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No. 10—R.P.A.CHEAP REPRINTS.
INCLUDING THE
Famous Belfast Address
LECTURES
AND
ESSAYS
By PROFESSOR TYNDALL
WATTS & Co.,
17, JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, LONDON, E.C.
(issued for the rationalist press
association, limited)
SECOND IMPRESSION, completing’ 35,000 copies.
D,
« ST
��Ife,
NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
LECTURES AND ESSAYS
�CONTENTS
PAGE
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94
Reflections on Prayer and Natural Law ■
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97
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Biographical Sketch of
The Belfast Address
Apology for
ti-ie
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Author
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Belfast Address
the
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Scientific Materialism Scientific Use of
Science
Man
and
Vitality
Miracles
and
On Prayer
Imagination
the
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Special Providences
as a
Science and
the
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Form of Physical Energy“ Spirits
117
�LECTURES
>
AND ESSAYS
BY
JOHN TYNDALL
(Cullings from “ Fragments of Science ”)
[issued
for the rationalist press association, ltd.]
WATTS & CO.,
17, JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, LONDON, E.C.
1909
��BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH1
John Tyndall, natural philosopher,
son of John Tyndall and his wife Sarah
(Macassey), was born at Leighlin Bridge,
co. Carlow, Ireland, on August 2nd,
1820. The Tyndalls, who claimed rela
tionship with the family of William
Tyndale the martyr, had crossed from
Gloucestershire to Ireland in the seven
teenth century. The elder John Tyndall,
son of a small landowner, although poor,
was a man of superior intellect, and he
gave his son the best education which
his circumstances could afford. At the
local national school young Tyndall
acquired a thorough knowledge of
elementary mathematics, which quali
fied him to. enter as civil assistant
(in 1839) the ordnance survey of Ireland.
In 1842 he was selected, as one of the
best draughtsmen in his department, for
employment on the English survey.
While quartered at Preston in Lanca
shire he joined the mechanics’ institute,
and attended its lectures. He was at
this time much impressed by Carlyle’s
Past and Present, and to the stimula
ting influence of Carlyle’s works was in
part' due his later resolve to follow a
scientific career. On quitting the survey
Tyndall was employed for three years as
a railway engineer.
In 1847 he accepted an offer from
George Edmondson, principal of Queen
wood College, Hampshire, to join the
college staff as teacher of mathematics
■hi
and surveying.
Mr. (afterwards Sir
Edward) Frankland was lecturer on
chemistry, and the two young men
agreed respectively to instruct each other
in chemistry and mathematics. But
Queenwood did not yield all the oppor
tunities they wished for, and they
presently resolved to take advantage of
the excellent instruction to be enjoyed
at the university of Marburg in HesseCassel. The decision was for Tyndall a
momentous one. He had nothing but
his own work and slender savings to
depend on, and his friends thought him
mad for abandoning the brilliant possi
bilities then open to a railway engineer.
In October, 1848, Tyndall and Frank
land settled at Marburg. Tyndall at
tended Bunsen’s lectures on experimental
and practical chemistry, and studied
mathematics and physics .in the classes
and laboratories of Stegmann, Gerling,
and Knoblauch. By intense application
he accomplished in less than two years
the work usually extended over three,
and thus became doctor of philosophy
early in 1850. Thenceforward he was
free to devote himself entirely to original
research.
x
His first scientific paper was a mathe
matical essay on screw surfaces—“ Die
Schraubenflache mit geneigter Erzeugungslinie und die Bedingungen des
Gleichgewichts fur solche Schrauben
which formed his inaugural dissertation
Smith-E,te-& Co-
- tetolf of
�biographical sketch
6
At Easter, 1851, Tyndall finally left
when he took his degree. His first I
Marburg and went to Berlin, where he
physical paper, published in the Philo
sophical Magazine for February, I^5I> became acquainted with many eminent
was on “The Phenomena of a Water Jet” men of science. In the laboratory of
—a subject comparatively simple, but not Professor Magnus he conducted a second
investigation on “ Diamagnetism and
without scientific interest.
In conjunction with Knoblauch, Tyn Magne-crystallic Action,”1 which formed
a sequel to that previously undertaken
dall executed and published an impor
with Knoblauch. A paper describing his
tant investigation “ On the Magneto
results was read at the Ipswich meeting
optic Properties of Crystals and the
of the British Association. He showed
Relation of Magnetism and Diamag
netism to Molecular Arrangement.”1 that the antithesis of the two forces
was absolute : diamagnetism resembling
They claimed to have discovered the
existence of a relation between the magnetism as to polarity and all other
density of matter and the manifestation characteristics, differing from it only by
the substitution of repulsion for attrac
of the magnetic force. Their funda
mental idea was that the component tion and vice versa.
The question of diamagnetic polarity
molecules of crystals, and other sub
was much discussed. Its existence,
stances, are not in every direction at the
originally asserted by Faraday, and
same distance from each other. The
superior magnetic energy of a crystal in reaffirmed by Weber in 1848, had been
subsequently denied by Faraday, who
a given direction, when suspended
still continued doubtful. To meet all
between the poles, they attributed
objections, Tyndall, at a later date, again
to the greater closeness of its mole
took up the subject, and in three con
cules in that direction. In support
clusive investigations, the second of
of their assumption they showed that, by
which formed the subject of the Bakenan
pressure, the magnetic axis of a bismuth
crystal could be shifted 909 in azimuth, lecture delivered before the Royal Society
in 1855, he put the polarity of bismuth
the line of pressure always setting itself
and other diamagnetic bodies beyond
parallel with, or at right angles to, the
question.2 Five years were. devoted _ by
fine joining the two magnetic poles, ac
him to the investigation of diamagnetism
cording as the crystal was magnetic or
and the influence of crystalline struc
diamagnetic. This explanation differed
ture and mechanical pressure upon the
essentially from that of Faraday and
manifestations of magnetic force. The
Pliicker. In June, 1850, Tyndall went
original papers (with a few omissions in
to England, and at the meeting of the
the last edition) are collected in his book
British Association of that year in Edin
burgh he read an account of his investiga on Diamagnetism (see p. 12).
Before leaving Marburg in 1851,
tion, which excited considerable interest.
Tyndall had agreed to return to Queen
He afterwards returned to Marburg for
wood ; this time as lecturer on matter
six months, and carried out a lengthy
; matics and natural philosophy. Here
inquiry into electro-magnetic attractions
at short distances.2
1 Phil. Mag., September,
„
» lb., November, 1851 1
«Phil. Mag-P^h 1850.
2 lb., April, 1851.
ib., 1856, pt. i.
Trans., x8SSI
�BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
7
■ he remained two years. The first of first to last resembled that of father and
the three investigations just alluded to son. Tyndall’s Faraday as a Discoverer
' was carried out at Queenwood, as was bears striking testimony to their attach
I also a Series of experiments on “The ment. Other sketches of Faraday by
Conduction of Heat through Wood.”1 Tyndall are in his Fragments of Science
On June 3rd, 1852, Tyndall was elected and in the life of Faraday in the
fellow of the Royal Society.
Dictionary of National Biography.
While at Queenwood he applied for
Tyndall’s career was now definitely
several positions which offered a wider marked out. To the end of his active
scope for his abilities. On his way to life his best energies were devoted to the
Ipswich in 1851 he had made the service of the Royal Institution. In
acquaintance of T. H. Huxley, and a 1867, when Faraday died, Tyndall suc
warm and enduring friendship resulted. ceeded him in his position as superin
. They made joint applications for the tendent of the Institution. On his own
chairs respectively of natural history retirement in the autumn of 1887 he
and physics then vacant at Toronto; was elected honorary professor.
but, tn spite of high testimonials, they
In 1854, after attending the British
were unsuccessful. They also failed Association meeting at Liverpool, Tyndall
tn candidatures for chairs in the newly- visited the slate quarries of Penrhyn.
founded university of Sydney, New His familiarity with the effects of pres
South Wales. Meanwhile, soon after sure upon the structure of crystals led
Tyndall’s departure from Berlin, Dr. him to give special attention to the
Henry Bence Jones visited that city, problem of slaty cleavage. By careful
and, hearing much of Tyndall’s labours observation and experiments with white
and personality, caused him to be wax and many other substances which
invited to give a Friday evening lecture develop cleavage in planes perpendicular
at the Royal Institution. The lecture,
to pressure, he satisfied himself that
“On the Influence of Material Aggregation pressure alone was sufficient to produce
Upon the Manifestations of Force,”2 was the cleavage of slate rocks. On June 6th,
delivered on February nth, 1853. It 1856, he lectured on the subject at the
produced an extraordinary impression, Royal Institution.1 Huxley, who was
and Tyndall, hitherto known only among present, suggested afterwards that the
physicists, became famous beyond the same cause might possibly explain the
limits of scientific society. In May, 1853, laminated structure of glacier ice recently
he was unanimously chosen as professor described in Forbes’s Travels in the
of natural philosophy in the Royal Alps. The friends agreed to take a
Institution. The appointment had the holiday and inspect the glaciers together.
special charm of making him the colleague The results of the observations made
of Faraday. Seldom have two men during this and two subsequent visits to
worked together so harmoniously as did Switzerland are given in Tyndall’s classi
Faraday and Tyndall during the years cal work, The Glaciers of the Alps
that followed. Their relationship from (see p. 12). The original memoirs are
in the Philosophical Transactions for
' See “ Molecular Influences,” Phil. Trans.,
Jvmaxy, 1853.
* 2?^/. Inst. Proc., i. 185.
1 See appendix to Glaciers of the Alps.
�8
Biographical
sketch
The very important series of researches
1857 and 1859. Tyndall, assisted by his
on “Radiant Heat in its Relation to
friend, Dr. Thomas Archer Hirst, made
many measurements upon the glaciers in Gases and Vapours,” which occupied him
continuation of the work of Agassiz and on and off for twelve years, and with
J. D. Forbes. He discussed, in particular, which his name will be always especially
the question as to the conditions which associated, were begun in 1859. He
enable a rigid body like ice to move like was led from the consideration of glacier
a river.
He showed very clearly the problems to study the part played by
defects of former theories, proving by aqueous vapour and other constituents
repeated observations on the structure of the atmosphere in producing the
and properties of ice the inefficacy of the remarkable conditions of temperature
generally admitted plastic theory to ac which prevail in mountainous regions.
The inquiry was one of exceptional diffij
count for the phenomena. Through the
direct application of the doctrine of culty. Prior to 1859 no means had been
regelation, he arrived at a satisfactory found of determining by experiment, as
explanation of the nature of glacier Melloni had done for solids and liquids,
the absorption, radiation, and trans
motion. The veined structure he as
cribed to mechanical pressure, and the mission of heat by gases and vapours.
By the invention of new and more deli
formation of crevasses to strains and
cate methods Tyndall succeeded in
pressures occurring in the body of the
glacier. In assigning to Rendu his controlling the refractory gases. . Fie
found unsuspected differences to exist in
position in the history of glacier theories,
their respective powers of absorption.
Tyndall gave offence to Professor
While elementary gases offered practi
Forbes. A controversy followed, in
cally no obstacle to the passage of heat
which the fairness of Tyndall’s attitude
rays, some of the compound gases
was fully vindicated.
absorbed more than eighty per cent, of
The expedition to Switzerland, under
the incident radiation. Allotropic forms
taken for a scientific purpose, had a
came under the same rule; ozone, for
secondary outcome. Tyndall was fasci
example, being a much better absorbent
nated by the mountains, and from that
than oxygen. The temperature of the
time forward yearly sought refreshment
source of heat was found to be of
in the Alps when his labours in London importance: heat of a higher tempAwere over. He became an accomplished
ture was much more penetrative than
mountaineer. In company with Mr.
Vaughan Hawkins he made one of the heat of a lower temperature.
The power to absorb and the power to
earliest assaults upon the Matterhorn in
radiate Tyndall showed to be perfectly
i860. He crossed over its summit from
reciprocal. He also established that, as
Breuil to Zermatt in 1868. The first
regards their powers of absorption and
ascent of the Weisshorn was made by him,
radiation, liquids and their vapours res
in 1861. Tyndall’s descriptions of his
pectively follow the same order. . Thus
Alpine adventures are not only graphic and he was able to determine the position bf
characterised by his keen interest in scien
aqueous vapour, which, on account of
tific problems, but show a poetical appre condensation, could not be experimented
ciation of mountain beauties in which he
[ upon directly. Experiments made with
is approached by few Alpine travellers.
�BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
dry and humid air corroborated the
inference that, as water transcends all
Other liquids, so aqueous vapour is
powerful above all other vapours as a
radiator and absorber. These results,
questioned by Magnus and by a few
liter experimenters, but fully established
by Tyndall, explained a number of
phenomena previously unaccounted for.
Since Wells’s researches on dew, no fact
has been established of greater impor
tance to the science of meteorology than
the high absorptive and radiative power
Of aqueous vapour. Many years later
<n experiment made in his presence by
Mr. Graham Bell suggested to Tyndall
a novel and interesting method of indi
rectly confirming his former results.1
Using a dark solution of iodine in
bisulphide of carbon as a ray-filter,
Tyndall was able approximately to
determine the proportion of luminous
to non-luminous rays in the electric and
Other lights. He also found that the
obscure rays collected by means of a
rock-salt lens would ignite combustible
materials at the invisible focus; while
some non-combustible bodies, exposed at
the same dark focus, became luminous
or calorescent. The astounding change
in the deportment of matter towards heat
»diated from an obscure source which
accompanies the act of chemical com
bination, and many other points of equal
importance, were first established by
these researches, for which Tyndall
received the Rumford medal in 1869.
Nine memoirs on these subjects were
published in the Philosophical Transac
tions^ and many additional papers in
other journals. They have been gathered
together in Contributions to Molecular
* See “Action of Free Molecules on Radiant
Heat, and its Conversion thereby into Sound,”
1882, pt. i.
9
Physics in the Domain of Radiant Heat
(see p. 12). This volume also includes
a series of striking experiments on the
decomposition of vapours by light,
wherein the blue of the firmament and
the polarisation of sky-light—illustrated
on skies artificially produced — were
shown to be due to excessively fine
particles floating in our atmosphere.
While engaged upon the last-mentioned
inquiry, Tyndall observed that a lumi
nous beam, passing through the moteless
air of his experimental tube, was invisible.
It occurred to him that such a beam
might be utilised to detect the presence
of germs in the atmosphere : air incom
petent to scatter light, through the
absence of all floating particles, must be
free from bacteria and their germs.
Numerous experiments showed “opti
cally pure ” air to be incapable of
developing bacterial life. In properly
protected vessels infusions of fish, flesh,
and vegetable, freely exposed after boiling
to air rendered moteless by subsidence,
and declared to be so by the invisible
passage of a powerful electric beam,
remained permanently pure and un
altered ; whereas the identical liquids,
exposed afterwards to ordinary dust
laden air, soon swarmed with bacteria.
Three extensive investigations into the
behaviour of putrefactive organisms were
made by Tyndall, mainly with the view
of removing such vagueness as still lin
gered in the public mind in 1875-6,
regarding the once widely-received doc
trine of spontaneous generation. Among
the new results arrived at the following
are noteworthy.
Bacteria are killed
below ioo° C.; but their desiccated
germs—those of the hay bacillus in par
ticular—may retain their vitality after
several hours’ boiling.
By a process
which he called “ discontinuous heating,”
�IO
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
whereby the germs, in the order of their
development, were successively destroyed
before starting into active life, he suc
ceeded in sterilising nutritive liquids
containing the most resistant germs.
This method, since universally adopted
by bacteriologists, has proved of great
practical value. The medical faculty of
Tubingen gave Tyndall the degree of
M.D. in recognition of these researches.
The original essays, written for the
Philosophical Transactions, are collected
in Floating Matter of the Air (see
p. 12).
In 1866 Tyndall had succeeded
Faraday as scientific adviser to the
Trinity House and Board of Trade. He
held the post for seventeen years, and it
was in connection with the Elder Brethren
that his chief investigations on sound
were undertaken, with a view to the
establishment of fog signals upon our
coasts. Many conflicting opinions were
held as to the respective values of
the various sound signals in use when
Tyndall began his experiments at the
South Foreland (May 19th, 1873). Very
discordant results appeared at first, but
all were eventually traced to variations
of density in the atmosphere. Tyndall
discovered that non-homogeneity of the
atmosphere affects sound as cloudiness
affects light. By streams of air differently
heated, or saturated in different degrees
with aqueous vapour, “acoustic flocculence” is produced. Acoustic clouds,
opaque enough to intercept sound
altogether and to produce echoes of
great intensity, may exist in air of perfect
visual transparency. Rain, hail, snow,
and fog were found not sensibly to
obstruct sound.
The atmosphere was
also shown to exercise a selective and con
tinually varying influence upon sounds,
being favourable to the transmission
sometimes of the longer, sometimes of
the shorter, sonorous waves. Tyndall
recommended the steam siren used in
the South Foreland experiments as, upon
the whole, the most powerful fog signal
yet tried in England.
His memoir on
the subject, presented to the Royal
Society on February 5th, 1874, is sum
marised in the book on Sound (see
p. 12).
Passing mention should be
made of the beautiful experiments on
sensitive flames described in the same
volume.
It was likewise in his capacity of
scientific adviser that Tyndall was called
upon, in 1869 and on many subsequent
occasions, to report upon the gas system
introduced by Mr. John Wigham, of
Dublin, the originator of several impor
tant steps in modern lighthouse illumina
tion. Tyndall’s inability, during a long
series of years, to secure what he con
sidered justice towards Mr. Wigham led
him eventually to sever himself from
colleagues to whom he was sincerely
attached.
He resigned his post on
March 28th, 1883.1
As a lecturer Tyndall was famed for
the charm and animation of his language,
for lucidity of exposition, and singular
skill in devising and conducting beautiful
experimental illustrations. As a writer
he did perhaps more than any other
person of his time for the diffusion of
scientific knowledge. By the publication
of his lectures and essays he aimed espe
cially at rendering intelligible to all, in
non-technical language, the dominant
scientific ideas of the century. His
work has borne abundant fruit in
inciting others to take up the great
interests which possessed so powerful an
1 See Nineteenth Century, July, 1888 ; Fort
nightly Review, December, 1888, and February,
1889 ; New Review, 1892.
�BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
attraction for himself. In Heat as a
Mode of Motion (see p. 12), which has
been regarded as the best of Tyndall’s
books, that difficult subject was for the
first time presented in a popular form.
The book on Light gives the substance
of lectures delivered in the United
States in the winter of 1872-3. The
proceeds of these lectures, which by
jttdiefous investment amounted in a few
years to between ^6,000 and ^7,000,
were devoted to the encouragement of
science in the United States.
His views upon the great question as
to the relation between science and
theological opinions are best given in his
presidential address to the British Asso
ciation at Belfast in 1874, which occa
sioned much controversy at the time
(reprinted, with essays on kindred sub
jects, in Fragments of Science, vol. ii.).
The main purpose of that address was
to maintain the claims of science to
discuss all such questions fully and
freely in all their bearings.
On February 29th, 1876, Tyndall mar
ried Louisa, eldest daughter of Lord
Claud Hamilton, who became his com
panion in all things. In 1877 they built
a cottage at Bel Alp, on the northern
side of the Valaise, above Brieg. There
they spent their summers amid his
favourite haunts.
In 1885 they built
what Tyndall called “a retreat for his
old age” upon the summit of Hind
Head, on the Surrey moors, then a very
retired district. Sleeplessness and weak
ness of digestion—ills from which he
had suffered more or less all his life—
increased upon him in later years, and
Caused him to resign his post at the
Royal Institution in March, 1887. His
later years were for the most part spent
at Hind Head. Repeated attacks of
severe illness, unhappily, prevented the
ii
execution of the many plans he had laid
out for his years of retirement. In 1893
he returned greatly benefited from a
three months’ sojourn in the Alps. But
a dose of chloral, accidentally adminis
tered, brought all to a close on December
4th, 1893.
Tyndall’s single-hearted devotion to
science and indifference to worldly advan
tages were but one manifestation of a noble
and generous nature.
A resolute will
and lofty principles, always pointing to a
high ideal, were in him associated with
great tenderness and consideration for
others. His chivalrous sense of justice
led him not unfrequently—irrespective
of nationality or even of personal ac
quaintance, and often at great cost of
time and trouble to himself—to take up
the cause of men whom he deemed to
have been unfairly treated or overlooked
in respect to their scientific merits. He
thus vindicated the claim of the unfortu
nate German physician, Dr. Julius
Robert Mayer, to have been the first to
lay down clearly the principle of the
conservation of energy and to point out
its universal application ; and succeeded
in obtaining his recognition by the
scientific world in spite of eminent
opposition.
The same spirit appeared
in his defence of Rendu’s title to a share
in the explanation of glacier movement,
and of Wigham’s services in regard to
lighthouses.
Tyndall took a warm interest in some
great political questions.
He sided
strongly with the Liberal Unionists in
opposing Mr. Gladstone’s Home Rule
policy.
Tyndall was of middle height, sparely
built, but with a strength, toughness, and
flexibility of limb which qualified him
to endure great fatigue and achieve the
�12
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
most difficult feats as a mountaineer.
His face was rather stern and strongly
marked, but the sharp features assumed
an exceedingly pleasing expression when
his sympathy was touched ; and the effect
was heightened by the quality of his
voice. His eyes were grey-blue, and his
hair, light-brown in youth, was abundant
and of very fine texture. He had gener
ally, like Faraday, to bespeak a hat on
account of the unusual length of his
head. A medallion of Tyndall, executed
by Woolner in 1876, is, perhaps, the best
likeness that exists of him.
Tyndall’s works have been translated
into most European languages.
In
Germany (where Helmholtz and Wiede
mann undertook the translations and
wrote prefaces) they are read almost as
much as in England. Some thousands of
his books are sold yearly in America, and
a few translations have been made into
the languages of India, China, and Japan.
In the Royal Society’s catalogue of
scientific papers 145 entries appear
under Tyndall’s name between 1850
and 1883, indicating approximately the
number of his contributions to the
Philosophical Transactions, the Philo
sophical Magazine, the Proceedings of the
Royal Society and of the Royal Institu
tion, and other scientific journals. A
great variety of subjects besides those
glanced at above occupied his attention.
They are for the most part dealt with in
the miscellaneous essays collected in
Fragments of Science and New Frag
ments. The essence of his teaching is
contained in the following publications :
1. The Glaciers of the Alps, being a
Narrative of Excursions and Ascents, an
Account of the Origin and Phenomena
of Glaciers, and an Exposition of the
Physical Principles to which they are
Related, i860; reprinted in 1896; trans
lated for the first time into German in
1898. 2. Mountaineering in 1861: A
Vacation Tour, 1862 (mostly repeated in
Hours of Exercise). 3. Pleat Considered
as a Mode of Motion, 1863; fresh
editions, each altered and enlarged,*n
1865, 1868, 1870, 1875 ; the sixth
edition, 1880, was stereotyped. 4. On
Sound, a course of eight lectures, 1867 ;
3rd edit., with additions, 1875 ; 4th
edit., revised and augmented, 1883 ; 5th
edit., revised, 1893. 5. Faraday as a
Discoverer, 1868; 5th edit., revised
1894. 6. Researches on Diamagnetism
and Magne-crystallic Action, including
the Question of Diamagnetic Polarity,
1870; third and smaller edition, 1888.
7. Fragments of Science for Unscientific
People: A Series of Detached Essays,
Lectures, and Reviews, 1871; augmented
in the first five editions; from 6th edit.,
1879, in two vols. 8- Hours of Exercise
in the Alps, 1871 ; 2nd edit., 1871; 3rd
edit., 1873; reprinted in 1899. 9.
Contributions to Molecular Physics in
the Domain of Radiant Heat: A Series
of Memoirs published in the Philosophical
Transactions and Philosophical Magazine,
with additions, 1872. 10. The Forms of
Water in Clouds and Rivers, Ice, and
Glaciers (International Scientific Series),
1872 ; 12th edit., 1897. 11. Six Lectures
on Light, delivered in America in 1872-3,
1873; 5th edit., 1895. 12. Lessons in
Electricity, at the Royal Institution, 1876;
5th edit., 1892. 13. Essays on the Float
ing Matter of the Air in Relation to Putre
faction and Infection, 1881; 2nd edit.,
1883. 14. New Fragments, 1892; last
edit., 1897. 15. Notes on Light: Nine
Lectures delivered in 1869, 1870. 16.
Notes on Electrical Phenomena and
Theories : Seven Lectures delivered in
1870, 1870.
L. C. T.
�LECTURES AND ESSAYS
THE BELFAST ADDRESS1
. § i.
An impulse inherent in primeval man
turned his thoughts and questionings
betimes towards the sources of natural
phenomena.
The same impulse, in
herited and intensified, is the spur of
scientific action to-day. Determined by
it, by a process of abstraction from
experience we form physical theories
which lie beyond the pale of experience,
but which satisfy the desire of the mind
to see every natural occurrence resting
upon a cause. In forming their notions
of the origin of things, our earliest
historic (and doubtless, we might add,
our prehistoric) ancestors pursued, as
far as their intelligence permitted, the
same course. They also fell back upon
experience 5 but with this difference—
that , the particular experiences which
furnished the warp and woof of their
theories were drawn, not from the study
of nature, but from what lay much
closer to them—the observation of men.
Their theories accordingly took an an
thropomorphic form. To supersensual
beings, which, “however potent and
invisible, were nothing but a species of
human creatures, perhaps raised from
among mankind, and retaining all human
passions and appetites,”2 were handed
Over the rule and governance of natural
phenomena.
Tested by observation and reflection,
these early notions failed in the long run I
to satisfy the more penetrating intellects
of our race.
Far in the depths of
history we find men of exceptional
power differentiating themselves from
the crowd, rejecting these anthropo
morphic notions, and seeking to con
nect natural phenomena with their
physical principles. But, long prior to
these purer efforts of the understanding,
the merchant had been abroad, and
rendered the philosopher possible;
commerce had been developed, wealth
amassed, leisure for travel and specula
tion secured, while races educated under
different conditions, and therefore differ
ently informed and endowed, had been
stimulated and sharpened by mutual
contact. In those regions where the
commercial aristocracy of ancient Greece
mingled with their eastern neighbours,
the sciences were born, being nurtured
and developed by free-thinking and
courageous men. The state of things
to be displaced may be gathered from a
passage of Euripides quoted by Hume:
“ There is nothing in the world; no
glory, no prosperity. The gods toss all
into confusion ; mix everything with its
reverse, that all of us, from our ignorance
and uncertainty, may pay them the more
worship and reverence.” Now, as science
demands the radical extirpation of caprice
and the absolute reliance upon law in
nature, there grew, with the growth of
scientific notions, a desire and determina
tion to sweep from the field of theory
Delivered before the British Association on Wednesday, August 10th, 1874.
2 Hume, Natural History of Religion.
�LECTURES AND ESSA YS
this mob of gods and demons, and to
place natural phenomena on a basis more
congruent with themselves.
The problem, which had been pre
viously approached from above, was now
attacked from below; theoretic effort
passed from the super- to the subsensible. It was felt that, to construct
the universe in idea, it was necessary to
have some notion of its constituent parts
_ of what Lucretius subsequently called
the “ First Beginnings.” Abstracting
again from experience, the leaders of
scientific speculation reached at length
the pregnant doctrine of atoms and
molecules, the latest developments of
which were set forth with such power
and clearness at the last meeting of the
British Association. Thought, no doubt,
had long hovered about this doctrine
before it attained the precision and com
pleteness which it assumed in the mind
of Democritus,1 a philosopher who may
well for a moment arrest our attention.
“ Few great men,” says Lange, a non
materialist, in his excellent History of
Materialism, to the spirit and to the
letter of which I am equally indebted,
“ have been so despitefully used by
history as Democritus. In the distorted
Images sent down to us through unscien
tific traditions there remains of him
almost nothing but the name of ‘the
laughing philosopher,’ while figures of im
measurably smaller significance spread
themselves out at full length before us.”
Lange speaks of Bacon’s high apprecia
tion of Democritus—for ample illustra
tions of which I am indebted to my
excellent friend Mr. Spedding, the learned
editor and biographer of Bacon. It is
evident, indeed, that Bacon considered
Democritus to be a man of weightier
metal than either Plato or Aristotle,
though their philosophy “was noised
and celebrated in the schools, amid the
din and pomp of professors.” It was not
they, but Genseric and Attila and the
barbarians, who destroyed the atomic
philosophy. “ For, at a time when all
1 Born 460 B.c.
human learning had suffered shipwreck,
these planks of Aristotelian and Platonic
philosophy, as being of a lighter and
more inflated substance, were preserved
and came down to us, while things
more solid sank and almost passed into
oblivion.”
The son of a wealthy father, Demo
critus devoted the whole of his inherited
fortune to the culture of his mind. He
travelled everywhere; visited Athens
when Socrates and Plato were there, but
quitted the city without making himself
known. Indeed, the dialectic strife in
which Socrates so much delighted had
no charm for Democritus, who held that
“the man who readily contradicts, and
uses many words, is unfit to learn any
thing truly right.” He is said to have
discovered and educated Protagoras the
Sophist, being struck as much by the
manner in which he, being a hewer of
wood, tied up his faggots as by the
sagacity of his conversation. Democritus
returned poor from his travels, was sup
ported by his brother, and _ at length
wrote his great work entitled “Diakosmos,”
which he read publicly before the people
of his native town. He was honoured
by his countrymen in various ways, and
died serenely at a great age.
The principles enunciated by Demo
critus reveal his uncompromising antago
nism to those who deduced the phenomena
of nature from the caprices of the gods.
They are briefly these: 1. From nothing
comes nothing. Nothing that exists can
be destroyed. All changes _ are due to
the combination and separation of mole
cules. 2. Nothing happens by chance j
every occurrence has its cause, from
which it follows by necessity. 3. The
only existing things are the atoms and
empty space; all else is mere opinion.
4. The atoms are infinite in number and
infinitely various in form ; they strike
together, and the lateral motions and
whirlings which thus arise are the begin
nings of worlds. 5- The varieties of all
things depend upon the varieties of their
atoms, in number, size, and aggregation.
6. The soul consists of fine, smooth,
�THE BELFAST ADDRESS
round atoms, like those of fire. These
are the most mobile of all: they inter
penetrate the whole body, and in their
motions the phenomena of life arise.
The first five propositions are a fair
general statement of the atomic philo
sophy, as now held. As regards the
sixth, Democritus made his finer atoms
do duty for the nervous system, whose
functions were then unknown.
The
atoms of Democritus are individually
without sensation; they combine in
obedience to mechanical laws ; and not
only organic forms, but the phenomena
of sensation and thought, are the result
of their combination.
That great enigma, “ the exquisite
adaptation of one part of an organism
to another part, and to the conditions of
life,” more especially the construction of
the human body, Democritus made no
attempt to solve. Empedocles, a man
of more fiery and poetic nature, intro
duced the notion of love and hate
among the atoms to account for their
combination and separation; and, bolder
than Democritus, he struck in with the
penetrating thought, linked, however,
with some wild speculation, that it lay
in the very nature of those combinations
which were suited to their ends (in
other words, in harmony with their
environment) to maintain themselves,
while unfit combinations, having no
proper habitat, must rapidly disappear.
Thus, more than 2,000 years ago, the
doctrine of the “ survival of the fittest,”
which in our day, not on the basis of
vague conjecture, but of positive know
ledge, has been raised to such extra
ordinary significance, had received at all
events partial enunciation.1
Epicurus,2 said to be the son of a poor
schoolmaster at Samos, is the next
dominant figure in the history of the
atomic philosophy.
He mastered the
writings of Democritus, heard lectures
in Athens, went back to Samos, and
subsequently wandered through various
countries. He finally returned to Athens,
* s«e Laxge, 2nd edit., p. 23.
2 Born 342 B.c.
15
where he bought a garden and sur
rounded himself by pupils, in the midst
of whom he lived a pure and serene life,
and died a peaceful death. Democritus
looked to the soul as the ennobling part
of man; even beauty, without under
standing, partook of animalism.
Epi
curus also rated the spirit above the
body; the pleasure of the body being
that of the moment, while the spirit
could draw upon the future and the past.
His philosophy was almost identical
with that of Democritus ; but he never
quoted either friend or foe. One main
object of Epicurus was to free the world
from superstition and the fear of death.
Death he treated with indifference. It
merely robs us of sensation. As long as
we are, death is not; and when death
is, we are not. Life has no more evil
for him who has made up his mind that
it is no evil not to live. He adored the
gods, but not in the ordinary fashion.
The idea of Divine power, properly
purified, he thought an elevating one.
Still he taught: “Not he is godless who
rejects the gods of the crowd, but rather
he who accepts them.” The gods were
to him eternal and immortal beings,
whose blessedness excluded every thought
of care or occupation of any kind. Nature
pursues her course in accordance with
everlasting laws, the gods never inter
fering. They haunt
“ The lucid interspace of world and world
Where never creeps a cloud or moves a wind,
Nor ever falls the least white star of snow,
Nor ever lowest roll of thunder moans,
Nor sound of human sorrow mounts to mar
Their sacred everlasting calm.”1
Lange considers the relation of Epi
curus to the gods subjective ; the indica
tion, probably, of an ethical requirement
of his own nature.
We cannot read
history with open eyes, or study human
nature to its depths, and fail to discern
such a requirement.
Man never has
been, and he never will be, satisfied with
the operations and products of the
Understanding alone; hence physical
1 Tennyson’s Lucretius,
�LECTURES AND ESSA YS
i6
science cannot cover all the demands of
his nature. B at the history of the efforts
made to satisfy these demands might be
broadly described as a history of errors
—the error, in great part, consisting in
ascribing fixity to that which is fluent,
which varies as we vary, being gross when
we are gross, and becoming, as our capa
cities widen, more abstract and sublime.
On one great point the mind of Epicurus
was at peace. He neither sought nor
expected, here or hereafter, any personal
profit from his relation to the gods. And
it is assuredly a fact that loftiness and
serenity of thought may be promoted by
conceptions which involve no idea of
profit of this kind. “ Did I not believe,”
said a great man1 to me once, “ that an
Intelligence is at the heart of things, my
life on earth would be intolerable.” The
utterer of these words is not, in my
opinion, rendered less but more noble
by the fact that it was the need of ethical
harmony here, and not the thought
of personal happiness hereafter, that
prompted his observation.
There are persons, not belonging to
the highest intellectual zone, nor yet to
the lowest, to whom perfect clearness of
exposition suggests want of depth. They
find comfort and edification in an abstract
and learned phraseology. To such people
Epicurus, who spared no pains to rid his
style of every trace of haze and turbidity,
appeared, on this very account, super
ficial. He had, however, a disciple who
thought it no unworthy occupation to
spend his days and nights in the effort
to reach the clearness of his master, and
to whom the Greek philosopher is mainly
indebted for the extension and perpetua
tion ot his fame.
Some two centuries
after the death of Epicurus, Lucretius2
wrote his great poem, On the Nature of
Things, in which he, a Roman, developed
with extraordinary ardour the philosophy
of his Greek predecessor. He wishes to
win over his friend Memnius to the
school of Epicurus ; and although he has
no rewards in a future life to offer,
’ Carlyle.
