Thus far the contradiction between Catholic verity and Scientific verity is complete and absolute, quite independently of the truth or falsehood of the doctrine of evolution. But, for those who hold the doctrine of evolution, all the Catholic verities about the creation of living beings must be no less false. For them, the assertion that the progenitors of all existing plants were made on the third day, of animals on the fifth and sixth days, in the forms they now present, is simply false. Nor can they admit that man was made suddenly out of the dust of the earth; while it would be an insult to ask an evolutionist whether he credits the preposterous fable respecting the fabrication of woman to which Suarez pins his faith. If Suarez has rightly stated Catholic doctrine, then is evolution utter heresy. And such I believe it to be. In addition to the truth of the doctrine of evolution, indeed, one of its greatest merits in my eyes, is the fact that it occupies a position of complete and irreconcilable antagonism to that vigorous and consistent enemy of the highest intellectual, moral, and social life of mankind—the Catholic Church. No doubt, Mr. Mivart, like other putters of new wine into old bottles, is actuated by motives which are worthy of respect, and even of sympathy; but his attempt has met with the fate which the Scripture prophesies for all such.

Catholic theology, like all theologies which are based upon the assumption of the truth of the account of the origin of things given in the Book of Genesis, being utterly irreconcilable with the doctrine of evolution, the student of science, who is satisfied that the evidence upon which the doctrine of evolution rests, is incomparably stronger and better than that upon which the supposed authority of the Book of Genesis rests, will not trouble himself further with these theologies, but will confine his attention to such arguments against the view he holds as are based upon purely scientific data—and by scientific data I do not merely mean the truths of physical, mathematical, or logical science, but those of moral and metaphysical science. For, by science, I understand all knowledge which rests upon evidence and reasoning of a like character to that which claims our assent to ordinary scientific propositions. And if any one is able to make good the assertion that his theology rests upon valid evidence and sound reasoning, then it appears to me that such theology will take its place as a part of science.

The present antagonism between theology and science does not arise from any assumption by the men of science that all theology must necessarily be excluded from science; but simply because they are unable to allow that reason and morality have two weights and two measures; and that the belief in a proposition, because authority tells you it is true, or because you wish to believe it, which is a high crime and misdemeanour when the subject matter of reasoning is of one kind, becomes under the alias of "faith" the greatest of all virtues, when the subject matter of reasoning is of another kind.

The Bishop of Brechin said well the other day:—"Liberality in religion—I do not mean tender and generous allowances for the mistakes of others—is only unfaithfulness to truth."[1] And, with the same qualification, I venture to paraphrase the Bishop's dictum: "Ecclesiasticism in science is only unfaithfulness to truth."

[Footnote 1: Charge at the Diocesan Synod of Brechin. Scotsman, Sept. 14, 1871.]

Elijah's great question, "Will you serve God or Baal? Choose ye," is uttered audibly enough in the ears of every one of us as we come to manhood. Let every man who tries to answer it seriously, ask himself whether he can be satisfied with the Baal of authority, and with all the good things his worshippers are promised in this world and the next. If he can, let him, if he be so inclined, amuse himself with such scientific implements as authority tells him are safe and will not cut his fingers; but let him not imagine he is, or can be, both a true son of the Church and a loyal soldier of science.

And, on the other hand, if the blind acceptance of authority appears to him in its true colours, as mere private judgment in excelsis, and if he have the courage to stand alone, face to face with the abyss of the Eternal and Unknowable, let him be content, once for all, not only to renounce the good things promised by "Infallibility," but even to bear the bad things which it prophesies; content to follow reason and fact in singleness and honesty of purpose, wherever they may lead, in the sure faith that a hell of honest men will, to him, be more endurable than a paradise full of angelic shams.

Mr. Mivart asserts that "without a belief in a personal God, there is no religion worthy of the name." This is a matter of opinion. But it may be asserted, with less reason to fear contradiction, that the worship of a personal God, who, on Mr. Mivart's hypothesis, must have used language studiously calculated to deceive His creatures and worshippers, is "no religion worthy of the name." "Incredibile est, Deum illis verbis ad populum fuisse locutum quibus deciperetur," is a verdict in which, for once, Jesuit casuistry concurs with the healthy moral sense of all mankind.

Having happily got quit of the theological aspect of evolution, the supporter of that great truth who turns to the scientific objections which are brought against it by recent criticism, finds, to his relief, that the work before him is greatly lightened by the spontaneous retreat of the enemy from nine-tenths of the territory which he occupied ten years ago. Even the Quarterly Reviewer not only abstains from venturing to deny that evolution has taken place, but he openly admits that Mr. Darwin has forced on men's minds "a recognition of the probability, if not more, of evolution, and of the certainty of the action of natural selection" (p. 49).

I do not quite see, myself, how, if the action of natural selection is certain, the occurrence of evolution is only probable; inasmuch as the development of a new species by natural selection is, so far as it goes, evolution. However, it is not worth while to quarrel with the precise terms of a sentence which shows that the high watermark of intelligence among those most respectable of Britons, the readers of the Quarterly Review, has now reached such a level that the next tide may lift them easily and pleasantly on the once-dreaded shore of evolution. Nor, having got there, do they seem likely to stop, until they have reached the inmost heart of that great region, and accepted the ape ancestry of, at any rate, the body of man. For the Reviewer admits that Mr. Darwin can be said to have established:

"That if the various kinds of lower animals have been evolved one from the other by a process of natural generation or evolution, then it becomes highly probable, a priori, that man's body has been similarly evolved; but this, in such a case, becomes equally probable from the admitted fact that he is an animal at all" (p. 65).

From the principles laid down in the last sentence, it would follow that if man were constructed upon a plan as different from that of any other animal as that of a sea-urchin is from that of a whale, it would be "equally probable" that he had been developed from some other animal as it is now, when we know that for every bone, muscle, tooth, and even pattern of tooth, in man, there is a corresponding bone, muscle, tooth, and pattern of tooth, in an ape. And this shows one of two things—either that the Quarterly Reviewer's notions of probability are peculiar to himself; or, that he has such an overpowering faith in the truth of evolution, that no extent of structural break between one animal and another is sufficient to destroy his conviction that evolution has taken place.

But this by the way. The importance of the admission that there is nothing in man's physical structure to interfere with his having been evolved from an ape, is not lessened because it is grudgingly made and inconsistently qualified. And instead of jubilating over the extent of the enemy's retreat, it will be more worth while to lay siege to his last stronghold—the position that there is a distinction in kind between the mental faculties of man and those of brutes; and that, in consequence of this distinction in kind, no gradual progress from the mental faculties of the one to those of the other can have taken place.

The Quarterly Reviewer entrenches himself within formidable-looking psychological outworks, and there is no getting at him without attacking them one by one.

He begins by laying down the following proposition: "'Sensation' is not 'thought,' and no amount of the former would constitute the most rudimentary condition of the latter, though sensations supply the conditions for the existence of 'thought' or 'knowledge'" (p. 67).

This proposition is true, or not, according to the sense in which the word "thought" is employed. Thought is not uncommonly used in a sense co-extensive with consciousness, and, especially, with those states of consciousness we call memory. If I recall the impression made by a colour or an odour, and distinctly remember blueness or muskiness, I may say with perfect propriety that I "think of" blue or musk; and, so long as the thought lasts, it is simply a faint reproduction of the state of consciousness to which I gave the name in question, when it first became known to me as a sensation.

Now, if that faint reproduction of a sensation, which we call the memory of it, is properly termed a thought, it seems to me to be a somewhat forced, proceeding to draw a hard and fast line of demarcation between thoughts and sensations. If sensations are not rudimentary thoughts, it may be said that some thoughts are rudimentary sensations. No amount of sound constitutes an echo, but for all that no one would pretend that an echo is something of totally different nature from a sound. Again, nothing can be looser, or more inaccurate, than the assertion that "sensations supply the conditions for the existence of thought or knowledge." If this implies that sensations supply the conditions for the existence of our memory of sensations or of our thoughts about sensations, it is a truism which it is hardly worth while to state so solemnly. If it implies that sensations supply anything else, it is obviously erroneous. And if it means, as the context would seem to show it does, that sensations are the subject-matter of all thought or knowledge, then it is no less contrary to fact, inasmuch as our emotions, which constitute a large part of the subject-matter of thought or of knowledge, are not sensations.

More eccentric still is the Quarterly Reviewer's next piece of psychology.

"Altogether, we may clearly distinguish at least six kinds of action to which the nervous system ministers:—

"I. That in which impressions received result in appropriate movements without the intervention of sensation or thought, as in the cases of injury above given.—This is the reflex action of the nervous system.

"II. That in which stimuli from without result in sensations through the agency of which their due effects are wrought out—Sensation.

"III. That in which impressions received result in sensations which give rise to the observation of sensible objects.—Sensible perception.

"IV. That in which sensations and perceptions continue to coalesce, agglutinate, and combine in more or less complex aggregations, according to the laws of the association of sensible perceptions.—Association.

