by warm sun-beams in primeval caves
Organic Life began beneath the waves.

This is also from the beginning, before time began, though else the description is different. Darwin operates with more than one sun, and from each sun "with quick explosions burst[s]", and from that first planet other planets are issued. I don't know, if that was the common cosmogonical theory of the time; but apparently it's what Darwin accepted for some reason. And he has life beginning "[n]urs'd by warm sun-beams" "beneath the waves".

The priestess continues her story:

"First Heat from chemic dissolution springs,
And gives to matter its eccentric wings:
With strong Repulsion parts the exploding mass,
Melts into lymph, or kindles into gas.
Attraction next, as earth or air subsides,
The ponderous atoms from the light divides,
Approaching parts with quick embrace combines,
Swells into spheres, and lengthens into lines.
Last, as fine goads the gluten-threads excite,
Cords grapple cords, and webs with webs unite;
And quick Contraction with ethereal flame
Lights into life the fibre-woven frame. —
Hence without parent by spontaneous birth
Rise the first specks of animated earth;
From Nature's womb the plant or insect swims,
And buds or breathes, with microscopic limbs.

This is a description of abiogenesis. As elsewhere, Darwin here gives a poetic description of his concepts, such as heat, repulsion, attraction, and contraction. A note to the first line says:

First Heat from chemic, l. 235. The matter of heat is an ethereal fluid, in which all things are immersed, and which constitutes the general power of repulsion; as appears in explosions which are produced by the sudden evolution of combined heat, and by the expansion of all bodies by the slower diffusion of it in its uncombined state. Without heat all the matter of the world would be condensed into a point by the power of attraction; and neither fluidity nor life could exist. There are also particular powers of repulsion, as those of magnetism and electricity, and of chemistry, such as oil and water; which last may be as numerous as the particular attractions which constitute chemical affinities; and may both of them exist as atmospheres round the individual particles of matter; see Botanic Garden, Bol. I. additional note VII. on elementary heat.

Heat is here correctly associated with motion, and all the other concepts are motional concepts, in concert with Darwin's general idea of translation everything into motion.

Darwin's description of abiogenesis isn't quite the current one; but since cells were first discovered in the 1830s, we should not expect too much anyway.

Interestingly, abiogenesis can be considered compatible with Genesis 1:

Gen 1:11 And God said, Let the earth put forth grass, herbs yielding seed, and fruit-trees bearing fruit after their kind, wherein is the seed thereof, upon the earth: and it was so.

...

Gen 1:20 And God said, Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.

...

Gen 1:24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind, cattle, and creeping things, and beasts of the earth after their kind: and it was so.

That is, God tells the earth and the waters to bring forth life. No evolution appears to be implied, though - but neither is it ruled out.

The priestess continues with the development of organs, and Darwin even claims that land is formed by life dimishing the water:

So Life's first powers arrest the winds and floods,
To bones convert them, or to shells, or woods;
Stretch the vast beds of argil, lime, and sand,
And from diminish'd oceans form the land!

A note to the secons line says:

And from diminish'd oceans, l. 268. The increase of the solid parts of the globe by the recrements of organic bodies, as limestone rocks form shells and bones, and the beds of clay, marl, coals, from decomposed woods, is now well known to those who have attended to modern geology; and Dr. Halley, and others, have endeavoured to show, with great probability, that the ocean has decreased in quanitity during the short time which human history has existed. Whence it appears, that the exertions of vegetable and animal life convert the fluid parts of the globe into solid ones; which is probably effected by combining the matter of heat with the other elements, instead of suffering it to remain simply diffused amongst them, which is a curious conjecture, and deserves further investigation.

This is quite interesting - the idea of organisms changing their own environment. This is, of course, still an important point in evolutionary theory; for instance that the atmosphere of the earth originally was oxygen-free, but early bacteria exhaled oxygen, which enabled oxygen-dependent life. It isn't quite this darwin writes about here, only about deology; but still the interaction between organisms and their environment is an important factor in evolution - environments are not established once and for all.

After this, the priestess moves to the mind:

"Next the long nerves unite their silver train,
And young Sensation permeates the brain;
Through each new sense the keen emotions dart,
Flush the young cheek, and swell the throbbing heart.
From pain and pleasure quick Volitions rise,
Lift the strong arm, or point the inquiring eyes;
With Reason's light bewilder'd Man direct,
And right and wrong with balance nice detect.
Last in thick swarms Associations spring,
Thoughts join to thoughts, to motions motions cling;
Whence in long trains of catenation flow
Imagined joy, and voluntary woe.

Again, it is the Zoönomia in poetic form.

The priestess recaps the whole story all the way to man:

Organic Life beneath the shoreless waves
Was born and nurs'd in Ocean's pearly caves
First forms minute, unseen by spheric glass,
Move on the mud, or pierce the watery mass;
These, as successive generations bloom,
New powers acquire, and larger limbs assume;
Whence countless groups of vegetation spring,
And breathing realms of fin, and feet, and wing.

"Thus the tall Oak, the giant of the wood,
Which bears Britannia's thunders on the flood;
The Whale, unmeasured monster of the main,
The lordly Lion, monarch of the plain,
The Eagle soaring in the realms of air,
Whose eye undazzled drinks the solar glare,
Imperious man, who rules the bestial crowd,
Of language, reason, and reflection proud,
With brow erect who scorns this earthly sod,
And styles himself the image of his God;
Arose from rudiments of form and sense,
An embryon point, or microscopic ens!

Despite the irony in the last three lines, it should be clear that Darwin's point is not to attack God, only to show that as all organisms, even oaks, whales, lions, eagles and humans, have started out as "[a]n embryon point," so why shouldn't life as such have started out that way?

Pre-Darwinists (5) William Paley

William Paley

Introduction

Paley's Natural Theology

Richard Dawkins' The Blind Watchmaker

William Paley (1743-1805) was an English clergyman and philosopher, best known for his watchmaker analogy in his book Natural Theology. Paley was far form the first to point to nature to prove the divine existence, neither was he even the first to use the watchmaker analogy; however, the Natural Theology has become the seminal work in the Intelligent Design versus evolution controversy, whether this controversy be considered a scientific controversy or not.

Charles Darwin was a convinced Paleyan as he embarked HMS Beagle in 1831, but when he left it, he had his doubts.

Richard Dawkins, in The Blind Watchmaker, acknowledges the relevance of Paley's argumentation in the Natural Theology, its distinction between simple things like a stone and complex things like a watch and an organism.

William Dembski, in his books and his articles, frequently refers to Paley. Interestingly, Dembski claims that it was from reading The Blind Watchmaker that he got the idea that specification and complexity "was the key to eliminating chance and inferring design" (cf. Specification: The Pattern That Signifies Intelligence., p. 31).

---

Paley's Natural Theology

An obligatory part of the curriculum, when Charles Darwin studied theology at Cambridge was Paley's Natural Theology: or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity (1802). Quotes are from the electronic version of the 12^th edition (1809) published by the University of Michigan Humanities Text Initiative.