3 Born 99 B. C.
although his object appears to be a purely
negative one, he addresses his friend with
the heat of an apostle. • His object, like
that of his great forerunner, is the destruc
tion of superstition; and considering that
men in his day trembled before every
natural event as a direct monition from
the gods, and that everlasting torture
was also in prospect, the freedom aimed
at by Lucretius might be deemed a posi
tive good. “ This terror,” he says, “ and
darkness of mind, must be dispelled, not
by the rays of the sun and glittering
shafts of day, but by the aspect and the
law of nature.” He refutes the notion
that anything can come out of nothing,
or that what is once begotten can be
recalled to nothing. The first beginnings,
the atoms, are indestructible, and into
them all things can be resolved at last.
Bodies are partly atoms and partly com
binations of atoms; but the atoms
nothing can quench. They are strong
in solid singleness, and, by their denser
combination, all things can be closely
packed .and exhibit enduring strength.
He denies that matter is infinitely divisi
ble. We come at length to the atoms,
without which, as an imperishable sub
stratum, all order in the generation and
development of things would be des
troyed.
The mechanical shock of the atoms
being, in his view, the all-sufficient cause
of things, he combats the notion that the
constitution of nature has been in any
way determined by intelligent design.
The interaction of the atoms throughout
infinite time rendered all manner of
combinations possible.
Of these, the
fit ones persisted, while the unfit ones
disappeared. Not after sage deliberation
did the atoms station themselves.in their
right places, nor did they bargain what
motions they should assume. From all
eternity they have been driven together,
and, after trying motions and unions of
every kind, they fell at length _ into the
arrangements, out of which this system
of things has been evolved. . “ If you
will apprehend and keep in mind these
things, Nature, free at once and rid of
�THE BELFAST ADDRESS
her haughty lords, is seen to do all
things spontaneously of herself, without
the meddling of the gods.”1
To meet the objection that his atoms
cannot be seen, Lucretius describes a
violent storm, and shows that the in
visible particles of air act in the same
way as the visible particles of water.
We perceive, moreover, the different
smells of things, yet never see them
coming to our nostrils. Again, clothes
hung up on a shore, which waves break
upon, become moist, and then get dry if
spread out in the sun, though no eye can
see either the approach or the escape
of the water-particles. A ring, worn long
on the finger, becomes thinner; a water
drop hollows out a stone; the plough
share is rubbed away in the field; the
street-pavement is worn by the feet; but
the particles that disappear at any
moment we cannot see. Nature acts
through invisible particles. That Lu
cretius had a strong scientific imagina
tion the foregoing references prove. A
fine illustration of his power in this
respect is his explanation of the ap
parent rest of bodies whose atoms are in
motion. He employs the image of a
flock of sheep with skipping lambs,
which, seen from a distance, presents
simply a white patch upon the green hill,
the jumping of the individual lambs
being quite invisible.
His vaguely grand conception of the
atoms falling eternally through space
suggested the nebular hypothesis to
Kant, its first propounder. Far beyond
the limits of our visible world are to be
found atoms innumerable, which have
never been united to form bodies, or
which, if once united, have been again
dispersed—falling silently through im
measurable intervals of time and space.
As everywhere throughout the All the'
same conditions are repeated, so must
the phenomena be repeated also. Above
1 Monro’s translation. In bis criticism of this
work {Contemporary Review, 1867) Dr. Hayman
does not appear to be aware of the really sound
and subtile observations on which the reasoning
of Lucretius, though erroneous, sometimes rests.
17
us, below us, beside us, therefore, are
worlds without end; and this, when
considered, must dissipate every thought
of a deflection of the universe by the
gods. The worlds come and go, attract
ing new atoms out of limitless space, or
dispersing their own particles.
The
reputed death of Lucretius, which forms
the basis of Mr. Tennyson’s noble poem,
is in strict accordance with his philo
sophy, which was severe and pure.
§ 2-
Still earlier than these three philoso
phers, and during the centuries between
the first of them and the last, the human
intellect was active in other fields than
theirs. Pythagoras had founded a school
of mathematics, and made his experi
ments on the harmonic intervals. The
Sophists had run through their career.
At Athens had appeared Socrates, Plato,
and Aristotle, who ruined the Sophists,
and whose yoke remains to some extent
unbroken to the present hour. Within
this period also the School of Alexandria
was founded, Euclid wrote his Elements,
and made some advance in optics.
Archimedes had propounded the theory
of the lever and the principles of
hydrostatics. Astronomy was immensely
enriched by the discoveries of Hippar
chus, who was followed by the historically
more celebrated Ptolemy.
Anatomy
had been made the basis of scientific
medicine; and it is said by Draper1 that
vivisection had begun.
In fact, the
science of ancient Greece had already
cleared the world of the fantastic images of
divinities operating capriciously through
natural phenomena. It had shaken itself
free from that fruitless scrutiny “ by the
internal light of the mind alone,” which
had vainly sought to transcend experi
ence, and to reach a knowledge of
ultimate causes. Instead of accidental
observation, it had introduced observa
tion with a purpose; instruments were
employed to aid the senses, and scientific
1 History of the Intellectual Development 0]
Europe, p. 295.
�i8
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
method was rendered in a great measure
complete by the union of Induction and
Experiment.
What, then, stopped its victorious
advance ?
Why was the scientific
intellect compelled, like an exhausted
soil, to lie fallow for nearly two millen
niums, before it could regather the
elements necessary to its fertility and
strength ?
Bacon has already let us
know one cause; Whewell ascribes this
stationary period to four causes—obscu
rity of thought, servility, intolerance of
disposition, enthusiasm of temper; and
he gives striking examples of each.1 But
these characteristics must have had their
antecedents in the circumstances of the
time. Rome, and the other cities of the
Empire, had fallen into moral putrefac
tion. Christianity had appeared, offer
ing the Gospel to the poor, and by
moderation, if not asceticism of life,
practically protesting against the pro
fligacy of the age. The sufferings of the
early Christians, and the extraordinary
exaltation of mind which enabled them
to triumph over the diabolical tortures to
which they were subjected,2 must have
left traces not easily effaced. They
scorned the earth, in view of that “build
ing of God, that house not made with
hands, eternal in the heavens.” The
Scriptures which ministered to their
spiritual needs were also the measure of
their science.
When, for example, the
celebrated question of Antipodes came
to be discussed, the Bible was with many
the ultimate court of appeal. Augustine,
who flourished a.d. 400, would not deny
the rotundity of the earth; but he would
deny the possible existence of inhabi
tants at the other side, “ because no
such race is recorded in Scripture among
the descendants of Adam.” Archbishop
Boniface was shocked at the assumption
of a “ world of human beings out of
the reach of the means of salvation.”
Thus reined in, Science was not likely to
make much progress. Later on, the
’ History of the Inductive Sciences, vol. i.
* Described with terrible vividness in Renan’s
Antichrist.
political and theological strife between
the Church and civil governments, so
powerfully depicted by Draper, must
have done much to stifle investigation.
Whewell makes many wise and brave
remarks regarding the spirit of the Middle
Ages.
It was a menial spirit.
The
seekers after natural knowledge had for
saken the fountain of living waters, the
direct appeal to nature by observation
and experiment, and given themselves
up to the remanipulation of the notions
of their predecessors.
It was a time
when thought had become abject, and
when the acceptance of mere authority
led, as it always does in science, to
intellectual death. Natural events, in
stead of being traced to physical, were
referred to moral, causes; while an
exercise of the phantasy, almost as degra
ding as the spiritualism of the present
day, took the place of scientific specula
tion. Then came the mysticism of the
Middle Ages, Magic, Alchemy, the Neo
platonic philosophy, with its visionary
though sublime abstractions, which caused
men to look with shame upon their own
bodies, as hindrances to the absorption
of the creature in the blessedness of the
Creator.
Finally came the scholastic
philosophy, a fusion, according to Lange,
of the least mature notions of Aristotle
with the Christianity of the West. Intel
lectual immobility was the result. As' a
traveller without a compass in a fog may
wander long, imagining he is making
way, and find himself after hours of toil
at his starting-point, so the schoolmen,
having “ tied and untied the same knots,
and formed and dissipated the same
clouds,”1 found themselves at the end of
centuries in their old position.
With regard to the influence wielded
by Aristotle in the Middle Ages, and
which, to a less extent, he still wields, I
would ask permission to make one
remark.
When the human mind has
achieved greatness and given evidence
of extraordinary power in one domain,
there is a tendency to credit it with
’ Whewell.
�THE BELFAST ADDRESS
similar power in all other domains. Thus
theologians have found comfort and as
surance in the thought that Newton dealt
with the question of revelation—forgetful
of the fact that the very devotion of his
powers, through all the best years of his
life, to a totally different class of ideas,
not to speak of any natural disqualifica
tion, tended to render him less, instead
of more, competent to deal with theo
logical and historic questions.
Goethe,
starting from his established greatness as
a poet, and indeed from his positive dis
coveries in Natural History, produced a
profound impression among the painters
of Germany, when he published his
“ Farbenlehre,” in which he endeavoured
to overthrow Newton’s theory of colours.
This theory he deemed so obviously
absurd that he considered its author a
charlatan, and attacked him with a corre
sponding vehemence of language. In
the domain of Natural History Goethe
had made really considerable discoveries;
and we have high authority for assuming
that, had he devoted himself wholly to
that side of science, he might have
reached an eminence comparable with
that which he attained as a poet. In
sharpness of observation, in the detection
of analogies apparently remote, in the
Classification and organisation of facts
according to the analogies discerned,
Goethe possessed extraordinary powers.
These elements of scientific inquiry fall
in with the disciplines of the poet. But,
on the other hand, a mind thus richly
endowed in the direction of Natural His
tory may be almost shorn of endowment
as regards the physical and mechanical
sciences. Goethe was in this condition.
He could not formulate distinct mecha
nical conceptions; he could not see the
force of mechanical reasoning; and, in
regions where such reasoning reigns
Supreme, he became a mere ignis fatuus
to those who followed him.
I have sometimes permitted myself to
compare Aristotle with Goethe—to credit
the Stagirite with an almost superhuman
power of amassing and systematising
facts, but to consider him fatally defective
T9
on that side of the mind in respect to
which incompleteness has been just
ascribed to Goethe. Whewell refers the
errors of Aristotle not to a neglect of
facts, but to “a neglect of the idea
appropriate to the facts; the idea of
Mechanical cause, which is Force, and
the substitution of vague or inapplicable
notions, involving only relations of space
or emotions of wonder.” This is doubt
less true; but the word “ neglect
implies mere intellectual misdirection,
whereas in Aristotle, as in Goethe, it
was not, I believe, misdirection, but
sheer natural incapacity, which lay at the
root of his mistakes. As a physicist,
Aristotle displayed what we should con
sider some of the worst of attributes in
a modern physical investigator—indis
tinctness of ideas, confusion of mind,
and a confident use of language which
led to the delusive notion that he had
really mastered his subject, while he
had, as yet, failed to grasp even the
elements of it. He put words in the
place of things, subject in the place of
object. He preached Induction without
practising it, inverting the true order of
inquiry by passing from the general to
the particular, instead of from the par
ticular to the general. He made of the
universe a closed sphere, in the centre
of which he fixed the earth, proving from
general principles, to his own satisfaction
and to that of the world for near 2,000
years, that no other universe was possible.
His notions of motion were entirely
unphysical. It was natural or unnatural,
better or worse, calm or violent—no
real mechanical conception regarding it
lying at the bottom of his mind. He
affirmed that a vacuum could not exist,
and proved that if it did motion in it
would be impossible. He determined
a priori how many species of animals
must exist, and showed on general prin
ciples why animals must have such and
such parts. When an eminent contem
porary philosopher, who is far removed
from errors of this kind, remembers
these abuses of the a prion method, he
will be able to make allowance for the
�20
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
jealousy of physicists as to the accep
tance of so-called 4 priori truths. Aris
totle’s errors of detail, as shown by
Eucken and Lange, were grave and
numerous. He affirmed that only in
man we had the beating of the heart,
that the left side of the body was colder
than the right, that men have more teeth
than women, and that there is an empty
space at the back of every man’s head.
There is one essential quality in physical
conceptions which was entirely wanting
in those of Aristotle and his followers—
a capability of being placed as coherent
pictures before the mind. The Germans
express the act of picturing by the word
vorstellen, and the picture they call
a Vorstellung. We have no word in
English which comes nearer to our
requirements than Imagination ; and,
taken with its proper limitations, the
word answers very well. But it is tainted
by its associations, and therefore objec
tionable to some minds. Compare, with
reference to this capacity of mental
presentation, the case of the Aristotelian,
who refers the ascent of water in a pump
to Nature’s abhorrence of a vacuum,
with that of Pascal when he proposed
to solve the question of atmospheric
pressure by the ascent of the Puy de
Dome. In the one case the terms of
the explanation refuse to fall into place
as a physical image; in the other the
image is distinct, the descent and rise
of the barometer being clearly figured
beforehand as the balancing of two
varying and opposing pressures.
§3During the drought of the Middle
Ages in Christendom, the Arabian in
tellect, as forcibly shown by Draper, was
active. With the intrusion of the Moors
into Spain, order, learning, and refine
ment took the place of their opposites.
When smitten with disease, the Christian
peasant resorted to a shrine, the Moorish
one to an instructed physician. The
Arabs encouraged translations from the
Greek philosophers, but not from the
Greek poets. They turned in disgust
“ from the lewdness of our classical
mythology, and denounced as an un
pardonable blasphemy all connection
between the impure Olympian Jove and
the Most High God.” Draper traces
still farther than Whewell the Arab
elements in our scientific terms. He
gives examples of what Arabian men of
science accomplished, dwelling particu
larly on Alhazen, who was the first to
correct the Platonic notion that rays of
light are emitted by the eye. Alhazen
discovered atmospheric refraction, and
showed that we see the sun and the
moon after they have set. He explained
the enlargement of the sun and moon,
and the shortening of the vertical
diameters of both these bodies when
near the horizon. He was aware that
the atmosphere decreases in density with
increase of elevation, and actually fixed
its height at 58^ miles. In the Book of
the Balance of Wisdom he sets forth the
connection between the weight of the
atmosphere and its increasing density.
He shows that a body will weigh differ
ently in a rare and dense atmosphere,
and he considers the force with which
plunged bodies rise through heavier
media. He understood the doctrine of
the centre of gravity, and applied it to
the investigation of balances and steel
yards. He recognised gravity as a force,
though he fell into the error of assuming
it to diminish simply as the distance, and
of making it purely terrestrial. He knew
the relation between the velocities,
spaces, and times of falling bodies, and
had distinct ideas of capillary attraction.
He improved the hydrometer. The deter
minations of the densities of bodies, as
given by Alhazen, approach very closely
to our own. “I join,” says Draper, “in
the pious prayer of Alhazen, that in the
day of judgment the All-Merciful will
take pity on the soul of Abur-Raihan,
because he was the first of the race of
men to construct a table of specific
gravities.” If all this be historic truth
(and I have entire confidence in Dr.
Draper), well may he “ deplore the
�THE BELFAST ADDRESS
systematic manner in which the litera
ture of Europe has contrived to put out
of sight our scientific obligations to the
Mohammedans.”1
The strain upon the mind during the
stationary period towards ultra-terrestrial
things, to the neglect of problems close
at hand, was sure to provoke reaction.
But the reaction was gradual; for the
ground was dangerous, and a power was
at hand competent to crush the critic
who went too far. To elude this power,
and still allow opportunity for the ex
pression of opinion, the doctrine of “two
fold truth ” was invented, according to
which an opinion might be held “theo
logically,” and the opposite opinion
“philosophically.”2 Thus, in the thir
teenth century, the creation of the world
in six days, and the unchangeableness
of the individual soul, which had been
so distinctly affirmed by St. Thomas
Aquinas, were both denied philoso
phically, but admitted to be true as
articles of the Catholic faith. When
^Protagoras uttered the maxim which
brought upon him so much vituperation,
that “opposite assertions are equally
true,” he simply meant to affirm men’s
differences to be so great that what was
subjectively true to the one might be
subjectively untrue to the other. The
great Sophist never meant to play fast
and loose with the truth by saying that
one of two opposite assertions, made by
the same individual, could possibly
escape being a lie. It was not “ sophis
try,” but the dread of theologic ven
geance, that generated this double deal
tag with conviction; and it is astonishing
to notice what lengths were allowed to
men who were adroit in the use of
[artifices of this kind.
Towards the close of the stationary
period a word-weariness, if I may so
express it, took more and more possession
of men’s minds.
Christendom had
become sick of the School Philosophy
and its verbal wastes, which led to no
1 Intellectual Development of Europe, p. 359.
2 Lange, 2nd edit., pp. 181, 182.
issue, but left the intellect in everlasting
haze. Here and there was heard the
voice of one impatiently crying in the
wilderness: “Not unto Aristotle, not unto
subtle hypothesis, not unto church, Bible,
or blind tradition, must we turn for a
knowledge of the universe, but to the
direct investigation of nature by obser
vation and experiment.” In 1543 the
epoch-marking work of Copernicus on
the paths of the heavenly bodies appeared.
The total crash of Aristotle’s closed
universe, with the earth at its centre,
followed as a consequence, and “The
earth moves 1” became a kind of watch
word among intellectual freemen. Coper
nicus was Canon of the church of
Frauenburg in the diocese of Ermeland.
For three-and-thirty years he had with
drawn himself from the world, and
devoted himself to the consolidation of
his great scheme of the solar system.
He made its blocks eternal; and even to
those who feared it, and desired its over
throw, it was so obviously strong that
they refrained for a time from meddling
with it. In the last year of the life of
Copernicus his book appeared; it is said
that the old man received a copy of it a
few days before his death, and then
departed in peace.
The Italian philosopher, Giordano
Bruno, was one of the earliest converts
to the new astronomy. Taking Lucretius
as his exemplar, he revived the notion of
the infinity of worlds ; and, combining
with it the doctrine of Copernicus,
reached the sublime generalisation that
the fixed stars are suns, scattered number
less through space, and accompanied by
satellites, which bear the same relation
to them that our earth does to our sun,
or our moon to our earth. This was an
expansion of transcendent import; but
Bruno came closer than this to our
present line of thought. Struck with
the problem of the generation and
maintenance of organisms, and duly
pondering it, he came to the conclusion
that Nature, in her productions, does
not imitate the technic of man. Her
process is one of unravelling and unfolding.
�LECTURES AND ESSA YS
22
The infinity of forms under which
matter appears was not imposed upon it
by an external artificer; by its own
intrinsic force and virtue it brings these
forms forth. Matter is not the mere
naked empty capacity which philosophers
have pictured her to be, but the universal
mother, who brings forth all things as
the fruit of her own womb.
This outspoken man was originally a
Dominican monk.
He was accused of
heresy and had to fly, seeking refuge in
Geneva, Paris, England, and Germany.
In 1592 he fell into the hands of the
Inquisition at Venice. He was im
prisoned for many years, tried, degraded,
excommunicated, and handed over to
the civil power, with the request that he
should be treated gently, and “without
the shedding of blood.” This meant
that he was to be burnt; and burnt
accordingly he was, on February 16th,
1600. To escape a similar fate Galileo,
thirty-three years afterwards, abjured
upon his knees, with his hands upon the
holy Gospels, the heliocentric doctrine,
which he knew to be true. After Galileo
came Kepler, who from his German
home defied the ultramontane power. He
traced out from pre-existing observations
the laws of planetary motion. Materials
were thus prepared for Newton, who
bound those empirical laws together by
the principle of gravitation.
§ 4*
In the seventeenth century Bacon and
Descartes, the restorers of philosophy,
appeared in succession. Differently edu
cated and endowed, their philosophic
tendencies were different. Bacon held
fast to Induction, believing firmly in the
existence of an external world, and
making collected experiences the basis
of all knowledge.
The mathematical
studies of Descartes gave him a bias
towards Deduction; and his fundamental
principle was much the same as that of
Protagoras, who made the individual man
the measure of all things.
“ I think,
therefore I am,” said Descartes.
Only
his own identity was sure to him ; and
the full development of this system
would have led to an idealism, in which
the outer world would have been re
solved into a mere phenomenon of con
sciousness. Gassendi, one of Descartes’s
contemporaries, of whom we shall hear
more presently, quickly pointed out that
the fact of personal existence would be
proved as well by reference to any other
act as to the act of thinking. I eat,
therefore I am, or I love, therefore I am,
would be quite as conclusive. Lichten
berg, indeed, showed that the very thing
to be proved was inevitably postulated in
the first two words, “ I think
and it is
plain that no inference from the postulate
could, by any possibility, be stronger
than the postulate itself.
But Descartes deviated strangely from
the idealism implied in his fundamental
principle. He was the first to reduce,
in a manner eminently capable of bearing
the test of mental presentation, vital
phenomena to purely mechanical prin
ciples. Through fear or love, Descartes
was a good Churchman ; he accordingly
rejected the notion of an atom, because
it was absurd to suppose that God, if He
so pleased, could not divide an atom; he
puts in the place of the atoms small
round particles, and light splinters, out
of which he builds the organism. .He
sketches with marvellous physical insight
a machine, with water for its motive
power, which shall illustrate vital actions.
He has made clear to his mind that such
a machine would be competent to carry
on the processes of digestion, nutrition,
growth, respiration, and the beating of
the heart. It would be competent to
accept impressions from the external
sense, to store them up in imagination
and memory, to go through the internal
movements of the appetites and passions,
and the external movements of the limbs.
He deduces these functions of his
machine from the mere arrangement of
its organs, as the movement of a clock,
or other automaton, is deduced from its
weights and wheels.
“ As far as these
functions are concerned,” he says, “ it is
�THE BELFAST ADDRESS
not necessary to conceive any other
vegetative or sensitive soul, nor any other
principle of motion or of life, than the blood
and the spirits agitated by the fire which
burns continually in the heart, and which
is in nowise different from the fires exist
ing in inanimatebodies.” Had Descartes
been acquainted with the steam-engine,
he would have taken it, instead of a fall
of water, as his motive power. He would
have shown the perfect analogy which
exists between the oxidation of the food
in the body and that of the coal in
the furnace.
He would assuredly
have anticipated Mayer in calling the
blood, which the heart diffuses, “ the oil
of the lamp of life,” deducing all animal
motions from the combustion of this oil,
as the motions of a steam-engine are
deduced from the combustion of its coal.
As the matter stands, however, and con
sidering the circumstances of the time,
the boldness, clearness, and precision
with which Descartes grasped the prob
fem of vital dynamics constitute a
marvellous illustration of intellectual
power.1
During the Middle Ages the doctrine
of atoms had to all appearance vanished
from discussion. It probably held its
ground among sober-minded and thoughtful men, though neither the church nor
the world was prepared to hear of it with
tolerance. Once, in the year 1348, it
received distinct expression. But re
tractation by compulsion immediately
followed; and, thus discouraged, it
Slumbered till the seventeenth century,
when it was revived by a contemporary
and friend of Hobbes of Malmesbury,
the orthodox Catholic provost of Digne,
Gassendi. But, before stating his rela
tion to the Epicurean doctrine, it will be
well to say a few words on the effect, as
regards science, of the general introduc
tion of monotheism among European
nations.
“ Were men,” says Hume, “ led into
the apprehension of invisible intelligent
’ See Huxley’s admirable Essay on Descartes.
Sermons, pp. 364, 365.
«3
power by contemplation of the works of
Nature, they could never possibly enter
tain any conception but of one single
Being, who bestowed existence and order
on this vast machine, and adjusted all
its parts to one regular system.” Refer
ring to the condition of the heathen, who
sees a god behind every natural event,
thus peopling the world with thousands
of beings whose caprices are incalculable,
Lange shows the impossibility of any
compromise between such notions and
those of science, which proceeds on the
assumption of never-changing law and
causality. “ But,” he continues, with
characteristic penetration, “ when the
great thought of one God, acting as a
unit upon the universe, has been seized,
the connection of things in accordance
with the law of cause and effect is not
only thinkable, but it is a necessary con
sequence of the assumption. For when
I see ten thousand wheels in motion,
and know, or believe, that they are all
driven by one motive power, then I
know that I have before me a mecha
nism, the action of every part of which
is determined by the plan of the whole.
So much being assumed, it follows that
I may investigate the structure of that
machine, and the various motions of its
parts. For the time being, therefore,
this conception renders scientific action
free.” In other words, were a capricious
god at the circumference of every wheel
and at the end of every lever, the action
of the machine would be incalculable by
the methods of science. But the actions
of all its parts being rigidly determined
by their connections and relations, and
these being brought into play by a
single motive power, then, though this
last prime mover may elude me, I am
still able to comprehend the machinery
which it sets in motion. We have here
a conception of the relation of Nature
to its Author, which seems perfectly
acceptable to some minds, but perfectly
intolerable to others.
Newton and
Boyle lived and worked happily under
the influence of this conception ; Goethe
rejected it with vehemence, and the same
�24
LECTUEES AND ESSA FS
repugnance to accepting it is manifest in
Carlyle.1
The analytic and synthetic tendencies
of the human mind are traceable through
out history, great writers ranging them
selves sometimes on the one side, some
times on the other. Men of warm
feelings, and minds open to the elevating
impressions produced by nature as a
whole, whose satisfaction, therefore, is
rather ethical than logical, lean to the
synthetic side; while the analytic har
monises best with the more precise and
more mechanical bias which seeks the
satisfaction of the understanding. Some
form of pantheism was usually adopted
by the one, while a detached Creator,
working more or less after the manner of
men, was often assumed by the other.
Gassendi, as sketched by Lange, is
hardly to be ranked with either. Having
formally acknowledged God as the great
first cause, he immediately dropped the
idea, applied the known laws of mechanics
to the atoms, and deduced from them
all vital phenomena.
He defended
Epicurus, and dwelt upon his purity,
both of doctrine and of life. True he
was a heathen, but so was Aristotle.
Epicurus assailed superstition and re
ligion, and rightly, because he did not
know the true religion. He thought
that the gods neither rewarded nor
punished, and he adored them purely in
consequence of their completeness : here
we see, says Gassendi, the reverence of
the child, instead of the fear of the slave.
The errors of Epicurus shall be corrected,
and the body of his truth retained.
Gassendi then proceeds, as any heathen
might have done, to build up the world,
and all that therein is, of atoms and
molecules. God, who created earth and
water, plants and animals, produced in
the first place a definite number of
1 Boyle’s model of the universe was the Stras
burg clock with an outside Artificer. Goethe,
on the other hand, sang :—
“ Ihm ziemt’s die Welt im Innern zu bewegen,
Natur in sich, sich in Natur zu hegen.”
See also Carlyle, Fast and Present, chap. v.
atoms, which constituted the seed of all
things. Then began that series of com
binations and decompositions which
now goes on, and which will continue in
future. The principle of every change
resides in matter. In artificial produc
tions the moving principle is different
from the material worked upon; but in
nature the agent works within, being the
most active and mobile part of the
material itself. Thus this bold ecclesiastic,
without incurring the censure of the
Church or the world, contrives to outstrip
Mr. Darwin. The same cast of mind
which caused him to detach the Creator
from his universe led him also to detach
the soul from the body, though to the
body he ascribes an influence so large as
to render the soul almost unnecessary.
The aberrations of reason were, in his
view, an affair of the material brain.
Mental disease is brain-disease; but then
the immortal reason sits apart, and can
not be touched by the disease. The
errors of madness are those of the instru
ment, not of the performer.
It may be more than a mere result of
education, connecting itself, probably,
with the deeper mental structure of the
two men, that the idea of Gassendi,
above enunciated, is substantially the
same as that expressed by Professor
Clerk Maxwell, at the close of the very
able lecture delivered by him at Bradford
in 1873. According to both philoso
phers, the atoms, if I understand aright,
are prepared materials, which, formed
once for all by the Eternal, produce by
their subsequent interaction all the
phenomena of the material world. There
seems to be this difference, however,
between Gassendi and Maxwell. The one
postulates, the other infers, his first cause.
In his “ manufactured articles,” as he
calls the atoms, Professor Maxwell finds
the basis of an induction which enables
him to scale philosophic heights con
sidered inaccessible by Kant, and to
take the logical step from the atoms to
their Maker.
Accepting here the leadership of Kant,
I doubt the legitimacy of Maxwell’s
�THE BELFAST ADDRESS
25
draws the sharpest distinction between
our real selves and our bodily instru
ments.
He does not, as far as I
remember, use the word “soul,” possibly
because the term was so hackneyed in
his day, as it had been for many genera
tions previously.
But he speaks of
“living powers,” “perceiving or percipient
powers,” “moving agents,”“ourselves,” in
the same sense as we should employ the
term “ soul.” He dwells upon the fact
that limbs may be removed, and mortal
diseases assail the body, the mind,
almost up to the moment of death, re
maining clear. He refers to sleep and
to swoon, where the “ living powers ” are
suspended but not destroyed. He con
siders it quite as easy to conceive of
existence out of our bodies as in them ;
that we may animate a succession of
bodies, the dissolution of all of them
having no more tendency to dissolve
our real selves, or “ deprive us of living
faculties—the faculties of perception and
action—than the dissolution of any
foreign matter which we are capable of
receiving impressions from, or making
use of for the common occasions of life.”
This is the key of the Bishop’s position :
“ our organised bodies are no more a
part of ourselves than any other matter
around us.” In proof of this he calls
attention to the use of glasses, which
“prepare objects” for the “percipient
power ” exactly as the eye does. The
eye itself is no more percipient than the
glass; is quite as much the instrument
of the true self, and also as foreign to
the true self, as the glass is. “ And if
we see with our eyes only in the same
manner as we do with glasses, the like
§ 5<
may justly be concluded from analogy
of all our senses.”
Ninety years subsequent to Gassendi
Lucretius, as you are aware, reached a
the doctrine of bodily instruments, as it
may be called, assumed- immense im precisely opposite conclusion: and it
certainly would be interesting, if not
portance in the hands of Bishop Butler,
profitable, to us all to hear what he
who, in his famous Analogy of Religion^
would or could urge in opposition to the
developed, from his own point of view,
reasoning of the Bishop.
As a brief
and with consummate sagacity, a similar
discussion of the point will enable us to
idea. The Bishop still influences many
see the bearings of an important question,
superior minds; and it will repay us to
I will here permit a disciple of Lucretius
dwell for a moment on his views. He
logic; but it is impossible not to feel the
ethic glow with which his lecture con
cludes. There is, moreover, a very noble
strain of eloquence in his description of
the steadfastness of the atoms : “Natural
causes, as we know, are at work, which
tend to modify, if they do not at length
destroy, all the arrangements and dimen
sions of the earth and the whole solar
system. But though in the course of
ages catastrophes have occurred and
may yet occur in the heavens, though
ancient systems may be dissolved and
new systems evolved out of their ruins,
the molecules out of which these systems
are built—the foundation stones of the
material universe—remain unbroken and
unworn.”
The atomic doctrine, in whole or in
part, was entertained by Bacon, Des
cartes, Hobbes, Locke, Newton, Boyle,
and their successors, until the chemical
law of multiple proportions enabled
Dalton to confer upon it an entirely
new significance. In our day there are
secessions from the theory, but it still
stands firm. Loschmidt, Stoney, and
Sir William Thomson have sought to
determine the sizes of the atoms, or
rather to fix the limits between which
their sizes lie; while the discourses of
Williamson and Maxwell delivered in
Bradford in 1873 illustrate the present
hold of the doctrine upon the foremost
scientific minds. In fact, it may be
doubted whether, wanting this funda
mental conception, a theory of the
material universe is capable of scientific
statement.
�26
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
to try the strength of the Bishop’s posi
tion, and then allow the Bishop to
retaliate, with the view of rolling back,
if he can, the difficulty upon Lucretius.
The argument might proceed in this
fashion :—
“ Subjected to the test of mental pre
sentation (Vorstellungj, your views, most
honoured prelate, would offer to many
minds a great, if not an insuperable,
difficulty. You speak of ‘ living powers,’
• percipient or perceiving powers,’ and
‘ ourselves ’; but can you form a mental
picture of any of these, apart from the
organism through which it is supposed
to act ? Test yourself honestly, and see
whether you possess any faculty that
would enable you to form such a concep
tion. The true self has a local habitation
in each of us; thus localised, must it not
possess a form ? If so, what form ?
Have you ever for a moment realised it ?
When a leg is amputated the body is
divided into two parts; is the true self
in both of them or in one? Thomas
Aquinas might say in both; but not
you, for you appeal to the consciousness
associated with one of the two parts, to
prove that the other is foreign matter.
Is consciousness, then, a necessary ele
ment of the true self ? If so, what do you
say to the case of the whole body being
deprived of consciousness ? If not, then on
what grounds do you deny any portion of
the true self to the severed limb? It seems
very singular that, from the beginning to
the end of your admirable book (and no
one admires its sober strength more than
I do), you never once mention the brain
or nervous system. You begin at one
end of the body, and show that its parts
may be removed without prejudice to the
perceiving power. What if you begin at
the other end, and remove, instead of the
leg, the brain ? The body, as before, is
divided into two parts; but both are
now in the same predicament, and neither
can be appealed to to prove that the
other is foreign matter. Or, instead of
going so far as to remove the brain itself,
let a certain portion of its bony covering
be removed, and let a rhythmic series of
pressures and relaxations of pressure be
applied to the soft substance. At every
pressure ‘ the faculties of perception and
of action ’ vanish; at every relaxation of
pressure they are restored. Where, dur
ing the intervals of pressure, is the per
ceiving power ? I once had the discharge
of a large Leyden battery passed unex
pectedly through me : I felt nothing, but
was simply blotted out of conscious
existence for a sensible interval. Where
was my true self during that interval? Men
who have recovered from lightning-stroke
have been much longer in the same state;
and, indeed, in cases of ordinary con
cussion of the brain, days may elapse
during which no experience is registered
in consciousness.
Where is the man
himself during the period of insensibility ?
You may say that I beg the question
when I assume the man to have been
unconscious, that he was really conscious
all the time, and has simply forgotten
what had occurred to him. In reply to
this, I can only say that no one need
shrink from the worst tortures that super
stition ever invented, if only so felt and
so remembered. I do not think your
theory of instruments goes at all to the
bottom of the matter.
A telegraph
operator has his instruments, by means
of which he converses with the world ;
our bodies possess a nervous system,
which plays a similar part between the
perceiving power and external things.
Cut the wires of the operator, break his
battery, demagnetise his needle; by this
means you certainly sever his connection
with the world; but, inasmuch as these
are real instruments, their destruction
does not touch the man who uses them.
The operator survives, and he knows that
he survives. What is there, I would ask,
in the human system that answers to
this conscious survival of the operator
when the battery of the brain is so
disturbed as to produce insensibility, or
when it is destroyed altogether ?
“ Another consideration, which you
may regard as slight, presses upon me
with some force. The brain may change
from health to disease, and through such
�THE BELFAST ADDRESS
a change the most exemplary man may
be converted into a debauchee or a mur
derer. My very noble and approved
good master had, as you know, threatenings of lewdness introduced into his
brain by his jealous wife’s philter; and
sooner than permit himself to run even
the risk of yielding to these base prompt
ings he slew himself. How could the
hand of Lucretius have been thus turned
against himself if the real Lucretius
remained as before ? Can the brain or
can it not act in this distempered way
without the intervention of the immortal
reason? If it can, then it is a prime
mover which requires only healthy regu
lation to render it reasonably self-acting,
and there is no apparent need of your
immortal reason at all. If it cannot,
then the immortal reason, by its mis
chievous activity in operating upon a
broken instrument, must have the credit
of committing every imaginable extrava
gance and crime. I think, if you will
allow me to say so, that the gravest
consequences are likely to flow from
your estimate of the body. To regard
'th® brain as you -would a staff or an
-eyeglass—to shut your eyes to all its
aiystery, to the perfect correlation of its
condition and our consciousness, to the
fact that a slight excess or defect of
blood in it produces the very swoon to
which you refer, and that in relation to
it our meat, and drink, and air, and
exercise have a perfectly transcendental
value and significance—to forget all
this does, I think, open a way to innu
merable errors in our habits of life, and
may possibly, in some cases, initiate and
ffoster that very disease, and consequent
mental ruin, which a wiser appreciation
©f this mysterious organ would have
^voided.”