"The above four groups contain only indeliberate operations, consisting, as they do at the best, but of mere presentative sensible ideas in no way implying any reflective or representative faculty. Such actions minister to and form Instinct. Besides these, we may distinguish two other kinds of mental action, namely:—

"V. That in which sensations and sensible perceptions are reflected on by thought, and recognized as our own, and we ourselves recognized by ourselves as affected and perceiving.—Self-consciousness.

"VI. That in which we reflect upon our sensations or perceptions, and ask what they are, and why they are.—Reason.

"These two latter kinds of action are deliberate operations, performed, as they are, by means of representative ideas implying the use of a reflective representative faculty. Such actions distinguish the intellect or rational faculty. Now, we assert that possession in perfection of all the first four (presentative) kinds of action by no means implies the possession of the last two (representative) kinds. All persons, we think, must admit the truth of the following proposition:—

"Two faculties are distinct, not in degree but in kind, if we may possess the one in perfection without that fact implying that we possess the other also. Still more will this be the case if the two faculties tend to increase in an inverse ratio. Yet this is the distinction between the instinctive and the intellectual parts of man's nature.

"As to animals, we fully admit that they may possess all the first four groups of actions—that they may have, so to speak, mental images of sensible objects combined in all degrees of complexity, as governed by the laws of association. We deny to them, on the other hand, the possession of the last two kinds of mental action. We deny them, that is, the power of reflecting on their own existence, or of inquiring into the nature of objects and their causes. We deny that they know that they know or know themselves in knowing. In other words, we deny them reason. The possession of the presentative faculty, as above explained, in no way implies that of the reflective faculty; nor does any amount of direct operation imply the power of asking the reflective question before mentioned, as to 'what' and 'why.'" (Loc. cit. pp. 67, 68.)

Sundry points are worthy of notice in this remarkable account of the intellectual powers. In the first place the Reviewer ignores emotion and volition, though they are no inconsiderable "kinds of action to which the nervous system ministers," and memory has a place in his classification only by implication. Secondly, we are told that the second "kind of action to which the nervous system ministers" is "that in which stimuli from without result in sensations through the agency of which their due effects are wrought out.—Sensation." Does this really mean that, in the writer's opinion, "sensation" is the "agent" by which the "due effect" of the stimulus, which gives rise to sensation, is "wrought out"? Suppose somebody runs a pin into me. The "due effect" of that particular stimulus will probably be threefold; namely, a sensation of pain, a start, and an interjectional expletive. Does the Quarterly Reviewer really think that the "sensation" is the "agent" by which the other two phenomena are wrought out?

But these matters are of little moment to anyone but the Reviewer and those persons who may incautiously take their physiology, or psychology, from him. The really interesting point is this, that when he fully admits that animals "may possess all the first four groups of actions," he grants all that is necessary for the purposes of the evolutionist. For he hereby admits that in animals "impressions received result in sensations which give rise to the observation of sensible objects," and that they have what he calls "sensible perception." Nor was it possible to help the admission; for we have as much reason to ascribe to animals, as we have to attribute to our fellow-men, the power, not only of perceiving external objects as external, and thus practically recognizing the difference between the self and the not-self; but that of distinguishing between like and unlike, and between simultaneous and successive things. When a gamekeeper goes out coursing with a greyhound in leash, and a hare crosses the field of vision, he becomes the subject of those states of consciousness we call visual sensation, and that is all he receives from without. Sensation, as such, tells him nothing whatever about the cause of these states of consciousness; but the thinking faculty instantly goes to work upon the raw material of sensation furnished to it through the eye, and gives rise to a train of thoughts. First comes the thought that there is an object at a certain distance; then arises another thought—the perception of the likeness between the states of consciousness awakened by this object to those presented by memory, as, on some former occasion, called up by a hare; this is succeeded by another thought of the nature of an emotion—namely, the desire to possess the hare; then follows a longer or shorter train of other thoughts, which end in a volition and an act—the loosing of the greyhound from the leash. These several thoughts are the concomitants of a process which goes on in the nervous system of the man. Unless the nerve-elements of the retina, of the optic nerve, of the brain, of the spinal chord, and of the nerves of the arms went through certain physical changes in due order and correlation, the various states of consciousness which have been enumerated would not make their appearance. So that in this, as in all other intellectual operations, we have to distinguish two sets of successive changes—one in the physical basis of consciousness, and the other in consciousness itself; one set which may, and doubtless will, in course of time, be followed through all their complexities by the anatomist and the physicist, and one of which only the man himself can have immediate knowledge.

As it is very necessary to keep up a clear distinction between these two processes, let the one be called neurosis, and the other psychosis. When the gamekeeper was first trained to his work, every step in the process of neurosis was accompanied by a corresponding step in that of psychosis, or nearly so. He was conscious of seeing something, conscious of making sure it was a hare, conscious of desiring to catch it, and therefore to loose the greyhound at the right time, conscious of the acts by which he let the dog out of the leash. But with practice, though the various steps of the neurosis remain—for otherwise the impression on the retina would not result in the loosing of the dog—the great majority of the steps of the psychosis vanish, and the loosing of the dog follows unconsciously, or as we say, without thinking about it, upon the sight of the hare. No one will deny that the series of acts which originally intervened between the sensation and the letting go of the dog were, in the strictest sense, intellectual and rational operations. Do they cease to be so when the man ceases to be conscious of them? That depends upon what is the essence and what the accident of those operations, which, taken together, constitute ratiocination.

Now ratiocination is resolvable into predication, and predication consists in marking, in some way, the existence, the co-existence, the succession, the likeness and unlikeness, of things or their ideas. Whatever does this, reasons; and if a machine produces the effects of reason, I see no more ground for denying to it the reasoning power, because it is unconscious, than I see for refusing to Mr. Babbage's engine the title of a calculating machine on the same grounds.

Thus it seems to me that a gamekeeper reasons, whether he is conscious or unconscious, whether his reasoning is carried on by neurosis alone, or whether it involves more or less psychosis. And if this is true of the gamekeeper, it is also true of the greyhound. The essential resemblances in all points of structure and function, so far as they can be studied, between the nervous system of the man and that of the dog, leave no reasonable doubt that the processes which go on in the one are just like those which take place in the other. In the dog, there can be no doubt that the nervous matter which lies between the retina and the muscles undergoes a series of changes, precisely analogous to those which, in the man, give rise to sensation, a train of thought, and volition.

Whether this neurosis is accompanied by such psychosis as ours, it is impossible to say; but those who deny that the nervous changes, which, in the dog, correspond with those which underlie thought in a man, are accompanied by consciousness, are equally bound to maintain that those nervous changes in the dog, which correspond with those which underlie sensation in a man, are also unaccompanied by consciousness. In other words, if there is no ground for believing that a dog thinks, neither is there any for believing that he feels.

As is well known, Descartes boldly faced this dilemma, and maintained that all animals were mere machines and entirely devoid of consciousness. But he did not deny, nor can anyone deny, that in this case they are reasoning machines, capable of performing all those operations which are performed by the nervous system of man when he reasons. For even supposing that in man, and in man only, psychosis is superadded to neurosis—the neurosis which is common to both man and animal gives their reasoning processes a fundamental unity. But Descartes's position is open to very serious objections, if the evidence that animals feel is insufficient to prove that they really do so. What is the value of the evidence which leads one to believe that one's fellow-man feels? The only evidence in this argument of analogy, is the similarity of his structure and of his actions to one's own. And if that is good enough to prove that one's fellow-man feels, surely it is good enough to prove that an ape feels. For the differences of structure and function between men and apes are utterly insufficient to warrant the assumption, that while men have those states of consciousness we call sensations, apes have nothing of the kind. Moreover, we have as good evidence that apes are capable of emotion and volition as we have that men other than ourselves are. But if apes possess three out of the four kinds of states of consciousness which we discover in ourselves, what possible reason is there for denying them the fourth? If they are capable of sensation, emotion, and volition, why are they to be denied thought (in the sense of predication)?

No answer has ever been given to these questions. And as the law of continuity is as much opposed, as is the common sense of mankind, to the notion that all animals are unconscious machines, it may safely be assumed that no sufficient answer ever will be given to them.

There is every reason to believe that consciousness is a function of nervous matter, when, that nervous matter has attained a certain degree of organization, just as we know the other "actions to which the nervous system ministers," such as reflex action and the like, to be. As I have ventured to state my view of the matter elsewhere, "our thoughts are the expression of molecular changes in that matter of life which is the source of our other vital phenomena."

Mr. Wallace objects to this statement in the following terms:—

"Not having been able to find any clue in Professor Huxley's writings to the steps by which he passes from those vital phenomena, which consist only, in their last analysis, of movements by particles of matter, to those other phenomena which we term thought, sensation, or consciousness; but, knowing that so positive an expression of opinion from him will have great weight with many persons, I shall endeavour to show, with as much brevity as is compatible with clearness, that this theory is not only incapable of proof, but is also, as it appears to me, inconsistent with accurate conceptions of molecular physics."