The Natural Theology begins with this famous passage:

In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there; I might possibly answer, that, for any thing I knew to the contrary, it had lain there for ever: nor would it perhaps be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place; I should hardly think of the answer which I had before given, that, for any thing I knew, the watch might have always been there. Yet why should not this answer serve for the watch as well as for the stone? Why is it not as admissible in the second case, as in the first? For this reason, and for no other, viz. that, when we come to inspect the watch, we perceive (what we could not discover in the stone) that its several parts are framed and put together for a purpose, e. g. that they are so formed and adjusted as to produce motion, and that motion so regulated as to point out the hour of the day; that, if the different parts had been differently shaped from what they are, of a different size from what they are, or placed after any other manner, or in any other order, than that in which they are placed, either no motion at all would have been carried on in the machine, or none which would have answered the use that is now served by it.

Any later work within Intelligent Design and origins is a mere footnote to this passage.

However, we may here notice a minor point; namely that Paley writes "nor would it perhaps be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer" concerning the answer that "it had lain there for ever" to the question about, how the stone had come to be, where it is. Just as a watch in a heath doesn't simply pop up, a stone doesn't either. Some stones are important in geology for tracing movements of glaciers, and, of course, radiometric dating of stones and rocks are of high importance, even for biology.

We'll ignore this, however, and return to Paley's argumentation:

To reckon up a few of the plainest of these parts, and of their offices, all tending to one result:-- We see a cylindrical box containing a coiled elastic spring, which, by its endeavour to relax itself, turns round the box. We next observe a flexible chain (artificially wrought for the sake of flexure), communicating the action of the spring from the box to the fusee. We then find a series of wheels, the teeth of which catch in, and apply to, each other, conducting the motion from the fusee to the balance, and from the balance to the pointer; and at the same time, by the size and shape of those wheels, so regulating that motion, as to terminate in causing an index, by an equable and measured progression, to pass over a given space in a given time. We take notice that the wheels are made of brass in order to keep them from rust; the springs of steel, no other metal being so elastic; that over the face of the watch there is placed a glass, a material employed in no other part of the work, but in the room of which, if there had been any other than a transparent substance, the hour could not be seen without opening the case. This mechanism being observed (it requires indeed an examination of the instrument, and perhaps some previous knowledge of the subject, to perceive and understand it; but being once, as we have said, observed and understood), the inference, we think, is inevitable, that the watch must have had a maker: that there must have existed, at some time, and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers who formed it for the purpose which we find it actually to answer; who comprehended its construction, and designed its use.

The keyword here is purpose, the parts of the watch are not chosen at random, but each has shape, size, and material chosen for an overall purpose, and, according to Paley, it is from this observation that we conclude that the watch must have had a maker.

Paley follows up with eight comments that can be summed up as follows

1. Design can be detected based on recognized purpose alone. It is not needed to know, how an object is actually made, certainly not to be able to make it oneself, and neither is it needed to know, where or when the object was made, and most importantly: no assumptions about the nature of the maker are needed.

2. Design can be detected, even if an object doesn't fulfil its purpose completely.

3. Design can be detected in an object, even if there are a few parts whose contribution to the overall purpose is not understood, and even if there are part that do not appear to be needed for the overall purpose.

4. A design conclusion is not invalidated by the argument that the designed object could be merely one out of several possible combinations of the same parts that could have formed naturally.

5. A design conclusion is not invalidated by the argument that there exists in the parts "a principle of order" that put them into the form of the designed object.

6. A design conclusion is not invalidated by the argument that the recognized purpose is not real, only a motive to induce the mind to think so.

7. A design conclusion is not invalidated by the argument that the designed object is formed by a law of nature, since a law of nature is not an agent and therefore cannot act, only establish the order by which an agent acts.

8. A design conclusion is not invalidated by the argument that the person making the conclusion doesn't know anything about the matter. As Paley writes: "He knows enough for his argument: he knows the utility of the end: he knows the subserviency and adaptation of the means to the end. These points being known, his ignorance of other points, his doubts concerning other points, affect not the certainty of his reasoning."

As is easy to see, comments 2-8 are really just elaborations on comment 1: Design can be detected based on recognized purpose alone.

This rules apply for recognizing a watch or similar object as designed, where we wouldn't really question a design concluson anyway. The big jump is of course to transfer the logic to apply to organisms.

And for this purpose, Paley begins chapter 2 with:

Suppose, in the next place, that the person who found the watch, should, after some time, discover that, in addition to all the properties which he had hitherto observed in it, it possessed the unexpected property of producing, in the course of its movement, another watch like itself (the thing is conceivable); that it contained within it a mechanism, a system of parts, a mould for instance, or a complex adjustment of lathes, files, and other tools, evidently and separately calculated for this purpose; let us inquire, what effect ought such a discovery to have upon his former conclusion.

This is followed by five comments that boil down to that this second discovery can only enhance the design conclusion, not weaken it. Even if the watch in question might be the direct product of another watch, there must still be a first watch that was designed.

To argue otherwise is, according to Paley, atheism. As he begins chapter 3:

This is atheism: for every indication of contrivance, every manifestation of design, which existed in the watch, exists in the works of nature; with the difference, on the side of nature, of being greater and more, and that in a degree which exceeds all computation. I mean that the contrivances of nature surpass the contrivances of art, in the complexity, subtility, and curiosity of the mechanism; and still more, if possible, do they go beyond them in number and variety; yet, in a multitude of cases, are not less evidently mechanical, not less evidently contrivances, not less evidently accommodated to their end, or suited to their office, than are the most perfect productions of human ingenuity.

That is, if we accept Paley's design arguments concerning the watch, we cannot deny that there is design in nature.

Paley then proceeds with a comparison between an eye and a telescope:

I know no better method of introducing so large a subject, than that of comparing a single thing with a single thing; an eye, for example, with a telescope. As far as the examination of the instrument goes, there is precisely the same proof that the eye was made for vision, as there is that the telescope was made for assisting it. They are made upon the same principles; both being adjusted to the laws by which the transmission and refraction of rays of light are regulated. I speak not of the origin of the laws themselves; but such laws being fixed, the construction, in both cases, is adapted to them. For instance; these laws require, in order to produce the same effect, that the rays of light, in passing from water into the eye, should be refracted by a more convex surface, than when it passes out of air into the eye. Accordingly we find that the eye of a fish, in that part of it called the crystalline lens, is much rounder than the eye of terrestrial animals. What plainer manifestation of design can there be than this difference? What could a mathematical-instrument-maker have done more, to show his knowledge of his principle, his application of that knowledge, his suiting of his means to his end; I will not say to display the compass or excellence of his skill and art, for in these all comparison is indecorous, but to testify counsel, choice, consideration, purpose?

