All this we pondered,
and could not much object to. In fact, we began to contract a liking
for a system which at the outset illustrates the advantages of good
breeding, and which makes the most "of every creatures best."
Could we "let by-gones be by-gones," and, beginning now, go on
improving and diversifying for the future by natural selection, could
we even take up the theory at the introduction of the actually
existing species, we should be well content; and so, perhaps, would
most naturalists be. It is by no means difficult to believe that
varieties are incipient or possible species, when we see what trouble
naturalists, especially botanists, have to distinguish between
them--one regarding as a true species what another regards as a
variety; when the progress of knowledge continually increases, rather
than diminishes, the number of doubtful instances; and when there is
less agreement than ever among naturalists as to what is the basis in
Nature upon which our idea of species reposes, or how the word is to be
defined. Indeed, when we consider the endless disputes of naturalists
and ethnologists over the human races, as to whether they belong to one
species or to more, and, if to more, whether to three, or five, or
fifty, we can hardly help fancying that both may be right--or rather,
that the uni-humanitarians would have been right many thousand years
ago, and the multi-humanitarians will be several thousand years later;
while at present the safe thing to say is, that probably there is some
truth on both sides.
Pages:
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145