I can imagine the Bishop thoughtful
after hearing this argument. He was
not the man to allow anger to mingle
with the consideration of a point of this
kind. After due reflection, and having
Strengthened himself by that honest
Contemplation of the facts which was
habitual with him, and which includes
27
the desire to give even adverse reasonings
their due weight, I can suppose the
Bishop to proceed thus : “ You will
remember that in the Analogy of Religion,
of which you have so kindly spoken, I
did not profess to prove anything abso
lutely, and that I over and over again
acknowledged and insisted on the small
ness of our knowledge, or rather the
depth of our ignorance, as regards the
whole system of the universe. My object
was to show my deistical friends, who
set forth so eloquently the beauty and
beneficence of Nature and the Ruler
thereof, while they had nothing but scorn
for the so-called absurdities of the Chris
tian scheme, that they were in no better
condition than we were, and that, for
every difficulty found upon our side,
quite as great a difficulty was to be found
upon theirs. I will now, with your per
mission, adopt a similar line of argument.
You are a Lucretian, and from the com
bination and separation of insensate
atoms deduce all terrestrial things, includ
ing organic forms and their phenomena.
Let me tell you in the first instance how
far I am prepared to go with you. I
admit that you can build crystalline
forms out of this play of molecular force;
that the diamond, amethyst, and snow
star are truly wonderful structures which
are thus produced. I will go farther, and
acknowledge that even a tree or flower
might in this way be organised. Nay, if
you can show me an animal without
sensation, I will concede to you that it
also might be put together by the
suitable play of molecular force.
“ Thus far our way is clear, but now
comes my difficulty. Your atoms are
individually without sensation; much
more are they without intelligence. May
I ask you, then, to try your hand upon
this problem ? Take your dead hydrogen
atoms, your dead oxygen atoms, your
dead carbon atoms, your dead nitrogen
atoms, your dead phosphorus atoms, and
all the other atoms, dead as grains of
shot, of which the brain is formed.
Imagine them separate and sensationless;
observe them running together and
�28
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
forming alt imaginable combinations.
This, as a purely mechanical process, is
seeable by the mind. But can you see, or
dream, or in any way imagine, how out
of that mechanical act, and from these
individually dead atoms, sensation,
thought, and emotion are to rise ? Are
you likely to extract Homer out of the
rattling of dice, or the Differential Cal
culus out of the clash of billiard-balls ?
I am not all bereft of this VorstellungsKraft of which you speak, nor am I, like
so many of my brethren, a mere vacuum
as regards scientific knowledge. I can
follow a particle of musk until it reaches
the olfactory nerve; I can follow the
waves of sound until thei> tremors reach
the water of the labyrinth, and set the
otoliths and Corti’s fibres in motion; I
can also visualise the waves of ether as
they cross the eye and hit the retina.
Nay more, I am able to pursue to the
central organ the motion thus imparted
at the periphery, and to see in idea the
very molecules of the brain thrown into
tremors. My insight is not baffled by
these physical processes. What baffles
and bewilders me is the notion that from
those physical tremors things so utterly
incongruous with them as sensation,
thought, and emotion can be derived.
You may say, or think, that this issue of
consciousness from the clash of atoms is
not more incongruous than the flash of
light from the union of oxygen and
hydrogen. But I beg to say that it is.
For such incongruity as the flash possesses
is that which I now force upon your
attention.
The ‘ flash ’ is an aflair of
consciousness, the objective counterpart
of which is a vibration. It is a flash
only by your interpretation. You are
the cause of the apparent incongruity;
and you are the thing that puzzles me.
I need not remind you that the great
Leibnitz felt the difficulty which I feel;
and that to get rid of this monstrous
deduction of life from death he displaced
your atoms by his monads, which were
more or less perfect mirrors of the
universe, and out of the summation and
integration of which he supposed all the
phenomena of life—sentient, intellectual,
and emotional—to arise.
“ Your difficulty then, as I see you
are ready to admit, is quite as great as
mine. You cannot satisfy the human
understanding in its demand for logical
continuity between molecular processes
and the phenomena of consciousness.
This is a rock on which Materialism
must inevitably split whenever it pre
tends to be a complete philosophy of life.
What is the moral, my Lucretian ? You
and I are not likely to indulge in illtemper in the discussion of these great
topics, where we see so much room for
honest differences of opinion. But there
are people of less wit or more bigotry (I
say it with humility), on both sides, who
are ever ready to mingle anger and vitu
peration with such discussions. There
are, for example, writers of note and in
fluence at the present day who are not
ashamed publicly to assume the ‘ deep
personal sin ’ of a great logician to be
the cause of his unbelief in a theologic
dogma.1 And there are others who hold
that we, who cherish our noble Bible,
wrought as it has been into the constitu
tion of our forefathers, and by inherit
ance into us, must necessarily be hypo
critical and insincere. Let us disavow
and discountenace such people, cherish
ing the unswerving faith that what is
good and true in both our arguments
will be preserved for the benefit of
humanity, while all that is bad or false
will disappear.”
I hold the Bishop’s reasoning to be
unanswerable, and his liberality to be
worthy of imitation.
It is worth remarking that in one re
spect the Bishop was a product of his
age. Long previous to his day the nature
1 This is the aspect under which the late
Editor of the Dublin Review presented to his
readers the memory of John Stuart Mill. I can
only say that I would as soon take my chance in
the other world, in the company of the “un
believer,” as in that of his Jesuit detractor. In
Dr. Ward we have an example of a wholesome
and vigorous nature soured and perverted by a
poisonous creed.
�THE BELFAST ADDRESS
29
of the soul had been so favourite and I
The lode of discovery once struck,
general a topic of discussion that, when
those petrified forms in which life was at
the students of the Italian Universities
one time active increased to multitudes
wished to know the leanings of a new
and demanded classification. They were
Professor, they at once requested him to
grouped in genera, species, and varie
lecture-upon the soul. About the time
ties, according to the degree of similarity
of Bishop Butler the question was not
subsisting between them. Thus confu
only agitated but extended. It was seen
sion was avoided, each object being
by the clear-witted men who entered this
found in the pigeon-hole appropriated to
arena that many of their best arguments
it and to its fellows of similar morpho
applied equally to brutes and men. The
logical or physiological character.
The
Bishop’s arguments were of this character.
general fact soon became evident that
He saw it, admitted it, took the conse none but the simplest forms of life lie
quence, and boldly embraced the whole
lowest down; that, as we climb higher
animal world in his scheme of immor among the superimposed strata, more per
tality.
fect forms appear. The change, however,
§ 6.
from form to form was not continuous, but
by steps—some small, some great. “ A
Bishop Butler accepted with unwaver section,” says Mr. Huxley, “ a hundred
ing trust the chronology of the Old Tes feet thick will exhibit at different heights
tament, describing it as “ confirmed by
a dozen species of Ammonite, none of
the natural and civil history of the world,
which passes beyond the particular zone
collected from common historians, from
of limestone, or clay, into the zone below
the state of the earth, and from the late
it, or into that above it.”
In the
inventions of arts and sciences.” These
presence of such facts it was not possible
words mark progress; and they must to avoid the question: Have these forms,
seem somewhat hoary to the Bishop’s
showing, though in broken stages, and
successors of to-day. It is hardly neces with many irregularities, this unmistak
sary to inform you that since his time the
able general advance, been subjected to
domain of the naturalist has been im no continuous law of growth or variation ?
mensely extended—the whole science of Had our education been purely scientific,
geology, with its astounding revelations
or had it been, sufficiently detached from
regarding the life of the ancient earth,
influences which, however ennobling in
having been created. The rigidity of old
another domain, have always proved
conceptions has been relaxed, the public
hindrances and delusions when intro
mind being rendered gradually tolerant
duced as factors into the domain of
of the idea that not for six thousand, nor
physics, the scientific mind never could
for sixty thousand, nor for six thousand
have swerved from the search for a law
thousand, but for seons embracing untold
of growth, or allowed itself to accept the
millions of years, this earth has been the
anthropomorphism which regarded each
theatre of life and death. The riddle of successive stratum as a kind of mechanic’s
the rocks has been read by the geologist
bench for the manufacture of new species
and palaeontologist from subcambrian
out of all relation to the old.
depths to the deposits thickening over
Biassed, however, by their previous
the sea-bottoms of to-day. And upon
education, the great majority of natural
the leaves of that stone book are, as you
ists invoked a special creative act to
know, stamped the characters, plainer
account for the appearance of each new
and surer than those formed by the ink
group of organisms. Doubtless numbers
of history, which carry the mind back
of them were clear-headed enough to see
into abysses of past time, compared with
that this was no explanation at all—that,
which the periods which satisfied Bishop
in point of fact, it was an attempt, by the
Butler cease to have a visual angle.
introduction of a greater difficulty, to
�3°
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
These papers were followed in 1859
by the publication of the first edition of
the Origin of Species. All great things
come slowly to the birth. Copernicus,
as I informed you, pondered his great
work for thirty-three years. Newton for
nearly twenty years kept the idea of
Gravitation before his mind ; for twenty
years also he dwelt upon his discovery of
Fluxions, and doubtless would have
continued to make it the object of his
private thought had he not found
Leibnitz upon his track. Darwin for
two-and-twenty years pondered the
problem of the origin of species, and
doubtless he would have continued to
do so had he not found Wallace upon,
his track.1 A concentrated, but full and
powerful, epitome of his labours was the
consequence. The book was by no
means an easy one; and prooably not
one in every score of those who then
attacked it had read its pages through,
or were competent to grasp their signifi
cance if they had. I do not say this
merely to discredit them ; for there were
in those days some really eminent
scientific men, entirely raised above the
heat of popular prejudice, and willing tc
accept any conclusion that science had
to offer, provided it was duly backed by
fact and argument, who entirely mistook
Mr. Darwin’s views. In fact, the woik
needed an expounder, and it found one
in Mr. Huxley. I know nothing more
admirable in the way of scientific exposi
tion than those early articles of his on
the origin of species. He swept the
curve of discussion through the really
significant points of the subject, en
riched his exposition with profound
original remarks and reflections, often
summing up in a single pithy sentence
an argument which a less compact mind
would have spread over pages. But
there is one impression made by the
book itself which no exposition of it,
1 Zoonomia, vol. i., pp- 5°°‘510,
_
however luminous, can convey ? and
2 In 1855 Mr. Herbert Spencer {Principles of
account for a less. But, having nothing I
to offer in the way of explanation, they
for the most part held their peace. Still,
the thoughts of reflecting men naturally
and necessarily simmered round the
question. De Maillet, a contemporary
of Newton, has been brought into notice
by Professor Huxley as one who “had a
notion of the modifiability of living
forms.” The late Sir Benjamin Brodie,
a man of highly philosophic mind, often
drew my attention to the fact that, as
early as 1794, Charles Darwin’s grand
father was the pioneer of Charles Darwin.1
In 1801, and in subsequent years, the
celebrated Lamarck, who, through the
vigorous exposition of his views by the
author of the Vestiges of Creation, gen
dered the public mind perfectly familiar
with the idea of evolution, endeavoured
to show the development of species out
of changes of habit and external con
dition. In 1813 Dr. Wells, the founder
of our present theory of Dew, read before
the Royal Society a paper in which, to
use the words of Mr. Darwin, “ he dis
tinctly recognises the principle of natural
selection ; and this is the first recognition
that has been indicated.” The thorough
ness and skill with which Wells pursued
his work, and the obvious independence
of his character, rendered him long ago a
favourite with me; and it gave me the
liveliest pleasure to alight upon this
additional testimony to his penetration.
Professor Grant, Mr. Patrick Matthew,
Von Buch, the author of the Vestiges,
D’Halloy, and others, by the enunciation
of opinions more or less clear and correct,
showed that the question had been fer
menting long prior to the year 1858,
when Mr. Darwin and Mr. Wallace
simultaneously, but independently, placed
their closely concurrent views before the
Linnean Society.2
Psychology, 2nd edit., vol. i., p. 465) expressed
“the belief that life under all its forms has
arisen by an unbroken evolution, and through
the instrumentality of what are called natural
causes.” This was my belief also at that time.
1 The behaviour of Mr. Wallace in relation to
this subject has been dignified in the highest
degree.
. .
�THE BELFAST ADDRESS
that is the impression of the vast amount
of labour, both of observation and of
thought, implied in its production. Let
US glance at its principles.
It is conceded on all hands that what
are called “varieties” are continually
produced. The rule is probably with
out exception. No chick, or child, is in
all respects and particulars the counter
part of its brother and sister; and in
such differences we have “ variety ” in
cipient. No naturalist could tell how far
this variation could be carried ; but the
great mass of them held that never, by
any amount of internal or external
change, nor by the mixture of both,
could the offspring of the same progenitor
so far deviate from each other as to con
stitute different species. The function
of the experimental philosopher is to
combine the conditions of Nature and
to produce her results; and this was the
method of Darwin.1 He made himself
acquainted with what could, without
any manner of doubt, be done in the
way of producing variation. He asso
ciated himself with pigeon-fanciers—
bought, begged, kept, and observed
every breed that he could obtain. Though
derived, from a common stock, the
diversities of these pigeons were such
that “ a score of them might be chosen
which, if shown to an ornithologist, and
he were told that they were wild birds,
would certainly be ranked by him as welldefined species.” The simple principle
which guides the pigeon-fancier, as it
does the cattle-breeder, is the selection
of some variety that strikes his fancy,
and the propagation of this variety
by inheritance. With his eye still directed
to the particular appearance which he
wishes to exaggerate, he selects it as it
re-appears in successive broods, and thus
adds . increment to increment until an
astonishing amount of divergence from
the parent type is effected. The breeder
The first step only towards experimental
demonstration has been taken. Experiments
now begun might, a couple of centuries hence,
ftimish data of incalculable value, which ought
to be supplied to the science of the future.
3«
in this case does not produce the elements
of the variation. He simply observes
them, and by selection adds them together
until the required result has been ob
tained. “No man,” says Mr. Darwin,
“ would ever try to make a fantail till he
saw a pigeon with a tail developed in
some slight degree in an unusual manner,
or a pouter until he saw a pigeon with a
crop of unusual size.” Thus nature gives
the hint, man acts upon it, and by the law
of inheritance exaggerates the deviation.
. Having thus satisfied himself by indu
bitable facts that the organisation of an
animal or of a plant (for precisely the
same treatment applies to plants) is to
some extent plastic, he passes from varia
tion under domestication to variation
under nature. Hitherto we have dealt
with the adding together of small
changes by the conscious selection of
man. Can Nature thus select ? Mr.
Darwin’s answer is, “Assuredly she can.”
The number of living things produced is
far in excess of the number that can be
supported ; hence at some period or
other of their lives there must be a
struggle for existence. And what is the
infallible result ? If one organism were
a perfect copy of the other in regard to
strength, skill, and agility, external con
ditions would decide. But this is not
the case. Here we have the fact of
variety offering itself to nature, as in the
former instance it offered itself to man ;
and those varieties which are least com
petent to cope with surrounding con
ditions will infallibly give way to those
that are most competent. To use a
familiar proverb, the weakest goes to the
wall. But the triumphant fraction again
breeds to over-production, transmitting
the qualities which secured its main
tenance, but transmitting them in different
degrees. The struggle for food again
supervenes, and those to whom the
favourable quality has been transmitted
in excess will triumph as before.
It is easy to see that we have here the
addition of increments favourable to the
individual, still more rigorously carried
out than in the case of domestication;
�32
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
for not only are unfavourable specimens
not selected by nature, but they are
destroyed. This is what Mr. Darwin
calls “ Natural Selection,” which acts by
the preservation and accumulation of
small inherited modifications, each profit
able to the preserved being. With this
idea he interpenetrates and leavens the
vast store of facts that he and others
have collected. We cannot, without
shutting our eyes through fear or preju
dice, fail to see that Darwin is here
dealing, not with imaginary, but. with
true causes; nor can we fail to discern
what vast modifications may be produced
by natural selection in periods sufficiently
long. Each individual increment may
resemble what mathematicians call a
“differential” (a quantity indefinitely
small)but definite and great changes
may obviously be produced by the inte
gration of these infinitesimal quantities,
through practically infinite time.
If Darwin, like Bruno, rejects the
notion of creative power,, acting after
human fashion, it certainly is not because
he is unacquainted with the numberless
exquisite adaptations on which this
notion of a supernatural. Artificer, has
been founded. His book is a repository
of the most startling facts of this descrip
tion. Take the marvellous observation
which he cites from Dr. Kruger, where a
bucket with an aperture . serving as a
spout is formed in an orchid. Bees visit
the flower; in eager search of material
for their combs they push each other
into the bucket, . the drenched ones
escaping from their involuntary , bath by
the spout. Here they rub their backs
against the viscid stigma, of the flower
and obtain glue; then against the pollenmasses, which are thus stuck to the back
of the bee and carried away. “ When the
bee, so provided, flies to another flower,
or to the same flower a second time, and
is pushed by its comrades into the
bucket, and then crawls out. by the
passage, the pollen-mass upon its back
necessarily comes first into contact with
the viscid stigma,” which takes up the
pollen; and this is how that orchid is
fertilised. Or take this other case of the
Catasetum. “Bees visit these flowers
in order to gnaw the labellum; in doing
this they inevitably touch a long, taper
ing, sensitive projection. This, when
touched, transmits a sensation or vibra
tion to a certain membrane, which is
instantly ruptured, setting free a spring,
by which the pollen-mass is shot forth
like an arrow in the right direction, and
adheres by its viscid extremity to the
back of the bee.” In this way the fer
tilising pollen is spread abroad.
It is the mind thus stored with the
choicest materials of the teleologist that
rejects teleology, seeking to refer these
wonders to natural causes. They illus
trate, according to him, the method of
nature, not the “ technic ” of a manlike
Artificer. The beauty of flowers is due
to natural selection. Those that distin
guish themselves by vividly contrasting
colours from the surrounding green leaves
are most readily seen, most frequently
visited by insects, most often fertilised, and
hence most favoured by natural selection.
Coloured berries also readily attract the
attention of birds and beasts, which feed
upon them, spread their manured seeds
abroad, thus giving trees and shrubs pos
sessing such berries a greater chance in
the struggle for existence.
With profound analytic and synthetic
skill, Mr. Darwin investigates the cell
making instinct of the hive-bee. His
method of dealing with it is representa
tive. He falls back from the more per
fectly to the less perfectly developed in
stinct—from the hive-bee to the humblebee, which uses its own cocoon as a
comb, and to classes of bees of interme
diate skill endeavouring to show how the
passage might be gradually made from
the lowest to the highest. The saving
of wax is the most important point in
the economy of bees. Twelve.to fifteen
pounds of dry sugar are said to be
needed for the secretion of a single
pound of wax. The quantities of nectar
necessary for the wax must therefore be
vast, and every improvement of construc
tive instinct which results in the saving
�THE BELFAST ADDRESS
of wax is a direct profit to the insect’s
life. The time that would otherwise be
devoted to the making of wax is devoted
to the gathering and storing of honey for
winter food. Mr. Darwin passes from
the humble-bee, with its rude cells,
through the Melipona, with its more
artistic cells, to the hive-bee with its
astonishing architecture. The bees place
themselves at equal distances apart upon
the wax, sweep and excavate equal
spheres round the selected points. The
spheres intersect, and the planes of inter
section are built up with thin laminae.
Hexagonal cells are thus formed. This
mode of treating such questions is, as I
have said, representative. The expositor
habitually retires from the more perfect
and complex, to the less perfect and
simple, and carries you with him through
stages of perfecting—adds increment to
increment of infinitesimal change, and in
this way gradually breaks down your
reluctance to admit that the exquisite
climax of the whole could be a result of
natural selection.
Mr. Darwin shirks no difficulty; and,
Saturated as the subject was with his
own thought, he must have known,
better than his critics, the weakness as
well as the strength of his theory. This
of course would be of little avail were
his object a temporary dialectic victory,
instead of the establishment of a truth
which he means to be everlasting. But
he takes no pains to disguise the weak
ness he has discerned; nay, he takes
every pains to bring it into the strongest
light. His vast resources enable him to
cope with objections started by himself
and others, so as to leave the final
impression upon the reader’s mind that,
if they be not completely answered, they
certainly are not fatal. Their negative
force being thus destroyed, you are free
to be influenced by the vast positive
mass of evidence he is able to bring
before you. This largeness of know
ledge and readiness of resource render
Mr. Darwin the most terrible of antago
nists.
Accomplished naturalists have
levelled heavy and sustained criticisms
33
against him—not always with the view
of fairly weighing his theory, but with
the express intention of exposing its
weak points only. This does not irritate
him. He treats every objection with a
soberness and thoroughness which even
Bishop Butler might be proud to imitate,
surrounding each fact with its appropriate
detail, placing it in its proper relations,
and usually giving it a significance which,
as long as it was kept isolated, failed to
appear. This is done without a trace of
ill-temper. He moves over the subject
with the passionless strength of a glacier;
and the grinding of the rocks is not
always. without a counterpart in the
logical pulverisation of the objector.
But though in handling this mighty
theme all passion has been stilled, there
is an emotion of the intellect, incident
to the discernment of new truth, which
often colours and warms the pages of
Mr. Darwin.
His success has been
great; and this implies not only the
solidity of his work, but the preparedness
of the public mind for such a revelation.
On this head a remark of Agassiz
impressed me more than anything else.
Sprung from a race of theologians, this
celebrated man combated to the last the
theory of natural selection. One of the
many times I had the pleasure of meeting
him in the United States was at Mr.
Winthrop’s beautiful residence at Brook
line, near Boston. Rising from luncheon,
we all halted as if by common consent
in front of a window, and continued
there a discussion which had been started
at table. The maple was in its autumn
glory, and the exquisite beauty of the
scene outside seemed, in my case, to
interpenetrate without disturbance the
intellectual action.
Earnestly, almost
sadly, Agassiz turned, and said to the
gentlemen standing round : “ I confess
that I was not prepared to see this
theory received as it has been by the
best intellects of our time. Its success
is greater than I could have thought
possible.”
B
�LECTURES AND ESSA YS
34
§ 7-
In our day grand generalisations have
been reached. The theory of the origin
of species is but one of them. Another,
of still wider grasp and more radical
significance, is the doctrine of the Con
servation of Energy, the ultimate philo
sophical issues of which are as yet
but dimly seen—that doctrine which
“ binds nature fast in fate,” to an extent
not hitherto recognised, exacting from
every antecedent its equivalent conse
quent, from every consequent its equiva
lent antecedent, and bringing vital as
well as physical phenomena under the
dominion of that law of causal con
nection which, so far as the human
understanding has yet pierced, asserts
itself everywhere in nature. Long in
advance of all definite experiment upon
the subject, the constancy and in
destructibility of matter had been
affirmed; and all subsequent experi
ence justified the affirmation. Mayer
extended the attribute of indestructi
bility to energy, applying it in the first
instance to inorganic,1 and afterwards
with profound insight to organic nature.
The vegetable world, though drawing
all its nutriment from invisible sources,
was proved incompetent to generate
anew either matter or force. Its matter
is for the most part transmuted gas ; its
force transformed solar force.
The
animal world was proved to be equally
uncreative, all its motive energies being
referred to the combustion of its food.
The activity of each animal, as a whole,
was proved to be the transferred activity
of its molecules. The muscles were
shown to be stores of mechanical energy,
potential until unlocked by the nerves,
and then resulting in muscular con
tractions. The speed at which messages
fly to and fro along the nerves was deter
mined by Helmholtz, and found to be,
not, as had been previously supposed,
1 Dr. Berthold has shown that Leibnitz had
sound views regarding the conservation of energy
in inorganic nature.
equal to that of light or electricity, but
less than the speed of sound—less even
than that of an eagle.
This was the work of the physicist:
then came the conquests of the com
parative anatomist and physiologist, re
vealing the structure of every animal and
the function of every organ in the whole
biological series, from the lowest zoo
phyte up to man. The nervous system
had been made the object of profound
and continued study, the wonderful, and,
at bottom, entirely mysterious controlling
power which it exercises over the whole
organism, physical and mental, being
recognised more and more. Thought
could not be kept back from a subject
so profoundly suggestive. Besides the
physical life dealt with by Mr. Darwin,
there is a psychical life presenting similar
gradations, and asking equally for a
solution. How are the different grades
and orders of Mind to be accounted for?
What is the principle of growth of that
mysterious power which on our planet
culminates in Reason ?
These are
questions which, though not thrusting
themselves so forcibly upon the attention
of the general public, had not only
occupied many reflecting minds, but had
been formally broached by one of them
before the Origin of Species appeared.
With the mass of materials furnished
by the physicist and physiologist in his
hands, Mr. Herbert Spencer, twenty
years ago, sought to graft upon this basis
a system of psychology; and two years
ago a second and greatly amplified
edition of his work appeared. Those
who have occupied themselves with the
beautiful experiments of Plateau will
remember that when two spherules of
olive-oil, suspended in a mixture of alcohol
and water of the same density as the oil,
are brought together, they do not imme
diately unite. Something like a pellicle
appears to be formed around the drops,
the rupture of which is immediately
followed by the coalescence of the
globules into one. There are organisms
whose vital actions are almost as purely
physical as the coalescence of such drops
�THE BELFAST ADDRESS
of oil. They come into contact and fuse
themselves thus together. From such
organisms to others a shade higher, from
these to others a shade higher still, and
on through an ever-ascending series, Mr.
Spencer conducts his argument. There
are two obvious factors to be here taken
into account — the creature and the
medium in which it lives, or, as it is
often expressed, the organism and its
environment.
Mr. Spencer’s funda
mental principle is, that between these
two factors there is incessant interaction.
The organism is played upon by the
environment, and is modified to meet
the requirements of the environment.
Life he defines to be “ a continuous
adjustment of internal relations to external
relations.”
In the lowest organisms we have a
kind of tactual sense diffused over the
entire body; then, through impressions
from without and their corresponding
adjustments, special portions of the sur
face become more responsive to stimuli
than others. The senses are nascent,
the basis of all of them being that simple
tactual sense which the sage Democritus
recognised 2,300 years ago as their
common progenitor. The action of light,
in,the first instance, appears to be a
mere disturbance of the chemical pro
cesses in the animal organism, similar to
that which occurs in the leaves of plants.
By degrees the action becomes localised
in a few pigment-cells, more sensitive to
light than the surrounding tissue. The
eye is incipient. At first it is merely
capable of revealing differences of light
and shade produced by bodies close at
hand. Followed, as the interception of
the light commonly is, by the contact of
the closely adjacent opaque body, sight
in this condition becomes a kind of
“anticipatory touch.” The adjustment
continues; a slight bulging out of the
epidermis over the pigment-granules
supervenes. A lens is incipient, and,
through the operation of infinite adjust
ments, at length reaches the perfection
that it displays in the hawk and eagle.
So of the other senses; they are special
35
differentiations of a tissue which was
originally vaguely sensitive all over.
With the development of the senses,
the adjustments between the organism
and its environment gradually extend in
space., a multiplication of experiences and
a corresponding modification of conduct
being the result. The adjustments also
extend in time, covering continually
greater intervals. Along with this exten
sion in space and time the adjustments
also increase in speciality and complexity,
passing through the various grades of
brute life, and prolonging themselves
into the domain of reason. Very striking
are Mr. Spencer’s remarks regarding the
influence of the sense of touch upon the
development of intelligence. This is, so
to say, the mother-tongue of all the
senses, into which they must be trans
lated to be of service to the organism.
Hence its importance. The parrot is
the most intelligent of birds, and its
tactual power is also greatest. From this
sense it gets knowledge, unattainable by
birds which cannot employ their feet as
hands. The elephant is the most saga
cious of quadrupeds—its tactual range
and skill, and the consequent multiplica
tion of experiences, which it owes to its
wonderfully adaptable trunk, being the
basis of its sagacity. Feline - animals,
for a similar cause, are more sagacious
than hoofed animals—atonement being
to some extent made in the case of the
horse by' the possession of sensitive
prehensile lips. In the Primates the
evolution of intellect and the evolution
of tactual appendages go hand in hand.
In the most intelligent anthropoid apes
we find the tactual range and delicacy
greatly augmented, new avenues of know
ledge being thus opened to the animal.
Man crowns the edifice here, not only in
virtue of his own manipulatory power,
but through the enormous extension of
his range of experience, by the invention
of instruments of precision, which serve
as supplemental senses and supplemental
limbs. The reciprocal action of these is
finely described and illustrated. That
chastened intellectual emotion, to which
�3&
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
I have referred in connection with Mr.
Darwin, is not absent in Mr. Spencer.
His illustrations possess at times exceed
ing vividness and force; and from his
style on such occasions it is to be in
ferred that the ganglia of this Apostle of
the Understanding are sometimes the
seat of a nascent poetic thrill.
It is a fact of supreme importance that
actions, the performance of which at first
requires even painful effort and delibera
tion, may, by habit, be rendered auto
matic. Witness the slow learning of its
letters by a child, and the subsequent
facility of reading in a man, when each
group of letters which forms a word is
instantly, and without effort, fused to a
single perception. Instance the billiardplayer,. whose muscles of hand and eye,
when he reaches the perfection of his art,
are unconsciously co-ordinated. Instance
the musician, who, by practice, is enabled
to fuse a multitude of arrangements,
auditory, tactual, and muscular, into a
process of automatic manipulation. Com
bining such facts with the doctrine of
hereditary transmission, we reach a theory
of Instinct. A chick, after coming out
of the egg, balances itself correctly, runs
about, picks up food, thus showing that
it possesses a power of directing its move
ments to definite ends. How did the
chick learn this very complex co-ordina
tion of eyes, muscles, and beak ? It has
not been individually taught; its per
sonal experience is nil, but it has the
benefit of ancestral experience. In its
inherited organisation are registered the
powers which it displays at birth. So
also as regards the instinct of the hive
bee, already referred to. The distance
at which the insects stand apart when
they sweep their hemispheres and build
their cells is “ organically remembered.”
Man also carries with him the physical
texture of his ancestry, as well as the
inherited intellect bound up with it.
The defects of intelligence during in
fancy and youth are probably less due to
a lack of individual experience than to
the fact that in early life the cerebral
organisation is still incomplete. The
period necessary for completion varies
with the race and with the individual.
As a round shot outstrips the rifled bolt
on quitting the muzzle of the gun, so the
lower race, in childhood, may outstrip
the higher. But the higher eventually
overtakes the lower, and surpasses it in
range. As regards individuals, we do
not always find the precocity of youth
prolonged to mental power in maturity;
while the dulness of boyhood is some
times strikingly contrasted with the intel
lectual energy of after years. Newton,
when a boy, was weakly, and he showed
no particular aptitude at school; but in
his eighteenth year he went to Cam
bridge, and soon afterwards astonished
his teachers by his power of dealing with
geometrical problems. During his quiet
youth his brain was slowly preparing
itself to be the organ of those energies
which he subsequently displayed.
By myriad blows (to use a Lucretian
phrase) the image and superscription of
the external world are stamped as states
of consciousness upon the organism, the
depth of the impression depending on
the number of the blows. When two or
more phenomena occur in the environ*
ment invariably together, they are stamped
to the same depth or to the same relief,
and indissolubly connected. And here
we come to the threshold of a great ques
tion. Seeing that he could in no way
rid himself of the consciousness of Space
and Time, Kant assumed them to be
necessary “forms of intuition,” the moulds
and shapes into which our intuitions are
thrown belonging to ourselves, and with
out objective existence. With unexpected
power and success, Mr. Spencer brings
the hereditary experience theory, as he
holds it, to bear upon this question.
“ If there exist certain external relations
which are experienced by all organisms
at all instants of their waking lives—
relations which are absolutely constant
and universal—there will be established
answering internal relations, that are
absolutely constant and universal. Such
relations we have in those of Space and
Time. As the substratum of all other
�THE BELFAST ADDRESS
relations of the Non-Ego, they must be
responded to by conceptions that are the
substrata of all other relations in the
Ego. Being the constant and infinitely
repeated elements of thought, they must
become the automatic elements of
thought—the elements of thought which
it is impossible to get rid of—the “ forms
of intuition.”
Throughout this application and ex
tension of Hartley’s and Mill’s “ Law of
Inseparable Association,” Mr. Spencer
stands upon his own ground, invoking,
instead of the experiences of the indi
vidual, the registered experiences of the
race. His overthrow of the restriction of
experience to the individual is, I think,
complete. That restriction ignores the
power of organising experience, furnished
at the outset to each-individual; it ignores
the different degrees of this power pos
sessed by different races, and by different
individuals of the same race. Were there
not in the human brain a potency ante
cedent to all experience, a dog or a cat
ought to be as capable of education as a
man. These predetermined internal re
lations are independent of the experi
ences of the individual. The human
brain is the “ organised register of infi
nitely numerous experiences received
during the evolution of life, or rather
during the evolution of that series of
organisms through which the human
organism has been reached. The effects
of the most uniform and frequent of
these experiences have been successively
bequeathed, principal and interest, and
have slowly mounted to that high intelli
gence which lies latent in the brain of
the infant. Thus it happens that the
European inherits from twenty to thirty
cubic inches more of brain than the
Papuan. Thus it happens that faculties,
as of music, which scarcely exist in some
inferior races, become congenital in
superior ones. Thus it happens that out
of savages unable to count up to the
number of their fingers, and speaking a
language containing only nouns and
verbs, arise at length our Newtons and
.Shakespeares.”
37
§ 8.
At the outset of this Address it was
stated that physical theories which lie
beyond experience are derived by a pro
cess of abstraction from experience. It
is instructive to note from this point of
view the successive introduction of new
conceptions. The idea of the attraction
of gravitation was preceded by the obser
vation of the attraction of iron by a
magnet, and of light bodies by rubbed
amber. The polarity of magnetism and
electricity also appealed to the senses.
It thus became the substratum of the
conception that atoms and molecules are
endowed with attractive and repellent
poles, by the play of which definite forms
of crystalline architecture are produced.
Thus molecular force becomes structural.'1
It required no great boldness of thought
to extend its play into organic nature,
and to recognise in molecular force the
agency by which both plants and animals
are built up. In this way, out of expe
rience arise conceptions which are wholly
ultra-experiential. None of the atomists
of antiquity had any notion of this play
of molecular polar force, but they had
experience of gravity, as manifested by
falling bodies. Abstracting from this,
they permitted their atoms to fall eter
nally through empty space. Democritus
assumed that the larger atoms moved
more rapidly than the smaller ones, which
they therefore could overtake, and with
which they could combine. Epicurus,
holding that empty space could offer no
resistance to motion, ascribed to all the
atoms the same velocity; but he seems
to have overlooked the consequence
that under such circumstances the atoms
could never combine. Lucretius cut the
knot by quitting the domain of physics
altogether, and causing the atoms to
move together by a kind of volition.
Was the instinct utterly at fault which
1 See Fragments of Science, vol. ii., article on
“ Matter and Force
or Lectures on Light, No.