Paley provides more details about the eye, the ear, and so on; but we'll skip to chapter 12 about astronomy:

My opinion of Astronomy has always been, that it is not the best medium through which to prove the agency of an intelligent Creator; but that, this being proved, it shows, beyond all other sciences, the magnificence of his operations. The mind which is once convinced, it raises to sublimer views of the Deity than any other subject affords; but it is not so well adapted, as some other subjects are, to the purpose of argument. We are destitute of the means of examining the constitution of the heavenly bodies. The very simplicity of their appearance is against them. We see nothing, but bright points, luminous circles, or the phases of spheres reflecting the light which falls upon them. Now we deduce design from relation, aptitude, and correspondence of parts. Some degree therefore of complexity is necessary to render a subject fit for this species of argument. But the heavenly bodies do not, except perhaps in the instance of Saturn's ring, present themselves to our observation as compounded of parts at all. This, which may be a perfection in them, is a disadvantage to us, as inquirers after their nature. They do not come within our mechanics. And what we say of their forms, is true of their motions. Their motions are carried on without any sensible intermediate apparatus; whereby we are cut off from one principal ground of argumentation and analogy. We have nothing wherewith to compare them; no invention, no discovery, no operation or resource of art, which, in this respect, resembles them. Even those things which are made to imitate and represent them, such as orreries, planetaria, cœlestial globes, &c. bear no affinity to them, in the cause and principle by which their motions are actuated. I can assign for this difference a reason of utility, viz. a reason why, though the action of terrestrial bodies upon each other be, in almost all cases, through the intervention of solid or fluid substances, yet central attraction does not operate in this manner. It was necessary that the intervals between the planetary orbs should be devoid of any inert matter either fluid or solid, because such an intervening substance would, by its resistance, destroy those very motions, which attraction is employed to preserve. This may be a final cause of the difference; but still the difference destroys the analogy.

The interesting point here is, of course, that it is the simplicity of cœlestial mechanics that makes Paley reject astronomy as a medium to prove the agency of an intelligent creator, and that an earthly model cannot work by the same mechanics (gravity). Traditionally it was arguments from astronomy that supported the design argument, not references to plants and animals. The idea being that the heaven was perfect, while the earth was not. To be a fallen star, that is, to have fallen from heaven to earth, wasn't a good thing.

Another problem that Paley sees:

Our ignorance, moreover, of the sensitive natures, by which other planets are inhabited, necessarily keeps from us the knowledge of numberless utilities, relations, and subserviences, which we perceive upon our own globe.

That is, Paley assumes the existence of "sensitive natures" on other planets; but since we have no knowledge about them, we cannot use them in any design arguments.

For Paley, therefore, what is admirable in astronomy is the precision of astronomical predictions, and "all this is wonderful, whether we refer our admiration to the constancy of the heavenly motions themselves, or to the perspicacity and precision with which they have been noticed by mankind."

And furthermore:

Nor is this the whole, nor indeed the chief part of what astronomy teaches. By bringing reason to bear upon observation (the acutest reasoning upon the exactest observation), the astronomer has been able, out of the mystic dance,and the confusion (for such it is) under which the motions of the heavenly bodies present themselves to the eye of a mere gazer upon the skies, to elicit their order and their real paths.

That is, the most admirable is that the astronomer has been able to find order in the apparent chaos.

Therefore, the intelligent agency in the cœlestial world is to be seen in choice, determination, and regulation:

Our knowledge therefore of astronomy is admirable, though imperfect: and, amidst the confessed desiderata and desideranda, which impede our investigation of the wisdom of the Deity, in these the grandest of his works, there are to be found, in the phænomena, ascertained circumstances and laws, sufficient to indicate an intellectual agency in three of its principal operations, viz. in choosing, in determining, in regulating; in choosing, out of a boundless variety of suppositions which were equally possible, that which is beneficial; in determining, what, left to itself, had a thousand chances against conveniency, for one in its favour; in regulating subjects, as to quantity and degree, which, by their nature, were unlimited with respect to either.

Paley then continues with examples of this, such as the proof of choice that there is only one sun, and it is placed in the middle.

Basically, all this can be boiled down to that intelligence changes probabilities. If Paley had known anything about DNA, he could have used exactly the same argumentation there.

Charles Darwin, in The Origin of Species, chapter 6, "Difficulties on Theory", writes:

To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree. Yet reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist; if further, the eye does vary ever so slightly, and the variations be inherited, which is certainly the case; and if any variation or modification in the organ be ever useful to an animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, can hardly be considered real. How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how life itself first originated; but I may remark that several facts make me suspect that any sensitive nerve may be rendered sensitive to light, and likewise to those coarser vibrations of the air which produce sound.

So, it's not that Darwin rejects Paleyan type argumentations - but the key phrase is changing conditions of life. What Paley assumes in his argumentation is that there is a designed, unchanging order to things; basically that everything stays the same, unless the creator intervenes. However, take away that assumption and see, what happens.

Later in the same chapter, Darwin writes:

If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find out no such case.

This is a key paragraph, the first sentence of which has given rise to the irreducible complexity mania. Darwin's gradualism here is not only caused by a lack of a known source of variation, but also caused by arguments such as the one in the beginning of Natural Theology, where Paley stated that any change in size or order of parts would prevent either motion or imply a different motion.

Darwin even co-opts Paley to supply an argument (ibid.):

Natural selection will never produce in a being anything injurious to itself, for natural selection acts solely by and for the good of each. No organ will be formed, as Paley has remarked, for the purpose of causing pain or for doing an injury to its possessor. If a fair balance be struck between the good and evil caused by each part, each will be found on the whole advantageous. After the lapse of time, under changing conditions of life, if any part comes to be injurious, it will be modified; or if it be not so, the being will become extinct, as myriads have become extinct.

That is, for Darwin, extinction is not caused by an catastrophe, but by lack of adaption to a changed environment. Paley himself does not enter the subject of extinction.

Paley writes in Natural Theology, chapter 26, "The Goodness of the Deity":

The same argument may be proposed in different terms; thus: Contrivance proves design: and the predominant tendency of the contrivance indicates the disposition of the designer. The world abounds with contrivances: and all the contrivances which we are acquainted with, are directed to beneficial purposes. Evil, no doubt, exists; but is never, that we can perceive, the object of contrivance. Teeth are contrived to eat, not to ache; their aching now and then is incidental to the contrivance, perhaps inseparable from it: or even, if you will, let it be called a defect in the contrivance: but it is not the object of it.

Well, it may be questioned, if Darwin is using Paley's argumentation quite as intended. And if quite as intended, natural selection then becomes "[t]he Goodness of the Deity". Natural selection, as least as used by Darwin, is in analogy to artificial selection such as performed by breeders and cultivators. However, while Darwin operates with a creator, he doesn't believe the creator is concerned about the minutiae of creation. The problem being, if Paley is right, why are there then extinct species? It is, among other factors, this extinction that suggests that things work differently than claimed by Paley. In The Origin of Species, chapter 14, "Recapitulation and Conclusion", Darwin writes:

Authors of the highest eminence seem to be fully satisfied with the view that each species has been independently created. To my mind it accords better with what we know of the laws impressed on matter by the Creator, that the production and extinction of the past and present inhabitants of the world should have been due to secondary causes, like those determining the birth and death of the individual.

