Louis Agassiz dismissed it as poor conjecture. Even Lyell concluded gloomily: "Darwin goes too far."
杰出的瑞典古生物學(xué)家路易斯·阿加西斯拒絕接受他的觀點(diǎn)，認(rèn)為它純屬臆想。連萊爾也不勝郁悶地得出結(jié)論說(shuō)：“達(dá)爾文走得太遠(yuǎn)了。”
T. H. Huxley disliked Darwin's insistence on huge amounts of geological time because he was a saltationist, which is to say a believer in the idea that evolutionary changes happen not gradually but suddenly. Saltationists (the word comes from the Latin for "leap") couldn't accept that complicated organs could ever emerge in slow stages. What good, after all, is one-tenth of a wing or half an eye? Such organs, they thought, only made sense if they appeared in a finished state.
T.H.赫胥黎不喜歡達(dá)爾文所主張的進(jìn)化要經(jīng)歷漫長(zhǎng)的地質(zhì)時(shí)間的觀點(diǎn)，因?yàn)樗且粋€(gè)突變論者，也就是說(shuō)他相信進(jìn)化是突然而非逐漸發(fā)生的。突變論者（這個(gè)詞來(lái)自拉丁語(yǔ)“跳躍”）無(wú)法相信復(fù)雜的器官會(huì)慢幔地分階段出現(xiàn)。十分之一的翅膀，或者二分之一的眼睛，試同這樣的器官究竟有什么用處？在他們看來(lái)，這種器官只有以已經(jīng)完成的形式出現(xiàn)才有意義。
The belief was surprising in as radical a spirit as Huxley because it closely recalled a very conservative religious notion first put forward by the English theologian William Paley in 1802 and known as argument from design. Paley contended that if you found a pocket watch on the ground, even if you had never seen such a thing before, you would instantly perceive that it had been made by an intelligent entity. So it was, he believed, with nature: its complexity was proof of its design. The notion was a powerful one in the nineteenth century, and it gave Darwin trouble too. "The eye to this day gives me a cold shudder," he acknowledged in a letter to a friend. In the Origin he conceded that it "seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree" that natural selection could produce such an instrument in gradual steps.
赫胥黎所主張的這種突變論是十分極端的，有點(diǎn)兒令人吃驚因?yàn)樗苋菀资谷寺?lián)想起由英國(guó)神學(xué)家威廉·佩利于1802年首先提出的一個(gè)極為保守的宗教觀念，這種觀念被稱(chēng)為“來(lái)自設(shè)計(jì)的論證”。佩利認(rèn)為，如果你在地上發(fā)現(xiàn)了一塊懷表，即使你以前從未見(jiàn)過(guò)這樣的東西，你也會(huì)立刻意識(shí)到它是由某個(gè)有才干的人制造的。他相信大自然也是如此，它的復(fù)雜性就是精心設(shè)計(jì)的證明。這種觀念在19世紀(jì)影響極大，也令達(dá)爾文感到不安。“直到今天，我一想到眼睛心里就直打冷戰(zhàn)。”在給朋友的一封信里，達(dá)爾文這樣寫(xiě)道。他在《物種起源》中承認(rèn)，自然選擇能以漸進(jìn)的方式產(chǎn)生這樣一種器官，“坦率地說(shuō)，似乎是個(gè)極其荒唐的觀念”。
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