�38
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
caused Lucretius thus to swerve from
his own principles ? Diminishing gradu
ally the number of progenitors,. Mr.
Darwin comes at length to one “ primor
dial form
but he does not say, so far
as I remember, how he supposes this
form to have been introduced. He
quotes with satisfaction the words of a
celebrated author and divine who had
“gradually learnt to see that it was just
as noble a conception of the Deity to
believe He created a few original forms,
capable of self-development into other
and needful forms, as to believe He
required a fresh act of creation to supply
the voids caused by the action of His
laws.” What Mr. Darwin thinks of this
view of the introduction of life I do
not know. But the anthropomorphism,
which it seemed his object to set asioe,
is as firmly associated with the creation
of a few forms as with the creation of a
multitude.
We need clearness and
thoroughness here. Two courses, and
two only, are possible. Either let _ us
open our doors freely to the conception
of creative acts, or, abandoning them, let
us radically change our notions of matter.
If we look at matter as pictured by
Democritus, and as defined for genera
tions in our scientific text-books, the
notion of conscious life coming out of it
cannot be formed by the mind. . The
argument placed in the mouth of Bishop
Butler suffices, in my opinion, to crush
all such materialism as this. . Those,
however, who framed these definitions of
matter were but partial students. . They
were not biologists, but mathematicians,
whose labours referred only to such
accidents and properties of matter as
could be expressed in their formulae.
Their science was mechanical science,
not the science of life. With matter in
its wholeness they never dealt; and,
denuded by their imperfect definitions,
“ the gentle mother of all ” became the
object of her children’s dread. Let us
reverently, but honestly, look the ques
tion in the face. Divorced from matter,
where is life ? Whatever our faith may
say, our knowledge shows them to be
indissolubly joined. Every meal we eat,
every cup we drink, illustrates the
mysterious control of mind by matter.
On tracing the line of life backwards,
we see it approaching more and more to
what we call the purely physical con
dition. We come at length to those
organisms which I have compared to
drops of oil suspended in a mixture of
alcohol and water. We reach the pro
togenes of Haeckel, in which we have “ a
type distinguishable from a fragment of
albumen only by its finely granular
character.” Can we pause here? We
break a magnet, and find two poles in
each of its fragments. We continue the
process of breaking ; but, however small
the parts, each carries with it, though
enfeebled, the polarity of the whole.
And when we can break no longer, we
prolong the intellectual vision to the
polar molecules. Are we not urged to
do something similar in the case of life ?
Is there not a temptation to close to
some extent with Lucretius, when he
affirms that “Nature is seen to do all
things spontaneously of herself without
the meddling of the gods”? or with
Bruno, when he declares that matter is
not “ that mere empty capacity which
philosophers have pictured her to be,
but the universal mother who brings
forth all things as the fruit of her own
womb ”? Believing, as I do, in the con
tinuity of nature, I cannot stop abruptly
where our microscopes cease to be of
use.
Here the vision of the mind
authoritatively supplements the vision of
the eye. By a necessity engendered and
justified by science I cross the boundary
of the experimental evidence, and dis
cern in that matter which we, in our
ignorance of its latent powers, and not
withstanding our professed reverence for
its Creator, have hitherto covered with
opprobrium, the promise and potency of
all terrestrial life.
If you ask me whether there exists the
least evidence to prove that any form of
life can be developed out of matter,
without demonstrable antecedent life,
my reply is that evidence considered
�THE BELFAST ADDRESS
perfectly conclusive by many has been
adduced; and that were some of us who
have pondered this question to follow a
very common example and accept testi
mony because it falls in with our belief,
we also should eagerly close with the
evidence referred to. But there is in the
true man of science a desire stronger
than the wish to have his beliefs upheld
—namely, the desire to have them true.
And this stronger wish causes him to
reject the most plausible support, if he
has reason to suspect that it is vitiated
by error. Those to whom I refer as
having studied this question, believing
the evidence offered in favour of “ spon
taneous generation ” to be thus vitiated,
cannot accept it. They know full well
that the chemist now prepares from in
organic matter a vast array of substances,
which were some time ago regarded as
the sole products of vitality. They are
intimately acquainted with the structural
power of matter, as evidenced in the
phenomena of crystallisation. They can
justify scientifically their belief in its
potency, under the proper conditions, to
produce organisms. But, in reply to
your question, they will frankly admit
their inability to point to any satisfactory
experimental proof that life can be
developed, save from demonstrable an
tecedent life. As already indicated, they
draw the line from the highest organisms
through lower ones down to the lowest;
and it is the prolongation of this line by
the intellect, beyond the range of the
senses, that leads them to the conclusion
which Bruno so boldly enunciated.1
The “materialism”, here professed
may be vastly different from what you
suppose, and I therefore crave your
gracious patience to the end. “The
'question of an external world,” says
J. S. Mill, “ is the great battle-ground of
metaphysics.”2 Mr. Mill himself reduces
•external phenomena to “ possibilities of
sensation. ’
Kant, as we have seen,
1 Bruno was a " Pantheist,” not an “ Atheist ”
•Oi a “ Materialist.”
’ Examination of Hamilton, p. 154,
39
made time and space “ forms ” of our
own intuitions. Fichte, having first by
the inexorable logic of his understanding
proved himself to be a mere link in that
chain . of eternal causation which holds
so rigidly in nature, violently broke the
chain by making nature, and all that it
inherits, an apparition of the mind.1
And it is by no means easy to combat
such notions. For when I say “ I see
you,” and that there is not the least doubt
about it, the obvious reply is, that what
I am really conscious of is an affection
of my own retina. And if I urge that
my sight can be checked by touching
you, the retort would be that I am equally
transgressing the limits of fact; for what I
am really conscious of is, not that you are
there, but that the nerves of my hand
have undergone a change. All we hear,
and see, and touch, and taste, and smell
are, it would be urged, mere variations
of our own condition, beyond which,
even, to the extent of a hair’s breadth,’
we cannot go. That anything answering
to our impressions exists outside of our
selves is not a fact, but an inference, to
which all validity would be denied by
an idealist like Berkeley, or by a sceptic
like Hume. Mr. Spencer takes another
line. With him, as with the uneducated
man, there is no doubt or question as to
the existence of an external world. But
he differs from the uneducated, who
think that the world really is what con
sciousness represents it to be.
Our
states of consciousness are mere symbols
of an outside entity which produces
them and determines the order of their
succession, but the real nature of which
we can never know.2 _ In fact, the whole
process of evolution is the manifestation
of a power absolutely inscrutable to the
1 Bestimmung des Menschen.
2 In a paper, at once popular and profound,
enhUed, “ Recent Progress in the Theory of
Vision, contained in the volume of lectures by
Helmholtz, published by Longmans, this sym
bolism of our states of consciousness is also
dwelt upon. The impressions of sense are the
mere signs of external things. In this paper
Helmholtz contends strongly against the view
that the consciousness of space is inborn; and
�40
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
intellect of man. As little in our day as
in the days of Job can man by searching
find this Power out. Considered funda
mentally, then, it is by the operation of
an insoluble mystery that life on earth is
evolved, species differentiated, and mind
unfolded, from their prepotent elements
in the immeasurable past,
The strength of the doctrine of Evolu
tion consists, not in an experimental
demonstration (for the subject is hardly
accessible to this mode of proof), but
in its general harmony with scientific
thought. From contrast, moreover, it
derives enormous relative cogency. On
the one side we have a theory (if it could
with any propriety be so called) derived,
as were the theories referred to at the
beginning of this Address, not from the
study of nature, but from the observa
tion of men—a theory which converts
the Power whose garment is seen in
the visible universe into an Artificer,
fashioned after the human model, and
acting by broken efforts as man is seen
to act. On the other side we have the
conception that all we see around us,
and all we feel within us—the phenomena
of physical nature as well as those of the
human mind—have their unsearchable
roots in a cosmical life, if I dare apply
the term, an infinitesimal span of which
is offered to the investigation of man.
And even this span is only knowable in
part. We can trace the development of
a nervous system, and correlate with it
the parallel phenomena of sensation and
thought. We see with undoubting cer
tainty that they go hand in hand. But
we try to soar in a vacuum the moment
we seek to comprehend the connection
he evidently doubts the power of the chick to
pick up grains of corn without preliminary
lessons. On this point, he says, further expertments are needed.
Such experiments have
been since made by Mr. Spalding, and they
seem to prove conclusively that the chick does
not need a single moment’s tuition to enable it
to stand, run, govern the muscles of its eyes,
and peck. Helmholtz, however, is contending
against the notion of pre-established harmony,
and I am not aware of his views as to the
organisation of experiences of race or breed.
between them. An Archimedean fulcrum
is here required which the human mind
cannot command ; and the effort to
solve the problem—to borrow a com
parison from an illustrious friend of
mine—is like that of a man trying to lift
himself by his own waistband. All that
has been said in this discourse is to be
taken in connection with this funda
mental truth. When £< nascent senses
are spoken of, when “ the differentiation
of a tissue at first vaguely sensitive all
over” is spoken of, and when these
possessions and processes are associated
with “ the modification of an organism
by its environment,” the same parallelism,
without contact, or even approach to
contact, is implied. Man the object is
separated by an impassable gulf from
man the subject.
There is no motor
energy in the human intellect to carry
it, without logical rupture, from the one
to the other.
§ 9The doctrine of Evolution derives man,
in his totality, from the interaction of
organism and environment through
countless ages past. The Human Under
standing, for example—that faculty which
Mr. Spencer has turned so skilfully round
upon its own antecedents—is itself a
result of the play between organism and
environment through cosmic ranges_ of
time. Never, surely, did prescription
plead so irresistible a claim. But then
it comes to pass that, over and above
his understanding, there are many other
things appertaining to man whose pre
scriptive rights are quite as strong as
those of the understanding itself. It is
a result, for example, of the play of
organism and environment that sugar is
sweet, and that aloes are bitter 5 that the
smell of henbane differs from the perfume
of a rose. Such facts of consciousness
(for which, by the way, no adequate
reason has ever been rendered) are quite
as old as the understanding; and many
other things can boast an equally ancient
origin. Mr. Spencer at one place refers
�THE BELFAST ADDRESS
to that most powerful of passions—the
amatory passion—as one which, when it
first occurs, is antecedent to all relative
experience whatever; and we may press
its claim as being at least as ancient, and
as valid, as that of the understanding
itself. Then there are such things woven
into the texture of man as the feeling of
Awe, Reverence, Wonder—and not alone
the sexual love just referred to, but the
love of the beautiful, physical, and moral,
in Nature, Poetry, and Art. There is
also that deep-set feeling, which, since
the earliest dawn of history, and pro
bably for ages prior to all history, incor
porated itself in the religions of the
world. You, who have escaped from
these religions into the high-and-dry light
of the intellect, may deride them; but
in so doing you deride accidents of form
merely, and fail to touch the immovable
basis of the religious sentiment in the
nature of man. To yield this sentiment
reasonable satisfaction is the problem of
problems at the present hour.
And
grotesque in relation to scientific culture
as many of the religions of the world
have been and are—dangerous, nay,
destructive, to the dearest privileges of
freemen as some of them undoubtedly
have been, and would, if they could, be
again—it will be wise to recognise them
as the forms of a force, mischievous if
permitted to intrude on the region of
objective knowledge, over which it holds
no command, but capable of adding, in
the region of poetry and emotion, inward
completeness and dignity to man.
Feeling, I say again, dates from as old
an origin and as high a source as intelli
gence, and it equally demands its range
of play. The wise teacher of humanity
will recognise the necessity of meeting
this demand, rather than of resisting it
on account of errors and absurdities of
form.
What we should resist, at all
hazards, is the attempt made in the past,
and now repeated, to found upon this
elemental bias of man’s nature a system
which should exercise despotic sway over
his intellect.
I have no fear of such a
consummation. Science has already to
41
some extent leavened the world; it will
leaven it more and more. I should look
upon the mild light of science breaking
in upon the minds of the youth of Ireland,
and strengthening gradually to the per
fect day, as a surer check to any intel
lectual or spiritual tyranny which may
threaten this island than the laws of
princes or the swords of emperors. We
fought and won our battle even in the
Middle Ages : should we doubt the issue
of another conflict with our broken foe ?
The impregnable position of science
may be described in a few words. We
claim, and we shall wrest from theology,
the entire domain of cosmological theory.
All schemes and systems which thus
infringe upon the domain of science must,
in so far as they do this, submit to its
control, and relinquish all thought of
controlling it. Acting otherwise proved
always disastrous in the past, and it is
simply fatuous to-day. Every system
which would escape the fate of an
organism too rigid to adjust itself to its
environment must be plastic to the
extent that the growth of knowledge
demands. When this truth has been
thoroughly taken in, 'rigidity will be
relaxed, exclusiveness diminished, things
now deemed essential will be dropped,
and elements now rejected will be assimi
lated. The lifting of the life is the
essential point, and as long as dogma
tism, fanaticism, and intolerance are kept
out, various modes of leverage may be
employed to raise life to a higher level.
Science itself not unfrequently derives
motive power from an ultra-scientific
source. Some of its greatest discoveries
have been made under the stimulus of a
non-scientific ideal. This was the case
among the ancients, and it has been so
among ourselves. Mayer, Joule, and
Colding, whose names are associated
with the greatest of modern generalisa
tions, were thus influenced. With his
usual insight, Lange at one place remarks
that “it is not always the objectively
correct and intelligible that helps man
most, or leads most quickly to the
fullest and truest knowledge. As the
�42
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
sliding body upon the brachystochrone
reaches its end sooner than by the
straighter road of the inclined plane, so,
through the swing of the ideal, we often
arrive at the naked truth more rapidly
than by the processes of the understand
ing.” Whewell speaks of enthusiasm of
temper as a hindrance to science; but
he means the enthusiasm of weak heads.
There is a strong and resolute enthu
siasm in which science finds an ally; and
it is to the lowering of this fire, rather
than to the diminution of intellectual
insight, that the lessening productiveness
of men of science, in their mature years,
is to be ascribed. Mr. Buckle sought to
detach intellectual achievement from
moral force. He gravely erred; for with
out moral force to whip it into action
the achievement of the intellect would
be poor indeed.
It has been said by its opponents that
science divorces itself from literature;
but the statement, like so many others,
arises from lack of knowledge. A glance
at the less technical writings of its leaders
—of its Helmholtz, its Huxley, and its
Du Bois-Reymond—would show what
breadth of literary culture they com
mand. Where among modern writers
can you find their superiors in clearness
and vigour of literary style? Science
desires not isolation, but freely combines
with every effort towards the bettering of
man’s estate. Single-handed, and sup
ported, not by outward sympathy, but by
inward force, it has built at least one
great wing of the many-mansioned home
which man in his totality demands. And
if rough walls and protruding rafter-ends
indicate that on one side the edifice is
still incomplete, it is only by wise com
bination of the parts required, with those
already irrevocably built, that we can
hope for completeness. There is no
necessary incongruity between what has
been accomplished and what remains to
be done. The moral glow of Socrates,
which we all feel by ignition, has in . it
nothing incompatible with the physics
of Anaxagoras which he so much
scorned, but which he would hardly
scorn to-day. And here I am reminded
of one among us, hoary, but still strong,
whose prophet-voice some thirty years
ago, far more than any other of this age,
unlocked whatever of life and nobleness
lay latent in its most gifted minds—one
fit to stand beside Socrates or the
Maccabean Eleazar, and to dare and
suffer all that they suffered and dared—
fit, as he once said of Fichte, “ to have
been the teacher of the Stoa, and to
have discoursed of Beauty and Virtue in
the groves of Academe.” With a capacity
to grasp physical principles which his
friend Goethe did not possess, and which
even total lack of exercise has not been
able to reduce to atrophy, it is the
world’s loss that he, in the vigour of his
years, did not open his mind and sym
pathies to science, and make its conclu
sions a portion of his message to mankind.
Marvellously endowed as he was—equally
equipped on the side of the Heart and
of the Understanding—he might have
done much towards teaching us how to
reconcile the claims of both, and to
enable them in coming times to dwell
together, in unity of spirit and in the
bond of peace.
And now the end is come. With
more time, or greater strength and know
ledge, what has been here said might
have been better said, while worthy
matters, here omitted, might have re
ceived fit expression. But there would
have been no material deviation from
the views set forth. As regards myself,
they are not the growth of a day; and
as regards you, I thought you ought to
know the environment which, with or
without your consent, is rapidly surround
ing you, and in relation to which some
adjustment on your part may be neces
sary.
A hint of Hamlet’s, however,
teaches us how the troubles of common
life may be ended; and it is perfectly
possible for you and me to purchase
intellectual peace at the price of intel
lectual death. The world is not without
refuges of this description; nor is it
wanting in persons who seek their
�APOLOGY FOR THE BELFAST ADDRESS
shelter, and try to persuade others to do
the same. The unstable and the weak
have yielded and will yield to this per
suasion, and they to whom repose is
sweeter than the truth. But I would
exhort you to refuse the offered shelter,
and to scorn the base repose—to accept,
if the choice be forced upon you, com
motion before stagnation, the breezy leap
of the torrent before the foetid stillness
of the swamp. In the course of this
Address I have touched on debatable
questions, and led you over what will be
deemed dangerous ground—and this
partly with the view of telling you that,
as regards these questions, science
claims unrestricted right of search. It
is not to the point to say that the views
of Lucretius and Bruno, of Darwin and
Spencer, may be wrong. Here I should
agree with you, deeming it indeed
certain that these views will undergo
modification.
But the point is that,
whether right or wrong, we claim the
right to discuss them.
For science,
however, no exclusive claim is here
made; you are not urged to erect it into
an idol.
The inexorable advance of
man’s understanding in the path of
knowledge, and those unquenchable
claims of his moral and emotional nature
which the understanding can never satisfy,
43
are here equally set forth. The world em
braces not only a Newton, but a Shake
speare—not only a Boyle, but a Raphael
—not only a Kant, but a Beethoven—
not only a Darwin, but a Carlyle. Not
in each of these, but in all, is human
nature whole. They are not opposed,
but supplementary—not mutually exclu
sive, but reconcilable. And if, unsatis
fied with them all, the human mind, with
the yearning of a pilgrim for his distant
home, will still turn to the Mystery from
which it has emerged, seeking so to
fashion it as to give unity to thought and
faith ; so long as this is done, not only
without intolerance or bigotry of any
kind, but with the enlightened recogni
tion that ultimate fixity of conception is
here unattainable, and that each suc
ceeding age must be held free to fashion
the mystery in accordance with its own
needs—then, casting aside all the restric
tions of Materialism, I would affirm this
to be a field for the noblest exercise of
what, in contrast with the knowing facul
ties, may be called the creative faculties
of man. Here, however, I touch a theme
too great for me to handle, but which
will assuredly be handled by the loftiest
minds, when you and I, like streaks of
morning cloud, shall have melted into
the infinite azure of the past.
APOLOGY FOR THE BELFAST ADDRESS'
1874
The world has been frequently informed
of late that I have raised up against
myself a host of enemies ; and consider
ing, with few exceptions, the deliverances
of the Press, and more particularly, of the
religious Press, I am forced to admit
that the statement is only too true. I
derive some comfort, nevertheless, from
..
the reflection of Diogenes, transmitted
to us by Plutarch, that “he who would
be saved must have good friends or
violent enemies ; and that he is best off
who possesses both.” This “best” con
dition, I have reason to believe, is mine.
Reflecting on the fraction I have
read of recent remonstrances, appeals,
The word “Apology” is here used in its original sense, as signifying “Vindication” 01
Defence”; no retractation is implied.— Ed.
�44
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
has himself told us how and where this
menaces, and judgments—covering not
Address of his was composed. It was
only the world that now is, but that
written among the glaciers and the soli
which is to come—I have noticed with
tudes of the Swiss mountains. It was
mournful interest how trivially men seem
no hasty, hurried, crude production; its
to be influenced by what they call their
every sentence bore marks of thought
religion, and how potently by that
and care.”
“ nature ” which it is the alleged province
My critic intends to be severe: he is
of religion to eradicate or subdue. From
simply just.
In the “ solitudes ” to
fair and manly argument, from the tenwhich he refers I worked with delibera
derest and holiest sympathy on the part
tion, endeavouring even to purify my
of those who desire my eternal good, I
pass by many gradations, through deli intellect by disciplines similar to those
berate unfairness, to a spirit of bitter enjoined by his own Church for the
ness, which desires with a fervour inex sanctification of the soul. I tried, more
over, in my ponderings to realise not
pressible in words my eternal ill. Now,
only the lawful, but the expedient; and
were religion the potent factor, we might
to permit no fear to act upon my mind,
expect a homogeneous utterance from
save that of uttering a single word on
those professing a common creed, while,
which I could not take my stand, either
if human nature be the really potent
in this or in any other world.
factor, we may expect utterances as
Still my time was so brief, the diffi
heterogeneous as the characters of men.
culties arising from my isolated position
As a matter of fact, we have the latter;
suggesting to my mind that the common were so numerous, and my thought and
expression so slow, that, in a literary
religion, professed and defended by
point of view, I halted, not only behind
these different people, is merely the
the ideal, but behind the possible.
accidental conduit through which they
Hence, after the delivery of the Address,
pour their own tempers, lofty or low,
I went over it with the desire, not to
courteous or vulgar, mild or ferocious,
as the case may be. Pure abuse, how revoke its principles, but to improve it
verbally, and above all to remove any
ever, as serving no good end, I have,
word which might give colour to the
wherever possible, deliberately avoided
reading, wishing, indeed, to keep, not notion of “ crudeness, hurry, or haste.”
In connection with the charge of
only hatred, malice, and uncharitable
Atheism my critic refers to the Preface
ness, but even every trace of irritation,
to the second issue of the Belfast
far away from my side of a discussion
Address. “ Christian men,” I there say,
which demands not only good-temper,
but largeness, clearness, and many-sided “are proved by their writings to have
their hours of weakness and of doubt, as
ness of mind, if it is to guide us to even
well as their hours of strength and of
provisional solutions.
It has been stated, with many varia conviction; and men like myself share,
in their own way, these variations of
tions of note and comment, that in
mood and tense.
Were the religious
the Address as subsequently published
moods of many of my assailants the only
by Messrs. Longman I have retracted
alternative ones, I do not know how
opinions uttered at Belfast. A Roman
strong the claims of the doctrine of
Catholic writer is specially strong upon
‘ Material Atheism ’ upon my allegiance
this point. Startled by the deep chorus
might be. Probably they would be very
of dissent which my “ dazzling fallacies ”
strong. But, as it is, I have noticed
have evoked, I am now trying to retreat.
during years of self-observation that it is
This he will by no means tolerate. “ It
not in hours of clearness and vigour
is too late now to seek to hide from
that this doctrine commends itself to my
the eyes of mankind one foul blot, one
mind; that in the presence of stronger
ghastly deformity.
Professor Tyndall
�APOLOGY FOR THE BELFAST ADDRESS
and healthier thought it ever dissolves
and disappears, as offering no solution
of the mystery in which we dwell, and
of which we form a part.”
With reference to this honest and
reasonable utterance my censor exclaims:
“ This is a most remarkable passage.
Much as we dislike seasoning polemics
with strong words, we assert that this
apology only tends to affix with links
of steel, to the name of Professor Tyndall,
the dread imputation against which he
struggles.”
Here we have a very fair example of
subjective religious vigour.
But my
quarrel with such exhibitions is that they
do not always represent objective fact.
No atheistic reasoning can, I hold, dis
lodge religion from the human heart.
Logic cannot deprive us of life, and
religion is life to the religious. As an
experience of consciousness it is beyond
the assaults of logic. But the religious
life is often projected in external forms
—I use the word in its widest sense—
and this embodiment of the religious
sentiment will have to bear more and
more, as the world becomes more en
lightened, the stress of scientific tests.
We must be careful of projecting into
external nature that which belongs to
ourselves. My critic commits this mis
take : he feels, and takes delight in
feeling, that I am struggling, and he
obviously experiences the most exquisite
pleasures of “the muscular sense” in
holding me down. His feelings are as
real as if his imagination of what mine
are were equally real. His picture of
my “ struggles ” is, however, a mere
delusion. I do not struggle. I do not
fear the charge of Atheism; nor should
I even disavow it, in reference to any
definition of the Supreme which he, or
his order, would be likely to frame. His
“ links ” and his “ steel ” and his “dread
imputations ” are, therefore, even more
unsubstantial than my “streaks of morn
ing cloud,” and they may be permitted
to vanish together.
These minor and more purely personal
45
matters at an end, the weightier allegation
remains, that at Belfast I misused my
position by quitting the domain of
science, and making an unjustifiable raid
into the domain of theology. This I
fail to see. Laying aside abuse, I hope
my accusers will consent to reason with
me. Is it not lawful for a scientific man
to speculate on the antecedents of the
solar system ? Did Kant, Laplace, and
William Herschel quit their legitimate
spheres when they prolonged the intellec
tual vision beyond the boundary of
experience, and propounded the nebular
theory ? Accepting that theory as prob
able, is it not permitted to a scientific
man to follow up, in idea, the series of
changes associated with the condensation
of the nebulae; to picture the successive
detachment of planets and moons, and
the z relation of all of them to the sun ?
If I look upon our earth, with its orbital
revolution and axial rotation, as one
small issue of the process which made
the solar system what it is, will any theo
logian deny my right to entertain and
express this theoretic view ? Time was
when a multitude of theologians would
have been found to do so—when that
arch-enemy of science which now vaunts
its tolerance would have made a speedy
end of the man who might venture to
publish any opinion of the kind.
But
that time, unless the world is caught
strangely slumbering, is for ever past.
As regards inorganic nature, then, we
may traverse, without let or hindrance,
the whole distance which separates the
nebulae from the worlds of to-day. But
only a few years ago this now conceded
ground of science was theological ground.
I could by no means regard this as the
final and sufficient concession of theo
logy ; and, at Belfast, I thought it not
only my right but my duty to state that,
as regards the organic world, we must
enjoy the freedom which we have already
won in regard to the inorganic. I could
not discern the shred of a title-deed
which gave any man, or any class of men,
the right to open the door of one of these
worlds to the scientific searcher and to
�46
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
close the other against him. And I con
sidered it frankest, wisest, and in the
long run most conducive to permanent
peace, to indicate, without evasion or
reserve, the ground that belongs to
Science, and to which she will assuredly
make good her claim.
I have been reminded that an eminent
predecessor of mine in the Presidential
chair expressed a totally different view of
the Cause of things from that enunciated
by me. In doing so he transgressed the
bounds of science at least as much as I
did; but nobody raised an outcry against
him. The freedom he took I claim.
And looking at what I must regard as
the extravagances of the religious world;
at the very inadequate and foolish notions
concerning this universe which are enter
tained by the majority of our authorised
religious teachers; at the waste of energy
on the part of good men over things
unworthy, if I may say it without dis
courtesy, of the attention of enlightened
heathens ; the fight about the fripperies
of Ritualism, and the verbal quibbles of
the Athanasian Creed ; the forcing on the
public view of Pontigny Pilgrimages ; the
dating of historic epochs from the defini
tion of the Immaculate Conception; the
proclamation of the Divine Glories of the
Sacred Heart—standing in the midst of
these chimeras, which astound all think
ing men, it did not appear to me extra
vagant to claim the public tolerance for
an hour and a half, for the statement of
more reasonable views, views more in
accordance with the verities which science
has brought to light, and which many
weary souls would, I thought, welcome
with gratification and relief.
But to come to closer quarters. The
expression to which the most violent ex
ception has been taken is this: “ Aban
doning all disguise, the confession I feel
bound to make before you is that I pro
long the vision backward across the
boundary of the experimental evidence,
and discern in that Matter which we, in
our ignorance, and notwithstanding our
professed reverence for its Creator, have
hitherto covered with opprobrium, the
promise and potency of every form and
quality of life.” To call it a “chorus of
dissent,” as my Catholic critic does, is a
mild way of describing the storm of
opprobrium with which this statement
has been assailed. But the first blast of
passion being past, I hope I may again
ask my opponents to consent to reason.
First of all, I am blamed for crossing the
boundary of the experimental evidence.
This, I reply, is the habitual action of
the scientific mind—at least of that por
tion of it which applies itself to physical
investigation. Our theories of light, heat,
magnetism, and electricity, all imply the
crossing of this boundary. My paper on
the “ Scientific Use of the Imagination,”
and my “Lectures on Light,” illustrate
this point in the amplest manner ; and in
the article entitled “ Matter and Force ” I
have sought, incidentally, to make clear
that in physics the experiential incessantly
leads to the ultra-experiential; that out
of experience there always grows some
thing finer than mere experience, and
that in their different powers of ideal
extension consists, for the most part, the
difference between the great and the
mediocre investigator. The kingdom of
science, then, cometh not by observation
and experiment alone, but is completed
by fixing the roots of observation and
experiment in a region inaccessible to
both, and in dealing with which we are
forced to fall back upon the picturing
power of the mind.
Passing the boundary of experience,
therefore, does not, in the abstract, con
stitute a sufficient ground for censure.
There must have been something in my
particular mode of crossing it which pro
voked this tremendous “chorus of dis
sent.”
Let us calmly reason the point out.
I hold the nebular theory as it was held
by Kant, Laplace, and William Herschel,
and as it is held by the best scientific
intellects of to-day. According to it, our
sun and planets were once diffused
through space as an impalpable haze, out
of which, by condensation, came the
I solar system.
What caused the haze to
�APOLOGY FOR THE BELFAST ADDRESS
condense ? Loss of heat. What rounded
the sun and planets ? That which rounds
a tear—molecular force. For seons, the
immensity of which overwhelms man’s
conceptions, the earth was unfit to main
tain what we call life. It is now covered
with visible living things. They are not
formed of matter different from that of
the earth around them. They are, on
the contrary, bone of its bone, and flesh
of its flesh. How were they introduced?
Was life implicated in the nebula—as
part, it may be, of a vaster and wholly
Unfathomable Life; or is it the work of
a Being standing outside the nebula,
who fashioned it, and vitalised it; but
whose own origin and ways are equally
past finding out ? As far as the eye of
science has hitherto ranged through
nature, no intrusion of purely creative
power into any series of phenomena has
ever been observed. The assumption
of such a power to account for special
phenomena, though often made, has
always proved a failure. It is opposed
to the very spirit of science ; and I there
fore assumed the responsibility of holding
up, in contrast with it, that method of
nature which it has been the vocation
and triumph of science to disclose, and
in the application of which we can alone
hope for further light.
Holding, then,
that the nebulae and the solar system,
life included, stand to each other in the
relation of the germ to the finished
organism, I reaffirm here, not arrogantly
or defiantly, but without a shade of indis
tinctness, the position laid down at
Belfast.
Not with the vagueness belonging to
the emotions, but with the definiteness
belonging to the understanding, the
scientific man has to put to himself these
questions regarding the introduction of
life upon the earth. He will be the last
to dogmatise upon the subject, for he
knows best that certainty is here for the
present unattainable. His refusal of the
creative hypothesis is less an assertion of
knowledge than a protest against the
assumption of knowledge which must
long, if not for ever, lie beyond us, and
47
the claim to which is the source of per
petual confusion upon earth. With a
mind open to conviction he asks his
opponents to show him an authority for
the belief they so strenuously and so
fiercely uphold. They can do no more
than point to the Book of Genesis, or
some other portion of the Bible. Pro
foundly interesting, and indeed pathetic,
to me are those attempts of the opening
mind of man to appease its hunger for a
Cause. But the Book of Genesis has no
voice in scientific questions. To the
grasp of geology, which it resisted for a
time, it at length yielded like potter’s
clay; its authority as a system of cosmo
gony being discredited on all hands by
the abandonment of the obvious meaning
of its writer. It is a poem, not a scien
tific treatise. In the former aspect it is
for ever beautiful: in the latter aspect it
has been, and it will continue to be,
purely obstructive and hurtful.
To
knowledge its value has been negative,
leading, in rougher ages than ours, to
physical, and even in our own “free”
age to moral, violence.
No incident connected with the pro
ceedings at Belfast is more instructive
than the deportment of the Catholic
hierarchy of Ireland; a body usually too
wise to confer notoriety upon an adver
sary by imprudently denouncing him.
The Times, to which I owe a great deal
on the score of fair play, where so much
has been unfair, thinks that the Irish
Cardinal, Archbishops, and Bishops, in
a recent manifesto, adroitly employed a
weapon which I, at an unlucky moment,
placed in their hands. The antecedents
of their action cause me to regard it in
a different light; and a brief reference
to these antecedents will, I think, illu
minate not only their proceedings regard
ing Belfast, but other doings which have
been recently noised abroad.
Before me lies a document bearing
the date of November, 1873, which, after
appearing for a moment, unaccountably
vanished from public view.
It is a
Memorial addressed by seventy of the
�4»
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
Students and Ex-students of the Catholic
University in Ireland to the Episcopal
Board of the University ; and it consti
tutes the plainest and bravest remon
strance ever addressed by Irish laymen
to their spiritual pastors and masters. . It
expresses the profoundest dissatisfaction
with the curriculum marked out for the
students of the University, setting forth
the extraordinary fact that the lecture
list for the faculty of Science, published
a month before they wrote, did not
contain the name of a single Professor
of the Physical or Natural Sciences.
The memorialists forcibly deprecate
this, and dwell upon the necessity of
education in science : “The distinguish
ing mark of this age is its ardour for
science.
The natural sciences have,
within the last fifty years, become the
chiefest study in the world; they
are in our time pursued with an activity
unparalleled in the history of mankind.
Scarce a year now passes without some
discovery being made in these sciences
which, as with the touch of the magician’s
wand, shivers to atoms theories formerly
deemed unassailable. It is through the
physical and natural sciences that the
fiercest assaults are now made on our
religion. No more deadly weapon is
used against our faith than the facts
incontestably proved by modern re
searches in science.”
Such statements must be the reverse
of comfortable to a number of gentle
men who, trained in the philosophy of
Thomas Aquinas, have been accustomed
to the unquestioning submission of all
other sciences to their divine science of
Theology. But this is not all: “ One thing
seems certain,” say the memorialists,
“ viz., that if chairs for the physical and
natural sciences be not soon founded in
the Catholic University, very many young
men will have their faith exposed to
dangers which the creation of a school
of science in the University would defend
them from. For our generation of Irish
Catholics are writhing under the sense
of their inferiority in science, and are
determined that such inferiority shall
not long continue; and so, if scientific
training be unattainable at our University,
they will seek it at Trinity or at the
Queen’s Colleges, in not one of which is
there a Catholic Professor of Science.” .
Those who imagined the Catholic
University at Kensington to be due to
the spontaneous recognition, on the part
of the Roman hierarchy, of the intel
lectual needs of the age will derive
enlightenment from this, and still more
from what follows : for the most formid
able threat remains. To the picture of
Catholic students seceding to Trinity
and the Queen’s Colleges the memo
rialists add this darkest stroke of all:
“ They will, in the solitude of their own
homes, unaided by any guiding advice,
devour the works of Haeckel, Darwin,
Huxley, Tyndall, and Lyell: works in
nocuous if studied under a professor
who would point out the difference
between established facts and erroneous
inferences, but which are calculated
to sap the faith of a solitary student
deprived of a discriminating judgment to
which he could refer for a solution of his
difficulties.”