That is, while Darwin accepts that the creator has set up natural laws, it is this same that makes him reject that production and extinction of species are due to divine edicts. The natural laws should be sufficient to bring about whatever purpose the creator might have had without additional micro-management.

Darwin continues:

When I view all beings not as special creations, but as the lineal descendants of some few beings which lived long before the first bed of the Silurian system was deposited, they seem to me to become ennobled. Judging from the past, we may safely infer that not one living species will transmit its unaltered likeness to a distant futurity.

While The Origin of Species does not deal with humans, it is certainly possible that these sentences are meant to apply to humans as well. In the "Conclusion" of Natural Theology, Paley writes:

Again; if there be those who think, that the contractedness and debility of the human faculties in our present state, seem ill to accord with the high destinies which the expectations of religion point out to us, I would only ask them, whether any one, who saw a child two hours after its birth, could suppose that it would ever come to understand fluxions (Note: See Search's Light of Nature, passim.); or who then shall say, what farther amplification of intellectual powers, what accession of knowledge, what advance and improvement, the rational faculty, be its constitution what it will, may not admit of, when placed amidst new objects, and endowed with a sensorium adapted, as it undoubtedly will be, and as our present senses are, to the perception of those substances, and of those properties of things, with which our concern may lie.

For Paley, of course, this promise of a grand future is to come true by a divine act; certainly not by evolution. Darwin shares the hope of a grand future, but maybe he thought that the creator had set up laws that would make that future come true without direct intervention.

---

Richard Dawkins' The Blind Watchmaker

In 1986 Richard Dawkins published the first edition of The Blind Watchmaker. This title refers to Paley's analogy between a creator and an unseen watchmaker in Natural Theology with the extension that not only is the watchmaker unseen, he is even blind. In chapter 1, "Explaining the very improbable", Dawkins writes:

Paley's argument is made with passionate sincerity and is informed by the best biological scholarship of his day, but it is wrong, gloriously and utterly wrong. The analogy between telescope and eye, between watch and living organism, is false. All appearances to the contrary, the only watchmaker in nature is the blind forces of physics, albeit deployed in a very special way. A true watchmaker has foresight: he designs his cogs and springs, and plans their interconnections, with a future purpose in his mind's eye. Natural selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation for the existence and apparently purposeful form of all life, has no purpose in mind. It has no mind and no mind's eye. It does not plan for the future. It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker.

Unlike Paley and Darwin, Dawkins is an atheist, so while for Darwin, natural selection is a mechanism established by the creator to serve a purpose, Dawkins reifies natural selection to become the creator itself. However, a creator with no purpose, no foresight, not even a mind, in which to have purpose or foresight.

Dawkins follows Paley closely in the distinction between uncomplex things, such as a stone, and complex things, such as a machine or an organism. However, he elevates machines to the status of living things for the sake of argument. Therefore he can write (ibid.):

With the exception of artificial machines, which we have already agreed to count as honorary living things, nonliving things don't work in this sense [actively to maintain disequilibrium]. They accept the forces that tend to bring them into equilibrium with their surroundings. Mont Blanc, to be sure, has existed for a long time, and probably will exist for a while yet, but it does not work to stay in existence. When rock comes to rest under the influence of gravity it just stays there. No work has to be done to keep it there. Mont Blanc exists, and it will go on existing until it wears away or an earthquake knocks it over. It doesn't take steps to repair wear and tear, or to right itself when it is knocked over, the way a living body does. It just obeys the ordinary laws of physics.

The "laws of physics" referred to here are the same as Darwin's natural laws, obeyed by as well organisms as by inorganic matter, since the former are composed of nothing but the latter; only organisms exhibit a higher level of complexity. Therefore, while Paley started out with recognizing purpose before going into the details of interaction of parts, Dawkins turns things the other way around:

Is this to deny that living things obey the laws of physics? Certainly not. There is no reason to think that the laws of physics are violated in living matter. There is nothing supernatural, no 'life force' to rival the fundamental forces of physics. It is just that if you try to use the laws of physics, in a naive way, to understand the behaviour of a whole living body, you will find that you don't get very far. The body is a complex thing with many constituent parts, and to understand its behaviour you must apply the laws of physics to its parts, not to the whole. The behaviour of the body as a whole will then emerge as a consequence of interactions of the parts.

In other words, while the scientific investigation may proceed from the whole to the parts, this is not a retracing of the mental processes of a creator, because what is perceived as an overall purpose only emerges "as a consequence of interactions of the parts". That is, Dawkins replaces Paley's top-down process with a bottom-up process.

Arthur de Gobineau: Essai sur l'Inégalité des Races Humaines

Arthur de Gobineau: Essai sur l'Inégalité des Races Humaines, 1^st edition 1854.

Quotes are from the Editions Pierre Belfond version, 1967.

DISCLAIMER: my knowledge of French is basically limited to, what I learned years ago in high school, so I cannot issue any guarantee that my reading of Essai sur l'Inégalité des Races Humaines is anywhere near beyond reproach, only that I have attempted as best I can to figure out, what Gobineau meant with the parts of the book I have picked down upon.

The book is dedicated to King George V (1851-66) of Hannover, and Gobineau opens the dedication with these words:

SIRE,

J’ai l’honneur d’offrir ici à Votre Majesté le fruit de longues méditations et d’études favorites, souvent interrompues, toujours reprises.

Les événements considérables, révolutions, guerres sanglantes, renversements de lois, qui, depuis trop d'années, ont agi sur les Etats européens, tournent aisément les imaginations vers l’examen des faits politiques. Tandis que le vulgaire n’en considère que les résultats immédiats et n’admire ou ne réprouve que l’étincelle électrique dont ils frappent les intérêts, les penseurs plus graves cherchent à découvrir les causes cachées de si terribles ébranlements, et, descendant la lampe à la main dans les sentiers obscurs de la philosophie et de l’histoire, ils vont demander à l’analyse du cœur humain ou à l’examen attentif des annales le mot d’une énigme qui trouble si fort et les existences et les consciences.

That is, Gobineau presents to his majesty the fruits of his speculations and studies into the hidden causes of the "revolutions, bloody wars, and lawlessness" that have been going on in Europe through many years. The picturesque language employed here with expressions such as "descendant la lampe à la main dans les sentiers obscurs de la philosophie et de l’histoire" ("descending with the lamp in hand into the dim passages of philosophy and history") sounds more like something from a gothic novel than from a scientific text.

Gobineau wasn’t himself a scientist either, he was a French diplomat; but he does rely on the scientific books of the time to make up his case. But, of course, the idea of white supremacy wasn't Gobineau's invention, neither was the warning against racial mixture, or any other single element. What is unique is the forging of all this into an attempt to make a theory of social renewal.