With all respect for Mr. Wallace, it appears to me that his remarks are entirely beside the question. I really know nothing whatever, and never hope to know anything, of the steps by which the passage from molecular movement to states of consciousness is effected; and I entirely agree with the sense of the passage which he quotes from Professor Tyndall, apparently imagining that it is in opposition to the view I hold.

All that I have to say is, that, in my belief, consciousness and molecular action are capable of being expressed by one another, just as heat and mechanical action are capable of being expressed in terms of one another. Whether we shall ever be able to express consciousness in foot-pounds, or not, is more than I will venture to say; but that there is evidence of the existence of some correlation between mechanical motion and consciousness, is as plain as anything can be. Suppose the poles of an electric battery to be connected by a platinum wire. A certain intensity of the current gives rise in the mind of a bystander to that state of consciousness we call a "dull red light"—a little greater intensity to another which we call a "bright red light;" increase the intensity, and the light becomes white; and, finally, it dazzles, and a new state of consciousness arises, which we term pain. Given the same wire and the same nervous apparatus, and the amount of electric force required to give rise to these several states of consciousness will be the same, however often the experiment is repeated. And as the electric force, the light-waves, and the nerve-vibrations caused by the impact of the light-waves on the retina, are all expressions of the molecular changes which are taking place in the elements of the battery; so consciousness is, in the same sense, an expression of the molecular changes which take place in that nervous matter, which is the organ of consciousness.

And, since this, and any number of similar examples that may be required, prove that one form of consciousness, at any rate, is, in the strictest sense, the expression of molecular change, it really is not worth while to pursue the inquiry, whether a fact so easily established is consistent with any particular system of molecular physics or not.

Mr. Wallace, in fact, appears to me to have mixed up two very distinct propositions: the one, the indisputable truth that consciousness is correlated with molecular changes in the organ of consciousness; the other, that the nature of that correlation is known, or can be conceived, which is quite another matter. Mr. Wallace, presumably, believes in that correlation of phenomena which we call cause and effect as firmly as I do. But if he has ever been able to form the faintest notion how a cause gives rise to its effect, all I can say is that I envy him. Take the simplest case imaginable—suppose a ball in motion to impinge upon another ball at rest. I know very well, as a matter of fact, that the ball in motion will communicate some of its motion to the ball at rest, and that the motion of the two balls after collision is precisely correlated with the masses of both balls and the amount of motion of the first. But how does this come about? In what manner can we conceive that the vis viva of the first ball passes into the second? I confess I can no more form any conception of what happens in this case, than I can of what takes place when the motion of particles of my nervous matter, caused by the impact of a similar ball, gives rise to the state of consciousness I call pain. In ultimate analysis everything is incomprehensible, and the whole object of science is simply to reduce the fundamental incomprehensibilities to the smallest possible number.

But to return to the Quarterly Reviewer. He admits that animals have "mental images of sensible objects, combined in all degrees of complexity, as governed by the laws of association." Presumably, by this confused and imperfect statement the Reviewer means to admit more than the words imply. For mental images of sensible objects, even though "combined in all degrees of complexity," are, and can be, nothing more than mental images of sensible objects. But judgments, emotions, and volitions cannot by any possibility be included under the head of "mental images of sensible objects."

If the greyhound had no better mental endowment than the Reviewer allows him, he might have the "mental image" of the "sensible object"—the hare—and that might be combined with the mental images of other sensible objects, to any degree of complexity, but he would have no power of judging it to be at a certain distance from him; no power of perceiving its similarity to his memory of a hare; and no desire to get at it. Consequently he would stand stock still, and the noble art of coursing would have no existence. On the other hand, as that art is largely practised, it follows that greyhounds alone possess a number of mental powers, the existence of which, in any animal, is absolutely denied by the Quarterly Reviewer.

Finally, what are the mental powers which he reserves as the especial prerogative of man? They are two. First, the recognition of "ourselves by ourselves as affected and perceiving.—Self-consciousness."

Secondly. "The reflection upon our sensations and perceptions, and asking what they are and why they are.—Reason."

To the faculty defined in the last sentence, the Reviewer, without assigning the least ground for thus departing from both common usage and technical propriety, applies the name of reason. But if man is not to be considered a reasoning being, unless he asks what his sensations and perceptions are, and why they are, what is a Hottentot, or an Australian black fellow; or what the "swinked hedger" of an ordinary agricultural district? Nay, what becomes of an average country squire or parson? How many of these worthy persons who, as their wont is, read the Quarterly Review, would do other than stand agape, if you asked them whether they had ever reflected what their sensations and perceptions are, and why they are?

So that if the Reviewer's new definition of reason be correct, the majority of men, even among the most civilized nations, are devoid of that supreme characteristic of manhood. And if it be as absurd as I believe it to be, then, as reason is certainly not self-consciousness, and as it, as certainly, is one of the "actions to which the nervous system ministers," we must, if the Reviewer's classification is to be adopted, seek it among those four faculties which he allows animals to possess. And thus, for the second time, he really surrenders, while seeming to defend, his position.

The Quarterly Reviewer, as we have seen, lectures the evolutionists upon their want of knowledge of philosophy altogether. Mr. Mivart is not less pained at Mr. Darwin's ignorance of moral science. It is grievous to him that Mr. Darwin (and nous autres) should not have grasped the elementary distinction between material and formal morality; and he lays down as an axiom, of which no tyro ought to be ignorant, the position that "acts, unaccompanied by mental acts of conscious will directed towards the fulfilment of duty," are "absolutely destitute of the most incipient degree of real or formal goodness."

Now this may be Mr. Mivart's opinion, but it is a proposition which, really, does not stand on the footing of an undisputed axiom. Mr. Mill denies it in his work on Utilitarianism. The most influential writer of a totally opposed school, Mr. Carlyle, is never weary of denying it, and upholding the merit of that virtue which is unconscious; nay, it is, to my understanding, extremely hard to reconcile Mr. Mivart's dictum with that noble summary of the whole duty of man—"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength; and thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." According to Mr. Mivart's definition, the man who loves God and his neighbour, and, out of sheer love and affection for both, does all he can to please them, is, nevertheless, destitute of a particle of real goodness.

And it further happens that Mr. Darwin, who is charged by Mr. Mivart with being ignorant of the distinction between material and formal goodness, discusses the very question at issue, in a passage which is well worth reading (vol. i.p. 87), and also comes to a conclusion opposed to Mr. Mivart's axiom. A proposition which has been so much disputed and repudiated, should, under no circumstances, have been thus confidently assumed to be true. For myself, I utterly reject it, inasmuch as the logical consequence of the adoption of any such principle is the denial of all moral value to sympathy and affection. According to Mr. Mivart's axiom, the man who, seeing another struggling in the water, leaps in at the risk of his own life to save him, does that which is "destitute of the most incipient degree of real goodness," unless, as he strips off his coat, he says to himself, "Now mind, I am going to do this because it is my duty and for no other reason;" and the most beautiful character to which humanity can attain, that of the man who does good without thinking about it, because he loves justice and mercy and is repelled by evil, has no claim on our moral approbation. The denial that a man acts morally because he does not think whether he does so or not, may be put upon the same footing as the denial of the title of an arithmetician to the calculating boy, because he did not know how he worked his sums. If mankind ever generally accept and act upon Mr. Mivart's axiom, they will simply become a set of most unendurable prigs; but they never have accepted it, and I venture to hope that evolution has nothing so terrible in store for the human race.

But, if an action, the motive of which is nothing out affection or sympathy, may be deserving of moral approbation and really good, who that has ever had a dog of his own will deny that animals are capable of such actions? Mr. Mivart indeed says:—"It may be safely affirmed, however, that there is no trace in brutes of any actions simulating morality which are not explicable by the fear of punishment, by the hope of pleasure, or by personal affection" (p. 221). But it may be affirmed, with equal truth, that there is no trace in men of any actions which are not traceable to the same motives. If a man does anything, he does it either because he fears to be punished if he does not do it, or because he hopes to obtain pleasure by doing it, or because he gratifies his affections[1] by doing it.

[Footnote 1: In separating pleasure and the gratification of affection, I simply follow Mr. Mivart without admitting the justice of the separation.]

Assuming the position of the absolute moralists, let it be granted that there is a perception of right and wrong innate in every man. This means, simply, that when certain ideas are presented to his mind, the feeling of approbation arises; and when certain others, the feeling of disapprobation. To do your duty is to earn the approbation of your conscience, or moral sense; to fail in your duty is to feel its disapprobation, as we all say. Now, is approbation a pleasure or a pain? Surely a pleasure. And is disapprobation a pleasure or a pain? Surely a pain. Consequently all that is really meant by the absolute moralists is that there is, in the very nature of man, something which enables him to be conscious of these particular pleasures and pains. And when they talk of immutable and eternal principles of morality, the only intelligible sense which I can put upon the words, is that the nature of man being what it is, he always has been, and always will be, capable of feeling these particular pleasures and pains. A priori, I have nothing to say against this proposition. Admitting its truth, I do not see how the moral faculty is on a different footing from any of the other faculties of man. If I choose to say that it is an immutable and eternal law of human nature that "ginger is hot in the mouth," the assertion has as much foundation of truth as the other, though I think it would be expressed in needlessly pompous language. I must confess that I have never been able to understand why there should be such a bitter quarrel between the intuitionists and the utilitarians. The intuitionist is, after all, only a utilitarian who believes that a particular class of pleasures and pains has an especial importance, by reason of its foundation in the nature of man, and its inseparable connection with his very existence as a thinking being. And as regards the motive of personal affection: Love, as Spinoza profoundly says, is the association of pleasure with that which is loved.[1] Or, to put it to the common sense of mankind, is the gratification of affection a pleasure or a pain? Surely a pleasure. So that whether the motive which leads us to perform an action is the love of our neighbour, or the love of God, it is undeniable that pleasure enters into that motive.