In the light of the knowledge given by
this courageous memorial, and of similar
knowledge otherwise derived, the recent
Catholic manifesto did not at all strike
me as a chuckle over the mistake of a
maladroit adversary, but rather as an
evidence of profound uneasiness on the
part of the Cardinal, the Archbishops,
and the Bishops who signed it. They
acted towards the Students’ Memorial,
however, with their accustomed practical
wisdom. As one concession to the spirit
which it embodied, the Catholic Univer
sity at Kensington was brought forth,
apparently as the effect of spontaneous
inward force, and not of outward pressure
becoming too formidable to be success
fully opposed.
.
The memorialists point with bitterness
to the fact that “the name of no Irish
Catholic is known in connection with the
physical and natural sciences.” But this,
they ought to know, is the complaint
of free and cultivated minds wherever
�APOLOGY FOR THE BELFAST ADDRESS
a Priesthood exercises dominant power.
Precisely the same complaint has been
made with respect to the Catholics
of Germany. The great national litera
ture and the scientific achievements
of that country, in modern times, are
almost wholly the work of Protestants.
A vanishingly small fraction of it only is
derived from members of the Roman
Church, although the number of these in
Germany is at least as great as that of the
Protestants. “ The question arises,” says
a writer in an able German periodical,
“ what is the cause of a phenomenon so
humiliating to the Catholics ? It cannot
be referred to want of natural endowment
due to climate (for the Protestants of
Southern Germany have contributed
powerfully to the creations of the German
intellect), but purely to outward circum
stances. And these are readily discovered
in the pressure exercised for centuries by
the Jesuitical system, which has crushed
out of Catholics every tendency to free
mental productiveness.” It is, indeed,
in Catholic countries that the weight of
Ultramontanism has been most severely
felt. It is in such countries that the very
finest spirits, who have dared, without
quitting their faith, to plead for freedom
or reform, have suffered extinction. The
extinction, however, was more apparent
than real, and Hermes, Hirscher, and
Gunther, though individually broken and
subdued, prepared the way, in Bavaria,
for the persecuted but unflinching
Frohschammer, for Dollinger, and for
the remarkable liberal movement of
which Dollinger is the head and guide.
Though moulded for centuries to an
obedience unparalleled in any other
country, except Spain, the Irish intellect
is beginning to show signs of indepen
dence; demanding a diet more suited
to its years than the pabulum of the
Middle Ages. As for the recent mani
festo in which Pope, Cardinal, Arch
bishops, and Bishops are united in one
grand anathema, its character and faith
are shadowed forth by the Vision of
Nebuchadnezzar recorded in the Book
of Daniel.
It resembles the image
49
whose form was terrible, but the gold,
and silver, and brass, and iron of which
rested upon feet of clay. And a stone
smote the feet of clay ; and the iron, and
the brass, and the silver, and the gold,
were broken in pieces together, and
became like the chaff of the summer
threshing-floors, and the wind carried
them away.
Monsignor Capel has recently been
good enough to proclaim at once the
friendliness of his Church towards true
science, and her right to determine what
true science is. Let us dwell for a
moment on the proofs of her scientific
competence.
When Halley’s comet
appeared in 1456 it was regarded as
the harbinger of God’s vengeance, the
dispenser of war, pestilence, and famine,
and by order of the Pope the church
bells of Europe were rung to scare the
monster away.
An additional daily
prayer was added to the supplications of
the faithful. The comet in due time
disappeared, and the faithful were com
forted by the assurance that, as in
previous instances relating to eclipses,
droughts, and rains, so also as regards
this “nefarious” comet, victory had been
vouchsafed to the Church.
Both Pythagoras and Copernicus had
taught the heliocentric doctrine—that
the earth revolves round the sun. In
the exercise of her right to determine
what true science is, the Church, in the
Pontificate of Paul V., stepped in and,
by the mouth of the Holy Congregation
of the Index, delivered, on March 5th,
1616, the following decree :—
And whereas it hath also come to the
knowledge of the said Holy Congregation
that the false Pythagorean doctrine of the
mobility of the earth and the immobility
of the sun, entirely opposed to Holy writ,
which is taught by Nicolas Copernicus, is
now published abroad and received by
many. In order that this opinion may not
further spread, to the damage of Catholic
truth, it is ordered that this and all other
books teaching the like doctrine be sus
pended, and by this decree they are all respec
tively suspended, forbidden, and condemned.
�5o
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
But why go back to 1456 and 1616 ?
Far be it from me to charge bygone sins
upon Monsignor Capel, were it not for
the practices he upholds to-day. The
most applauded dogmatist and champion
of the Jesuits is, I am informed, Perrone.
No less than thirty editions of a work of
his have been scattered abroad for the
healing of the nations. His notions of
physical astronomy are virtually those of
1456.
He teaches boldly that “God
does not rule by universal law....... that
when God orders a given planet to stand
still He does not detract from any law
passed by Himself, but orders that
planet to move round the sun for such
and such a time, then to stand still, and
then again to move, as His pleasure may
be.” Jesuitism proscribed Frohschammer
for questioning its favourite dogma, that
every human soul was created by a
direct supernatural act of God, and for
asserting that man, body and soul, came
from his parents. This is the system
that now strives for universal power; it
is from it, as Monsignor Capel graciously
informs us, that we are to learn what is
allowable in science, and what is not 1
In the face of such facts, which might
be multiplied at will, it requires extra
ordinary bravery of mind, or a reliance
upon public ignorance almost as extra
ordinary, to make the claims made by
Monsignor Capel for his Church.
Before me is a very remarkable letter
addressed in 18751 by the Bishop of
Montpellier to the Deans and Professors
of Faculties of Montpellier, in which the
writer very clearly lays down the claims
of his Church. He had been startled
by an incident occurring in a course of
lectures on Physiology given by a pro
fessor, of whose scientific capacity there
was no doubt, but who, it was alleged,
rightly or wrongly, had made his course
the vehicle of materialism. “Je ne me
suis point donne,” says the Bishop, “ la
mission que je remplis au milieu de
1 The next four paragraphs, as this date indi
cates, were inserted only in the subsequent
reprints.—Ed.
vous.
‘ Personne, au temoignage de
saint Paul, ne s’attribue & soi-meme un
pared honneur; il y faut etre appele de
Dieu, comme Aaron.’ Et pourquoi en
est-il ainsi ? C’est parce que, selon le
meme Apotre, nous devons' etre les
ambassadeurs de Dieu; et il n’est pas
dans les usages, pas plus qu’il n’est dans
la raison et le droit, qu’un envoye
s’accredite lui-meme.
Mais, si j’ai regu
d’En-Haut une mission; si l’Eglise, au
nom de Dieu lui-meme, a souscrit mes
lettres de creance, me sierait-il de manquer aux instructions qu’elle m’a donnees et d’entendre, en un sens different
du sien, le role qu’elle m’a confie ?
“ Or, Messieurs, la sainte Eglise se
croit investie du droit absolu d’enseigner
les hommes; elle se croit depositaire de
la verite, non pas de la verite fragmentaire, incomplete, melee de certitude et
d’hesitation, mais de la verite totale,
complete, au point de vue religieux.
Bien plus, elle est si sfire de l’infaillibilite que son Fondateur divin lui a
communiquee, comme la dot magnifique
de leur indissoluble alliance, que, meme
dans l’ordre naturel, - scientifique ou
philosGphique, moral ou politique, elle
n’admet pas qu’un systeme puisse etre
soutenu et adopte par des chretiens, s’il
contredit a des dogmes definis. Elle
considere que la negation volontaire et
opiniatre d’un seul point de sa doctrine
rend coupable du peche d’heresie; et
elle pense que toute heresie formelie, si
on ne la rejette pas courageusement
avant de paraitre devant Dieu, entraine
avec soi la perte certaine de la grace et
de l’eternite.”
The Bishop recalls those whom he
addresses from the false philosophy of
the present to the philosophy of the past,
and foresees the triumph of the latter.
“Avant que le dix-neuvieme siecle
s’acheve, la vieille philosophic scolastique aura repris sa place dans la juste
admiration du monde.
Il lui faudra
pourtant bien du temps pour guerir les
maux de tout genre, causes par son
indigne rivale; et pendant de longues
annees encore, ce nom de philosophic le
�APOLOGY FOR THE BELFAST ADDRESS
plus grand de la langue humaine apres
celui de religion, sera suspect aux ames
qui se souviendront de la science impie
et materialiste de Locke, de Condillac
ou d’Helvetius.
L’heure actuelle est
aux sciences naturelies : c’est maintenant
l’instrument de combat contre l’Eglise et
contre toute foi religieuse. Nous ne les
redoutons pas.” Further on the Bishop
warns his readers that everything can be
abused. Poetry is good, but in excess it
“ Les
may injure practical conduct.
mathematiques sont excellentes : et B ossuet les a louees ‘ comme etant ce qui
sert le plus a la justesse du raisonnement ’; mais si on s’accoutume exclusivement a leur methode, rien de ce qui
appartient a l’ordre moral ne parait plus
pouvoir etre demontre ; et Fenelon a pu
parler de rensorcellement et des attraits
diaboliques de la geometrie.”
The learned Bishop thus finally accen
tuates the claims of the Church:—
“ Comme le definissait le Pape Leon X,
au cinquieme concile cecumenique de
Latran, ‘ Le vrai ne peut pas etre contraire
a lui-meme : par consequent, toute asser
tion contraire a une verite de foi revelee
est necessairement et absolument fausse.’
Il suit de la que, sans entrer dans l’examen
scientifique de telle ou telle question de
physiologie, mais par la seule certitude
de nos dogmes, nous pouvons juger du
sort de telle ou telle hypothese, qui est
une machine de guerre anti-chretienne
plutot qu’une conquete serieuse sur les
secrets et les mysteres de la nature.........
C’est un dogme que l’homme a ete forme
et fagonne des mains de Dieu. Done
il est faux, heretique, contraire a la
dignite du Createur et offensant pour son
chef-d’oeuvre, de dire que l’homme constitue la sepiieme espece des singes.
....... Heresie encore de dire que le genre
humain n’est pas sorti d’un seul couple,
et qu’on y peut compter jusqu’a douze
races distinctes 1”
The course of life upon earth, as far
as Science can see, has been one of
amelioration—a steady advance on the
whole from the lower to the higher. The
Si
continued effort of animated nature is to
improve its condition and raise itself
to a loftier level. In man improvement
and amelioration depend largely upon
the growth of conscious knowledge, by
which the errors of ignorance are con
tinually moulted, and truth is organised.
It is the advance of knowledge that has
given a materialistic colour to the philo
sophy of this age. Materialism is there
fore not a thing to be mourned over, but
to be honestly considered—accepted if
it be wholly true, rejected if it be wholly
false, wisely sifted and turned to account
if it embrace a mixture of truth and
error. Of late years the study of the
nervous system, and its relation to
thought and feeling, have profoundly
occupied inquiring minds.
It is our
duty not to shirk—it ought rather to be
our privilege to accept—the established
results of such inquiries, for here assur
edly our ultimate weal depends upon our
loyalty to the truth. Instructed as to the
control which the nervous system exer
cises over man’s moral and intellectual
nature, we shall be better prepared, not
only to mend their manifold defects, but
also to strengthen and purify both. Is
mind degraded by this recognition of its
dependence ? Assuredly not. Matter,
on the contrary, is raised to the level it
ought to occupy, and from which timid
ignorance would remove it.
But the light is dawning, and it will
become stronger as time goes on. Even
the Brighton “Church Congress” affords
evidence of this. From the manifold
confusions of that assemblage my
memory has rescued two items, which it
would fain preserve : the recognition of
a relation between Health and Religion,
and the address of the Rev. Harry Jones.
Out of the conflict of vanities his words
emerge wholesome and strong, because
undrugged by dogma, coming directly
from the warm brain of one who knows
what practical truth means, and who has
faith in its vitality and inherent power of
propagation. I wonder whether he is
less effectual in his ministry than his
more embroidered colleagues ? It surely
�52
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
behoves our teachers to come to some
definite understanding as to this question
of health; to see how, by inattention to
it, we are defrauded, negatively and
positively : negatively, by the privation of
that “ sweetness and light ” which is the
natural concomitant of good health;
positively, by the insertion into life of
cynicism, ill-temper, and a thousand
corroding anxieties which good health
would dissipate. We fear and scorn
“ materialism.” But he who knew all
about it, and could apply his knowledge,
might become the preacher of a new
gospel. Not, however, through the
ecstatic moments of the individual does
such knowledge come, but through the
revelations of science, in connection with
the history of mankind.
Why should the Roman Catholic
Church call gluttony a mortal sin ? Why
should fasting occupy a place in the dis
ciplines of religion ? What is the mean
ing of Luther’s advice to the young
clergyman who came to him, perplexed
with the difficulties of predestination and
election, if it be not that, in virtue of its
action upon the brain, when wisely
applied, there is moral and religious
virtue even in a hydro-carbon ? To use
the old language, food and drink are
creatures of God, and have therefore a
spiritual value. Through our neglect of
the monitions of a reasonable materialism
we sin and suffer daily. I might here
point to the train of deadly disorders
over which science has given modern
society such control—disclosing the lair
of the material enemy, ensuring his
destruction, and thus preventing that
moral squalor and hopelessness which
habitually tread on the heels of epidemics
in the case of the poor.
Rising to higher spheres, the visions
of Swedenborg, and the ecstasy of
Plotinus and Porphyry, are phases of
that psychical condition, obviously con
nected with the nervous system and state
of health, on which is based the Vedic
doctrine of the absorption of the indi
vidual into the universal soul. Plotinus
taught the devout how to pass into a
condition of ecstasy. Porphyry com
plains of having been only once united
to God in eighty-six years, while his
master Plotinus had been so united six
times in sixty years.1
A friend who
knew Wordsworth informs me that the
poet, in some of his moods, was accus
tomed to seize hold of an external object
to assure himself of his own bodily exist
ence. As states of consciousness such
phenomena have an undisputed reality
and a substantial identity ; but they are
connected with the most»heterogeneous
objective conceptions. The subjective
experiences are similar, because of the
similarity of the underlying organisations.
But for those who wish to look beyond
the practical facts there will always
remain ample room for speculation.
Take the argument of the Lucretian in
troduced in the Belfast Address. As
far as I am aware, not one of my
assailants has attempted to answer it.
Some of them, indeed, rejoice over the
ability displayed by Bishop Butler in
rolling back the difficulty on his oppo
nent ; and they even imagine that it is
the Bishop’s own argument that is there
employed. But the raising of- a new
difficulty does not abolish—does not
even lessen—the old one, and the argu
ment of the Lucretian remains untouched
by anything the Bishop has said or can
say.
And here it may be permitted me to
add a word to an important controversy
now going on: and which turns on the
question: Do states of consciousness
enter as links into the chain of ante
cedence and sequence, which give rise
to bodily actions, and to other states of
consciousness; or are they merely by
products, which are not essential to the
physical processes going on in the brain ?
Speaking for myself, it is certain that I
have no power of imagining states of
* I recommend to the reader’s particular
attention Dr. Draper’s important work entitled
History of the Conflict between Religion and
Science (Messrs. H. S. King and Co.).
�APOLOGY FOR THE BELFAST ADDRESS
consciousness, interposed between the
molecules of the brain, and influencing
the transference of motion among the
molecules.
The thought “ eludes all
mental presentation
and hence the
logic seems of iron strength which claims
for the brain an automatic action, unin
fluenced by states of consciousness.
But it is, I believe, admitted by those
who hold the automaton-theory, that
states of consciousness are produced by
the marshalling of the molecules of the
brain : and this production of conscious
ness by molecular motion is to me quite
as inconceivable on mechanical princi
ples as the production of molecular
motion by consciousness. If, therefore,
I reject one result, I must reject both.
I, however, reject neither, and thus stand
in the presence of two Incomprehensibles,
instead of one Incomprehensible. While
accepting fearlessly the facts of mate
rialism dwelt upon in these pages, I bow
my head in the dust before that mystery
of mind which has hitherto defied its
own penetrative power, and which may
ultimately resolve itself into a demon
strable impossibility of self-penetration.
But the secret is an open one—the
practical monitions are plain enough,
which declare that on our dealings with
matter depend our weal and woe, phy
sical and moral.
The state of mind
which rebels against the recognition of
the claims of “ materialism” is not un
known to me. I can remember a time
when I regarded my body as a weed, so
much more highly did I prize the
53
conscious strength and pleasure derived
from moral and religious feeling—which,
I may add, was mine without the inter
vention of dogma. The error was not
an ignoble one, but this did not save it
from the penalty attached to error.
Saner knowledge taught me that the
body is no weed, and that, treated as
such, it would infallibly avenge itself.
Am I personally lowered by this change
of front ? Not so. Give me their health,
and there is no spiritual experience of
those earlier years—no resolve of duty,
or work of mercy, no work of self
renouncement, no solemnity of thought,
no joy in the life and aspects of nature
—that would not still be mine; and this
without the least reference or regard to
any purely personal reward or punish
ment looming in the future.
And now I have to utter a “ farewell ”
free from bitterness to all my readers ;
thanking my friends for a sympathy
more steadfast, I would fain believe, if
less noisy, than the antipathy of my foes;
and commending to these a passage
from Bishop Butler, which they have
either not read or failed to lay to heart.
“ It seems,” saith the Bishop, “that men
would be strangely headstrong and selfwilled, and disposed to exert themselves
with an impetuosity which would render
society insupportable, and the living in
it impracticable, were it not for some
acquired moderation and self-govern
ment, some aptitude and readiness in
restraining themselves, and concealing
their sense of things.”
�54
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISM1
1868
The celebrated Fichte, in his lectures on
the “Vocation of the Scholar,” insisted
on a culture which should be not one
sided, but all-sided. The scholar’s in
tellect was to expand spherically, and
not in a single direction only. In one
direction, however, Fichte required that
the scholar should apply himself directly
to nature, become a creator of know
ledge, and thus repay, by original labours
of his own, the immense debt he owed
to the labours of others. It was these
which enabled him to supplement the
knowledge derived from his own re
searches, so as to render his culture
rounded and not one-sided.
As regards science, Fichte’s idea is to
some extent illustrated by the constitu
tion and labours of the British Associa
tion. We have here a body of men
engaged in the pursuit of Natural Know
ledge, but variously engaged. While
sympathising with each of its departments,
and supplementing his culture by know
ledge drawn from all of them, each
student amongst us selects one subject
for the exercise of his own original faculty
—one line, along which he may carry
the light of his private intelligence a
little way into the darkness by which all
knowledge is surrounded. Thus, the
geologist deals with the rocks; the biolo
gist with the conditions and phenomena
of life; the astronomer with stellar
masses and motions ; the mathematician
with the relations of space and number;
the chemist pursues his atoms ; while
the physical investigator has his own
large field in optical, thermal, electrical,
acoustical, and other phenomena. The
British Association then, as a whole,
faces physical nature on all sides, and
pushes knowledge centrifugally outwards,
the sum of its labours constituting what
Fichte might call the sphere of natural
knowledge. In the meetings of the
Association it is found necessary to
resolve this sphere into its component
parts, which take concrete form under
the respective letters of our Sections.
Mathematics and Physics have been
long accustomed to coalesce, and here
they form a single section. No matter
how subtle a natural phenomenon may
be, whether we observe it in the
region of sense or follow it into that of
imagination, it is in the long run reducible
to mechanical laws. But the mechanical
data once guessed or given, mathematics
are all-powerful as an instrument of
deduction. The command of Geometry
over the relations of space, and the farreaching power which Analysis confers,
are potent both as means of physical
discovery and of reaping the entire fruits
of discovery. Indeed, without mathe
matics, expressed or implied, our know
ledge of physical science would be both
friable and incomplete.
Side by side with the mathematical
method we have the method of experi
ment. Here, from a starting-point fur
nished by his own researches or those of
others, the investigator proceeds _ by
combining intuition and verification.
He ponders the knowledge he possesses,
and tries to push it further; he guesses,
and checks his guess; he conjectures,
and confirms or explodes his conjecture.
These guesses and conjectures are by no
means leaps in the dark; for knowledge
once gained casts a faint light beyond
its own immediate boundaries. There
is no discovery so limited as not to
1 President’s Address to the Mathematical and Physical Section of the British Association at
Norwich.
�SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISM
55
illuminate something beyond itself. The
relationship to each other. When this
force of intellectual penetration into this
is done, we find that the observed
penumbral region which surrounds actual
motion of the hands follows of necessity
knowledge is not, as some seem to think,
from the inner mechanism of the watch
dependent upon method, but upon the
when acted upon by the force invested
genius of the investigator. There is,
in the spring. The motion of the hands
however, no genius so gifted as not to
may be called a phenomenon of art, but
need control and verification. The prothe case is similar with the phenomena
foundest minds know best that Nature’s
of nature. These also have their inner
ways are not at all times their ways, and
mechanism and their store of force to
that the brightest flashes in the world of set that mechanism going. The ultimate
thought are incomplete until they have
problem of physical science is to reveal
been proved to have their counterparts
this mechanism, to discern this store,
in the world of fact. Thus the vocation
and to show that, from the combined
of the true experimentalist may be
action of both, the phenomena of which
defined as the continued exercise of they constitute the basis must, of neces
spiritual insight, and its incessant cor
sity, flow.
rection and realisation. His experiments
I thought an attempt to give you even
constitute a body, of which his purified
a brief and sketchy illustration of the
intuitions are, as it were, the soul.
manner in which scientific thinkers
Partly through mathematical and
regard this problem would not be un
partly through experimental research,
interesting to you on the present occa
physical science has, of late years,
sion ; more especially as it will give me
assumed a momentous position in the
occasion to say a word or two on the
world. Both in a material and in an
tendencies and limits of modern science;
intellectual point of view it has produced,
to point out the region which men of
and it is destined to produce, immense
science claim as their own, and where it
changes—vast social ameliorations, and
is futile to oppose their advance; and
vast alterations in the popular conception
also to define, if possible, the bourne
of the origin, rule, and governance of between this and that other region to
natural things.
By science, in the
which the questionings and yearnings of
physical world, miracles are wrought,
the scientific intellect are directed in vain.
while philosophy is forsaking its ancient
But here your tolerance will be needed.
metaphysical channels, and pursuing
It was the American Emerson, I think,
others which have been opened or
who said that it is hardly possible to state
indicated by scientific research.
This
any truth strongly, without apparent in
must become more and more the case as justice to some other truth. Truth is
philosophical writers become more deeply
often of a dual character, taking the form
imbued with the methods of science,
of a magnet with two poles; and many
better acquainted with the facts which
of the differences which agitate the think
scientific men have established, and with
ing part of mankind are to be traced to
the great theories which they have elabo the exclusiveness with which partisan
rated.
reasoners dwell upon one half of the
I f you look at the face of a watch, you
duality, in forgetfulness of the other.
see the hour and minute-hands, and
The proper course appears to be to state
possibly also a second-hand, moving
both halves strongly, and allow each its
over the graduated dial. Why do these
fair share in the formation of the resul
hands move; and why are their relative
tant conviction. But this waiting for the
motions such as they are observed to be?
statement of the two sides of a question
These questions cannot be answered
implies patience. It implies a resolution
without opening the watch, mastering its
to suppress indignation, if the statement
various parts, and ascertaining their
of the one half should clash with our
�56
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
convictions, and to repress equally undue
elation, if the half-statement should
happen to chime in with our views. It
implies a determination to wait calmly
for the statement of the whole before we
pronounce judgment in the form of either
acquiescence or dissent.
This premised, and I trust accepted,
let us enter upon our task. There have
been writers who affirmed that the Pyra
mids of Egypt were natural productions;
and in his early youth Alexander von
Humboldt wrote a learned essay with the
express object of refuting this notion.
We now regard the pyramids as the work
of men’s hands, aided probably by
machinery of which no record remains.
We picture to ourselves the swarming
workers toiling at those vast erections,
lifting the inert stones, and, guided by
the volition, the skill, and possibly _ at
times by the whip of the architect, placing
them in their proper positions. The
blocks, in this case, were moved and
posited by a power external to them
selves, and the final form of the pyramid
expressed the thought of its human
builder.
Let us pass from this illustration of
constructive power to another of a dif
ferent kind. When a solution of common
salt is slowly evaporated, the water which
holds the salt in solution disappears, but
the salt itself remains behind. At a
certain stage of concentration the salt
can no longer retain the liquid form; its
particles, or molecules, as they are called,
begin to deposit themselves as minute
solids—so minute, indeed, as to defy all
microscopic power. As evaporation con
tinues, solidification goes on, and we
finally obtain, through the clustering
together of innumerable molecules, a
finite crystalline mass of a definite form.
What is this form ? It sometimes seems
a mimicry of the architecture of Egypt.
We have little pyramids built by the salt,
terrace above terrace from base to apex,
forming a series of steps resembling those
up which the traveller in Egypt is dragged
by his guides. The human mind is as
little disposed to look without question
ing at these pyramidal salt-crystals as to
look at the pyramids of Egypt, without
inquiring whence they came. How,
then, are those salt-pyramids built up ?
Guided by analogy, you may, if you
like, suppose that, swarming among the
constituent molecules of the salt, there is
an invisible population, controlled and
coerced by some invisible master, placing
the atomic blocks in their positions.
This, however, is not the scientific idea,
nor do I think your good sense will
accept it as a likely one. The scientific
idea is that the molecules act upon each
other without the intervention of slave
labour; that they attract each other, and
repel each other, at certain definite
points or poles, and in certain definite
directions ; and that the pyramidal form
is the result of this play of attraction and
repulsion. While, then, the blocks of
Egypt were laid down by a power external
to themselves, these molecular blocks of
salt are self-posited, being fixed in their
places by the inherent forces with which
they act upon each other.
I take common salt as an illustration,
because it is so familiar to us all; but
any other crystalline substance would
answer my purpose equally well. Every
where, in fact, throughout inorganic
nature, we have this formative power, as
Fichte would call it—this structural
energy ready to come into play, and
build the ultimate particles of matter
into definite shapes. The ice of our
winters and of our polar regions is its
handiwork, and so also are the quartz,
felspar, and mica of our rocks. Our
chalk-beds are for the most part composed
of minute shells, which are also the pro
duct of structural energy; but behind
the shell, as a whole, lies a more remote
and subtle formative act. These shells
are built up of little crystals of calc-spar,
and, to form these crystals, the structural
force had to deal with the intangible
molecules of carbonate of line. This
tendency on the part of matter to organise
itself, to grow into shape, to assume defi
nite forms in obedience to the definite
action of force, is, as I have said, all-
�SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISM
pervading. It is in the ground on which
you tread, in the water you drink, in the
air you breathe. Incipient life, as it
were, manifests itself throughout the
whole of what we call inorganic nature.
The forms of the minerals resulting
from this play of polar forces are various,
and exhibit different degrees of com
plexity. Men of science avail themselves
of all possible means of exploring their
molecular architecture. For this purpose
they employ in turn, as agents of explora
tion, light, heat, magnetism, electricity,
and sound. Polarised light is especially
useful and powerful here. A beam of
such light, when sent in among the
molecules of a crystal, is acted on by
them, and from this action we infer with
more or less clearness the manner in
which the molecules are arranged. That
differences, for example, exist between
the inner structure of rock-salt and that
of crystallised sugar or sugar-candy is
thus strikingly revealed. These actions
often display themselves in chromatic
phenomena of great splendour, the play
of molecular force being so regulated as
to cause the removal of some of the
coloured constituents of white light,
while others are left with increased
intensity behind.
And now let us pass from what we
are accustomed to regard as a dead
mineral, to a living grain of corn. When
this is examined by polarised light,
chromatic phenomena similar to those
noticed in crystals are observed. And
why? Because the architecture of the
grain resembles that of the crystal. In
the grain also the molecules are set in
definite positions, and in accordance
with their arrangement they act upon
the light. But what has built together
the molecules of the corn ? Regarding
crystalline architecture, I have already
said that you may, if you please, consider
the atoms and molecules to be placed
in position by a Power external to them
selves. The same hypothesis is open to
you now. But if in the case of crystals
you have rejected this notion of an
external architect, I think you are bound
57
to reject it in the case of the grain, and
to conclude that the molecules of the
corn, also, are posited by the forces with
which they act upon each other. It
would be poor philosophy to invoke an
external agent in the one case, and to
reject it in the other.
Instead of cutting our grain of corn
into slices and subjecting it to the action
of polarised light, let us place it in the
earth, and subject it to a certain degree
of warmth.
In other words, let the
molecules, both of the corn and of the
surrounding earth, be kept in that state
of agitation which we call heat. Under
these circumstances, the grain and the
substances which surround it interact,
and a definite molecular architecture is
the result. A bud is formed; this bud
reaches the surface, where it is exposed
to the sun’s rays, which are also to be
regarded as a kind of vibratory motion.
And as the motion of common heat,
with which the grain and the substances
surrounding it were first endowed, enabled
the grain and these substances to exer
cise their mutual attractions and repul
sions, and thus to coalesce in definite
forms, so the specific motion of the sun’s
rays now enables the green bud to feed
upon the carbonic acid and the aqueous
vapour of the air. The bud appropriates
those constituents of both for which it
has an elective attraction, and permits
the other constituent to return to the
atmosphere. Thus the architecture is
carried on. Forces are active at the
root, forces are active in the blade, the
matter of the air and the matter of the
atmosphere are drawn upon, and the
plant augments in size.
We have in
succession the stalk, the ear, the full
corn in the ear; the cycle of molecular
action being completed by the produc
tion of grains similar to that with which
the process began.
Now there is nothing in this process
which necessarily eludes the conceptive
or imagining power of the human mind.
An intellect the same in kind as our
own would, if only sufficiently expanded,
be able to follow the whole process from
�§8
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
beginning to end. It would see every
molecule placed in its position by the
specific attractions and repulsions exerted
between it and other molecules, the
whole process, and its consummation,
being an instance of the play of molecular
force. Given the grain and its environ
ment, with their respective forces, the
purely human intellect might, if suffi
ciently expanded, trace out a priori
every step of the process of growth, and,
by the application of purely mechanical
principles, demonstrate that the cycle
must end, as it is seen to end, in the
reproduction of forms like that with
which it began. A necessity rules here,
similar to that which rules the planets
in their circuits round the sun.
You will notice that I am stating the
truth strongly, as at the beginning we
agreed it should be stated. But I must
go still further, and affirm that in the
eye of science the animal body is just as
much the product of molecular force as
the chalk and the ear of corn, or as
the crystal of salt or sugar. Many of
the parts of the body are obviously
mechanical. Take the human heart, for
example, with its system of valves, or
take the exquisite mechanism of the eye
or hand. Animal heat, moreover, is
the same in kind as the heat of a fire,
being produced by the same chemical
process. Animal motion, too, is as cer
tainly derived from the food of the
animal as the motion of Trevethyck’s
walking-engine from the fuel in its fur
nace. As regards matter, the animal
body creates nothing; as regards force,
it creates nothing. Which of you by
taking thought can add one cubit to his
stature? All that has been said, then,
regarding the plant may be restated with
regard to the animal. Every particle
that enters into the composition of a
nerve, a muscle, or a bone has been
placed in its position by molecular force.
And unless the existence of law in these
matters be denied, and the element of
caprice introduced, we must conclude
that, given the relation of any molecule
of the body to its environment, its posi
tion in the body might be determined
mathematically.
Our difficulty is not
with the quality of the problem, but with
its complexity ; and this difficulty might
be met by the simple expansion of the
faculties we now possess.
Given this
expansion, with the necessary molecular
data, and the chick might be deduced
as rigorously and as logically from the
egg as the existence of Neptune from
the disturbances of Uranus, or as conical
refraction from the undulatory theory of
light.
You see I am not mincing matters, but
avowing nakedly what many scientific
thinkers more or less distinctly believe.
The formation of a crystal, a plant, or
an animal is, in their eyes, a purely
mechanical problem, which differs from
the problems of ordinary mechanics in
the smallness of the masses, and the
complexity of the processes involved.
Here you have one half of our dual
truth; let us now glance at the other
half.
Associated with this wonderful
mechanism of the animal body we have
phenomena no less certain than those of
physics, but between which and the
mechanism we discern no necessary con
nection. A man, for example, can say
“I feel,” “I think,” “I love”; but how
does consciousness infuse itself into the
problem ? The human brain is said to
be the organ of thought and feeling:
when we are hurt, the brain feels it;
when we ponder, or when our passions
or affections are excited, it is through
the instrumentality of the brain. Let us
endeavour to be a little more precise
here. I hardly imagine there exists a
profound scientific thinker, who has
reflected upon the subject, unwilling to
admit the extreme probability of the
hypothesis, that for every fact of con
sciousness, whether in the domain of
sense, thought, or emotion, a definite
molecular condition, of motion or struc
ture, is set up in the brain; or who
would be disposed even to deny that, if
the motion, or structure, be induced by
internal causes instead of external, the
effect on consciousness will be the same?
�SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISM
Let any nerve, for example, be thrown
by morbid action into the precise state
of motion which would be communicated
to it by the pulses of a heated body,
surely that nerve will declare itself hot—
the mind will accept the subjective inti
mation exactly as if it were objective.
The retina may be excited by purely
mechanical means. A blow on the eye
causes a luminous flash, and the mere
pressure of the finger on the external
ball produces a star of light, which
Newton compared to the circles on a
peacock’s tail.
Disease makes people
see visions and dream dreams; but, in
all such cases, could we examine the
organs implicated, we should, on philo
sophical grounds, expect to find them in
that precise molecular condition which
the real objects, if present, would super
induce.
The relation of physics to conscious
ness being thus invariable, it follows that,
given the state of the brain, the corres
ponding thought or feeling might be
inferred : or, given the thought or feel
ing, the corresponding state of the brain
might be inferred. But how inferred ?
It would be at bottom not a case of
logical inference at all, but of empi
rical association. You may reply that
many of the inferences of science are of
this character—the inference, for ex
ample, that an electric current, of a given
direction, will deflect a magnetic needle
in a definite way. But the cases differ
in this, that the passage from the current
to the needle, if not demonstrable, is
conceivable, and that we entertain no
doubt as to the final mechanical solution
of the problem. But the passage from
the physics of the brain to the corre
sponding facts of consciousness is in
conceivable as a result of mechanics.
Granted that a definite thought and a
definite molecular action in the brain
occur simultaneously, we do not possess
the intellectual organ, nor apparently any
rudiment of the organ, which would
enable us to pass, by a process of reason
ing, from the one to the other. They
appear together, but we do not know why.
59
Were our minds and senses so expanded,
strengthened, and illuminated, as to
enable us to see and feel the very mole
cules of the brain; were we capable of
following all their motions, all their
groupings, all their electric discharges, if
such there be; and were we intimately
acquainted with the corresponding states
of thought and feeling ; we should be as
far as ever from the solution of the prob
lem, “How are these physical processes
connected with the facts of conscious
ness ?” The chasm between the two
classes of phenomena would still remain
intellectually impassable. Let the con
sciousness of love, for example, be asso
ciated with a right-handed spiral motion
of the molecules of the brain, and the
consciousness of hate with a left-handed
spiral motion. We should then know,
when we love, that the motion is in one
direction, and, when we hate, that the
motion is in the other; but the “ why ?”
would remain as unanswerable as before.
In affirming that the growth of the
body is mechanical, and that thought, as
exercised by us, has its correlative in the
physics of the brain, I think the position
of the “ Materialist ” is stated, as far as
that position is a tenable one. I think
the materialist will be able finally to
maintain this position against all attacks;
but I do not think, in the present condi
tion of the human mind, that he can pass
beyond this position. I do not think he
is entitled to say that his molecular
groupings and motions explain every
thing. In reality they explain nothing.