Later in the dedication, Gobineau writes:

Les hommes d’aujourd’hui seraient même en droit de faire, devant lui, trophée de qulques mérites qui lui manquent. Mais, si, pour repousser leurs accusations, il vient soudain à évoquer les ombres grandioses des périodes héroïques, que diront-ils? ...

That is, in an unheroic time, if you ask the grand shadows of the past heroic times, what will they answer? Gobineau continues:

Rien, sinon que toutes les belles choses, tombées dans le silence, ne sont pas mortes et qu’elles dorment; que tous les âges ont vu des périodes de transition, époques où la souffrance lutte avec la vie et d’où celle-ci se détache, à la fin, victorieuse et resplendissante, et que, puisque, la Chaldée trop vieillie fut remplacée jadis par la Perse jeune et vigoreuse, la Grèce décrépite par Rome virile et la domination abâtardie d’Augustule par les royaumes des nobles princes teutoniques, de même les races modernes obtiendront leur rajeunissement.

That is, you need to make it happen, not hang around and wait for it to happen to you. The young, vigorous, virile, noble races have won over the older races, when these had lost the qualities that had made them winners in the first place.

All in all, Gobineau reaches the conclusion that ethnicity is the most important question in history:

C’est alors que, d’inductions en inductions, j’ai dû me pénétrer de cette évidence, que la question ethnique domine tous les autres problèmes de l’histoire, en tient la clef, et que l’inégalié des races dont le concour forme une nation, suffit à expliquer tout l’enchaînement des destinés des peuples.

That is, the inequality of races that make up a nation are sufficient to explain how the destinies of peoples are linked together.

The rest of that same paragraph shows the diplomat coming to the fore; Gobineau mentions, just as an example, that by the Anglo-Saxon conquest of Great Britain a new strength came about that ruled some of the peoples of that island by the sword of the illustrious ancestors of his majesty, and now in one August Person, two branches of the same nation have been united in one royal house, which draws its glorious throne rights from distant sources of a most heroic origin.

In 1714, prince-elector (Kurfürst) George of Hannover becomes king of Great Britain, and the personal union between Hannover and Great Britain remains until the accession of Queen Victoria to the British throne in 1837. Hannover itself is occupied by the French in 1803; but the electorate is restored in 1813, and in 1814 Hannover is made a kingdom. During 1849-50, Prussia proposes a plan to construct a central-European union under Prussian leadership. Hannover first supports the plan, but Austrian pressure makes Hannover join a coalition hostile to the union. The plan is finally abandoned, as the Russian Czar Nicolai supports Austria against the union plan. However, in 1865 Prussia and Austria come to disagree over how to distribute the spoils gained from Denmark in the war of 1864, and in 1866 a war breaks out. Hannover like all the other major German states joins Austria. And with the Prussian victory, Hannover is made a Prussian province.

Back to Gobineau, who proceeds with:

Après avoir reconnu qu’il est des races fortes et qu’il en est de faibles, je me suis attaché à observer de préférences les premières, à démêler leurs aptitudes, et surtout à remonter la chaîne de leurs génálogies. En suivant cette méthode, j’ai fini par me convaincre que tout ce qu’il y a de grand, de noble, de fécond sur la terre, en fait de créations humaines, la science, l'art, la civilisation, ramène l’observateur vers un point unique, n’est issu que d’un même germe, n’a résulté que d’une seule pensée, n’appartient qu’à une seule famille dont les différentes branches ont régné dans toutes les contrèes policées de l’Univers.

That is, Gobineau has found out, which races are strong, and which races are weak, and for the former,  traced their genealogies. From this he has convinced himself that all human creations, science, art, civilization, lead to one single point, namely that these are not descended from the same germ, not from the same thought, and not come from a single family which through different branches has ruled all the countries of the Universe.

Now, this is in 1854, where George V supports Austria, the arch-enemy of France. It is a clear possibility that these words in particular refer to the Habsburg dynasty, whose branches once ruled, if not the Universe, then quite a large part of the earth. Now, of course, just as scientists and others in the Renaissance wrote dedications to princes, kings, and popes in order to buy goodwill, or perhaps a well-paid position, we need not necessarily put more into this dedication than that Gobineau clearly wasn't supporting the Habsburg dynasty. That is, we need not assume that Essai sur l'Inégalité des Races Humaines was written merely to annoy the Austrian emperor, only that the various events in Europe around 1850 actually did have some importance for the book.

In the preface to the 2^nd edition, Charles Darwin and Darwinism are given a couple of favorable mentions, and the same goes for Henry Thomas Buckle. Apparently Gobineau thinks that Darwin and Buckle are dependent on him:

De là [that social progress and decline are caused by racial mixture] fut tirée la théorie de la sélection devenue si célèbre entre les main de Darwin et plus encore de ses élèves. Il en est r´sulté, entre autres, le système de Buckle, et par l’ecart considérable que les opinions de ce philosophe présent avec les miennes, on peut mesurer l’éloignement relatif des routes que savant se frayer deux pensées hostiles parties d’un point commun.

...

Darwin et Buckle ont créé ainsi les dérivations principales du ruisseau que j’ai ouvert.

Ernst Haeckel, in return, is given a less favorable mention:

A dater de cette réforme indispensable on enlèvera enfin les haches de silex et les couteaux d’obsidienne aux main des anthropoïdes de M. le professeur Haeckel, gens qui en font un si mauvais usage.

(Henry Thomas) Buckle (1821-1862) mentioned together with Darwin was a British historian, who wrote a History of Civilization, volume I published in 1857, and volume II published in 1861. It is true that also Buckle considered society ruled by laws as fixed as those of physics, wherefore he relied on statistics rather than on individual history, and it is also true that Buckle considered Europeans to be the most culturally advanced. However Bockle had been writing on his History before Gobineau published his book. As for Darwin, I fail to see much similarity between anything Darwin wrote and Essai sur l'Inégalité des Races Humaines.

The Essai sur l'Inégalité des Races Humaines comprises six volumes, the first of which carries the title "Considérations Préliminairies; Définitions, Recherche et Exposition des Lois Naturelles qui Régissent le Monde Social"; that is, "Preliminary Considerations; Definitions, Research and Exposition of the Natural Laws that rule the Social World", quite a positivist title. But unlike Auguste Comte, Gobineau appears not to believe that a common culture can be established. As he writes at the end of the preface:

Aujourd’hui on aime les grandes unités, les vastes amas où les entités isolées disparaissant. C’est ce qu’on suppose être le produit de la science. A chaque époque, celle-ci voudrait dévorer une vérité qui la géne. Il ne faut pas s’en effrayer. Jupiter échappe toujours à la voracité de Saturne, et l’epoux et le fils de Rhée, dieux, l’un comme l’autre, règnent, sans pouvoir s’entredétruire, sur la majesté de l’univers.