[Footnote 1: "Nempe, Amor nihil aliud est, quam Laetitia, concomitante idea causae externae."—Ethices III. xiii.]

Thus much in reply to Mr. Mivart's arguments. I cannot but think that it is to be regretted that he ekes them out by ascribing to the doctrines of the philosophers with whom he does not agree, logical consequences which have been over and over again proved not to flow from them: and when reason fails him, tries the effect of an injurious nickname. According to the views of Mr. Spencer, Mr. Mill, and Mr. Darwin, Mr. Mivart tells us, "virtue is a mere kind of retrieving;" and, that we may not miss the point of the joke, he puts it in italics. But what if it is? Does that make it less virtue? Suppose I say that sculpture is a "mere way" of stone-cutting, and painting a "mere way" of daubing canvas, and music a "mere way" of making a noise, the statements are quite true; but they only show that I see no other method of depreciating some of the noblest aspects of humanity, than that of using language in an inadequate and misleading sense about them. And the peculiar in appropriateness of this particular nickname to the views in question, arises from the circumstance which Mr. Mivart would doubtless have recollected, if his wish to ridicule had not for the moment obscured his judgment—that whether the law of evolution applies to man or not, that of hereditary transmission certainly does. Mr. Mivart will hardly deny that a man owes a large share of the moral tendencies which he exhibits to his ancestors; and the man who inherits a desire to steal from a kleptomaniac, or a tendency to benevolence from a Howard, is, so far as he illustrates hereditary transmission, comparable to the dog who inherits the desire to fetch a duck out of the water from his retrieving sire. So that, evolution, or no evolution, moral qualities are comparable to a "kind of retrieving;" though the comparison, if meant for the purposes of casting obloquy on evolution, does not say much for the fairness of those who make it.

The Quarterly Reviewer and Mr. Mivart base their objections to the evolution of the mental faculties of man from those of some lower animal form, upon what they maintain to be a difference in kind between the mental and moral faculties of men and brutes; and I have endeavoured to show, by exposing the utter unsoundness of their philosophical basis, that these objections are devoid of importance.

The objections which Mr. Wallace brings forward to the doctrine of the evolution of the mental faculties of man from those of brutes by natural causes, are of a different order, and require separate consideration.

If I understand him rightly, he by no means doubts that both the bodily and the mental faculties of man have been evolved from those of some lower animal; but he is of opinion, that some agency beyond that which has been concerned in the evolution of ordinary animals, has been operative in the case of man. "A superior intelligence has guided the development of man in a definite direction and for a special purpose, just as man guides the development of many animal and vegetable forms."[1] I understand this to mean that, just as the rock-pigeon has been produced by natural causes, while the evolution of the tumbler from the blue rock has required the special intervention of the intelligence of man, so some anthropoid form may have been evolved by variation and natural selection; but it could never have given rise to man, unless some superior intelligence had played the part of the pigeon-fancier.

[Footnote 1: The limits of Natural Selection as applied to Man (loc. cit. p. 359).]

According to Mr. Wallace, "whether we compare the savage with the higher developments of man, or with the brutes around him, we are alike driven to the conclusion, that, in his large and well-developed brain, he possesses an organ quite disproportioned to his requirements" (p. 343); and he asks, "What is there in the life of the savage but the satisfying of the cravings of appetite in the simplest and easiest way? What thoughts, idea, or actions are there that raise him many grades above the elephant or the ape?" (p. 342). I answer Mr. Wallace by citing a remarkable passage which occurs in his instructive paper on "Instinct in Man and Animals."

"Savages make long journeys in many directions, and, their whole faculties being directed to the subject, they gain a wide and accurate knowledge of the topography, not only of their own district, but of all the regions round about. Everyone who has travelled in a new direction communicates his knowledge to those who have travelled less, and descriptions of routes and localities, and minute incidents of travel, form one of the main staples of conversation around the evening fire. Every wanderer or captive from another tribe adds to the store of information, and, as the very existence of individuals and of whole families and tribes depends upon the completeness of this knowledge, all the acute perceptive faculties of the adult savage are directed to acquiring and perfecting it. The good hunter or warrior thus comes to know the bearing of every hill and mountain range, the directions and junctions of all the streams, the situation of each tract characterized by peculiar vegetation, not only within the area he has himself traversed, but perhaps for a hundred miles around it. His acute observation enables him to detect the slightest undulations of the surface, the various changes of subsoil and alterations in the character of the vegetation that would be quite imperceptible to a stranger. His eye is always open to the direction in which he is going; the mossy side of trees, the presence of certain plants under the shade of rocks, the morning and evening flight of birds, are to him indications of direction almost as sure as the sun in the heavens" (pp. 207-8).

I have seen enough of savages to be able to declare that nothing can be more admirable than this description of what a savage has to learn. But it is incomplete. Add to all this the knowledge which a savage is obliged to gain of the properties of plants, of the characters and habits of animals, and of the minute indications by which their course is discoverable: consider that even an Australian can make excellent baskets and nets, and neatly fitted and beautifully balanced spears; that he learns to use these so as to be able to transfix a quartern loaf at sixty yards; and that very often, as in the case of the American Indians, the language of a savage exhibits complexities which a well-trained European finds it difficult to master: consider that every time a savage tracks his game, he employs a minuteness of observation, and an accuracy of inductive and deductive reasoning which, applied to other matters, would assure some reputation to a man of science, and I think we need ask no further why he possesses such a fair supply of brains. In complexity and difficulty, I should say that the intellectual labour of a "good hunter or warrior" considerably exceeds that of an ordinary Englishman. The Civil Service Examiners are held in great terror by young Englishmen; but even their ferocity never tempted them to require a candidate to possess such a knowledge of a parish, as Mr. Wallace justly points out savages may possess of an area a hundred miles, or more, in diameter.

But suppose, for the sake of argument, that a savage has more brains than seems proportioned to his wants, all that can be said is that the objection to natural selection, if it be one, applies quite as strongly to the lower animals. The brain of a porpoise is quite wonderful for its mass, and for the development of the cerebral convolutions. And yet since we have ceased to credit the story of Arion, it is hard to believe that porpoises are much troubled with intellect: and still more difficult is it to imagine that their big brains are only a preparation for the advent of some accomplished cetacean of the future. Surely, again, a wolf must have too much brains, or else how is it that a dog, with only the same quantity and form of brain, is able to develop such singular intelligence? The wolf stands to the dog in the same relation as the savage to the man; and, therefore, if Mr. Wallace's doctrine holds good, a higher power must have superintended the breeding up of wolves from some inferior stock, in order to prepare them to become dogs.

Mr. Wallace further maintains that the origin of some of man's mental faculties by the preservation of useful variations is not possible. Such, for example, are "the capacity to form ideal conceptions of space and time, of eternity and infinity; the capacity for intense artistic feelings of pleasure in form, colour, and composition; and for those abstract notions of form and number which render geometry and arithmetic possible." "How," he asks, "were all or any of these faculties first developed, when they could have been of no possible use to man in his early stages of barbarism?"

Surely the answer is not far to seek. The lowest savages are as devoid of any such conceptions as the brutes themselves. What sort of conceptions of space and time, of form and number, can be possessed by a savage who has not got so far as to be able to count beyond five or six, who does not know how to draw a triangle or a circle, and has not the remotest notion of separating the particular quality we call form, from the other qualities of bodies? None of these capacities are exhibited by men, unless they form part of a tolerably advanced society. And, in such a society, there are abundant conditions by which a selective influence is exerted in favour of those persons who exhibit an approximation towards the possession of these capacities.

The savage who can amuse his fellows by telling a good story over the nightly fire, is held by them in esteem and rewarded, in one way or another, for so doing in other words, it is an advantage to him to possess this power. He who can carve a paddle, or the figure-head of a canoe better, similarly profits beyond his duller neighbour. He who counts a little better than others, gets most yams when barter is going on, and forms the shrewdest estimate of the numbers of an opposing tribe. The experience of daily life shows that the conditions of our present social existence exercise the most extraordinarily powerful selective influence in favour of novelists, artists, and strong intellects of all kinds; and it seems unquestionable that all forms of social existence must have had the same tendency, if we consider the indisputable facts that even animals possess the power of distinguishing form and number, and that they are capable of deriving pleasure from particular forms and sounds. If we admit, as Mr. Wallace does, that the lowest savages are not raised "many grades above the elephant and the ape;" and if we further admit, as I contend must be admitted, that the conditions of social life tend, powerfully, to give an advantage to those individuals who vary in the direction of intellectual or aesthetic excellence, what is there to interfere with the belief that these higher faculties, like the rest, owe their development to natural selection?