The utmost he can affirm is the associa
tion of two classes of phenomena, of
whose real bond of union he is in abso
lute ignorance. The problem of the con
nection of body and soul is as insoluble
in its modern form as it was in the prescientific ages. Phosphorus is known to
enter into the composition of the human
brain, and a trenchant German writer
has exclaimed, “ Ohne Phosphor, kein
Gedanke !” That may or may not be the
case; but even if we knew it to be the
case, the knowledge would not lighten
our darkness. On both sides of the zone
�6o
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
here assigned to the materialist he is
equally helpless. If you ask him whence
is this “ Matter ” of which we have been
discoursing, who or what divided it into
molecules, who or what impressed upon
them this necessity of running into
organic forms, he has no answer. Science
is mute in reply to these questions. But
if the materialist is confounded and
science rendered dumb, who else is pre
pared with a solution? To whom has
this arm of the Lord been revealed? Let
us lower our heads and acknowledge our
ignorance, priest and philosopher, one
and all.
Perhaps the mystery may resolve itself
into knowledge at some future day. The
process of things upon this earth has
been one of amelioration. It is a long
way from the Iguanodon and his contem
poraries to the President and Members
of the British Association. And whether
we regard the improvement from the
scientific or from the theological point of
view—as the result of progressive deve
lopment, or of successive exhibitions of
creative energy—neither view entitles us
to assume that man’s present faculties
end the series, that the process of
amelioration ends with him. A time
may therefore come when this ultra-scien
tific region, by which we are now
enfolded, may offer itself to terrestrial, if
not to human, investigation. Two-thirds
of the rays emitted by the sun fail to
arouse the sense of vision. The rays
exist, but the visual organ requisite for
their translation into light does not exist.
And so, from this region of darkness and
mystery which surrounds us, rays may
now be darting, which require but the
development of the proper intellectual
organs to translate them into knowledge
as far surpassing ours as ours surpasses
that of the wallowing reptiles which once
held possession of this planet. Mean
while the mystery is not without its uses.
It certainly may be made a power in the
human soul; but it is a power which has
feeling, not knowledge, for its base. It
may be, will be, and I hope is turned to
account, both in steadying and strengthen
ing the intellect, and in rescuing man
from that littleness to which, in the
struggle for existence, or for precedence
in the world, he is continally prone.
Musings on the Matterhorn^
July 2ytht 1868.
Hacked and hurt by time, the aspect
of the mountain from its higher crags
saddened me. Hitherto the impression
it made was that of savage strength;
here we had inexorable decay. But this
notion of decay implied a reference to a
period when the Matterhorn was in the
full strength of mountainhood. Thought
naturally ran back to its remoter origin
and sculpture. Nor did thought halt
there, but wandered on through molten
worlds to that nebulous haze which
philosophers have regarded, and with
good reason, as the proximate source of
all material things. I tried to look at
this universal cloud, containing within
itself the prediction of all that has since
occurred; I tried to imagine it as the
seat of those forces whose action was to
issue in solar and stellar systems, and all
that they involve. Did that formless
fog contain potentially the sadness with
which I regarded the Matterhorn ? Did
the thought which now ran back to it
simply return to its primeval home ? If
so, had we not better recast our defini
tions of matter and force; for, if life and
thought be the very flower of both, any
definition which omits life and thought
must be inadequate, if not untrue. Are
questions like these warranted? Why
not ? If the final goal of man has not
been yet attained; if his development
has not been yet arrested, who can say
that such yearnings and questionings are
not necessary to the opening of a finer
vision, to the budding and the growth of
diviner powers ? When I look at the
heavens and the earth, at my own body,
at my strength and weakness, even at
these ponderings, and ask myself, I§
�SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE IMAGINATION
there no being or thing in the universe
that knows more about these matters
than I do; what is my answer ? Suppos
ing our theologic schemes of creation,
condemnation, and redemption to be
dissipated; and the warmth of denial
which they excite, and which, as a motive
force, can match the warmth of affirma
tion, dissipated at the same time ; would
the undeflected human mind return to
61
the meridian of absolute neutrality as
regards these ultra-physical questions?
Is such a position one of stable equi
librium ? The channels of thought being
already formed, such are the questions,
without replies, which could run athwart
consciousness during a ten minutes’ halt
upon the weathered crest of the Matter
horn.
SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE IMAGINATION1
“Lastly, physical investigation, more than anything besides, helps to teach us the actual value and
right use of the Imagination—of that wondrous faculty which, left to ramble uncontrolled, leads us
astray into a wilderness ofperplexities and errors, a land of mists and shadows ; but which, properly
controlled by experience and reflection, becomes the noblest attribute of man ; the source ofpoetic genius,
the instrument of discovery in Science, without the aid of which Newton would never have invented
fluxions, nor Davy have decomposed the earths and alkalies, nor would Columbus have found another
Continent.”—Address to the Royal Society by its President, Sir Benjamin Brodie, Nov. 30th, 1859.
I carried with me to the Alps this year
the burden of this evening’s work. Save
from memory I had no direct aid upon
the mountains; but to spur up the
emotions, on which so much depends, as
well as to nourish indirectly the intellect
and will, I took with me four works,
comprising two volumes of poetry,
Goethe’s Farbenlehre, and the work on
Logic recently published by Mr. Alex
ander Bain. In Goethe, so noble other
wise, I chiefly noticed the self-inflicted
hurts of genius, as it broke itself in vain
against the philosophy of Newton. Mr.
Bain I found, for the most part, learned
and practical, shining generally with a
dry light, but exhibiting at times a flush
of emotional strength, which proved that
even logicians share the common fire of
humanity. He interested me most when
he became the mirror of my own condi
tion. Neither intellectually nor socially
is it good for man to be alone, and the
sorrows of thought are more patiently
borne when we find that they have been
experienced by another. From certain
passages in his book I could infer that
Mr. Bain was no stranger to such
sorrows. Speaking, for example, of the
ebb of intellectual force, which we all
from time to time experience, Mr. Bain
says: “The uncertainty where to look for
the next opening of discovery brings the
pain of conflict and debility of in
decision.” These words have in them
the true ring of personal experience.
The action of the investigator is periodic.
He grapples with a subject of inquiry,
wrestles with it, and exhausts, it may be,
both himself and it for the time being.
He breathes a space, and then renews
the struggle in another field. Now this
period of halting between two investi
gations is not always one of pure repose.
It is often a period of doubt and dis
comfort—of gloom and ennui. “ The
uncertainty where to look for the next
opening of discovery brings the pain of
* Discourse delivered before the British Association at Liverpool, September 16th, 1870.
�62
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
conflict and the debility of indecision.”
It was under such conditions that I had
to equip myself for the hour and the
ordeal that are now come.
The disciplines of common life are, in
great part, exercises in the relations of
space, or in the mental grouping of
bodies in space; and by such exercises
the public mind is, to some extent,
prepared for the reception of physical
conceptions. Assuming this preparation
on your part, the wish gradually grew
within me to trace, and to enable you to
trace, some of the more occult features
and operations of Light and Colour. I
wished, if possible, to take you. beyond
the boundary of mere observation, into
a region where things are intellectually
discerned, and to show you there the
hidden mechanism of optical action.
But how are those hidden things to
be revealed? Philosophers may be right
in affirming that we cannot transcend
experience: we can, at all events, carry
it a long way from its origin. We can
magnify, diminish, qualify, and combine
experiences, so as to render them fit for
purposes entirely new. In explaining
sensible phenomena, we habitually form
mental images of the ultra-sensible.
There are Tories even in science who
regard Imagination as a faculty to be
feared and avoided rather than employed.
They have observed its action in weak
vessels, and are unduly impressed by its
disasters. But they might with equal
justice point to exploded boilers as an
argument against the use of steam.
With accurate experiment and observa
tion to work upon, Imagination becomes
the architect of physical theory. Newton’s
passage from a falling apple to a falling
moon was an act of the prepared imagina
tion, without which the “laws of Kepler
could never have been traced to their
foundations.
Out of the facts of
chemistry the constructive imagination
of Dalton formed the atomic . theory.
Davy was richly endowed with the
imaginative faculty, while with Faraday
its exercise was incessant, preceding,
accompanying, and guiding all his experi
ments. His strength and fertility as a
discoverer is to be referred in great part
to the stimulus of his imagination.
Scientific men fight shy of the word
because of its ultra-scientific connota
tions ; but the fact is that without the
exercise of this power our knowledge of
nature would be a mere tabulation of
co-existences and sequences. We should
still believe in the succession of day and
night, of summer and winter; but the
conception of Force would vanish from
our universe; causal relations would
disappear, and with them that science
which is now binding the parts of nature
to an organic whole.
I should like to illustrate by a few
simple instances the use that scientific
men have already made of this power of
imagination, and to indicate afterwards
some of the further uses that they are
likely to make of it. Let us begin with
the rudimentary experiences. Observe
the falling of heavy rain-drops into a
tranquil pond. Each drop as it strikes
the water becomes a centre of distur
bance, from which a series of ring-ripples
expand outwards. Gravity and inertia
are the agents by which this wave-motion
is produced, and a rough experiment
will suffice to show that the rate of
propagation does not amount to a foot
a second. A series of slight mechanical
shocks is experienced by a body plunged
in the water, as the wavelets reach it in
succession. But a finer motion is at the
same time set up and propagated. If
the head and ears be immersed in the
water, as in an experiment of Franklin’s,
the tick of the drop is heard. Now, this
sonorous impulse is propagated, not at
the rate of a foot, but at the rate of 4,700
feet a second. In this case it is not the
gravity but the elasticity of the water
that comes into play. . Every liquid
particle pushed against its neighbour
delivers up its motion with extreme
rapidity, and the pulse is. propagated as
a thrill. The incompressibility of water,
as illustrated by the famous Florentine
experiment, is a measure of its elasticity ;
�SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE IMAGINATION
and to the possession of this property,
in so high a degree, the rapid trans
mission of a sound-pulse through water
is to be ascribed.
But water, as you know, is not neces
sary to the conduction of sound; air is
its most common vehicle.
And you
know that when the air possesses the
particular density and elasticity corre
sponding to the temperature of freezing
water, the velocity of sound in it is
1,090 feet a second. It is almost exactly
one-fourth of the velocity in water; the
reason being that, though the greater
weight of the water tends to diminish
the velocity, the enormous molecular
elasticity of the liquid far more than
atones for the disadvantage due to weight.
By various contrivances we can compel
the vibrations of the air to declare them
selves; we know the length and fre
quency of the sonorous waves, and we
have also obtained great mastery over
the various methods by which the air is
thrown into vibration. We know the
phenomena and laws of vibrating rods,
of organ-pipes, strings, membranes, plates,
and bells. We can abolish one sound
by another. We know the physical
meaning of music and noise, of harmony
and discord. In short, as regards sound
in general, we have a very clear notion
of the external physical processes which
correspond to our sensations.
In the phenomena of sound, we travel
a very little way from downright sensible
experience. Still the imagination is to
some extent exercised. The bodily eye,
for example, cannot see the condensations
and rarefactions of the waves of sound.
We construct them in thought, and we
believe as firmly in their existence as
in that of the air itself. But now our
experience is to be carried into a new
region, where a new use is to be made
of it. Having mastered the cause and
mechanism of sound, we desire to know
the cause and mechanism of light. We
wish to extend our inquiries from the
auditory to the optic nerve. There is
in the human intellect a power of expan
sion—I might almost call it a power of
63
creation—which is brought into play by
the simple brooding upon facts. The
legend of the spirit brooding over chaos
may have originated in experience of
this power. In the case now before us
it has 'manifested itself by transplanting
into space, for the purposes of light, an
adequately modified form of the mecha
nism of sound.
We know intimately
whereon the velocity of sound depends.
When we lessen the density of the
aerial medium, and preserve its elasticity
constant, we augment the velocity. When
we heighten the elasticity and keep the
density constant we also augment the
velocity. A small density, therefore, and
a great elasticity, are the two things
necessary to rapid propagation. Now
light is known to move with the astound
ing velocity of 186,000 miles a second.
How is such a velocity to be obtained ?
By boldly diffusing in space a medium
of the requisite tenuity and elasticity.
Let us make such a medium our
starting-point, and, endowing it with one
or two other necessary qualities, let us
handle it in accordance with strict
mechanical laws. Let us then carry our
results from the world of theory into the
world of sense, and see whether our
deductions do not issue in the very
phenomena of light which ordinary
knowledge and skilled experiment reveal.
If in all the multiplied varieties of these
phenomena, including those of the most
remote and entangled description, this
fundamental conception always brings
us face to face with the truth; if no con
tradiction to our deductions from it be
found in external nature, but on all sides
agreement and verification; if, more
over, as in the case of Conical Refraction
and in other cases, it actually forces
upon our attention phenomena which
no eye had previously seen, and which
no mind had previously imagined—such
a conception must, we think, be some
thing more than a mere figment of the
scientific fancy.
In forming it, that
composite and creative power, in which
reason and imagination are united, has,
we believe, led us into a world not less
�64
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
real than that of the senses, and of which
the world of sense itself is the suggestion
and, to a great extent, the outcome.
Far be it from me, however, to wish
to fix you immovably in this or in any
other theoretic conception.
With all
our belief of it, it will be well to keep
the theory of a luminiferous ether plastic
and capable of change.
You may,
moreover, urge that, although the phe
nomena occur as if the. medium existed,
the absolute demonstration of its exist
ence is still wanting. Far be it from me
to deny to this reasoning such validity
as it may fairly claim. Let us endeavour
by means of analogy to form a fair
estimate of its force. You believe that
in society you are surrounded by reason
able beings like yourself.
You are,
perhaps, as firmly convinced of this as of
anything. What is your warrant for this
conviction ? Simply and solely this: your
fellow-creatures behave as if they were
reasonable; the hypothesis, for it is
nothing more, accounts for the facts. To
take an eminent example : you believe
that our President is a reasonable being.
Why? There is no known method of
superposition by which any one of us
can apply himself intellectually to any
other, so as to demonstrate coincidence
as regards the possession of reason, If,
therefore, you hold our President to be
reasonable, it is because he behaves as if
he were reasonable. As in the case of
the ether, beyond the “ as if” you can
not go. Nay, I should not wonder if
a close comparison of the data on which
both inferences rest caused many re
spectable persons to conclude that the
ether had the best of it.
This universal medium, this light-ether
as it is called, is the vehicle, not the
origin, of wave-motion. It receives and
transmits, but it does not create. Whence
does it derive the motions it conveys ?
For the most part from luminous bodies.
By the motion of a luminous body I do
not mean its sensible motion, such, as
the flicker of a candle, or the shooting
out of red prominences from the limb
of the sun. I mean an intestine motion
of the atoms or molecules of the lumin
ous body. But here a certain reserve is
necessary. Many chemists of the pre
sent day refuse to speak of atoms and
molecules as real things. Their caution
leads them to stop short of the clear,
sharp, mechanically intelligible atomic
theory enunciated by Dalton, or any
form of that theory, and to make the
doctrine of “ multiple proportions ” their
intellectual bourne.
I respect the
caution, though I think it is here mis
placed. The chemists who recoil from
these notions of atoms and molecules
accept, without hesitation, the Undulatory Theory of Light. Like you and me,
they one and all believe in an e ther and
its light-producing waves. Let us consider
what this belief involves. Bring your
imaginations once more into play, and
figure a series of sound-waves passing
through air. Follow them up to their
origin, and what do you there find ? A
definite, tangible, vibrating body. It may
be the vocal chords of a human being, it
may be an organ-pipe, or it may be a
stretched string. Follow in the same
manner a train of ether-waves to their
source, remembering at the same time
that your ether is matter, dense, elastic,
and capable of motions subject to, and
determined by, mechanical laws. What
then do you expect to find as the source
of a series of ether-waves ? Ask your
imagination if it will accept a vibrating
multiple proportion—a numerical ratio
in a state of oscillation ? I do not think
it will. You cannot crown the edifice
with this abstraction. The scientific
imagination, which is here authoritative,
demands, as the origin and cause of a
series of ether-waves, a particle of vibrat
ing matter quite as definite, though it
may be excessively minute, as that which
gives origin to a musical sound. Such a
particle we name an atom or a molecule.
I think the intellect, when focussed so as
to give definition without penumbral
haze, is sure to realise this image at the
last.
With the view of preserving thought
�SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE IMAGINATION
continuous throughout this discourse,
and of preventing either failure of know
ledge or of memory from causing any
rent in our picture, I here propose to run
rapidly over a bit of ground which is
probably familiar to most of you, but
which I am anxious to make familiar to
you all. The waves generated in the
ether by the swinging atoms of luminous
bodies are of different lengths and ampli
tudes. The amplitude is the width of
swing of the individual particles of the
waves. In water-waves it is the vertical
height of the crest above the trough,
while the length of the wave is the hori
zontal distance between two consecutive
crests. The aggregate of waves emitted
by the sun may be broadly divided into
two classes: the one class competent,
the other incompetent, to excite vision.
But the light-producing waves differ
markedly among themselves in size, form,
and force. The length of the largest of
these waves is about twice that of the
smallest, but the amplitude of the largest
is probably a hundred times that of the
smallest. Now the force or energy of
the wave, which, expressed with reference
to sensation, means the intensity of the
light, is proportional to the square of the
amplitude. Hence the amplitude being
one-hundred-fold, the energy of the
largest light-giving waves would be tenthousand-fold that of the smallest. This
is not improbable. I use these figures
not with a view to numerical accuracy,
but to give you definite ideas of the dif
ferences that probably exist among the
light-giving waves. And if we take the
whole range of solar radiation into
account—its non-visual as well as its
visual waves—I think it probable that
the force, or energy, of the largest wave
is more than a million times that of the
smallest.
Turned into their equivalents of sensa
tion, the different light-waves produce
different colours. Red, for example, is
produced by the largest waves, violet by
the smallest, while green is produced by
a wave of intermediate length and ampli
tude. On entering from air into a more
65
highly refracting substance, such as glass
or water, or the sulphide of carbon, all
the waves are retarded, but the smallest
ones most. This furnishes a means of
separating the different classes of waves
from each other; in other words, of
analysing the light. Sent through a re
fracting prism, the waves of the sun are
turned aside in different degrees from
their direct course, the red least, the
violet most. They are virtually pulled
asunder, and they paint upon a white
screen placed to receive them “ the solar
spectrum.” Strictly speaking, the spec
trum embraces an infinity of colours ;
but the limits of language, and of our
powers of distinction, cause it to be
divided into seven segments: red, orange,
yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. These
are the seven primary or prismatic colours.
Separately, or mixed in various pro
portions, the solar waves yield all the
colours observed in nature and employed
in art. Collectively, they give us the
impression of whiteness. Pure unsifted
solar light is white ; and, if all the wave
constituents of such light be reduced in
the same proportion, the light, though
diminished in intensity, will still be white.
The whiteness of snow with the sun
shining upon it is barely tolerable to the
eye. The same snow under an overcast
firmament is still white. Such a firma
ment enfeebles the light by reflecting it
upwards : and when we stand above a
cloud-field—on an Alpine summit, for
instance, or on the top of Snowdon—
and see, in the proper direction, the
sun shining on the clouds below us, they
appear dazzlingly white. Ordinary clouds,
in fact, divide the solar light impinging
on them into two parts—a reflected part
and a transmitted part—in each of which
the proportions of wave-motion which
produce the impression of whiteness are
sensibly preserved.
It will be understood that the con
dition of whiteness would fail if all the
waves were diminished equally, or by the
same absolute quantity. They must
be reduced proportionately, instead of
equally. If by the act of reflection the
c
�66
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
waves of red light are split into exact
halves, then, to preserve the light white,
the waves of yellow, orange, green, and
blue must also be split into exact halves.
In short, the reduction must take place,
not by absolutely equal quantities, but
by equal fractional parts. In white light
the preponderance, as regards energy, of
the larger over the smaller waves must
always be immense.
Were the case
otherwise, the visual correlative, blue, of
the smaller waves would have the upper
hand in our sensations.
Not only are the waves of ether re
flected by clouds, by solids, and . by
liquids, but when they pass from light
air to dense, or from dense, air to light,
a portion of the wave-motion is always
reflected. Now, our atmosphere changes
continually in density from top to bottom.
It will help our conception if we regard
it as made up of a series of thin con
centric layers, or shells of air, each shell
being of the same density throughout, a
small and sudden change of density
occurring in passing from shell to shell.
Light would be reflected at the limiting
surfaces of all these shells, and their
action would be practically the same as
that of the real atmosphere. And now
I would ask your imagination to picture
this act of reflection. What must become
of the reflected light ? The atmospheric
layers turn their convex surfaces towards
the sun; they are so many convex
mirrors of feeble power; and you will
immediately perceive that the light regu
larly reflected from these surfaces cannot
reach the earth at all, but is dispersed in
space. Light thus reflected cannot, there
fore, be the light of the sky..
But, though the sun’s light is not
reflected in this fashion from the aerial
layers to the earth, there is indubitable
evidence to show that the light of our
firmament is scattered light. Proofs of
the most cogent description could be
here adduced; but we need only con
sider that we receive light at . the same
time from all parts of the hemisphere of
heaven. The light of the firmament
comes to us across the direction of the
solar rays, and even against the direction
of the solar rays ; and this lateral and
opposing rush of wave-motion can only
be due to the rebound of the waves from
the air itself, or from something sus
pended in the air. It is also evident
that, unlike the action of clouds, the
solar light is not reflected by the sky. in
the proportions which produce white.
The sky is blue, which indicates an
excess of the shorter waves. In account
ing for the colour of the sky, the first
question suggested by analogy would
undoubtedly be, Is not the air blue?
The blueness of the air has, in fact, been
given as a solution of the blueness of the
sky. But how, if the air be blue, can
the light of sunrise and sunset, which
travels through vast distances of air, be
yellow, orange, or even red ? The
passage of white solar light through, a
blue medium could by no possibility
redden the light. The hypothesis of a
blue air is therefore untenable. In fact,
the agent, whatever it is, which sends us
the light of the sky, exercises in. so
doing a dichroitic action. The light
reflected is blue, the light transmitted is
orange or red. A marked distinction is
thus exhibited between the matter of the
sky and that of an ordinary cloud, which
exercises no such dichroitic action.
By the scientific use of the imagina
tion we may hope to penetrate this
mystery. The cloud takes no note of
size on the part of the waves of ether,
but reflects them all alike. It exercises
no selective action. Now, the cause of
this may be that the cloud particles are
so large, in comparison with, the waves of
ether, as to reflect them all indifferently.
A broad cliff reflects an Atlantic roller as
easily as a ripple produced by a sea-bird s
wing; and in the presence of large
reflecting surfaces the existing differences
of magnitude among the waves of ether
may disappear. But supposing the re
flecting particles, instead of being very
large, to be very small in comparison
with the size of the waves. In this case,
instead of the whole wave being fronted
and thrown back, a small portion only is
�SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE IMAGINATION
shivered off. The great mass of the
wave passes over such a particle without
reflection. Scatter, then, a handful of
such minute foreign particles in our
atmosphere, and set imagination to watch
their action upon the solar waves. Waves
of all sizes impinge upon the particles,
and you see at every collision a portion
of the impinging wave struck off; all the
waves of the spectrum, from the extreme
red to the extreme violet, being thus
acted upon.
Remembering that the red waves stand
to the blue much in the relation of
billows to ripples, we have to consider
whether those extremely small particles
are competent to scatter all the waves in
the same proportion. If they be not—
and a little reflection will make it clear
that they are not—the production of
colour must be an incident of the scatter
ing. Largeness is a thing of relation;
and the smaller the wave, the greater is
the relative size of any particle on which
the wave impinges, and the greater also
the ratio of the portion scattered to the
total wave. A pebble, placed in the
way of the ring-ripples produced by
heavy rain-drops on a tranquil pond, will
scatter a large fraction of each ripple,
while the fractional part of a larger wave
thrown back by the same pebble might
be infinitesimal. Now we have already
made it clear to our minds that, to
preserve the solar light white, its con
stituent proportions must not be altered;
but in the act of division performed by
these very small particles the proportions
are altered; an undue fraction of the
smaller waves is scattered by the particles,
and, as a consequence, in the scattered
light blue will be the predominant
colour.
The other colours of the
spectrum must, to some extent, be
associated with the blue. They are not
absent, but deficient. We ought, in
fact, to have them all, but in diminishing
proportions, from the violet to the red.
We have here presented a case to the
imagination, and, assuming the undulatory theory to be a reality, we have, I
think, fairly reasoned our way to the
conclusion, that were particles, small in
comparison to the sizes of the ether
waves, sown in our atmosphere, the light
scattered by those particles would be
exactly such as we observe in our azure
skies. When this light is analysed, all
the colours of the spectrum are found,
and they are found in the proportions
indicated by our conclusion. Blue is
not the sole, but it is the predominant
colour.
Let us now turn our attention to the
light which passes unscattered among
the particles. How must it be finally
affected ? By its successive collisions
with the particles the white light is more
and more robbed of its shorter waves;
it therefore loses more and more of its
due proportion of blue. The result may
be anticipated. The transmitted light,
where short distances are involved, will
appear yellowish. But as the sun sinks
towards the horizon the atmospheric
distances increase, and consequently the
number of the scattering particles. They
abstract in succession the violet, the
indigo, the blue, and even disturb the pro
portions of green. The transmitted light
under such circumstances must pass from
yellow through orange to red.
This
also is exactly what we find in nature.
Thus, while the reflected light gives us
at noon the deep azure of the Alpine
skies, the transmitted light gives us at
sunset the warm crimson of the Alpine
snows. The phenomena certainly occur
as if our atmosphere were a medium
rendered slightly turbid by the mecha
nical suspension of exceedingly small
foreign particles.
Here, as before, we encounter our
sceptical “as if."
It is one of the
parasites of science, ever at hand, and
ready to plant itself and sprout, if it can,
on the weak points of our philosophy.
But a strong constitution defies the
parasite, and in our case, as we question
the phenomena, probability grows like
growing health, until in the end the
malady of doubt is completely extirpated,
fl he first question that naturally arises is
this: Can small particles be really proved
�68
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
to act in the manner indicated? No
doubt of it.
Each one of you can
submit the question to an experimental
test. Water will not dissolve resin, but
spirit will dissolve it; and when spirit
holding resin in solution is dropped into
water, the resin immediately separates
in solid particles, which render the water
milky. The coarseness of this precipitate
depends on the quantity of the dissolved
resin.
You can cause it to separate
either in thick clots or in exceedingly
fine particles. Professor Briicke has
given us the proportions which produce
particles particularly suited to our present
purpose. One gramme of clean mastic
is dissolved in eighty-seven grammes of
absolute alcohol, and the transparent
solution is allowed to drop into a beaker
containing clear water, kept briskly
stirred. An exceedingly fine precipitate
is thus formed, which declares its pre
sence by its action upon light. Placing
a dark surface behind the beaker, and
permitting the light to fall into it from
the top or front, the medium is seen to
be distinctly blue. It is not perhaps so
perfect a blue as may be seen on excep
tional days among the Alps, but it is. a
very fair sky-blue. A trace of soap in
water gives a tint of blue. London, and
I fear Liverpool, milk makes an approxi
mation to the same colour, through the
operation of the same cause; and Helm
holtz has irreverently disclosed the fact
that the deepest blue eye is simply a
turbid medium.
The action of turbid media upon light
was illustrated by Goethe, who, though
unacquainted with the undulatory theory,
was led by his experiments to regard
the firmament as an illuminated turbid
medium, with the darkness of space
behind it. He describes glasses showing
a bright yellow by transmitted, and a
beautiful blue by reflected, light. Pro
fessor Stokes, who was probably the first
to discern the real nature of the action
of small particles on the waves of ether,1
1 This is inferred from conversation.
I am
describes a glass of a similar kind.’
Capital specimens of such glass are to
be found at Salviati’s, in St. James’s
Street. What artists call “ chill ” is no
doubt an effect of this description.
Through the action of minute particles,
the browns of a picture often present
the appearance of the bloom of a plum.
By rubbing the varnish with a silk hand
kerchief optical continuity is established
and the chill disappears. Some years
ago I witnessed Mr. Hirst experimenting
at Zermatt on the turbid water of the
Visp. When kept still for a day or so,
the grosser matter sank, but the finer
particles remained suspended, and gave
a distinctly blue tinge to the water. The
blueness of certain Alpine lakes has
been shown to be in part due to this
cause. Professor Roscoe has noticed
several striking cases of a similar kind.
In a very remarkable paper the late
Principal Forbes showed that steam
issuing from the safety-valve of a locomo
tive, when favourably observed, exhibits
at a certain stage of its condensation
the colours of the sky. It is blue by
reflected light, and orange or red by
transmitted light. The same effect, as
pointed out by Goethe, is to some extent
exhibited by peat-smoke.
More than
ten years ago, I amused . myself by
observing, on a calm day at Killarney, the
straight smoke-columns rising from the
cabin-chimneys. It was easy to project
the lower portion of a column against a
dark pine, and its upper portion against
a bright cloud.
The smoke in the
former case was blue, being seen mainly
by reflected light; in the latter case it
was reddish, being seen mainly by trans
mitted light.
Such smoke was not in
not aware that Professor Stokes has published
anything upon the subject.
1 This glass, by reflected light, had a colour
“strongly resembling that of a decoction o
horse-chesnut bark.” Curiously enough, Goethe
refers to this very decoction :
^'Ianr) ne^me
einen Streifen frischer Rinde von der Rosskastanie, man stecke denselben in ein Gias Wasser,
und in der kurzesten Zeit werden wir das vollkommenste Himmelblau entstehen sehen. —Goethe s
Werke, B. xxix., p. 24.
�SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE IMAGINATION
exactly the condition to give us the glow
of the Alps, but it was a step in this
direction. Briicke’s fine precipitate, above
referred to, looks yellowish by transmitted
light; but, by duly strengthening the
precipitate, you may render the white
light of noon as ruby-coloured as the
sun, when seen through Liverpool smoke
or upon Alpine horizons. I do not,
however, point to the gross smoke arising
from coal as an illustration of the action
of small particles, because such smoke
soon absorbs and destroys the waves of
blue, instead of sending them to the eyes
of the observer.
These multifarious facts, and number
less others which cannot now be referred
to, are explained by reference to the
single principle, that, where the scatter
ing particles are small in comparison
to the ethereal waves, we have in the
reflected light a greater proportion of
the smaller waves, and in the trans
mitted light a greater proportion of
the larger waves, than existed in the
original white light. The consequence, as
regards sensation, is that in the one case
blue is predominant, and in the other
orange or red. Our best microscopes
can readily reveal objects not more than
s^Loth of an inch in diameter. This
is less than the length of a wave of red
light. Indeed, a first-rate microscope
would enable us to discern objects not
exceeding in diameter the length of the
smallest waves of the visible spectrum.1
By the microscope, therefore, we can
test our particles. If they be as large as
the light-waves, they will infallibly be
seen; and if they be not so seen, it is
because they are smaller. Some months
ago I placed in the hands of our Presi
dent a liquid containing Briicke’s pre
cipitate. The liquid was milky blue, and
Mr. Huxley applied to it his highest
microscopic power. He satisfied me that,
had particles of even nrsWath of an
inch in diameter existed in the liquid,
1 Dallinger and Drysdale have recently
measured cilia -^Ars^th of an inch in diameter.
1878.
69
they could not have escaped detection.
But no particles were seen. Under the
microscope the turbid liquid was not to
be distinguished from distilled water.1
But we have it in our power to imitate,
far more closely than we have hitherto
done, the natural conditions of this prob
lem. We can generate, in air, artificial
skies, and prove their perfect identity
with the natural one, as regards the exhi
bition of a number of wholly unexpected
phenomena. By a continuous process of
growth, moreover, we are able to connect
sky-matter, if I may use the term, with
molecular matter on the one side, and
with molar matter, or matter in sensible
masses, on the other. In illustration ot
this, I will take an experiment suggested
by some of my own researches, and
described by M. Morren of Marseilles at
the Exeter meeting of the British Asso
ciation. Sulphur and oxygen combine
to form sulphurous acid gas, two atoms
of oxygen and one of sulphur constitut
ing the molecule of sulphurous acid. It
has been recently shown that waves of
ether issuing from a strong source, such
as the sun or the electric light, are com
petent to shake asunder the atoms of
gaseous molecules.2 A chemist would
call this “ decomposition ” by light; but
it behoves us, who are examining the
power and function of the imagination,
to keep constantly before us the physical
images which underlie our terms. There
fore I say, sharply and definitely, that
the components of the molecules of
sulphurous acid are shaken asunder by
the ether-waves. Enclosing sulphurous
acid in a suitable vessel, placing it in a
dark room, and sending through it a
powerful beam of light, we at first see
nothing : the vessel containing the gas
seems as empty as a vacuum. Soon,
1 Like Dr. Burdon Sanderson’s “ pyrogen/'
the particles of mastic passed, without sensible
hindrance, through filtering-paper. By such
filtering no freedom from suspended particles is
secured. The application of a condensed beam
to the filtrate renders this at once evident.
2 See article on “New Chemical Reactions
Produced by Light,"Fragments of Science, vol. i.
�70
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
however, along the track of the beam a
beautiful sky-blue colour is observed,
which is due to light scattered by the
liberated particles of sulphur. For a
time the blue grows more intense; it
then becomes whitish, and ends in a
more or less perfect white. When the
action is continued long enough, the
tube is filled with a dense cloud of sul
phur particles, which by the application
of proper means may be rendered indi
vidually visible.1
Here, then, our ether-waves untie the
bond of chemical affinity, and liberate a
body—sulphur—which at ordinary tem
peratures is a solid, and which therefore
soon becomes an object of the senses.
We have first of all the free atoms of
sulphur, which are incompetent to stir
the retina sensibly with scattered light.
But these atoms gradually coalesce and
form particles, which grow larger by con
tinual accretion, until after a minute or
two they appear as sky-matter.. In this
condition they are individually invisible;
but collectively they send an amount of
wave-motion to the retina, sufficient to
produce the firmamental blue.
The
particles continue, or may be caused to
continue, in this condition for a con
siderable time, during which no micro
scope can cope with them. But they
grow slowly larger, and pass by in
sensible gradations into the state of cloud,
when they can no longer elude the armed
eye.
Thus, without solution of con
tinuity, we start with matter in the atom,
and end with matter in the mass ; sky
matter being the middle term of the
series of transformations.
Instead of sulphurous acid, we might
choose a dozen other substances, and
produce the same effect with all of them.
In the case of some—probably in the
case of all—it is possible to preserve
* M. Morren was mistaken in supposing that
& modicum of sulphurous acid, in the drying
tubes, had any share in the production of the
“ actinic clouds” described by me. A beautiful
case of molecular instability in the presence of
light is furnished by peroxide of chlorine, as
proved by Professor Dewar. 1878.
matter in the firmamental condition for
fifteen or twenty minutes under the con
tinual operation of the light. During
these fifteen or twenty minutes the
particles constantly grow larger, without
ever exceeding the size requisite to the
production of the celestial blue. Now,
when two vessels are placed before us,
each containing sky-matter, it is possible
to state with great distinctness which
vessel contains the largest particles.
The eye is very sensitive to differences
of light, when, as in our experiments, it
is placed in comparative darkness, and
the wave-motion thrown against the
retina is small. The larger particles
declare themselves by the greater white
ness of their scattered light. Call now
to mind the observation, or effort at
observation, made by our President,
when he failed to distinguish the particles
of mastic in Briicke’s medium, and when
you have done this, please follow me.