That is, it is a never-ending battle, not the final victory of the one over the other, to become the majesty of the universe.

Since I do not have the time and qualifications for a closer examination of the book itself, I will here limit myself to a few points that I have found of particular interest.

In Vol I, chapter 11, "Les différences ethniques sont permantes" ("The ethnic differences are permanent"), Gobineau writes:

Qu’Adam soit l’auteur de notre espèce blanche, il faut l’admettre certainement. Il est bien claire que les Ecritures veulent qu’on l’entendre ainsi, puisque de lui descendent des générations qui incontestablement ont été blanches. Ceci posé, rien ne prouve que, dans la pensée des premiers rédacteurs des généalogies adamites, les créatures qui n’appartenaient pas à la race blanche aient passé pour faire partie de l’espèce.

That is, "Adam is the originator of our white species", and creatures not part of the white race are not part of that species. It should here be understood that Gobineau operates with three main races: white, black, and yellow. The biblical division into Hamites, Semites, and Japhetites is for Gobineau a division within the white race. What should be noticed here, in particular, is that Gobineau considers the Bible to be a reliable source of actual history.

Vol I, chapter 16, the final chapter of that volume, carries the long superscript "Récapitulation; caractères respectifs des trois grandes races; effects sociaux des mélanges; supérorité du type blanc et, dans ce type, de la famille ariane", or, in English, "Recapitulation; respective characters of the three great races; social effects of [racial] mixtures; superiority of the white type, and within that type, of the Aryan family". Gobineau claims that there have been no more tahn ten great civilizations, and that they have all been started by the white race. These civilizations are:

1. The Indian civilization - built around a branche of the white Aryan nation. Note: actually there was an Indian civilization before the Aryan invasion.

2. The Egyptian civilization - founded by an Aryan colony from India. Charles Darwin writes in footnote 5 of The Descent of Man, chapter 7, "On the Races of Man" the following:

   With respect to the figures in the famous Egyptian caves of Abou-Simbel, M. Pouchet says ('The Plurality of the Human Races,' Eng. translat., 1864, p. 50), that he was far from finding recognisable representations of the dozen or more nations which some authors believe that they can recognise. Even some of the most strongly-marked races cannot be identified with that degree of unanimity which might have been expected from what has been written on the subject. Thus Messrs. Nott and Gliddon ('Types of Mankind,' p. 148), state that Rameses II., or the Great, has features superbly European; whereas Knox, another firm believer in the specific distinctness of the races of man ('Races of Man,' 1850, p. 201), speaking of young Memnon (the same as Rameses II., as I am informed by Mr. Birch), insists in the strongest manner that he is identical in character with the Jews of Antwerp. Again, when I looked at the statue of Amunoph III., I agreed with two officers of the establishment, both competent judges, that he had a strongly-marked negro type of features; but Messrs. Nott and Gliddon (ibid. p. 146, fig. 53), describe him as a hybrid, but not of "negro intermixture."

   So, it's not as if it is all that easy to determine the racial status of the ancient Egyptians.

3. The Assyrians - to which are attached other civilizations such as the Jewish and the Phoenician. According to Gobineau, these are Hamites and Semites. Gobineau places the Iranian civilizations here, but mentions that they are Aryans.

4. The Greeks - originally Aryans, but with Semitic elements.

5. The Chinese civilization - like the Egyptian founded by an Aryan colony from India.

6. The old civilization of the Italian Peninsula - became a mosaic of Celts, Iberians, Aryans, and Semites.

7. The Germanic races transforme in the 5^th century the western spirit - they were Aryans.

8. The Alleghanian civilizations in America.

9. The Mexican civilizations in America.

10. The Peruvian civilization in America.

In Vol VI, chapter 7, "Les indigènes américans" ("The native Americans"), discusses the racial status of the native Americans and ends up suggesting that at least the royal families of the three American civilization groups mentioned above (8.-10.) were white, even Aryans of Scandinavian origin.

Pre-Darwinists (4) Edward Blyth

Introduction
Edward Blyth - a short biography
Varieties of animals
Cuvier's The Animal Kingdom

One of the stranger articles at AnswersInGenesis is Darwin’s illegitimate brainchild by Russell Grigg. What makes it strange is that rather than the standard attack on Darwin's theory of evolution, the article attacks Charles Darwin personally for being unoriginal; that is, in attacking Darwin, the article implicitly admits that there were several precursors, which in turn means that the usual attacks on evolution for being a theory made by an insane atheist loose all their relevance.

Biography One of these precursors is Edward Blyth. The article claims that Darwin knew about Blyth's articles in The Magazine of Natural History from 1835-37, in which natural selection was described, but didn't credit Blyth. This would appear to be an inconsistency on behalf of Grigg, since he mentions that the idea of natural selection was around as early as 1794; that is, long before Blyth wrote his articles.

Grigg asks the question: "Why did [Charles Darwin] not cite Blyth’s papers that dealt directly with natural selection?" and suggests the following two reasons:

1. Blyth was a Christian and what we would nowadays call a ‘special creationist’. E.g. concerning the seasonal changes in animal colouring (such as the mountain hare becoming white in winter), Blyth said that these were ‘striking instances of design, which so clearly and forcibly attest the existence of an omniscient great First Cause’ [Blyth (1835)]. And he said that animals ‘evince superhuman wisdom, because it is innate, and therefore, instilled by an all-wise Creator’ [Blyth (1837)].

2. Blyth correctly saw the concept of natural selection as a mechanism by which the sick, old and unfit were removed from a population; that is, as a preserving factor and for the maintenance of the status quo—the created kind [Wieland, C., Muddy waters: Clarifying the confusion about natural selection]. Creationists like Edward Blyth (and English theologian William Paley) saw natural selection as a process of culling; that is, of choosing between several traits, all of which must first be in existence before they can be selected.

Evolutionist Loren Eisely's book Darwin and the Mysterious Mr. X from 1979 is Grigg's main source for the claim that Darwin stole his theory from Blyth.

This same book is also the main source for creationist James M. Foard's article The Darwin Papers - Edward Blyth and Natural Selection. This article and Loren Eisely's book is critiqued by evolutionist Roland Watts in a No Answers in Genesis article". Foard's article contains a response to Watt's article.

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Edward Blyth - short biography

Edward Blyth (1810-1873)  was born as the eldest child of a poor family in London. His father died, when Edward was ten years old, leaving his mother to raise the four children. However, the situation of the family was well enough for Edward to be sent to school, where he excelled in chemistry and natural history, spending his every spare moment at the British Museum.

1832 - Blyth buys a druggist's business in Lower Tooting, London, and worked as a chemist, while still keeping his zoological interest. Blyth is a frequent speaker at naturalist meetings in London, and from 1835 to 1837 he publishes articles on the subject of natural selection in The Magazine of Natural History (Vols. 8, 9, and 10). While there is evidence that Charles Darwin, while in Peru in 1835 during his voyage on the Beagle has read at least the first of Blyth's articles, these very creationist articles have little in common with Darwin's use of natural selection.