Finally, with respect to the development of the moral sense out of the simple feelings of pleasure and pain, liking and disliking, with which the lower animals are provided, I can find nothing in Mr. Wallace's reasonings which has not already been met by Mr. Mill, Mr. Spencer, or Mr. Darwin.

I do not propose to follow the Quarterly Reviewer and Mr. Mivart through the long string of objections in matters of detail which they bring against Mr. Darwin's views. Everyone who has considered the matter carefully will be able to ferret out as many more "difficulties;" but he will also, I believe, fail as completely as they appear to me to have done, in bringing forward any fact which is really contradictory of Mr. Darwin's views. Occasionally, too, their objections and criticisms are based upon errors of their own. As, for example, when Mr. Mivart and the Quarterly Reviewer insist upon the resemblances between the eyes of Cephalopoda and Vertebrata, quite forgetting that there are striking and altogether fundamental differences between them; or when the Quarterly Reviewer corrects Mr. Darwin for saying that the gibbons, "without having been taught, can walk or run upright with tolerable quickness, though they move awkwardly, and much less securely than man." The Quarterly Reviewer says, "This is a little misleading, inasmuch as it is not stated that this upright progression is effected by placing the enormously long arms behind the head, or holding them out backwards as a balance in progression."

Now, before carping at a small statement like this, the Quarterly Reviewer should have made sure that he was quite right. But he happens to be quite wrong. I suspect he got his notion of the manner in which a gibbon walks from a citation in "Man's Place in Nature." But at that time I had not seen a gibbon walk. Since then I have, and I can testify that nothing can be more precise than Mr. Darwin's statement. The gibbon I saw walked without either putting his arms behind his head or holding them out backwards. All he did was to touch the ground with the outstretched fingers of his long arms now and then, just as one sees a man who carries a stick, but does not need one, touch the ground with it as he walks along.

Again, a large number of the objections brought forward by Mr. Mivart and the Quarterly Reviewer apply to evolution in general, quite as much as to the particular form of that doctrine advocated by Mr. Darwin; or, to their notions of Mr. Darwin's views and not to what they really are. An excellent example of this class of difficulties is to be found in Mr. Mivart's chapter on "Independent Similarities of Structure." Mr. Mivart says that these cannot be explained by an "absolute and pure Darwinian," but "that an innate power and evolutionary law, aided by the corrective action of natural selection, should have furnished like needs with like aids, is not at all improbable" (p. 82).

I do not exactly know what Mr. Mivart means by an "absolute and pure Darwinian;" indeed Mr. Mivart makes that creature hold so many singular opinions that I doubt if I can ever have seen one alive. But I find nothing in his statement of the view which he imagines to be originated by himself, which is really inconsistent with what I understand to be Mr. Darwin's views.

I apprehend that the foundation of the theory of natural selection is the fact that living bodies tend incessantly to vary. This variation is neither indefinite, nor fortuitous, nor does it take place in all directions, in the strict sense of these words.

Accurately speaking, it is not indefinite, nor does it take place in all directions, because it is limited by the general characters of the type to which the organism exhibiting the variation belongs. A whale does not tend to vary in the direction of producing feathers, nor a bird in the direction of developing whalebone. In popular language there is no harm in saying that the waves which break upon the sea-shore are indefinite, fortuitous, and break in all directions. In scientific language, on the contrary, such a statement would be a gross error, inasmuch as every particle of foam is the result of perfectly definite forces, operating according to no less definite laws. In like manner, every variation of a living form, however minute, however apparently accidental, is inconceivable except as the expression of the operation of molecular forces or "powers" resident within the organism. And, as these forces certainly operate according to definite laws, their general result is, doubtless, in accordance with some general law which subsumes them all. And there appears to be no objection to call this an "evolutionary law." But nobody is the wiser for doing so, or has thereby contributed, in the least degree, to the advance of the doctrine of evolution, the great need of which is a theory of variation.

When Mr. Mivart tells us that his "aim has been to support the doctrine that these species have been evolved by ordinary natural laws (for the most part unknown), aided by the subordinate action of 'natural selection'" (pp. 332-3), he seems to be of opinion that his enterprise has the merit of novelty. All I can say is that I have never had the slightest notion that Mr. Darwin's aim is in any way different from this. If I affirm that "species have been evolved by variation[1] (a natural process, the laws of which are for the most part unknown), aided by the subordinate action of natural selection," it seems to me that I enunciate a proposition which constitutes the very pith and marrow of the first edition of the "Origin of Species." And what the evolutionist stands in need of just now, is not an iteration of the fundamental principle of Darwinism, but some light upon the questions, What are the limits of variation? and, If a variety has arisen, can that variety be perpetuated, or even intensified, when selective conditions are indifferent, or perhaps unfavourable, to its existence? I cannot find that Mr. Darwin has ever been very dogmatic in answering these questions. Formerly, he seems to have inclined to reply to them in the negative, while now his inclination is the other way. Leaving aside those broad questions of theology, philosophy, and ethics, by the discussion of which neither the Quarterly Reviewer nor Mr. Mivart can be said to have damaged Darwinism—whatever else they have injured—this is what their criticisms come to. They confound a struggle for some rifle-pits with an assault on the fortress.

[Footnote 1: Including under this head hereditary transmission.]

In some respects, finally, I can only characterize the Quarterly Reviewer's treatment of Mr. Darwin as alike unjust and unbecoming. Language of this strength requires justification, and on that ground I add the remarks which follow.

The Quarterly Reviewer opens his essay by a careful enumeration of all those points upon which, during the course of thirteen years of incessant labour, Mr. Darwin has modified his opinions. It has often and justly been remarked, that what strikes a candid student of Mr. Darwin's works is not so much his industry, his knowledge, or even the surprising fertility of his inventive genius; but that unswerving truthfulness and honesty which never permit him to hide a weak place, or gloss over a difficulty, but lead him, on all occasions, to point out the weak places in his own armour, and even sometimes, it appears to me, to make admissions against himself which are quite unnecessary. A critic who desires to attack Mr. Darwin has only to read his works with a desire to observe, not their merits, but their defects, and he will find, ready to hand, more adverse suggestions than are likely ever to have suggested themselves to his own sharpness, without Mr. Darwin's self-denying aid.

Now this quality of scientific candour is not so common that it needs to be discouraged; and it appears to me to deserve other treatment than that adopted by the Quarterly Reviewer, who deals with Mr. Darwin as an Old Bailey barrister deals with a man against whom he wishes to obtain a conviction, per fas aut nefas, and opens his case by endeavouring to create a prejudice against the prisoner in the minds of the jury. In his eagerness to carry out this laudable design, the Quarterly Reviewer cannot even state the history of the doctrine of natural selection without an oblique and entirely unjustifiable attempt to depreciate Mr. Darwin. "To Mr. Darwin," says he, "and (through Mr. Wallace's reticence) to Mr. Darwin alone, is due the credit of having first brought it prominently forward and demonstrated its truth." No one can less desire than I do, to throw a doubt upon Mr. Wallace's originality, or to question his claim to the honour of being one of the originators of the doctrine of natural selection; but the statement that Mr. Darwin has the sole credit of originating the doctrine because of Mr. Wallace's reticence is simply ridiculous. The proof of this is, in the first place, afforded by Mr. Wallace himself, whose noble freedom from petty jealousy in this matter, smaller folk would do well to imitate; and who writes thus:—"I have felt all my life, and I still feel, the most sincere satisfaction that Mr. Darwin had been at work long before me, and that it was not left for me to attempt to write the 'Origin of Species.' I have long since measured my own strength, and know well that it would be quite unequal to that task." So that if there was any reticence at all in the matter, it was Mr. Darwin's reticence during the long twenty years of study which intervened between the conception and the publication of his theory, which gave Mr. Wallace the chance of being an independent discoverer of the importance of natural selection. And, finally, if it be recollected that Mr. Darwin's and Mr. Wallace's essays were published simultaneously in the Journal of the Linnaean Society for 1858, it follows that the Reviewer, while obliquely depreciating Mr. Darwin's deserts, has in reality awarded to him a priority which, in legal strictness, does not exist.

Mr. Mivart, whose opinions so often concur with those of the Quarterly Reviewer, puts the case in a way, which I much regret to be obliged to say, is, in my judgment, quite as incorrect; though the injustice may be less glaring. He says that the theory of natural selection is, in general, exclusively associated with the name of Mr. Darwin, "on account of the noble self-abnegation of Mr. Wallace." As I have said, no one can honour Mr. Wallace more than I do, both for what he has done and for what he has not done, in his relation to Mr. Darwin. And perhaps nothing is more creditable to him than his frank declaration that he could not have written such a work as the "Origin of Species." But, by this declaration, the person most directly interested in the matter repudiates, by anticipation, Mr. Mivart's suggestion that Mr. Darwin's eminence is more or less due to Mr. Wallace's modesty.