A beam of light is permitted to act upon
a certain vapour. In two minutes the
azure appears, but at the end of fifteen
minutes it has not ceased to be azure.
After fifteen minutes its colour, and some
other phenomena, pronounce it to be a
blue of distinctly smaller particles than
those sought for in vain by Mr. Huxley.
These particles, as already stated, must
have been less than nroVoth of an inch
in diameter. And now I want you to
consider the following question : Here
are particles which have been growing
continually for fifteen minutes, and at
the end of that time are demonstrably
smaller than those which defied the
microscope of Mr. Huxley— What must
have been the size of these particles at the
beginning of their growth I What notion
can you form of the magnitude of such
particles ?
The distances of stellar
space give us simply a bewildering, sense
of vastness, without leaving any distinct
impression on the mind; and the mag
nitudes with \yhich we have here to. do,
bewilder us equally in the opposite direc
tion. We are dealing with infinitesimals,
compared with which the test objects of
the microscope are literally immense.
�SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE IMAGINATION
Small in mass, the vastness in point of
number of the particles of our sky may be
inferred from the continuity of its light.
It is not in broken patches, nor at scat
tered points, that the heavenly azure is
revealed.
To the observer on the
summit of Mont Blanc, the blue is as
uniform and coherent as if it formed the
surface of the most close-grained solid.
A marble dome would not exhibit a
stricter continuity. And Mr. Glaisher
will inform you that, if our hypothetical
shell were lifted to twice the height of
Mont Blanc above the earth’s surface,
we should still have the azure overhead.
By day this light quenches the stars;
even by moonlight it is able to exclude
from vision all stars between the fifth
and the eleventh magnitude. It may be
likened to a noise, and the feebler stellar
radiance to a whisper drowned by the
noise.
What is the nature of the particles
which shed this light ? The celebrated
De la Rive ascribes the haze of the Alps
in fine weather to floating organic germs.
Now the possible existence of germs in
such profusion has been held up as an
absurdity.
It has been affirmed that
they would darken the air, and on the
assumed impossibility of their existence
in the requisite numbers, without invasion
of the solar light, an apparently powerful
argument has been based by believers in
spontaneous generation. Similar argu
ments have been used by the opponents
of the germ theory of epidemic disease,
who have triumphantly challenged an
appeal to the microscope and the
chemist’s balance to decide the question.
Such arguments, however, are founded
on a defective acquaintance with the
powers and properties of matter. Without
committing myself in the least to De la
Rive’s notion, to the doctrine of spon
taneous generation, or to the germ theory
of disease, I would simply draw attention
to the demonstrable fact, that in the
atmosphere we have particles which defy
both the microscope and the balance,
which do not darken the air, and which
exist, nevertheless, in multitudes suffi
7i
cient to reduce to insignificance the
Israelitish hyperbole regarding the sands
upon the sea-shore.
The varying judgments of men on
these and other questions may perhaps
be, to some extent, accounted for by that
doctrine of Relativity which plays so im
portant a part in philosophy. This doc
trine affirms that the impressions made
upon us by any circumstance, or com
bination of circumstances, depend upon
our previous state. Two travellers upon
the same height, the one having ascended
to it from the plain, the other having
descended to it from a higher elevation,
will be differently affected by the scene
around them.
To the one nature is
expanding, to the other it is contracting;
and impressions which have two such
different antecedent states are sure to
differ. In our scientific judgments the
law of relativity may also play an impor
tant part. To two men, one educated
in the school of the senses, having mainly
occupied himself with observation; the
other educated in the school of imagina
tion as well, and exercised in the con
ceptions of atoms and molecules to which
we have so frequently referred, a bit of
matter, say yvfonrth of an inch in dia
meter, will present itself differently. The
one descends to it from his molar heights,
the other climbs to it from his molecular
lowlands. To the one it appears small,
to the other large. So, also, as regards
the appreciation of the most minute
forms of life revealed by the microscope.
To one of the men these naturally appear
conterminous with the ultimate particles
of matter; there is but a step from
the atom to the organism. The other
discerns numberless organic gradations
between both. Compared with his atoms,
the smallest vibrios and bacteria of the
microscopic field are as behemoth and
leviathan. The law of relativity may to
some extent explain the different atti
tudes of two such persons with regard to
the question of spontaneous generation.
An amount of evidence which satisfies
the one entirely fails to satisfy the other;
�72
LECTURES AND ESSA FS
and while to the one the last bold defence
and startling expansion of the doctrine
by Dr. Bastian will appear perfectly con
clusive, to the other it will present itself
as merely imposing a labour of demo
lition on subsequent investigators.1
Let me say here that many of our
physiological observers appear to form a
very inadequate estimate of the distance
which separates the microscopic from
the molecular limit, and that, as a con
sequence, they sometimes employ a
phraseology calculated to mislead. When,
for example, the contents of a cell are
described as perfectly homogeneous or
as absolutely structureless, because the
microscope fails to discover any struc
ture; or when two structures are pro
nounced to be without difference, because
the microscope can discover none, then,
I think, the microscope begins to play a
mischievous part. A little consideration
will make it plain that the microscope
can have no voice in the question of
germ structure. Distilled water is more
perfectly homogeneous than any possible
organic germ. What is it that causes
the liquid to cease contracting at 39°
Fahr., and to expand until it freezes?
We have here a structural process of
which the microscope can take no note,
nor is it likely to do so by any con
ceivable extension of its powers. Place
distilled water in the field of an electro
magnet, and bring a microscope to bear
upon it. Will any change be observed
when the magnet is excited ? Absolutely
none ; and, still, profound and complex
changes have occurred. First of all, the
particles of water have been rendered
diamagnetically polar; and secondly, in
virtue of the structure impressed upon it
by the magnetic whirl of its. molecules,
the liquid twists a ray of light in a fashion
perfectly determinate both as to quantity
and direction.
Have the diamond, the amethyst, and
the countless other crystals formed in
1 When these words were uttered I did not
imagine that the chief labour of demolition would
fall upon myself. 1878.
the laboratories of nature and of man no
structure ? Assuredly they have ; but
what can the microscope make of it?
Nothing. It cannot be too distinctly
borne in mind that between the micro
scopic limit and the true molecular limit
there is room for infinite permutations
and combinations. It is in this region
that the poles of the atoms are arranged,
that tendency is given to their powers;
so that when these poles and powers
have free action, proper stimulus, and a
suitable environment, they determine,
first the germ, and afterwards the com
plete organism. This first marshalling
of the atoms, on which all subsequent
action depends, baffles a keener power
than that of the microscope. When
duly pondered, the complexity of the
problem raises the doubt, not of the
power of our instrument, for that is
but whether we ourselves possess the
intellectual elements which will . ever
enable us to grapple with the ultimate
structural energies of nature.1
In more senses than one Mr. Darwin
has drawn heavily upon the scientific
tolerance of his age. He has drawn
heavily upon time in his development of
species, and he has drawn adventurously
upon matter in his theory of pangenesis.
According to this theory, a germ, already
microscopic, is a world of minor germs.
Not only is the organism as a whole
wrapped up in the germ, but every organ
of the organism has there its special seed.
This, I say, is an adventurous draft on
the power of matter to divide itself and
distribute its forces. But, unless we are
perfectly sure that he is overstepping the
bounds of reason, that he is unwittingly
1 “ In using the expression, ‘ one sort of living
substance,’ I must guard against being supposed
to mean that any kind of living protoplasm is
homogeneous. Hyaline though it may appear,
we are not at present able to assign any
limit to its complexity of structure.”—Burd on
Sanderson, in the British Medical Journal.,
January 16th, 1875. We have here scientific
insight, and its correlative caution.
In tact,
Dr. Sanderson’s important researches are a
continued illustration of the position laid down
above.
�SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE IMAGINATION
sinning against observed fact or demon
strated law—for a mind like that of
Darwin can never sin wittingly against
either fact or law—we ought, I think, to
be cautious in limiting his intellectual
horizon. If there be the least doubt in
the matter, it ought to be given in favour
of the freedom of such a mind. To it a
vast possibility is in itself a dynamic
power, though the possibility may never
be drawn upon. It gives me pleasure to'
think that the facts and reasonings of
this discourse tend rather towards the
justification of Mr. Darwin than towards
his condemnation; for they seem to show
the perfect competence of matter and
force, as regards divisibility and distribu
tion, to bear the heaviest strain that he
has hitherto imposed upon them.
In the case of Mr. Darwin, observa
tion, imagination, and reason combined
have run back with wonderful sagacity
and success over a certain length of the
line of biological succession. Guided by
analogy, in his Origin of Species he placed
at the root of life a primordial germ, from
which he conceived the amazing variety
of the organisms now upon the earth’s
surface might be deduced. If this hypo
thesis were even true, it would not be
final. The human mind would infallibly
look behind the germ, and, however
hopeless the attempt, would inquire into
the history of its genesis. In this dim
twilight of conjecture the searcher wel
comes every gleam, and seeks to augment
his light by indirect incidences.
He
studies the methods of nature in the
ages and the worlds within his reach, in
order to shape the course of speculation
in antecedent ages and worlds. And
though the certainty possessed by experi
mental inquiry is here shut out, we are
not left entirely without guidance. From
the examination of the solar system, Kant
and Laplace came to the conclusion that
its various bodies once formed parts of
the same undislocated mass; that matter
in a nebulous form preceded matter in
its present form ; that, as the ages rolled
away, heat was wasted, condensation
followed, planets were detached; and
73
that finally the chief portion of the hot
cloud reached, by self-compression, the
magnitude and density of our sun. The
earth itself offers evidence of a fiery
origin; and in our day the hypothesis of
Kant and Laplace receives the indepen
dent countenance of spectrum analysis,
which proves the same substances to be
common to the earth and sun.
Accepting some such view of the con
struction of our system as probable, a
desire immediately arises to connect the
present life of our planet with the past.
We wish to know something of our
remotest ancestry. On its first detach
ment from the central mass, life, as we
understand it, could not have been
present on the earth. How, then, did
it come there ? The thing to be encou
raged here is a reverent freedom—a free
dom preceded by the hard discipline
which checks licentiousness in specula
tion—while the thing to be repressed,
both in science and out of it, is dog
matism. And here I am in the hands
of the meeting—willing to end, but ready
to go on. I have no right to intrude
upon you. unasked, the unformed notions
which are floating like clouds, or gather
ing to more solid consistency, in the
modern speculative scientific mind. But
if you wish me to speak plainly, honestly,
and undisputatiously, I am willing to do
so. On the present occasion—
“ You are ordained to call, and I to come.”
Well, your answer is given, and I obey
your call.
Two or three years ago, in an ancient
London College, I listened to a discus
sion at the end of a lecture by a very
remarkable man. Three or four hundred
clergymen were present at the lecture.
The orator began with the civilisation of
Egypt in the time of Joseph; pointing
out the very perfect organisation of the
kingdom, and the possession of chariots,
in one of which Joseph rode, as proving
a long antecedent period of civilisation.
He then passed on to the mud of the
Nile, its rate of augmentation, its present
thickness, and the remains of human
�74
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
handiwork found therein : thence to the
rocks which bound the Nile valley, and
which teem with organic remains. Thus
in his own clear way he caused the idea
of the world’s age to expand itself indefi
nitely before the minds of his audience,
and he contrasted this with the age
usually assigned to the world. During
his discourse he seemed to be swimming
against a stream ; he manifestly thought
that he was opposing a general convic
tion. He expected resistance in the
subsequent discussion; so did I. But
it was all a mistake; there was no
adverse current, no opposing conviction,
no resistance; merely here and there a
half-humorous but unsuccessful attempt
to entangle him in his talk. The meeting
agreed with all that had been said
regarding the antiquity of the earth and
of its life. They had, indeed, known it
all long ago, and they rallied the lecturer
for coming among them with so stale a
story. It was quite plain that this large
body of clergymen, who were, I should
say, to be ranked among the finest
samples of their class, had entirely given
up the ancient landmarks, and trans
ported the conception of life’s origin to
an indefinitely distant past.
■ This leads us to the gist of our present
inquiry, which is this : Does life belong
to what we call matter, or is it an inde
pendent principle inserted into matter
at some suitable epoch—say when the
j hysical conditions became such as to
permit of the development of life ? Let
us put the question with the reverence
due to a faith and culture in which we
all were cradled, and which are the
undeniable historic antecedents of our
present enlightenment. I say, let us put
the question reverently, but let us also
put it clearly and definitely. There are
the strongest grounds for believing that
during a certain period of its history the
earth was not, nor was it fit to be, the
theatre of life. Whether this was ever a
nebulous period, or merely a molten
period, does not signify much ; and if
we revert to the nebulous condition, it
is because the probabilities are really on
its side. Our question is this : Did
creative energy pause until the nebulous
matter had condensed, until the earth
had been detached, until the solar fire
had so far withdrawn from the earth’s
vicinity as to permit a crust to gather
round the planet ? Did it wait until the
air was isolated ; until the seas were
formed; until evaporation, condensation,
and the descent of rain had begun; until
the eroding forces of the atmosphere
had weathered and decomposed the
molten rocks so as to form soils; until
the sun’s rays had become so tempered
by» distance, and by waste, as to be
chemically fit for the decomposition
necessary to vegetable life ? Having
waited through these seons until the
proper conditions had set in, did it send
the fiat forth, “ Let there be Life! ”?
These questions define a hypothesis not
without its difficulties, but the dignity of
which in relation to the world’s know
ledge was demonstrated by the nobleness
of the men whom it sustained.
Modern scientific thought is called
upon to decide between this hypothesis
and another; and public thought gene
rally will afterwards be called upon to
do the same. But, however the convic
tions of individuals here and there may
be influenced, the process must be slow
and secular which commends the hypo
thesis of Natural Evolution to the public
mind. For what are the core and essence
of this hypothesis ? Strip it naked, and
you stand face to face with the notion
that not alone the more ignoble forms of
animalcular or animal life, not alone the
nobler forms of the horse and lion, not
alone the exquisite and wonderful mecha
nism of the human body, but that the
human mind itself—emotion, intellect,
will, and all their phenomena—were once
latent in a fiery cloud. Surely the mere
statement of such a notion is more than
a refutation. But the hypothesis would
probably go even farther than this.
Many who hold it would probably
assent to the position that, at the present
moment, all our philosophy, all our
poetry, all our science, and all our art—
�SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE IMAGINATION
Plato, Shakespeare, Newton, and Raphael
—are potential in the fires of the sun.
We long to learn something of our origin.
If the Evolution hypothesis be correct,
even this unsatisfied yearning must have
come to us across the ages which separate
the primeval mist from the consciousness
of to-day. I do not think that any holder
of the Evolution hypothesis would say
that I overstate or overstrain it in any
way. I merely strip it of all vagueness,
and bring before you, unclothed and
unvarnished, the notions by which it
must stand or fall.
Surely these notions represent an
absurdity too monstrous to be enter
tained by any sane mind. But why are
such notions absurd, and why should
sanity reject them ? The law of Rela
tivity, of which we have previously
spoken, may find its application here.
These Evolution notions are absurd,
monstrous, and fit only for the intel
lectual gibbet, in relation to the ideas
concerning matter which were drilled
into us when young. Spirit and matter
have ever been presented to us in the
rudest contrast, the one as all-noble, the
other as all-vile. But is this correct?
Upon the answer to this question all
depends.
Supposing that, instead of
having the foregoing antithesis of spirit
and matter presented to our youthful
minds, we had been taught to regard
them as equally worthy, and equally
wonderful; to consider them, in fact, as
two opposite faces of the self-same
mystery. Supposing that in youth we
had been impregnated with the notion
of the poet Goethe, instead of the notion
of the poet Young, and taught to look
upon matter, not as “ brute matter,” but
as the “ living garment of God ”; do you
not think that under these altered cir
cumstances the law of Relativity might
have had an outcome different from its
present one? Is it not probable that
our repugnance to the idea of primeval
union between spirit and matter might
be considerably abated? Without this
total revolution of the notions now preva
lent, the Evolution hypothesis must stand
75
condemned; but in many profoundly
thoughtful minds such a revolution has
already taken place. They degrade neither
member of the mysterious duality referred
to ; but they exalt one of them from its
abasement, and repeal the divorce hitherto
existing between them. In substance, if
not in words, their position as regards
the relation of spirit and matter is:
“ What God hath joined together, let not
man put asunder.”
You have been thus led to the outer
rim of speculative science, for beyond
the nebulae scientific thought has never
hitherto ventured. I have tried to state
that which I considered ought, in fair
ness, to be outspoken. I neither think
this Evolution hypothesis is to be flouted
away contemptuously, nor that it ought
to be denounced as wicked. It is to be
brought before the bar of disciplined
reason, and there justified or condemned.
Let us hearken to those who wisely sup
port it, and to those who wisely oppose
it; and let us tolerate those, whose
name is legion, who try foolishly to do
either of these things. The only thing
out of place in the discussion is dogma
tism on either side.
Fear not the
Evolution hypothesis. Steady yourselves,
in its presence, upon that faith in the
ultimate triumph of truth which was
expressed by old Gamaliel when he said:
“ If it be of God, ye cannot overthrow
it; if it be of man, it will come to
nought.”
Under the fierce light of
scientific inquiry, it is sure to be dissi
pated if it possess not a core of truth.
Trust me, its existence as a hypothesis
is quite compatible with the simultaneous
existence of all those virtues to which
the term “ Christian ” has been applied.
It does not solve—it does not profess to
solve—the ultimate mystery of this uni
verse. It leaves, in fact, that mystery
untouched. For, granting the nebula
and its potential life, the question,
whence they came, would still remain to
baffle and bewilder us. At bottom, the
hypothesis does nothing more than
“ transport the conception of life’s origin
to an indefinitely distant past.”
�76
LECTURES AND ESSA VS
Those who hold the doctrine of Evo
lution are by no means ignorant of the
uncertainty of their data, and they only
yield to it a. provisional assent. They
regard the nebular hypothesis as pro
bable, and, in the utter absence of any
evidence to prove the act illegal, they
extend the method of nature from the
present into the past. Here the observed
uniformity of nature is their only guide.
Within the long range of physical
inquiry they have never discerned in
nature the insertion of caprice. Through
out this range the laws of physical and
intellectual continuity have run side by
side. Having thus determined the
elements of their curve in a world of
observation and experiment, they prolong
that curve into an antecedent world,
and accept as probable the unbroken
sequence of development from the nebula
to the present time. You never hear
the really philosophical defenders of the
doctrine of Uniformity speaking of
impossibilities in nature. They never
say, what they are constantly charged
with saying, that it is impossible for the
Builder of the universe to alter His
work. Their business is not with the
possible, but the actual—not with a
world which might be, but with a world
that is. This they explore with a courage
not unmixed with reverence, and accord
ing to methods which, like the quality
of a tree, are tested by their fruits. They
have but one desire—to know the truth.
They have but one fear—to believe a
lie. And if they know the strength of
science, and rely upon it with unswerving
trust, they also know the limits beyond
which science ceases to be strong. They
best know that questions offer themselves
to thought which science, as now prose
cuted, has not even the tendency to
solve. They have as little fellowship
with the atheist who says there is no
God as with the theist who professes
to know the mind of God. “ Two
things,” said Immanuel Kant, “ fill me
with awe : the starry heavens, and the
sense of moral responsibility in man.”
And in his hours of health and strength
and sanity, when the stroke of action
has ceased, and the pause of reflection
has set in, the scientific investigator
finds himself overshadowed by the same
awe. Breaking contact with the hamper
ing details of earth, it associates him
with a Power which gives fulness and
tone to his existence, but which he can
neither analyse nor comprehend.
SCIENCE AND MAN'
A magnet attracts iron; but when we
analyse the effect we learn that the
metal is not only attracted but repelled,
the final approach to the magnet being
due to the difference of two unequal
and opposing forces. Social progress is
for the most part typified by this duplex
or polar action. As a general rule, every
advance is balanced by a partial retreat,
every amelioration is associated more or
less with deterioration. No great mecha
nical improvement, for example, is intro
duced for the benefit of society at large
that does not bear hardly upon indivi
duals. Science, like other things, is
subject to the operation of this polar
law, what is good for it under one aspect
being bad for it under another.
1 Presidential Address, delivered before the Birmingham and Midland Institute, October 1st,
1877 ; with additions.
�SCIENCE AND MAN
Science demands above all things per
sonal concentration.
Its home is the
study of the mathematician, the quiet
laboratory of the experimenter, and the
cabinet of the meditative observer of
nature. Different atmospheres are re
quired by the man of science, as. such,
and the man of action.
Thus the
facilities of social and international inter
course, the railway, the telegraph, and
the post-office, which are such undoubted
boons to the man of action, re-act, to
some extent injuriously, on the man of
science. Their tendency is to break up
that concentrativeness which, as I have
said, is an absolute necessity to the
scientific investigator.
The men who have most profoundly
influenced the world from the scientific
side have habitually sought isolation.
Faraday, at a certain period of his career,
formally renounced dining out. Darwin
lives apart from the bustle of the world
in his quiet home in Kent. Mayer and
Joule dealt in unobtrusive retirement
with the weightiest scientific questions.
There is, however, one motive power in
the world which no man, be he a scien
tific student or otherwise, can afford to
treat with indifference; and that is, the
cultivation of right relations with his
fellow-men—the performance of his duty,
not as an isolated individual, but as a
member of society. It is duty in this
aspect, overcoming alike the sense of
possible danger and the desire for repose,
that has placed me in your presence here
to-night.
.
To look at his picture as a whole, a
painter requires distance ; and to judge
of the total scientific achievement of any
age, the standpoint of a succeeding age
is desirable. We may, however, trans
port ourselves in idea into the future,
and thus survey with more or Jess com
pleteness the science of our time. We
sometimes hear it decried, and contrasted
to its disadvantage with the science of
other times. I do not think that this
will be the verdict of posterity. I think,
on the contrary, that posterity will
acknowledge that in the history of
77
science no higher samples of intellectual
conquest are recorded than those which
this age has made its own. One of the
most salient of these I propose, with
your permission, to make the subject of
our consideration during the coming
hour.
It is now generally admitted that the
man of to-day is the child and product
of incalculable antecedent time.
His
physical and intellectual textures have
been woven for him during his passage
through phases of history and forms of
existence which lead the mind back to
an abysmal past. One of the qualities
which he has derived from that past is
the yearning to let in the light of prin
ciples on the otherwise bewildering flux
of phenomena. He has been described
by the German Lichtenberg as “ das
rastlose Ursachenthier ” — the restless
cause-seeking animal—in whom facts
excite a kind of hunger to know the
sources from which they spring. Never,
I venture to say, in the history of the
world has this longing been more liberally
responded to, both among men of science
and the general public, than during the
last thirty or forty years. - I say “ the
general public,” because it is a feature of
our time that the man of science no
longer limits his labours to the society of
his colleagues and his peers, but shares,
as far as it is possible to share, with the
world at large the fruits of inquiry.
The celebrated Robert Boyle regarded
the universe as a machine; Mr. Carlyle
prefers regarding it as a tree. He loves
the image of the umbrageous Igdrasil
better than that of the Strasburg clock. . A
machine may be defined as an organism
with life and direction outside; a tree
may be defined as an organism with life
and direction within. In the light of
these definitions, I close with the con
ception of Carlyle.
The order and
energy of the universe I hold to be
inherent, and not imposed from without,
the expression of fixed law and not of
arbitrary will, exercised by what Carlyle
would call an Almighty Clockmaker. But
the two conceptions are not so much
�78
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
opposed to each other after all. In one
fundamental particular they at all events
agree. They equally imply the inter
dependence and harmonious interaction
of parts, and the subordination of the in
dividual powers of the universal organism
to the working of the whole.
Never were the harmony and inter
dependence just referred to so clearly
recognised as now. Our insight regard
ing them is not that vague and general
insight to which our fathers had attained,
and which, in early times, was more
frequently affirmed by the synthetic poet
than by the scientific man.
The inter
dependence of our day has become
quantitative—expressible by numbers—
leading, it must be added, directly into
that inexorable reign of law which so
many gentle people regard with dread.
In the domain now under review men of
science had first to work their way from
darkness into twilight, and from twilight
into day.
There is no solution of con
tinuity in science.
It is not given to
any man, however endowed, to rise
spontaneously into intellectual splendour
without the parentage of antecedent
thought. Great discoveries grow. Here,
as in other cases, we have first the seed,
then the ear, then the full corn in the
ear, the last member of the series imply
ing the first. Thus, as regards the dis
covery of gravitation with which the
name of Newton is identified, notions
more or less clear concerning it had
entered many- minds before Newton’s
transcendent mathematical genius raised
it to the level of a demonstration. The
whole of his deductions, moreover, rested
upon the inductions of Kepler. Newton
shot beyond his predecessors; but his
thoughts were rooted in their thoughts,
and a just distribution of merit would
assign to them a fair portion of the
honour of discovery.
Scientific theories sometimes float like
rumours in the air before they receive
complete expression.
The doom of a
doctrine is often practically sealed, and
the truth of one is often practically ac
cepted, long prior to the demonstration
of either the error or the truth. Per
petual motion was discarded before it
was proved to be opposed to natural
law; and, as regards the connection and
interaction of natural forces, intimations
of modern discoveries are strewn through
the writings of Leibnitz, Boyle, Hooke,
Locke, and others.
Confining ourselves to recent times,
Dr. Ingleby has pointed out to me some
singularly sagacious remarks bearing
upon this question, which were published
by an anonymous writer in 1820. Roget’s
penetration was conspicuous in 1829.
Mohr had grasped in 1837 some deep
lying truth. The writings of Faraday
furnish frequent illustrations of his pro
found belief in the unity of nature. “ I
have long,” he writes in 1845, “ held an
opinion almost amounting to conviction,
in common, I believe, with other lovers
of natural knowledge, that the various
forms under which the forces of matter
are made manifest have one common
origin, or, in other words, are so directly
related and mutually dependent that
they are convertible, as it were, one
into another, and possess equivalence
of power in their action.”
His own
researches on magneto-electricity, on
electro-chemistry, and on the “ magneti
sation of light,” led him directly to this
belief. At an early date Mr. Justice
Grove made his mark upon this question.
Colding, though starting from a meta
physical basis, grasped eventually the
relation between heat and mechanical
work, and sought to determine it experi
mentally. And here let me say, that
to him who has only the truth at heart,
and who in his dealings with scientific
history keeps his soul unwarped by envy,
hatred, or malice, personal or national,
every fresh accession to historic know
ledge must be welcome.
For every
new-comer of proved merit, more espe
cially if that merit should have been
previously overlooked, he makes ready
room in his recognition or his reverence.
But no retrospect of scientific literature
has as yet brought to light a claim which
can sensibly affect the positions accorded
�SCIENCE AND MAN
* to two great Path-hewers, as the Germans
call them, whose names in relation to
this subject are linked in indissoluble
association.
These names are Julius
Robert Mayer and James Prescott Joule.
In his essay on “Circles” Mr. Emerson,
if I remember rightly, pictured intel
lectual progress as rhythmic.
At a
given moment knowledge is surrounded
by a barrier which marks its limit. It
gradually gathers clearness and strength
until by-and-by some thinker of excep
tional power bursts the barrier and wins
a wider circle, within which thought
once more entrenches itself.
But the
internal force again accumulates, the
new barrier is in its turn broken, and the
mind finds itself surrounded by a still
wider horizon.
Thus, according to
Emerson, knowledge spreads by inter
mittent victories instead of progressing
at a uniform rate.
When Dr. Joule first proved that a
weight of one pound, falling through a
height of 7 7 2 feet, generated an amount of
heat competent to warm a pound of water
one degree Fahrenheit, and that in lifting
the weight so much heat exactly dis
appeared, he broke an Emersonian
“ circle,” releasing by the act an amount
of scientific energy which rapidly overran
a vast domain, and embodied itself in
the great doctrine known as the “ Con
servation of Energy.”
This doctrine
recognises in the material universe a
constant sum of power made up of items
among which the most Protean fluctua
tions are incessantly going on. It is as
if the body of Nature were alive, the
thrill and interchange of its energies
resembling those of an organism. The
parts of the “stupendous whole” shift and
change, augment and diminish, appear
and disappear, while the total of which
they are the parts remains quantitatively
immutable. Immutable, because when
change occurs it is always polar—plus
accompanies minus, gain accompanies
loss, no item varying in the slightest
degree without art absolutely equal change
of some other item in the opposite direc
tion.
79
The sun warms the tropical ocean,
converting a portion of its liquid into
vapour, which rises in the air and is
recondensed on mountain heights, return
ing in rivers to the ocean from which it
came. Up to the point where condensa
tion begins, an amount of heat exactly
equivalent to the molecular work of
vaporisation and the mechanical work
of lifting the vapour to the mountaintops has disappeared from the universe.
What is the gain corresponding to this
loss ? It will seem when mentioned to
be expressed in a foreign currency. The
loss is a loss of heat; the gain is a gain
of distance, both as regards masses and
molecules. Water which was formerly
at the sea-level has been lifted to a
position from which it can fall; mole
cules which have been locked together
as a liquid are now separate as vapour
which can recondense. After condensa
tion gravity comes into effectual play,
pulling the showers down upon the hills,
and the rivers thus created through their
gorges to the sea. Every raindrop which
smites the mountain produces its definite
amount of heat; every river in its course
developes heat by the clash of its cataracts
and the friction of its bed. In the act
of condensation, moreover, the molecular
work of vaporisation is accurately re
versed.
Compare, then, the primitive
loss of solar warmth with the heat gene
rated by the condensation of the vapour,
and by the subsequent fall of the water
from cloud to sea. They are mathemati
cally equal to each other. No particle
of vapour was formed and lifted without
being paid for in the currency of solar
heat; no particle returns as water to the
sea without the exact quantitative resti
tution of that heat There is nothing
gratuitous in physical nature, no expen
diture without equivalent gain, no gain
without equivalent expenditure. With
inexorable constancy the one accom
panies the other, leaving no nook or
crevice between them for spontaneity to
mingle with the pure and necessary play
of natural force.
Has this uniformity
�80 '
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
of nature ever been broken ? The reply
blood-heat, then to redness, and finally
is : “Not to the knowledge of science.”
to a white heat. The heat under these
What has been here stated regarding
circumstances generated in the battery
heat and gravity applies to the whole of by the combustion of a fixed quantity of
inorganic nature. Let us take an illus zinc is no longer constant, but it varies
tration from chemistry. The metal zinc
inversely as the heat generated outside.
may be burnt in oxygen, a perfectly
If the outside heat be tzz’Z, the inside heat
definite amount of heat being produced
is a maximum; if the external wire be
by the combustion of a given weight of raised to a blood-heat, the internal heat
the metal. But zinc may also be burnt
falls slightly short of the maximum. If
in a liquid which contains a supply of the wire be rendered red-hot, the quantity
oxygen—in water, for example. It does
of missing heat within the battery is
not in this case produce flame or fire,
greater, and if the external wire be ren
but it does produce heat which is capable
dered white-hot the defect is greater
of accurate measurement. But the heat
still. Add together the internal and
of zinc burnt in water falls short of that
external heat produced by the combus
produced in pure oxygen, the reason
tion of a given weight of zinc, and
being that to obtain its oxygen from the
you have an absolutely constant total.
water the zinc must first dislodge the
The heat generated without is so much
hydrogen. It is in the performance of lost within, the heat generated within is
this molecular work that the missing heat
so much lost without, the polar changes
is absorbed. Mix the liberated hydrogen
already adverted to coming here con
with oxygen and cause them to recom spicuously into play. Thus in a variety
bine ; the heat developed is mathemati of ways we can distribute the items of a
cally equal to the missing heat. Thus, in
never-varying sum, but even the subtle
pulling the oxygen and hydrogen asunder
agency of the electric current places no
an amount of heat is consumed which is
creative power in our hands.
accurately restored by their reunion.
Instead of generating external heat,
This leads up to a few remarks upon
we may cause the current to effect
the Voltaic battery. It is not my design
chemical decomposition at a distance
to dwell upon the technical features of from the battery. Let it, for example,
this wonderful instrument, but simply,
decompose water into oxygen and hydro
by means of it, to show what varying
gen. The heat generated in the battery
shapes a given amount of energy can
under these circumstances by the com
assume while maintaining unvarying
bustion of a given weight of zinc falls
quantitative stability. When that form
short of what is produced when there is
of power which we call an electric cur no decomposition. How far short ? The
rent passes through Grove’s battery, zinc
question admits of a perfectly exact
is consumed in acidulated water; and in
answer. When the oxygen and hydrogen
the battery we are able so to arrange
recombine, the heat absorbed in the de
matters that when no current passes no
composition is accurately restored, and it
zinc shall be consumed.
Now the cur is exactly equal in amount to that missing
rent, whatever it may be, possesses the
in the battery. We may, if we like,
power of generating heat outside the
bottle up the gases, carry in this form
battery. We can fuse with it iridium,
the heat of the battery to the polar
the most refractory of metals, or we can regions, and liberate it there.
The
produce with it the dazzling electric light,
battery, in fact, is a hearth on which
and that at any terrestrial distance from
fuel is consumed; but the heat of the
the battery itself.
combustion, instead of being confined
We will now, however, content our in the usual manner to the hearth itself,
selves with causing the current to raise a
may be first liberated at the other side of
given length of platinum wire, first to a
the world.
�SCIENCE AND MAN
And here we are able to solve an
enigma which long perplexed scientific
men, and which could not be solved
until the bearing of the mechanical
theory of heat upon the phenomena of
the Voltaic battery was understood. The
puzzle was, that a single cell could not
decompose water. The reason is now
plain enough. The solution of an equi
valent of zinc in a single cell developes
not much more than half the amount of
heat required to decompose an equivalent
of water, and the single cell cannot cede
an amount of force which it does not
possess. But by forming a battery of
two cells instead of one, we develop an
amount of heat slightly in excess of that
needed for the decomposition of the
water. The two-celled battery is there
fore rich enough to pay for that decom
position, and to maintain the excess
referred to within its own cells.
Similar reflections apply to the thermo
electric pile, an instrument usually com
posed of small bars of bismuth and
antimony soldered alternately together.
The electric current is here evoked by
warming the soldered junctions of one
face of the pile. Like the Voltaic current,
the thermo-electric current can heat
wires, produce decomposition, magnetise
iron, and deflect a magnetic needle at
any distance from its origin. You will
be disposed, and rightly disposed, to
refer those distant manifestations of
power to the heat communicated to the
face of the pile, but the case is worthy
of closer examination. In 1826 Thomas
Seebeck discovered thermo-electricity,
and six years subsequently Peltier made
an observation which comes with singular
felicity to our aid in determining the
material used up in the formation of the
thermo-electric current. He found that
when a weak extraneous current was
sent from antimony to bismuth the
junction of the two metals was always
heated, but that when the direction was
from bismuth to antimony the junction
was chilled. Now the current in the
thermo-pile itself is always from bismuth
to antimony, across the heated junction
—a direction in which it cannot possibly
establish itself without consuming the
heat imparted to the junction. This
heat is the nutriment of the current.
Thus the heat generated by the thermo
current in a distant wire is simply that
originally imparted to the pile which has
been first transmuted into electricity, and
then retransmuted into its first form at a
distance from its origin. As water in
a state of vapour passes from a boiler
to a distant condenser, and there assumes
its primitive form without gain or loss,
so the heat communicated to the thermo
pile distils into the subtler electric
current, which is, as it were, recondensed
into heat in the distant platinum wire.
