Evolution and the Mathematical Symmetries in Animals
The harmony in the mathematical symmetries between animals is one of the essential laws of nature. The settings in which species vie for life occur inside definite limits where no obstructions preclude their fuller dispersion leads to the further theory that these limits were attributed to them from the start. We should make the final conclusion that the order that prevails throughout nature is intended, that it is governed by the limitations determined out on the first day of creation, and that it has been protected unchanged through ages with no other changes than those which the higher intellectual abilities of man have allowed him to levy on some few animals more closely connected with him.
The notions of some of the most eminent and influential writers of the pre-Darwinian period appear to us now to be rather out-of-date and even positively ridiculous; but they notwithstanding exhibit the mental condition of even the most sophisticated section of scientists on the matter of the nature and origin of species. They make it clear that despite the massive knowledge and clever reasoning of Lamarck, and the more popular exposition of the matter by the author of the Vestiges of Creation, there had never been a passing account of the derivation of any one species from another. Such leading naturalists as Geoffroy Saint Hilaire, Professor Grant, Dean Herbert, Von Buch, and others, expressed their belief that species originated as simple varieties, and that the species of each genus were all descended from a common ancestor. But not one of them explained the law or the method by which the changes occurred. This was still “the great mystery.”
Concerning the additional question of how far this common ancestry could be carried barely came up for discussion at all. They believed that, although the first step on the road of “transmutation of species” had so far not been established, and it was rather futile to contemplate as to how far it might be possible to move in the same direction or where the path would finally lead.
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