XI.

THE GENEALOGY OF ANIMALS.[1]

Considering that Germany now takes the lead of the world in scientific investigation, and particularly in biology, Mr. Darwin must be well pleased at the rapid spread of his views among some of the ablest and most laborious of German naturalists.

[Footnote 1: "The Natural History of Creation." By Dr. Ernst Haeckel (Natuerliche Schoepfungs-Geschichte.—Von Dr. Ernst Haeckel, Professor an der Universitaet Jena.) Berlin, 1868.]

Among those, Professor Haeckel, of Jena, is the Coryphaeus. I know of no more solid and important contributions to biology in the past seven years than Haeckel's work on the Radiolaria, and the researches of his distinguished colleague Gegenbaur, in vertebrate anatomy; while in Haeckel's Generelle Morphologie there is all the force, suggestiveness, and, what I may term the systematizing power, of Oken, without his extravagance. The Generelle Morphologie is, in fact, an attempt to put the doctrine of Evolution, so far as it applies to the living world, into a logical form; and to work out its practical applications to their final results. The work before us, again, may be said to be an exposition of the Generelle Morphologie for an educated public, consisting, as it does, of the substance of a series of lectures delivered before a mixed audience at Jena, in the session 1867-8.

"The Natural History of Creation,"—or, as Professor Haeckel admits it would have been better to call his work, "The History of the Development or Evolution of Nature,"—deals, in the first six lectures, with the general and historical aspects of the question, and contains a very interesting and lucid account of the views of Linnaeus, Cuvier, Agassiz, Goethe, Oken, Kant, Lamarck, Lyell, and Darwin, and of the historical filiation of these philosophers.

The next six lectures are occupied by a well-digested statement of Mr. Darwin's views. The thirteenth lecture discusses two topics which are not touched by Mr. Darwin, namely, the origin of the present form of the solar system, and that of living matter. Full justice is done to Kant, as the originator of that "cosmic gas theory," as the Germans somewhat quaintly call it, which is commonly ascribed to Laplace. With respect to spontaneous generation, while admitting that there is no experimental evidence in its favour, Professor Haeckel denies the possibility of disproving it, and points out that the assumption that it has occurred is a necessary part of the doctrine of Evolution. The fourteenth lecture, on "Schoepfungs-Perioden und Schoepfungs-Urkunden," answers pretty much to the famous disquisition on the "Imperfection of the Geological Record" in the Origin of Species.

The following five lectures contain the most original matter of any, being devoted to "Phylogeny," or the working out of the details of the process of Evolution in the animal and vegetable kingdoms, so as to prove the line of descent of each group of living beings, and to furnish it with its proper genealogical tree, or "phylum."

The last lecture considers objections and sums up the evidence in favour of biological Evolution.

I shall best testify to my sense of the value of the work thus briefly analysed if I now proceed to note down some of the more important criticisms which have been suggested to me by its perusal.

I. In more than one place, Professor Haeckel enlarges upon the service which the Origin of Species has done, in favouring what he terms the "causal or mechanical" view of living nature as opposed to the "teleological or vitalistic" view. And no doubt it is quite true that the doctrine of Evolution is the most formidable opponent of all the commoner and coarser forms of Teleology. But perhaps the most remarkable service to the philosophy of Biology rendered by Mr. Darwin is the reconciliation of Teleology and Morphology, and the explanation of the facts of both which his views offer.

The Teleology which supposes that the eye, such as we see it in man or one of the higher Vertebrata, was made with the precise structure which it exhibits, for the purpose of enabling the animal which possesses it to see, has undoubtedly received its death-blow. Nevertheless it is necessary to remember that there is a wider Teleology, which is not touched by the doctrine of Evolution, but is actually based upon the fundamental proposition of Evolution. That proposition is, that the whole world, living and not living, is the result of the mutual interaction, according to definite laws, of the forces possessed by the molecules of which the primitive nebulosity of the universe was composed. If this be true, it is no less certain that the existing world lay, potentially, in the cosmic vapour; and that a sufficient intelligence could, from a knowledge of the properties of the molecules of that vapour, have predicted, say the state of the Fauna of Britain in 1869, with as much certainty as one can say what will happen to the vapour of the breath in a cold winter's day.

Consider a kitchen clock, which ticks loudly, shows the hours, minutes, and seconds, strikes, cries "cuckoo!" and perhaps shows the phases of the moon. When the clock is wound up, all the phenomena which it exhibits are potentially contained in its mechanism, and a clever clockmaker could predict all it will do after an examination of its structure.

If the evolution theory is correct, the molecular structure of the cosmic gas stands in the same relation to the phenomena of the world as the structure of the clock to its phenomena.

Now let us suppose a death-watch, living in the clock-case, to be a learned and intelligent student of its works. He might say, "I find here nothing but matter and force and pure mechanism from beginning to end," and he would be quite right. But if he drew the conclusion that the clock was not contrived for a purpose, he would be quite wrong. On the other hand, imagine another death-watch of a different turn of mind. He, listening to the monotonous "tick! tick!" so exactly like his own, might arrive at the conclusion that the clock was itself a monstrous sort of death-watch, and that its final cause and purpose was to tick. How easy to point to the clear relation of the whole mechanism to the pendulum, to the fact that the one thing the clock did always and without intermission was to tick, and that all the rest of its phenomena were intermittent and subordinate to ticking! For all this, it is certain that kitchen clocks are not contrived for the purpose of making a ticking noise.

Thus the teleological theorist would be as wrong as the mechanical theorist, among our death-watches; and, probably, the only death-watch who would be right would be the one who should maintain that the sole thing death-watches could be sure about was the nature of the clock-works and the way they move; and that the purpose of the clock lay wholly beyond the purview of beetle faculties.

Substitute "cosmic vapour" for "clock," and "molecules" for "works," and the application of the argument is obvious. The teleological and the mechanical views of nature are not, necessarily, mutually exclusive. On the contrary, the more purely a mechanist the speculator is, the more firmly does he assume a primordial molecular arrangement, of which all the phenomena of the universe are the consequences; and the more completely is he thereby at the mercy of the teleologist, who can always defy him to disprove that this primordial molecular arrangement was not intended to evolve the phenomena of the universe. On the other hand, if the teleologist assert that this, that, or the other result of the working of any part of the mechanism of the universe is its purpose and final cause, the mechanist can always inquire how he knows that it is more than an unessential incident—the mere ticking of the clock, which he mistakes for its function. And there seems to be no reply to this inquiry, any more than to the further, not irrational, question, why trouble oneself about matters which are out of reach, when the working of the mechanism itself, which is of infinite practical importance, affords scope for all our energies?

Professor Haeckel has invented a new and convenient name, "Dysteleology," for the study of the "purposelessnesses" which are observable in living organisms—such as the multitudinous cases of rudimentary and apparently useless structures. I confess, however, that it has often appeared to me that the facts of Dysteleology cut two ways. If we are to assume, as evolutionists in general do, that useless organs atrophy, such cases as the existence of lateral rudiments of toes, in the foot of a horse, place us in a dilemma. For, either these rudiments are of no use to the animal, in which case, considering that the horse has existed in its present form since the Pliocene epoch, they surely ought to have disappeared; or they are of some use to the animal, in which case they are of no use as arguments against Teleology. A similar, but still stronger, argument may be based upon the existence of teats, and even functional mammary glands, in male mammals. Numerous cases of "Gynaecomasty," or functionally active breasts in men, are on record, though there is no mammalian species whatever in which the male normally suckles the young. Thus, there can be little doubt that the mammary gland was as apparently useless in the remotest male mammalian ancestor of man as in living men, and yet it has not disappeared. Is it then still profitable to the male organism to retain it? Possibly; but in that case its dysteleological value is gone.

II. Professor Haeckel looks upon the causes which have led to the present diversity of living nature as twofold. Living matter, he tells us, is urged by two impulses: a centripetal, which tends to preserve and transmit the specific form, and which he identifies with heredity; and a centrifugal, which results from the tendency of external conditions to modify the organism and effect its adaptation to themselves. The internal impulse is conservative, and tends to the preservation of specific, or individual, form; the external impulse is metamorphic, and tends to the modification of specific, or individual, form.

In developing his views upon this subject, Professor Haeckel introduces qualifications which disarm some of the criticisms I should have been disposed to offer; but I think that his method of stating the case has the inconvenience of tending to leave out of sight the important fact—which is a cardinal point in the Darwinian hypothesis—that the tendency to vary, in a given organism, may have nothing to do with the external conditions to which that individual organism is exposed, but may depend wholly upon internal conditions. No one, I imagine, would dream of seeking in the direct influence of the external conditions of his life for the cause of the development of the sixth finger and toe in the famous Maltese.