1837 - the druggist's business fails, and Blyth moves to Brixton, Surrey.

1838 - Blyth is appointed curator (possibly honorary) of the Ornithological Society of London.

1840 - Blyth translates and edits the 'Mammalia, Birds, and Reptiles' section of the English version, The Animal Kingdom, of Cuvier's Regne animal distribué d'après son organisation (1817). See Cuvier's The Animal Kingdom for details.

1841 - Blyth goes to India as the curator of the museum of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal in Calcutta, where he reorganizes the catalogues and is a prolific publisher on behalf of the society; but he is censured in 1947 due to his difficult behavior.

1854 - Blyth marries a young widow, whom he had known previously in England before her first marriage, and who is visiting relatives in India.

1855 - An extensive correspondence between Blyth and Charles Darwin begins.

1857 - The happy marriage ends with the death of Blyth's wife, an event from which he suffers extreme psychological trauma leading to severe illness.

1862 - Blyth leaves Calcutta and returns to England. He formally retires from the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1863; but is made a honorary member in 1865.

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Varieties of Animals (1835)

In The Magazine of Natural History, Vol. 8, No. 1., January, 1835, pp. 40-53, we find the article "An Attempt to Classify the 'Varieties' of Animals with Observations on the Marked Seasonal and Other Changes Which Naturally Take Place in Various British Species, and Which Do Not Constitute Varieties", or "Varieties of Animals" for short, by Edward Blyth.

Blyth begins by noting that the word 'variety' is "very commonly misapplied to individuals of a species, which are merely undergoing a regular natural change, either progressing from youth to maturity, or gradually shifting, according to fixed laws, their colours with the seasons". That is, Blyth considers 'variety' only to be applicable to "a departure from the acknowledged type of a species, either in structure, in size, or in colour", where the 'departure' isn't a change of the individual organism due to age or season. Worth noting here is the existence of an "acknowledged type of a species"; that is, there is standard against which the variety can be decided to be a variety. Continuing the sentence, Blyth writes that 'variety' "vague in the degree of being alike used to denote the slightest individual variation, and the most dissimilar breeds which have originated from one common stock." To clear up this vagueness, Blyth proposes a classification of varieties into four classes: "simple variations, acquired variations, breeds, and true varieties."

In more details, these fours classes of varieties are defined as follows:

1. Simple Variations. About these, Blyth writes: "The first class, which I propose to style simple or slight individual variations, differs only in degree from the last, or true varieties; and consists of mere differences of colour or of stature, unaccompanied by any remarkable structural deviation; also of slight individual peculiarities of any kind, which are more or less observable in all animals, whether wild or tame, and which, having a tendency to perpetuate themselves by generation, may, under particular circumstances, become the origin of true breeds (which constitute my third class of varieties), but which, in a state of nature, are generally lost in the course of two or three generations." That is, simple variations are only in degree different from true varieties, and in a state of nature they are generally lost within few generations. As an example of a simple variation, Blyth mentions albinos.

2. Acquired Variations. About these, Blyth writes: "The second class of varieties which I would designate thus, comprises the various changes which, in a single individual, or in the course of generations, are gradually brought about by the operation of known causes: such as the greater or less supply of nutriment; the influence of particular sorts of food; or, either of these combined with the various privations consequent upon confinement; which changes would as gradually and certainly disappear if these causes were removed." That is, aquired variations are those that are caused by environmental factors affecting the development of individuals, either a single individual or in the course of generations. Apparently Blyth believed such aquired variations to be hereditary, although dependent on the continuation of the environmental factors. As examples of aquired variations, Blyth mentions that domesticated animals become more "bulky and lazy", because they don't have to seek their own nutrition, and their "muscles of the organs of locomotion" become "rigid and comparatively powerless", because they are not used much and therefore not developed to full size.

3. Breeds. About these, Blyth writes: "It is a general law of nature for all creatures to propagate the like of themselves: and this extends even to the most trivial minutiae, to the slightest individual peculiarities; and thus, among ourselves, we see a family likeness transmitted from generation to generation. When two animals are matched together, each remarkable for a certain given peculiarity, no matter how trivial, there is also a decided tendency in nature for that peculiarity to increase; and if the produce of these animals be set apart, and only those in which the same peculiarity is most apparent, be selected to breed from, the next generation will possess it in a still more remarkable degree; and so on, till at length the variety I designate a breed, is formed, which may be very unlike the original type." That is, 'peculiarities' are inherited and increased, if both parents have the same 'peculiarity'. As examples of breeds, Blyth mentions "many of the varieties of cattle, and, in all probability, the greater number of those of domestic pigeons".
   Blyth further writes that "[t]he original form of a species is unquestionably better adapted to its natural habits than any modification of that form;" and that this adaptation to natural habits is kept up, because "the sexual passions excite to rivalry and conflict, and the stronger must always prevail over the weaker, the latter, in a state of nature, is allowed but few opportunities of continuing its race." Blyth even uses the phrase "the struggle for existence": "In a large herd of cattle, the strongest bull drives from him all the younger and weaker individuals of his own sex, and remains sole master of the herd; so that all the young which are produced must have had their origin from one which possessed the maximum of power and physical strength; and which, consequently, in the struggle for existence, was the best able to maintain his ground, and defend himself from every enemy."
   And more of the same: "In like manner, among animals which procure their food by means of their agility, strength, or delicacy of sense, the one best organized must always obtain the greatest quantity; and must, therefore, become physically the strongest, and be thus enabled, by routing its opponents, to transmit its superior qualities to a greater number of offspring." This makes you wonder, why it's called 'social Darwinism' and not 'social Blythism', doesn't it? This struggle for existence, serves, according to Blyth, to keep a species true to its type: "The same law, therefore, which was intended by Providence to keep up the typical qualities of a species, can be easily converted by man into a means of raising different varieties; but it is also clear that, if man did not keep up these breeds by regulating the sexual intercourse, they would all naturally soon revert to the original type." That is, for Blyth, the struggle for existence is a divine commandment, "which causes each race to be chiefly propagated by the most typical and perfect individuals." So, why is everybody yelling at Darwinists?

4. True Varieties. About these, Blyth writes: "The last of these divisions to which I more peculiarly restrict the term variety, consists of what are, in fact a kind of deformities, or monstrous births, the peculiarities of which, from reasons already mentioned, would very rarely, if ever, be perpetuated in a state of nature; but which, by man's agency, often become the origin of a new race." That is, true varieties are freaks of nature, which in a state of nature would be weeded out. As examples of true varieties, Blyth mentions "the breed of sheep, now common in North America, and known by the name of ancons or otter sheep", "[t]he solidungular variety of swine, tailless cats, back-feathered, five-toed, and rumpless fowls, together with many sorts of dogs, and probably , also the race of fan-tailed pigeons".
   Unlike the above, "[t]he deviations of this kind do not appear to have any tendency to revert to the original form". Blyth suggests that such a deviation, that is a true variety, "most probably, could only be restored, in a direct manner, by the way in which the variety was first produced," whereby he would most likely have meant a new deviation to counter the first one.
   Of special interest is that Blyth suggests that "[t]o this class may be also referred, with more than probability, some of the more remarkable varieties of the human species."

