serious disease will be weakened.”
“What a terrifying prospect!”
“But a real philosopher must not refrain from pointing out something
‘terrifying’ if he otherwise believes it to be true. So let us attempt another
summary.”
“Okay.”
“You could say that life is one big lottery in which only the winning
numbers are visible.”
“What on earth do you mean?”
“Those that have lost in the struggle for existence have disappeared,
you see. It takes many millions of years to select the winning numbers for
each and every species of vegetable and animal on the earth. And the losing
numbers—well, they only make one appearance. So there are no species of
animal or vegetable in existence today that are not winning numbers in the
great lottery of life.”
“Because only the best have survived.”
“Yes, that’s another way of saying it. And now, if you will kindly pass me
the picture which that fellow—that zookeeper—brought us . . .”
Sophie passed the picture over to him. The picture of Noah’s Ark
covered one side of it. The other was devoted to a tree diagram of all the
various species of animals. This was the side Alberto was now showing her.
“Our Darwinian Noah also brought us a sketch that shows the
distribution of the various vegetable and animal species. You can see how the
different species belong in the different groups, classes, and subkingdoms.”
“Yes.”
“Together with monkeys, man belongs to the so-called primates.
Primates are mammals, and all mammals belong to the vertebrates, which
again belong to the multi-cellular animals.”
“It’s almost like Aristotle.”
“Yes, that’s true. But the sketch illustrates not only the distribution of the
different species today. It also tells something of the history of evolution. You
can see, for example, that birds at some point parted from reptiles, and that
reptiles at some point parted from amphibia, and that amphibia parted from
fishes.”
“Yes, it’s very clear.”
“Every time a line divides into two, it’s because mutations have resulted
in a new species. That is how, over the ages, the different classes and
subkingdoms of animals arose. In actual fact there are more than a million
animal species in the world today, and this million is only a fraction of the
species that have at some time lived on the earth. You can see, for instance,
that an animal group such as the Trilobita is totally extinct.”
“And at the bottom are the monocellular animals.”
“Some of these may not have changed in two billion years. You can also
see that there is a line from these monocellular organisms to the vegetable
kingdom. Because in all probability plants come from the same primal cell as
animals.”
“Yes, I see that. But there’s something that puzzles me.”
“Yes?”
“Where did this first primal cell come from? Did Darwin have any answer
to that?”