I conceive that both hereditary transmission and adaptation need to be analysed into their constituent conditions by the further application of the doctrine of the Struggle for Existence. It is a probable hypothesis, that what the world is to organisms in general, each organism is to the molecules of which it is composed. Multitudes of these, having diverse tendencies, are competing with one another for opportunity to exist and multiply; and the organism, as a whole, is as much the product of the molecules which are victorious as the Fauna, or Flora, of a country is the product of the victorious organic beings in it.

On this hypothesis, hereditary transmission is the result of the victory of particular molecules contained in the impregnated germ. Adaptation to conditions is the result of the favouring of the multiplication of those molecules whose organizing tendencies are most in harmony with such conditions. In this view of the matter, conditions are not actively productive, but are passively permissive; they do not cause variation in any given direction, but they permit and favour a tendency in that direction which already exists.

It is true that, in the long run, the origin of the organic molecules themselves, and of their tendencies, is to be sought in the external world; but if we carry our inquiries as far back as this, the distinction between internal and external impulses vanishes. On the other hand, if we confine ourselves to the consideration of a single organism, I think it must be admitted that the existence of an internal metamorphic tendency must be as distinctly recognized as that of an internal conservative tendency; and that the influence of conditions is mainly, if not wholly, the result of the extent to which they favour the one, or the other, of these tendencies.

III. There is only one point upon which I fundamentally and entirely disagree with Professor Haeckel, but that is the very important one of his conception of geological time, and of the meaning of the stratified rocks as records and indications of that time. Conceiving that the stratified rocks of an epoch indicate a period of depression, and that the intervals between the epochs correspond with periods of elevation of which we have no record, he intercalates between the different epochs, or periods, intervals which he terms "Ante-periods." Thus, instead of considering the Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous, and Eocene periods, as continuously successive, he interposes a period before each, as an "Antetrias-zeit," "Antejura-zeit," "Antecreta-zeit," "Antecocen-zeit," &c. And he conceives that the abrupt changes between the Faunae of the different formations are due to the lapse of time, of which we have no organic record, during their "Ante-periods."

The frequent occurrence of strata containing assemblages of organic forms which are intermediate between those of adjacent formations, is, to my mind, fatal to this view. In the well-known St. Cassian beds, for example, Palaeozoic and Mesozoic forms are commingled, and, between the Cretaceous and the Eocene formations, there are similar transitional beds. On the other hand, in the middle of the Silurian series, extensive unconformity of the strata indicates the lapse of vast intervals of time between the deposit of successive beds, without any corresponding change in the Fauna.

Professor Haeckel will, I fear, think me unreasonable, if I say that he seems to be still overshadowed by geological superstitions; and that he will have to believe in the completeness of the geological record far less than he does at present. He assumes, for example, that there was no dry land, nor any terrestrial life, before the end of the Silurian epoch, simply because, up to the present time, no indications of fresh water, or terrestrial organisms, have been found in rocks of older date. And, in speculating upon the origin of a given group, he rarely goes further back than the "Ante-period," which precedes that in which the remains of animals belonging to that group are found. Thus, as fossil remains of the majority of the groups of Reptilia are first found in the Trias, they are assumed to have originated in the "Antetriassic" period, or between the Permian and Triassic epochs.

I confess this is wholly incredible to me. The Permian and the Triassic deposits pass completely into one another; there is no sort of discontinuity answering to an unrecorded "Antetrias;" and, what is more, we have evidence of immensely extensive dry land during the formation of these deposits. We know that the dry land of the Trias absolutely teemed with reptiles of all groups except Pterodactyles, Snakes, and perhaps Tortoises; there is every probability that true Birds existed, and Mammalia certainly did. Of the inhabitants of the Permian dry land, on the contrary, all that have left a record are a few lizards. Is it conceivable that these last should really represent the whole terrestrial population of that time, and that the development of Mammals, of Birds, and of the highest forms of Reptiles, should have been crowded into the time during which the Permian conditions quietly passed away, and the Triassic conditions began? Does not any such supposition become in the highest degree improbable, when, in the terrestrial or fresh-water Labyrinthodonts, which lived on the land of the Carboniferous epoch, as well as on that of the Trias, we have evidence that one form, of terrestrial life persisted, throughout all these ages, with no important modification? For my part, having regard to the small amount of modification (except in the way of extinction) which the Crocodilian, Lacertilian, and Chelonian Reptilia have undergone, from the older Mesozoic times to the present day, I cannot but put the existence of the common stock from which they sprang far back in the Palaeozoic epoch; and I should apply a similar argumentation to all other groups of animals.

IV. Professor Haeckel proposes a number of modifications in Taxonomy, all of which are well worthy of consideration. Thus he establishes a third primary division of the living world, distinct from both animals and plants, under the name of the Protista, to include the Myxomycetes, the Diatomaceae, and the Labyrinthulae, which are commonly regarded as plants, with the Noctilucae, the Flagellata, the Rhizopoda, the Protoplasta, and the Monera, which are most generally included within the animal world. A like attempt has been made, by other writers, to escape the inconvenience of calling these dubious organisms by the name of plant or animal; but I confess, it appears to me, that the inconvenience which is eluded in one direction, by this step, is met in two others. Professor Haeckel himself doubts whether the Fungi ought not to be removed into his Protista. If they are not, indeed, the Myxomycetes render the drawing of every line of demarcation between Protista and Plants impossible. But if they are, who is to define the Fungi from the Algae? Yet the sea-weeds are surely, in every respect, plants. On the other hand, Professor Haeckel puts the sponges among the Coelenterata (or polypes and corals), with the double inconvenience, as it appears to me, of separating the sponges from their immediate kindred, the Protoplasta, and destroying the definition of the Coelenterata. So again, the Infusoria possess all the characters of animality, but it can hardly be said that they are as clearly allied to the worms as they are to the Noctilucae.

On the whole, it appears to me to be most convenient to adhere to the old plan of calling such of these low forms as are more animal in habit, Protozoa, and such as are more vegetal, Protophyta.

Another considerable innovation is the proposition to divide the class Pisces into the four groups of Leptocardia, Cyclostomata, Pisces, and Dipneusta. As regards the establishment of a separate class for the Lancelet (Amphioxus), I think there can be little doubt of the propriety of so doing, inasmuch as it is far more different from all other fishes than they are from one another. And there is much to be said in favour of the same promotion of the Cyclostomata, or Lampreys and Hags. But considering the close relation of the Mudfish with the Ganoidei, and the wide differences between the Elasmobranchii and the Teleostei, I greatly doubt the propriety of separating the Dipneusta, as a class, from the other Pisces.

Professor Haeckel proposes to break up the vertebrate sub-kingdom, first, into the two provinces of Leptocardia and Pachycardia; Amphioxus being in the former, and all other vertebrates in the latter division. The Pachycardia are then divided into Monorhina, which contains the Cyclostome fishes, distinguished by their single nasal aperture; and Amphirhina, comprising the other Vertebrata, which have two nasal apertures. These are further subdivided into Anamnia (Pisces, Dipneusta, Amphibia) and Amniota (Reptilia, Aves, Mammalia). This classification undoubtedly expresses many of the most important facts in vertebrate structure in a clear and compendious way; whether it is the best that can he adopted remains to be seen.

With much reason the Lemurs are removed altogether from the Primates, under the name of Prosimiae. But I am surprised to find the Sirenia left in one group with the Cetacea, and the Plesiosauria with the Ichthyosauria; the ordinal distinctness of these having, to my mind, been long since fully established.

V. In Professor Haeckel's speculations on Phylogeny, or the genealogy of animal forms, there is much that is profoundly interesting, and his suggestions are always supported by sound knowledge and great ingenuity. Whether one agrees or disagrees with him, one feels that he has forced the mind into lines of thought in which it is more profitable to go wrong than to stand still.

To put his views into a few words, he conceives that all forms of life originally commenced as Monera, or simple particles of protoplasm; and that these Monera originated from not-living matter. Some of the Monera acquired tendencies towards the Protistic, others towards the Vegetal, and others towards the Animal modes of life. The last became animal Monera. Some of the animal Monera acquired a nucleus, and became amoeba-like creatures; and, out of certain of these, ciliated infusorium-like animals were developed. These became modified into two stirpes: A, that of the worms; and B, that of the sponges. The latter by progressive modification gave rise to all the Coelenterata; the former to all other animals. But A soon broke up into two principal stirpes, of which one, a, became the root of the Annelida, Echinodermata, and Arthropoda, while the other, b, gave rise to the Polyzoa and Ascidioida, and produced the two remaining stirpes of the Vertebrata and the Mollusca.

Perhaps the most startling proposition of all those which Professor Haeckel puts before us is that which he bases upon Kowalewsky's researches into the development of Amphioxus and of the Ascidioida, that the origin of the Vertebrata is to be sought in an Ascidioid form. Goodsir long ago insisted upon the resemblance between Amphioxus and the Ascidians; but the notion of a genetic connection between the two, and especially the identification of the notochord of the Vertebrate with the axis of the caudal appendage of the larva of the Ascidian, is a novelty which, at first, takes one's breath away. I must confess, however, that the more I have pondered over it, the more grounds appear in its favour, though I am not convinced that there is any real parallelism between the mode of development of the ganglion of the Ascidian and that of the Vertebrate cerebro-spinal axis.

