Evolution and Harmony in the Symmetry of Animals
The harmony in the quantitative ratios between animals is one of the fascinating laws of nature. The settings in which species vie for life occur within distinct limitations where no obstructions preclude their fuller statistical distribution leads to the further notion that these limits were allotted to them from the start. We should arrive at the final conclusion that the order which predominates throughout nature is intentional, that it is governed by the restrains determined out on the first day of creation, and that it has been sustained unchanged through ages with no other changes than those which the higher intellectual powers of man allow him to inflict on a few animals more closely connected with him.
These opinions of some of the most eminent and powerful philosophers and scientists of the pre-Darwinian age look to us now to be quite out-of-date or positively absurd; but they still show the mental condition of even the most advanced section of scientists on the topic of the nature and origin of species. They make it clear that despite the tremendous knowledge and adroit reasoning of Lamarck, and the more general exposition of the issue by the author of the Vestiges of Creation, there had never been a passable explanation of the derivation of any one species from any other. Such leading naturalists as Geoffroy Saint Hilaire, Professor Grant, Dean Herbert, Von Buch, and others, had expressed their belief that species arose as simple assortments, and that the species of each genus were all derived from a single common ancestor. But not one of them explained the law or the method by which the variations occurred. This was still “the great mystery.”
Pertaining to the other inquiry of how far this common lineage could be carried didn’t come up for discussion at all. This is because they considered that, although the first step along the road of “transmutation of species” had not been established, and it was quite useless to ponder how far it might be feasible to travel in the same direction or where the path would ultimately lead.
There is a great deal of contention on this, of course, in the evolution creationism debate. The demographics on the evolution creation debate is an interesting matter, one which I hope soon to explore.