Blyth continues his discussion under the fourth class by the subject of human skin color to determine, where this feature should go in his classification. Basically, he considers sun-tanning of white people to be an aquired variety, while the color of black people is not, since it is kept even in cold climates. Further, Blyth writes:

There is one fact, however, here to be observed, which is very well worthy of attention; and this is, that coloured varieties appear to have been chiefly produced in hot countries; which seems almost to induce the conclusion that they were originally efforts of nature, to enable the skin to withstand the scorching produced by exposure to the burning rays of a tropical sun.

We may, I suppose, wonder, what Blyth means by "efforts of nature"; it sounds almost as if he attributes consciousness to nature.

Apparently, Blyth considers white skin color to be original:

Wherever a black individual was produced, especially among rude nations, if the breed was continued at all, the natural aversion it would certainly inspire would soon cause it to become isolated, and, before long, would, most probably, compel the race to seek for refuge in emigration.  That no example, however, of the first production of a black variety has been recorded, may be ascribed to various causes; it may have only taken place once since the creation of the human race, and that once in a horde of tropical barbarians remote from the then centres of comparative civilisation, where no sort of record would have been preserved.  But it is highly probable that analogous-born varieties may have given rise to the Mongolian, Malay, and certain others of the more diverse races of mankind; nay, we may even suppose that, in some cases, the difference, in the first instance, was much greater, and was considerably modified by the intermixture which must have taken place in the first generations.

And maybe non-whites were simply driven away because they deviated from the perfect:

Still, however, it may not be impertinent to remark here, that, as in the brute creation, by a wise provision, the typical characters of a species are, in a state of nature, preserved by those individuals chiefly propagating, whose organisation is the most perfect, and which, consequently, by their superior energy and physical powers, are enabled to vanquish and drive away the weak and sickly, so in the human race degeneration is, in great measure, prevented by the innate and natural preference which, and this is the principal and is always given to the most comely main reason why the varieties which are produced in savage tribes, must generally either become extinct in the first generation, or, if propagated, would most likely be left to themselves, and so become the origin of a new race; and in this we see an adequate cause for the obscurity in which the origin of different races is involved.

Following the discussion of the classification of varieties, Blyth writes:

The above is confessedly a hasty and imperfect sketch, a mere approximation towards an apt classification of "varieties", but if it chance to meet the eye, and be fortunate enough to engage the attention, of any experienced naturalist, who shall think it worth his while to follow up the subject, and produce a better arrangement of these diversities, my object in indicting the present article will be amply recompensed.

So, even if Darwin had some inspiration from this, Blyth would have been "amply recompensed" simply by Darwin's use of that inspiration.

The rest of the article addresses "periodical and other changes of appearance, which naturally take place in various British animals, and which do not constitute varieties." These comprise full or partial shedding of coat and change of coat color.

After having detailed these, Blyth writes:

There has been, strangely enough, a difference of opinion among naturalists, as to whether these seasonal changes of colour were intended by Providence as an adaptation to change of temperature, or as a means of preserving the various species from the observation of their foes, by adapting their hues to the colour of the surface; against which latter opinion it has been plausibly enough argued, that "nature provides for the preyer as well as for the prey." The fact is, they answer both purposes; and they are among those striking instances of design, which so clearly and forcibly attest the existence of an omniscient great First Cause.

What is worth noting here is that creationist naturalists of the time were trying to figure out the rules by which the creator (whether called 'Providence' or 'nature') had designed the species. That the same feature can serve two different purposes is clearly for Blyth a proof of "an omniscient great First Cause".

After this, Blyth writes:

How beautifully do we thus perceive, as in a thousand other instances, the balance of nature preserved: and even here we see another reason why sickly or degenerate animals (those, I mean, which are less able to maintain the necessary vigilance) must soon disappear; and why the slightest deviation from the natural hue must generally prove fatal to the animal.  How different, thus, are even simple variations from the seasonal changes of colour which naturally take place! Properly followed up, this subject might lead to some highly interesting and important results.

By this, Blyth refers to that "seasonal changes of colour which naturally take place" serve to keep a balance between predator and prey for the benefit of both, while "even simple variations" disrupt the balance and therefore are usually weeded out quickly.

Blyth ends his article by writing:

It certainly points to the conclusion, that every, even the slightest, tint and marking has some decided use, and is intimately connected with the habits and welfare of the animal; and it also furnishes a satisfactory reason, why closely allied animals (or, in other words, animals of very similar form and habits) should so very commonly nearly resemble each other in their colours and in the general character of their markings.

The point here being that since "even simple variations" usually are weeded out, the species as they are must be perfectly adapted, since otherwise  the tints and markings would not have prevailed, which in turn means that they are not mere decorations.

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Cuvier's The Animal Kingdom

Georges Baron de Cuvier (1769-1832) was a French statesman and zoologist and is regarded as the father of the modern sciences of comparative anatomy and paleontology. He would certainly warrant his own Pre-Darwinist page; but I just don't have enough information about him for that, so therefore just this short notice under Edward Blyth.

Cuvier was against the evolutionary ideas of the time and maintained that all species were specially created by God for a special purpose, and that each organ in the body had been created for a special function, and that it would be impossible for any creature to survive any significant change in its structure, The argumentation for the latter (and against evolution) was based on Cuvier's principle of correlation of parts., which states that "the number, direction, and shape of the bones that compose each part of an animal's body are always in a necessary relation to all the other parts, in such a way that - up to a point - one can infer the whole from any one of them and vice versa". Cuvier, however, did make allowance for variation within certain limits.

In 1817 Cuvier publishes his Regne animal distribué d'après son organisation, which was translated to English with expansions and modifications as The Animal Kingdom several times. As mentioned above, Blyth translates and edits the 'Mammalia, Birds, and Reptiles' section of the English version in 1840

From the Wikipedia article about Blyth I have this quote from an editorial footnote by Blyth in The Animal Kingdom:

However reciprocal...may appear the relations of the preyer and the prey, a little reflection on the observed facts suffices to intimate that the relative adaptations of the former only are special, those of latter being comparatively vague and general; indicating that there having been a superabundance which might serve as nutriment, in the first instance, and which, in many cases, was unattainable by ordinary means, particular species have therefore been so organized (that is to say, modified upon some more or less general type or plan of structure,) to avail themselves of the supply.

That is, predator species are more specialized in their adaptations than are prey species, which Blyth explains by a superabundance of the latter, which was unattainable by "ordinary means" and therefore modifations of the former "upon some more or less general type or plan of structure" so all possible preys had a predator. This is, of course, still not evolution in a Darwinian sense; but keeps with modifications within type/kind.