The hardly less startling hypothesis that the Echinoderms are coalesced worms, on the other hand, appears to be open to serious objection. As a matter of anatomy, it does not seem to me to correspond with fact; for there is no worm with a calcareous skeleton, nor any which has a band-like ventral nerve, superficial to which lies an ambulacral vessel. And, as a question of development, the formation of the radiate Echinoderm within its vermiform larva seems to me to be analogous to the formation of a radiate Medusa upon a Hydrozoic stock. But a Medusa is surely not the result of the coalescence of as many organisms as it presents morphological segments.

Professor Haeckel adduces the fossil Crossopodia and Phyllodocites as examples of the Annelidan forms, by the coalescence of which the Echinoderms may have been produced; but, even supposing the resemblance of these worms to detached starfish arms to be perfect, it is possible that they may be the extreme term, and not the commencement, of Echinoderm development. A pentacrinoid Echinoderm, with a complete jointed stalk, is developed within the larva of Antedon. Is it not possible that the larva of Crossopodia may have developed a vermiform Echinoderm?

With respect to the Phylogeny of the Arthropoda, I find myself disposed to take a somewhat different view from that of Professor Haeckel. He assumes that the primary stock of the whole group was a crustacean, having that Nauplius form in which Fritz Mueller has shown that so many Crustacea commence their lives. All the Entomostraca arose by the modification of some one or other of these Naupliform "Archicarida." Other Archicarida underwent a further metamorphosis into a Zoaea-form. From some of these "Zoeopoda" arose all the remaining Malacostracous Crustacea; while, from others, was developed some form analogous to the existing Galeodes, out of which proceeded, by gradual differentiation, all the Myriapoda, Arachnida, and Insecta.

I should, be disposed to interpret the facts of the embryological history and of the anatomy of the Arthropoda in a different manner. The Copepoda, the Ostracoda, and the Branchiopoda are the Crustacea which have departed least from the embryonic or Nauplius-forms; and, of these, I imagine that the Copepoda represent the hypothetical Archicarida most closely. Apus and Sapphirina indicate the relations of these Archaeocarids with the Trilobita, and the Eurypterida connect the Trilobita and the Copepoda with the Xiphosura. But the Xiphosura have such close morphological relations with the Arachnida, and especially with the oldest known Arachnidan, Scorpio, that I cannot doubt the existence of a genetic connection between the two groups. On the other hand, the Branchiopoda do, even at the present day, almost pass into the true Podophthalmia, by Nebalia. By the Trilobita, again, the Archicarida are connected with such Edriophthalmia as Serolis. The Stomapoda are extremely modified Edriophthalmia of the amphipod type. On the other side, the Isopoda lead to the Myriapoda, and the latter to the Insecta. Thus the Arthropod phylum, which suggests itself to me, is that the branches of the Podophthalmia, of the Insecta (with the Myriapoda), and of the Arachnida, spring separately and distinctly from the Archaeocarid root—and that the Zoaea-forms occur only at the origin of the Podophthalmous branch.

The phylum of the Vertebrata is the most interesting of all, and is admirably discussed by Professor Haeckel. I can note only a few points which seem to me to be open to discussion. The Monorhina, having been developed out of the Leptocardia, gave rise, according to Professor Haeckel, to a shark-like form, which was the common stock of all the Amphirhina. From this "Protamphirhine" were developed, in divergent lines, the true Sharks, Rays, and Chimaerae; the Ganoids, and the Dipneusta. The Teleostei are modified Ganoidei. The Dipneusta gave rise to the Amphibia, which are the root of all other Vertebrata, inasmuch as out of them were developed the first Vertebrata provided with an amnion, or the Protamniota. The Protamniota split up into two stems, one that of the Mammalia, the other common to Reptilia and Aves.

The only modification which it occurs to me to suggest in this general view of the Phylogeny of the Vertebrata is, that the "Protamphirhine" was possibly more ganoid than shark-like. So far as our present information goes the Ganoids are as old as the Sharks; and it is very interesting to observe that the remains of the oldest Ganoids, Cephalaspis and Pteraspis, have as yet displayed no trace of jaws. It is just possible that they may connect the Monorhina, with the Sturgeons among the Amphirhina. On the other hand, the Crossopterygian Ganoids exhibit the closest connection with Lepidosiren, and thereby with the Amphibia. It should not be forgotten that the development of the Lampreys exhibits curious points of resemblance with that of the Amphibia, which are absent in the Sharks and Rays. Of the development of the Ganoidei we have unfortunately no knowledge, but their brains and their reproductive organs are more amphibian than are those of the Sharks.

On the whole, I am disposed to think that the direct stem of ascent from the Monorhina to the Amphibia is formed by the Ganoids and the Mudfishes; while the Osseous fishes and the Sharks are branches in different directions from this stem.

What the Protamniota were like, I do not suppose any one is in a position to say, but I cannot think that the thoroughly Lacertian Protorosaurus had anything to do with them. The reptiles which are most amphibian in their characters, and therefore, probably, most nearly approach the Protamniota, are the Ichthyosauria and the Chelonia.

That the Didelphia were developed out of some ornithodelphous form, as Professor Haeckel supposes, seems to be unquestionable; but the existing Opossums and Kangaroos are certainly extremely modified and remote from their ancestors the "Prodidelphia," of which we have not, at present the slightest knowledge. The mode of origin of the Monodelphia from these is a very difficult problem, for the most part left open by Professor Haeckel. He considers the Prosimiae, or Lemurs, to be the common stock of the Deciduata, and the Cetacea (with which he includes the Sirenia) to be modified Ungulata. As regards the latter question, I have little doubt that the Sirenia connect the Ungulata with the Proboscidea; and none, that the Cetacea are extremely modified Carnivora. The passage between the Seals and the Cetacea by Zeuglodon is complete. I also think that there is much to be said for the opinion, that the Insectivora represent the common stock of the Primates (which passed into them by the Prosimiae), the Cheiroptera, the Rodentia, and the Carnivora. And I am greatly disposed to look for the common root of all the Ungulata, as well, in some ancient non-deciduate Mammals which were more like Insectivora than anything else. On the other hand, the Edentata appear to form a series by themselves.

The latter part of this notice of the Natuerliche Schoepfungs-Geschichte, brings so strongly into prominence the points of difference between its able author and myself, that I do not like to conclude without reminding the reader of my entire concurrence with the general tenor and spirit of the work, and of my high estimate of its value.



XII.

BISHOP BERKELEY ON THE METAPHYSICS OF SENSATION.[1]

Professor Fraser has earned the thanks of all students of philosophy for the conscientious labour which he has bestowed upon his new edition of the works of Berkeley; in which, for the first time, we find collected together every thought which can be traced to the subtle and penetrating mind of the famous Bishop of Cloyne; while the "Life and Letters" will rejoice those who care less for the idealist and the prophet of tar-water, than for the man who stands out as one of the noblest and purest figures of his time: that Berkeley from whom the jealousy of Pope did not withhold a single one of all "the virtues under heaven;" nor the cynicism of Swift, the dignity of "one of the first men of the kingdom for learning and virtue;" the man whom the pious Atterbury could compare to nothing less than an angel; and whose personal influence and eloquence filled the Scriblerus Club and the House of Commons with enthusiasm for the evangelization of the North American Indians; and even led Sir Robert Walpole to assent to the appropriation of public money to a scheme which was neither business nor bribery.[2]

[Footnote 1: "The Works of George Berkeley, D.D., formerly Bishop of Cloyne, including many of his Works hitherto unpublished, with Preface, Annotations, his Life and Letters, and an Account of his Philosophy." By A.C. Fraser. Four vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1871.]

[Footnote 2: In justice to Sir Robert, however, it is proper to remark that he declared afterwards, that he gave his assent to Berkeley's scheme for the Bermuda University only because he thought the House of Commons was sure to throw it out.]

Hardly any epoch in the intellectual history of England is more remarkable in itself, or possesses a greater interest for us in these latter days, than that which coincides broadly with the conclusion of the seventeenth and the opening of the eighteenth century.

The political fermentation of the preceding age was gradually working itself out; domestic peace gave men time to think; and the toleration won by the party of which Locke was the spokesman, permitted a freedom of speech and of writing such as has rarely been exceeded in later times.

Fostered by these circumstances, the great faculty for physical and metaphysical inquiry, with which the people of our race are naturally endowed, developed itself vigorously; and at least two of its products have had a profound and a permanent influence upon the subsequent course of thought in the world. The one of these was English Freethinking; the other, the Theory of Gravitation.

Looking back to the origin of the intellectual impulses of which these were the results, we are led to Herbert, to Hobbes, to Bacon; and to one who stands in advance of all these, as the most typical man of his time—Descartes. It is the Cartesian doubt—the maxim that assent may properly be given to no propositions but such as are perfectly clear and distinct—which, becoming incarnate, so to speak, in the Englishmen, Anthony Collins, Toland, Tindal, Woolston, and in the wonderful Frenchman, Pierre Bayle, reached its final term in Hume.