The Essence of Darwinism and the Basis of Modern Orthodoxy 95
the difference in importance between fishbait and fomenting revolution, and who,
in recognizing evolution, just happened to be in the right place at the right time. In
fact, Darwin's worm book presents an artfully chosen example of the deeper
principle that underlay all his work, including the discovery of evolution—the
uniformitarian power of small changes cumulated over great durations. What better
example than the humble worm, working literally beneath our notice, but making,
grain by grain, both our best soils and the topography of England. In the preface
(1881, p. 6), Darwin explicitly draws the analogy to evolution by refuting the
opinions of a certain Mr. Fish (wonderful name, given the context), who denied
that worms could account for much "considering their weakness and their size":
"Here we have an instance of that inability to sum up the effects of a continually
recurrent cause, which has often retarded the progress of science, as formerly in the
case of geology, and more recently in that of the principle of evolution."
Darwin waxed almost messianic in advancing this theme in the Origin of
Species, for he understood that readers could not grasp his argument for evolution
until they embraced this uniformitarian vision with their hearts. He confessed the a
priori improbability of his assertion, given the norms and traditions of western
thought: "Nothing at first can appear more difficult to believe than that the more
complex organs and instincts should have been perfected, not by means superior
to, though analogous with, human reason, but by the accumulation of innumerable
slight variations, each good for the individual possessor" (1859, p. 459). In his
short concluding section on our general reluctance to accept evolution, he did
not—probably for diplomatic reasons—identify specific cultural or religious
barriers; instead, he spoke of our unfamiliarity with the crucial uniformitarian
postulate: "But the chief cause of our natural unwillingness to admit that one
species has given birth to other and distinct species, is that we are always slow in
admitting any great change of which we do not see the intermediate steps... the
mind cannot possibly grasp the full meaning of the term of a hundred million
years; it cannot add up and perceive the full effects of many slight variations,
accumulated during an almost infinite number of generations" (1859, p. 481).
To impress readers with the power of natural selection, Darwin continually
stressed the cumulative effect of small changes. He reserved his best literary lines,
his finest metaphors, for this linchpin of his argument—as in this familiar passage:
"It may be said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinizing, throughout
the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad,
preserving and adding up all that is good; silently and insensibly working,
whenever and wherever opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic
being in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life. We see nothing of
these slow changes in progress, until the hand of time has marked the long lapse of
ages" (1859, p. 84). Examine the smallest changes and variations, Darwin almost
begs us. Let nothing pass beneath your notice. Cumulate, cumulate, and cumulate:
Certainly no clear line of demarcation has as yet been drawn between
species and sub-species.. .; or, again, between sub-species and well-