In my youth I thought an electro
magnetic engine which was shown to me
a veritable perpetual motion—a machine,
that is to say, which performed work
without the expenditure of power. Let
us consider the action of such a machine.
Suppose it to be employed to pump
water from a lower to a higher level.
On examining the battery which works
the engine we find that the zinc consumed
does not yield its full amount of heat.
The quantity of heat thus missing within
is the exact thermal equivalent of the
mechanical work performed without.
Let the water fall again to the lower
level; it is warmed by the fall.
Add
the heat thus produced to that generated
by the friction, mechanical and mag
netical, of the engine; we thus obtain
the precise amount of heat missing in
the battery.
All the effects obtained
from the machine are thus strictly paid
for; this “ payment for results ” being,
I would repeat, the inexorable method
of nature.
No engine, however subtly devised,
can evade this law of equivalence, or
perform on its own account the smallest
modicum of work. The machine distri
butes, but it cannot create.
Is the
animal body, then, to be classed among
machines? When I lift a weight, or
throw a stone, or climb a mountain, or
wrestle with my comrade, am I not con
scious of actually creating and expending
�82
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
force ? Let us look at the antecedents
of this force.
We derive the muscle
and fat of our bodies from what we eat.
Animal heat you know to be due to the
slow combustion of this fuel. My arm
is now inactive, and the ordinary slow
combustion of my blood and tissue is
going on. For every grain of fuel thus
burnt a perfectly definite amount of heat
has been produced. I now contract my
biceps muscle without causing it to
perform external work. The combustion
is quickened, and the heat is increased;
this additional heat being liberated in
the muscle itself. I lay hold of a 56 lb.
weight, and by the contraction of my
biceps lift it through the vertical space
of a foot. The blood and tissue con
sumed during this contraction have not
developed in the muscle their due
amount of heat. A quantity of heat is
at this moment missing in my muscle
which would raise the temperature of an
ounce of water somewhat more than one
degree Fahrenheit. I liberate the weight:
it falls to the earth, and by its collision
generates the precise amount of heat
missing in the muscle.
My muscular
heat is thus transferred from its local
' hearth to external space. The fuel is
consumed in my body, but the heat of
combustion is produced outside my
body.
The case is substantially the
same as that of the Voltaic battery when
it performs external work, or produces
external heat. All this points to the
conclusion that the force we employ in
muscular exertion is the force of burning
fuel and not of creative will.
In the
light of these facts the body is seen to
be as incapable of generating energy
without expenditure, as the solids and
liquids of the Voltaic battery.
The
body, in other words, falls into the
category of machines.
We can do with the body all that we
have already done with the battery—
heat platinum wires, decompose water,
magnetise iron, and deflect a magnetic
needle.
The combustion of muscle
may be made to produce all these
effects, as the combustion of zinc may
be caused to produce them. By turning
the handle of a magneto-electric machine
a coil of wire may be caused to rotate
between the poles of a magnet. As long
as the two ends of the coil are uncon
nected we have simply to overcome
the ordinary inertia and friction of the
machine in turning the handle. But the
moment the two ends of the coil are
united by a thin platinum wire a sudden
addition of labour is thrown upon the
turning arm. When the necessary labour
is expended, its equivalent immediately
appears. The platinum wire glows. You
can readily maintain it at a white heat,
or even fuse it. This is a very remark
able result. From the muscles of the
arm, with a temperature of ioo°, we
extract the temperature of molten plati
num, which is nearly four thousand
degrees. The miracle here is the reverse
of that of the burning bush mentioned
in Exodus. There the bush burned,
but was not consumed : here the body
is consumed, but does not burn. The
similarity of the' action with that of
the Voltaic battery when it heats an
external wire is too obvious to need
pointing out.
When the machine is
used to decompose water, the heat of
the muscle, like that of the battery, is
consumed in molecular work, being fully
restored when the gases recombine. As
before, also, the transmuted heat of the
muscles may be bottled up, carried to
the polar regions, and there restored to
its pristine form.
The matter of the human body is the
same as that of the world around us;
and here we find the forces of the
human body identical with those of
inorganic nature. Just as little as the
Voltaic battery is the animal body a
creator of force. It is an apparatus ex
quisite and effectual beyond all others in
transforming and distributing the energy
with which it is supplied, but it possesses
no creative power. Compared with the
notions previously entertained regarding
the play of “vital force ” this is a great
result. The problem of vital dynamics
�SCIENCE AND MAN
has been described by a competent
authority as “ the grandest of all.” I
subscribe to this opinion, and honour
correspondingly the man who first suc
cessfully grappled with the problem.
He was no pope, in the sense of being
infallible, but he was a man of genius
whose work will be held in honour as
long as science endures. I have already
named him in connection with our
illustrious countryman Dr. Joule. Other
eminent men took up this subject subse
quently and independently, but all that
has been done hitherto enhances instead
of diminishing the merits of Dr. Mayer.
Consider the vigour of his reasoning.
“ Beyond the power of generating in
ternal heat, the animal organism can
generate heat external to itself. A
blacksmith by hammering can warm a
nail, and a savage by friction can heat
wood to its point of ignition. Unless,
then, we abandon the physiological
axiom that the animal body cannot create
heat out of nothing, we are driven to the
conclusion that it is the total heat., within
and without, that ought to be regarded as
the real calorific effect of the oxidation
within the body A Mayer, however, not
only states the principle, but illustrates
numerically the transfer of muscular heat
to external space. A bowler who imparts
a velocity of 30 feet to an 8-lb. ball con
sumes in the act one-tenth of a grain of
carbon. The heat of the muscle is here
distributed over the track of the ball,
being developed there by mechanical
friction. A man weighing 150 lbs. con
sumes in lifting his own body to a height
of 8 feet the heat of a grain of carbon.
Jumping from this height the heat is
restored. The consumption of 2 ozs.
4 drs. 20 grs. of carbon would place the
same man on the summit of a mountain
10,000 feet high. In descending the
mountain an amount of heat equal to
that produced by the combustion of
the foregoing amount of carbon is
restored. The muscles of a labourer
whose weight is 150 lbs. weigh 64 lbs.
When dried they are reduced to 15 lbs.
Were the oxidation corresponding to a
83
day-labourer’s ordinary work exerted on
the muscles alone, they would be wholly
consumed in 80 days. Were the oxida
tion necessary to sustain the heart’s
action concentrated on the heart itself,
it would be consumed in 8 days. And
if we confine our attention to the two
ventricles, their action would consume
the associated muscular tissue in 3%
days. With a fulness and precision of
which this is but a sample did Mayer,
between 1842 and 1845, deal with the
great question of vital dynamics.
In direct opposition, moreover, to the
foremost scientific authorities of that day,
with Liebig at their head, this solitary
Heilbronn worker was led by his calcu
lations to maintain that the muscles, in
the main, played the part of machinery,
converting the fat, which had been
previously considered a mere heat-pro
ducer, into the motive power of the
organism. Mayer’s prevision has been
justified by events, for the scientific
world is now upon his side.
We place, then, food in our stomachs
as so much combustible matter. It is
first dissolved by purely chemical pro
cesses, and the nutritive fluid is poured
into the blood. Here it comes into con
tact with atmospheric oxygen admitted by
the lungs. It unites with the oxygen as
wood or coal might unite with it in a
furnace. The matter-products of the
union, if I may use the term, are the
same in both cases, viz. carbonic acid
and water. The force-products are also
the same—heat within the body, or heat
and work outside the body. Thus far
every action of the organism belongs to
the domain either of physics or of
chemistry. But you saw me cohtract
the muscle of my arm. What enabled
me to do so? Was it or was it not the
direct action of my will? The answer
is, the action of the will is mediate, not
direct. Over and above the muscles the
human organism is provided with long
whitish filaments of medullary matter,
which issue from the spinal column,
being connected by it on the one side
with the brain, and on the other side
�84
LECTURES AND ESSA VS
losing themselves in the muscles. Those
filaments or cords are the nerves, which
you know are divided into two kinds,
sensor and motor, or, if you like the
terms better, afferent and efferent nerves.
The former carry impressions from the
external world to the brain; the latter
convey the behests of the brain to the
muscles. Here, as elsewhere, we find
ourselves aided by the sagacity of Mayer,
who was the first clearly to formulate the
part played by the nerves in the organism.
Mayer saw that neither nerves nor brain,
nor both together, possessed the energy
necessary to animal motion ; but he also
saw that the nerve could lift a latch and
open a door, by which floods of energy
are let loose.
“As an engineer,” he
says with admirable lucidity, “ by the
motion of his finger in opening a valve
or loosening a detent, can liberate an
amount of mechanical energy almost
infinite compared with its exciting cause;
so the nerves, acting on the muscles, can
unlock an amount of power out of all
proportion to the work done by the
nerves themselves.” The nerves, accord
ing to Mayer, pull the trigger, but the
gunpowder which they ignite is stored in
the muscles.
This is the view now
universally entertained.
The quickness of thought has passed
into a proverb, and the notion that any
measurable time elapsed between the
infliction of a wound and the feeling of
the injury would have been rejected as
preposterous thirty years ago. Nervous
impressions, notwithstanding the results
of Haller, were thought to be transmitted,
if not instantaneously, at all events with
the rapidity of electricity. Hence, when
Helmholtz, in 1851, affirmed, as the
result of experiment, nervous transmis
sion to be a comparatively sluggish
process, very few believed him. His
experiments may now be made in the
lecture-room. Sound in air moves at
the rate of 1,100 feet a second; sound
in water moves at the rate of 5,000 feet
a second; light in ether moves at the
rate of 186,000 miles a second, and elec
tricity in free wires moves probably at the
same rate.
But the nerves transmit
their messages at the rate of only 70 feet
a second, a progress which in these
quick times might well be regarded as
inordinately slow.
Your townsman, Mr. Gore, has pro
duced by electrolysis a kind of antimony
which exhibits an action strikingly analo
gous to that of nervous propagation. A
rod of this antimony is in such a mole
cular condition that when you scratch or
heat one end of the rod the disturbance
propagates itself before your eyes to the
other end, the onward march of the dis
turbance being announced by the develop
ment of heat and fumes along the line of
propagation.
In some such way the
molecules of the nerves are successively
overthrown ; and if Mr. Gore could only
devise some means of winding up his
exhausted antimony, as the nutritive
blood winds up exhausted nerves, the
comparison would be complete. The
subject may be summed up, as Du BoisReymond has summed it up, by reference
to the case of a whale struck by a harpoon
in the tail. If the animal were seventy
feet long, a second would elapse before
the disturbance could reach the brain.
But the impression after its arrival has
to diffuse itself and throw the brain into
the molecular condition necessary to
consciousness. Then, and not till then,
the command to the tail to defend itself
is shot through the motor nerves.
Another second must elapse before the
command can reach the tail, so that
more than two seconds transpire between
the infliction of the wound and the
muscular response of the part wounded.
The interval required for the kindling of
consciousness would probably more than
suffice for the destruction of the brain by
lightning, or even by a rifle-bullet. Before
the organ can arrange itself it may, there
fore, be destroyed, and in such a case we
may safely conclude that death is pain
less.
The experiences of common life supply
us with copious instances of the libera
tion of vast stores of muscular power
�SCIENCE AND MAN
by an infinitesimal “priming” of the
muscles by the nerves. We all know the
effect produced on a “ nervous ” organi
sation by a slight sound which causes
affright. An aerial wave, the energy. of
which would not reach a minute fraction
of that necessary to raise the thousandth
of a grain through the thousandth of an
inch, can throw the whole human frame
into a powerful mechanical spasm, fol
lowed by violent respiration and palpita
tion. The eye, of course, may be
appealed to as well as the ear. Of this
the lamented Lange gives the following
vivid illustration:—
A merchant sits complacently in his
easy chair, not knowing whether smoking,
sleeping, newspaper reading, or the diges
tion of food occupies the largest portion
of his personality. A servant enters the
room with a telegram, bearing the words,
“Antwerp, etc........ Jonas and Co. have
failed.” “Tell James to harness the
horses 1” The servant flies. Up starts
the merchant, wide awake, makes a dozen
paces through the room, descends to the
counting-house, dictates letters, and for
wards despatches. He jumps into his
carriage, the horses snort, and their
driver is immediately at the Bank, on the
Bourse, and among his commercial
friends. Before an hour has elapsed he
is again at home, where he throws him
self once more into his easy chair with a
deep-drawn sigh : “ Thank God I am pro
tected against the worst, and now for
further reflection.”
This complex mass of action, emo
tional, intellectual, and mechanical, is
evoked by the impact upon the retina of
the infinitesimal waves of light coming
from a few pencil marks on a bit of paper.
We have, as Lange says, terror, hope,
sensation, calculation, possible ruin, and
victory compressed into a moment. What
caused the merchant to spring out of his
chair ? The contraction of his muscles.
What made his muscles contract ? An
impulse of the nerves, which lifted the
proper latch, and liberated the muscular
power. Whence this impulse ? From
the centre of the nervous system. But
85
how did it originate there ? This is the
critical question, to which some will
reply that it had its origin in the human
soul.
The aim and effort of science is to
explain the unknown in terms of the
known. Explanation, therefore, is con
ditioned by knowledge. You have pro
bably heard the story of the German
peasant who, in early railway days, was
taken to see the performance of a loco
motive. He had never known carriages
to be moved except by animal power.
Every explanation outside of this concep
tion lay beyond his experience, and could
not be invoked. After long reflection,
therefore, and seeing no possible escape
from the conclusion, he exclaimed con
fidently to his companion, “ Es miissen
doch Pferdedarin sein”—“There must be
horses inside.” Amusing as this locomo
tive theory may seem, it illustrates a
deep-lying truth.
With reference to our present question,
some may be disposed to press upon me
such considerations as these :—Your
motor-nerves are so many speakingtubes, through which messages are sent
from the man to the world; and your
sensor nerves are so many conduits
through which the whispers of the world
are sent back to the man. But you have
not told us where is the man. Who or
what is it that sends and receives those
messages through the bodily organism ?
Do not the phenomena point to the
existence of a self within the self, which
acts through the body as through a
skilfully constructed instrument? You
picture the muscles as hearkening to the
commands sent through the motor nerves,
and you picture the sensor nerves as the
vehicles of incoming intelligence; are
you not bound to supplement this
mechanism by the assumption of an
entity which uses it ? In other words,
are you not forced by your own exposition
into the hypothesis of a free human soul ?
This is fair reasoning now, and at a
certain stage of the world’s knowledge
it might well have been deemed con
clusive. Adequate reflection, however,
�86
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
shows that, instead of introducing light
into our minds, this hypothesis con
sidered scientifically increases our dark
ness. You do not in this case explain
the unknown in terms of the known,
which, as stated above, is the method of
science, but you explain the unknown
in terms of the more unknown. Try
to mentally visualise this soul as an
entity distinct from the body, and the
difficulty immediately appears.
From
the side of science all that we are war
ranted in stating is that the terror, hope,
sensation, and calculation of Lange’s
merchant are psychical phenomena pro
duced by, or associated with, the mole
cular processes set up by waves of light
in a previously prepared brain.
When facts present themselves let us
dare to face them, but let the man of
science equally dare to confess ignorance
where it prevails. What then is the
causal connection, if any, between the
objective and subjective—between mole
cular motions and states of conscious
ness ? My answer is : I do not see the
connection, nor have I as yet met any
body who does. It is no explanation to
say that the objective and subjective
effects are two sides of one and the same
phenomenon. Why should the pheno
menon have two sides ? This is the very
core of the difficulty. There are plenty
of molecular motions which do not
exhibit this two-sidedness. Does water
think or feel when it runs into frost-ferns
upon a window-pane ? If not, why
should the molecular motion of the brain
be yoked to this mysterious companion
—consciousness ? We can form a cohe
rent picture of the physical processes—
the stirring of the brain, the thrilling
of the nerves, the discharging of the
muscles, and all the subsequent mecha
nical motions of the organism. But we
can present to our minds no picture
ef the process whereby consciousness
emerges, either as a necessary link or as
an accidental by-product of this series of
actions. Yet it certainly does emerge—
the prick of a pin suffices to prove that
molecular motion can produce conscious
ness. The reverse process of the pro
duction of motion by consciousness is
equally unpresentable to the mind. We
are here, in fact, upon the boundary line
of the intellect, where the ordinary
canons of science fail to extricate us
from our difficulties. If we are true to
these canons, we must deny to subjective
phenomena all influence on physical
processes. Observation proves that they
interact, but in passing from one to the
other we meet a blank which mechanical
deduction is unable to fill.
Frankly
stated, we have here to deal with facts
almost as difficult to seize mentally as
the idea of a soul.
And if you are
content to make your “ soul ” a poetic
rendering of a phenomenon which refuses
the yoke of ordinary physical laws, I,
for one, would not object to this exercise
of ideality. Amid all our speculative
uncertainty, however, there is one prac
tical point as clear as the day; namely,
that the brightness and the usefulness of
life, as well as its darkness and disaster,
depend to a great extent upon our own
use or abuse of this miraculous organ.
Accustomed as I am to harsh lan
guage, I am quite prepared to hear my
“ poetic rendering ” branded as a “ false
hood ” and a “ fib.” The vituperation is
unmerited, for poetry or ideality and
untruth are assuredly very different
things. The one may vivify, while the
other kills. When St. John extends the
notion of a soul to “souls washed in
the blood of Christ ” does he “ fib ” ?
Indeed, if the appeal to ideality is cen
surable, Christ himself ought not to
have escaped censure. Nor did he
escape it. “ How can this man give us
his flesh to eat ?” expressed the sceptical
flouting of unpoetic natures. Such are
still among us.
Cardinal Manning
would doubtless tell any Protestant who
rejects the doctrine of transubstantiation
that he “ fibs ” away the plain words of.
his Saviour when he reduces “ the Body
of the Lord ” in the sacrament to a mere
figure of speech.
Though misuse may render it grotesque
or insincere, the idealisation of ancient
�SCIENCE AND MAN
conceptions, when done consciously and
above board, has, in my opinion, an im
portant future. We are not radically
different from our historic ancestors, and
any feeling which affected them pro
foundly requires only appropriate, cloth
ing to affect us. The world will not
lightly relinquish its heritage of poetic
feeling, and metaphysic will be welcomed
when it abandons its pretensions to
scientific discovery and consents to be
ranked as a kind of poetry. “A good
symbol,”says Emerson, “is a missionary
to persuade thousands. The Vedas, the
Edda, the Koran, are each remembered
by its happiest figure. There is no more
welcome gift to men than a new symbol.
They assimilate themselves to it, deal
with it in all ways, and it will last a
hundred years.
Then comes a . new
genius and brings another.” Our ideas
of God and the soul are obviously sub
ject to this symbolic mutation. They
are not now what they were a century
ago. They will not be a century hence
what they are now. Such ideas consti
tute a kind of central energy in the
human mind, capable, like the energy of
the physical universe, of assuming various
shapes and undergoing various trans
formations. They baffle and elude the
theological mechanic who would carve
them to dogmatic forms. They offer
themselves freely to the poet who under
stands his vocation, and whose function
is, or ought to be, to find “ local habita
tion ” for thoughts woven into our sub
jective life, but which refuse to be
mechanically defined.
We now stand face to face with the
final problem. It is this : Are the brain,
and the moral and intellectual processes
known to be associated with the brain—
and, as far as our experience goes, in
dissolubly associated—subject to the
laws which we find paramount in physical
nature? Is the will of man, in other
words, free, or are it and nature equally
“ bound fast in fate ” ? From this latter
conclusion, after he had established it to
the entire satisfaction of his understand
87
ing, the great German thinker Fichte
recoiled. You will find the record of
this struggle between head and heart in
his book, entitled Die. Bestimmung des
Menschen — The Vocation of Man.1
Fichte was determined at all hazards to
maintain his freedom, but the price he
paid for it indicates the difficulty of the
task. To escape from the iron necessity
seen everywhere reigning in physical
nature, he turned defiantly round upon
nature and law, and affirmed both of
them to be the products of his own mind.
He was not going to be the slave of a
thing which he had himself created.
There is a good deal to be said in
favour of this view, but few of us prob
ably would be able to bring into play the
solvent transcendentalism whereby Fichte
melted his chains.
Why do some regard this notion of
necessity with terror, while others do not
fear it at all ? Has not Carlyle some
where said that a belief in destiny is the
bias of all earnest minds ? “ It is not
Nature,” says Fichte, “it is Freedom
itself, by which the greatest and most
terrible disorders incident to our race are
produced. Man is the cruellest enemy
of man.” But the question of moral
responsibility here emerges, and it is the
possible loosening of this responsibility
that so many of us dread. The notion
of necessity certainly failed to frighten
Bishop Butler. He thought it untrue
—even absurd—but he did not fear its
practical consequences. He showed, on
the contrary, in the Analogy, that as
far as human conduct is concerned the
two theories of free-will and necessity
would come to the same in the end.
What is meant by free-will ? Does it
imply the power of producing events
without antecedents?—of starting, as it
were,, upon a creative tour of occurrences
without any impulse from within or from
without ? Let us consider the point.
If there be absolutely or relatively no
reason why a tree should fall, it will not
1 Translated by Dr. William Smith, of Edin
burgh ; Triibner, 1873.
�LECTURES AND ESSA YS
fall; and if there be absolutely or rela
tively no reason why a man should act,
he will not act. It is true that the
united voice of this assembly could not
persuade me that I have not, at this
moment, the power to lift my arm if I
wished to do so. Within this range the
conscious freedom of my will cannot be
questioned. But what about the origin
of the “ wish ” ? Are we, or are we not,
complete masters of the circumstances
which create our wishes, motives, and
tendencies to action ? Adequate reflec
tion will, I think, prove that we are not.
What, for example, have I had to do
with the generation and development of
that which some will consider my total
being, and others a most potent factor of
my total being—the living, speaking
organism which now addresses you ?
As stated at the beginning of this dis
course, my physical and intellectual
textures were woven for me, not
me.
Processes in the conduct or regulation
of which I had no share have made me
what I am. Here, surely, if anywhere,
we are as clay in the hands of the potter.
It is the greatest of delusions to suppose
that we come into this world as sheets of
white paper, on which the age can write
anything it likes, making us good or bad,
noble or mean, as the age pleases. The
age can stunt, promote, or pervert pre
existent capacities, but it cannot create
them. The worthy Robert Owen, who
saw in external circumstances the great
moulders of human character, was
obliged to supplement his doctrine by
making the man himself one of the
circumstances. It is as fatal as it is
cowardly to blink facts because they are
not to our taste. How many disorders,
ghostly and bodily, are transmitted to us
by inheritance ? In our courts of law,
whenever it is a question whether a crime
has been committed under the influence
of insanity, the best guidance the judge
and jury can have is derived from the
parental antecedents of the accused. If
among these insanity be exhibited in any
marked degree, the presumption in the
prisoner’s favour is enormously enhanced,
because the experience of life has taught
both judge and jury that insanity is fre
quently transmitted from parent to child.
I met, some years ago, in a railway
carriage the governor of one of our largest
prisons. He was evidently an observant
and reflective man, possessed of wide
experience gathered in various parts of
the world, and a thorough student of the
duties of his vocation. He told me that
the prisoners in his charge might be
divided into three distinct classes. The
first class consisted of persons who ought
never to have been in prison. External
accident, and not internal taint, had
brought them within the grasp of the
law, and what had happened to them
might happen to most of us. They
were essentially men of sound moral
stamina, though wearing the prison garb.
Then came the largest class, formed of
individuals possessing no strong bias,
moral or immoral, plastic to the touch of
circumstances, which could mould them
into either good or evil members of
society. Thirdly came a class—happily
not a large one—whom no kindness
could conciliate and no discipline tame.
They were sent into this world labelled
“incorrigible,’’wickedness being stamped,
as it were, upon their organisations. It
was an unpleasant truth, but, as a truth,
it ought to be faced. For such criminals
the prison over which he ruled was
certainly not the proper place. If con
fined at all, their prison should be on a
desert island, where the deadly contagium
of their example could not taint the
moral air. But the sea itself he was
disposed to regard as a cheap and appro
priate substitute for the island.
It
seemed to him evident that the State
would benefit if prisoners of the first
class were liberated ; prisoners of the
second class educated; and prisoners of
the third class put compendiously under
water.
It is not, however, from the observa
tion of individuals that the argument
against “ free-will,” as commonly under
stood, derives its principal force. It is, as
already hinted, indefinitely strengthened
�SCIENCE AND MAN
when extended to the race. Most of
you have been forced to listen to the
outcries and denunciations which rang
discordant through the land for some
years after the publication of Mr. Darwin’s
Origin of Species. Well, the world—even
the clerical world—has for the most part
settled down in the belief that Mr.
Darwin’s book simply reflects the truth
of nature : that we who are now “ fore
most in the files of time ” have come to
the front through almost endless stages
of promotion from lower to higher forms
of life.
If to any one of us were given the
privilege of looking back through the
aeons across which life has crept towards
its present outcome, his vision, according
to Darwin, would ultimately reach a
point when the progenitors of this
assembly could not be called human.
From that humble society, through the
interaction of its members and the
storing up of their best qualities, a better
one emerged; from this again a better
still; until at length, by the integration
of infinitesimals through ages of ameliora
tion, we came to be what we are to-day.
We of this generation had no conscious
share in the production of this grand
and beneficent result. Any and every
generation which preceded us had just
as little share. The favoured organisms
whose garnered excellence constitutes
our present store owed their advantages,
first, to what we in our ignorance are
obliged to call “accidental variation”;
and, secondly, to a law of heredity in
the passing of which our suffrages were
not collected. With characteristic felicity
and precision Mr. Matthew Arnold lifts
this question into the free air of poetry,
but not out of the atmosphere of truth,
when he ascribes the process of ameliora
tion to “a power not ourselves which
makes for righteousness.” If, then, our
organisms, with all their tendencies and
capacities, are given to us without our
being consulted; and if, while capable
of acting within certain limits in accord
ance with our wishes, we are not masters
of the circumstances in which motives
89
and wishes originate; if, finally, our
motives and wishes determine our actions
—in what sense can these actions be
said to be the result of free-will ?
Here, again, we are confronted with
the moral responsibility, which, as it has
been much talked of lately, it is desirable
to meet. With the view of removing
the fear of our falling back into the con
dition of “ the ape and tiger,” so sedu
lously excited by certain writers, I propose
to grapple with this question in its
rudest form, and in the most uncom
promising way. “ If,” says the robber,
the ravisher, or the murderer, “ I act
because I must act, what right have you
to hold me responsible for my deeds ?”
The reply is, “ The right of society to
protect itself against aggressive and
injurious forces, whether they be bond
or free, forces of nature or forces of
man.”
“ Then,” retorts the criminal,
“ you punish me for what I cannot help.”
“ Let it be granted,” says society ; “ but
had you known that the treadmill or the
gallows was certainly in store for you,
you might have ‘helped.’ Let us reason
the matter fully and frankly out. We
may entertain no malice or hatred against
you; it is enough that with a view to
our own safety and purification we are
determined that you and such as you
shall not enjoy liberty of evil action in
our midst. You, who have behaved as
a wild beast, we claim the right to cage
or kill as we should a wild beast. The
public safety is a matter of more impor
tance than the very limited chance of
your moral renovation, while the know
ledge that you have been hanged by the
neck may furnish to others about to do
as you have done the precise motive
which will hold them back. If your act
be such as to invoke a minor penalty, then
not only others, but yourself, may profit
by the punishment which we inflict. On
the homely principle that ‘ a burnt child
dreads the fire,’ it will make you think
twice before venturing on a repetition of
your crime. Observe, finally, the con
sistency of our conduct. You offend,
�90
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
you say, because you cannot help offend
ing, to the public detriment. We punish,
is our reply, because we cannot help
punishing, for the public good. Practi
cally, then, as Bishop Butler predicted,
we act as the world acted when it sup
posed the evil deeds of its criminals to
be the products of free-will.”1
“ What,” I have heard it argued, “ is
the use of preaching about duty if a
man’s predetermined position in the
moral world renders him incapable of
profiting by advice ?” Who knows that
he is incapable? The preacher’s last
word is a factor in the man’s conduct,
and it may be a most important factor,
unlocking moral energies which might
otherwise remain imprisoned and unused.
If the preacher thoroughly feel that words
of enlightenment, courage, and admoni
tion enter into the list of forces employed
by Nature herself for man’s amelioration,
since she gifted man with speech, he
will suffer no paralysis to fall upon his
tongue. Dung the fig-tree hopefully,
and not until its barrenness has been
demonstrated beyond a doubt let the
sentence go forth, “Cut it down, why
cumbereth it the ground ?”
I remember when a youth in the town
of Halifax, some two and thirty years
ago, attending a lecture given by a young
man to a small but select audience. The
aspect of the lecturer was earnest and
practical, and his voice soon rivetted
attention. He spoke of duty, defining
it as a debt owed, and there was a kind
ling vigour in his words which must have
strengthened the sense of duty in the
minds of those who heard him.
No
speculations regarding the freedom of the
will could alter the fact that the words of
that young man did me good. His
name was George Dawson. He also
spoke, if you will allow me to allude to
it, of a social subject much discussed at
the time—the Chartist subject of “ level
ling.” Suppose, he says, two men to be
1 An eminent Church dignitary describes all
this, not unkindly, as “ truculent logic.” I think
it worthy of his Grace’s graver consideration.
equal at night, and that one rises at six,
while the other sleeps till nine next
morning, what becomes of your level
ling? And, in so speaking, he made
himself the mouthpiece of Nature, which,
as we have seen, secures advance, not by
the reduction of all to a common level,
but by the encouragement and conserva
tion of what is best.
It may be urged that, in dealing as
above with my hypothetical criminal, I
am assuming a state of things brought
about by the influence of religions which
include the dogmas of theology and the
belief in free-will—a state, namely, in
which a moral majority control and keep
in awe an immoral minority. The heart
of man is deceitful above all things, and
desperately wicked. Withdraw, then, our
theologic sanctions, including the belief
in free-will, and the condition of the race
will be typified by the samples of indi
vidual wickedness which have been
above adduced. We shall, that is, become
robbers, and ravishers, and murderers.
From much that has been written of late
it would seem that this astounding infe
rence finds house-room in many minds.
Possibly, the people who hold such views
might be able to illustrate them by indi
vidual instances.
“ The fear of hell’s a hangman’s whip,
To keep the wretch in order.”
Remove the fear, and the wretch, follow
ing his natural instinct, may become
disorderly; but I refuse to accept him as
a sample of humanity. “ Let us eat and
drink, for to-morrow we die ” is by no
means the ethical consequence of a
rejection of dogma. To many of you
the name of George Jacob Holyoake is
doubtless familiar, and you are probably
aware that at no man in England has the
term “ atheist ” been more frequently
pelted. There are, moreover, really few
who have more completely liberated
themselves from theologic notions.
Among working-class politicians Mr.
Holyoake is a leader. Does he exhort
his followers to “ Eat and drink, for
to-morrow we die”? Not so. In the
�SCIENCE AND MAN
August number of the Nineteenth Cen
tury you will find these words from his
pen : “ The gospel of dirt is bad enough,
but the gospel of mere material comfort
is much worse.” He contemptuously
calls the Comtist championship of the
working man “ the championship of the
trencher.” He would place “the leanest
liberty which brought with it the dignity
and power of self-help ” higher than
“ any prospect of a full plate without it.”
Such is the moral doctrine taught by
this “atheistic” leader; and no Christian,
I apprehend, need be ashamed of it.
Most heartily do I recognise and
admire the spiritual radiance, if I may
use the term, shed by religion on
the minds and lives of many personally
known to me. At the same time I can
not but observe how signally, as regards
the production of anything beautiful,
religion fails in other cases. Its pro
fessor and defender is sometimes at
bottom a brawler and a clown. These
differences depend upon primary dis
tinctions of character which religion does
not remove. It may comfort some to
know that there are among us many
whom the gladiators of the pulpit would
call “ atheists ” and “ materialists,” whose
lives, nevertheless, as tested by any ac
cessible standard of morality, would con
trast more than favourably with the
lives of those who seek to stamp them
with this offensive brand. When I say
“ offensive,” I refer simply to the inten
tion of those who use such terms, and
not because atheism or materialism,
when compared with many of the notions
ventilated in the columns of religious
newspapers, has any particular offensive
ness for me. If I wished to find men
who are scrupulous in their adherence to
engagements, whose words are their bond,
and to whom moral shiftiness of any kind
is subjectively unknown; if I wanted a
loving father, a faithful husband, an
honourable neighbour, and a just citizen
—I should seek him, and find him, among
the band of “ atheists ” to which I refer.
I have known some of the most pro
nounced among them not only in life but
9i
in death—seen them approaching with
open eyes the inexorable goal, with no
dread of a “ hangman’s whip,” with no
hope of a heavenly crown, and still as
mindful of their duties, and as faithful in
the discharge of them, as if their eternal
future depended upon their latest deeds.
In letters addressed to myself, and in
utterances addressed to the public, Fara
day is often referred to as a sample of
the association of religious faith with
moral elevation. I was locally intimate
with him for fourteen or fifteen years of
my life, and had thus occasion to observe
how nearly his character approached
what might, without extravagance, be
called perfection. He was strong but
gentle, impetuous but self-restrained; a
sweet and lofty courtesy marked his
dealings with men and women; and
though he sprang from the body of the'
people, a nature so fine might well have
been distilled from the flower of antece
dent chivalry. Not only in its broader
sense was the Christian religion necessary
to Faraday’s spiritual peace, but in what
many would call the narrow sense held
by those described by Faraday himself
as “ a very small and despised sect of
Christians, known, if known at all, as
Sandemanians,” it constituted the light
and comfort of his days.
Were our experience confined to such
cases, it would furnish an irresistible
argument in favour of the association of
dogmatic religion with moral purity and
grace. But, as already intimated, our
experience is not thus confined. In
further illustration of this point, we may
compare with Faraday a philosopher of
equal magnitude, whose character, in
cluding gentleness and strength, candour
and simplicity, intellectual power and
moral elevation, singularly resembles that
of the great Sandemanian, but who has
neither shared the theologic views nor
the religious emotions which formed so
dominant a factor in Faraday’s life. I
allude to Mr. Charles Darwin, the Abra
ham of scientific men—a searcher as
obedient to the command of truth as was
the patriarch to the command of God.
�92
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
I cannot, therefore, as so many desire,
look upon Faraday’s religious belief as
the exclusive source of qualities shared
so conspicuously by one uninfluenced by
that belief. To a deeper virtue belonging
to human nature in its purer forms I am
disposed to refer the excellence of both.
Superstition may be defined as con
structive religion, which has grown incon
gruous with intelligence. We may admit,
with Fichte, “that superstition has un
questionably constrained its subjects to
abandon many pernicious practices and
to adopt many useful ones the real loss
accompanying its decay at the present
day has been thus clearly stated by the
same philosopher: “ In so far as these
lamentations do not proceed from the
priests themselves—whose grief at the
loss of their dominion over the human
mind we can well understand—but from
the politicians, the whole matter resolves
itself into this, that government has
thereby become more difficult and expen
sive. The judge was spared the exercise
of his own sagacity and penetration
when, by threats of relentless damnation,
he could compel the accused to make
confession. The evil spirit formerly per
formed without reward services for which
in later times judges and policemen have
to be paid.”
No man ever felt the need of a high
and ennobling religion more thoroughly
than this powerful and fervid teacher,
who, by the way, did not escape the
brand of “atheist.” But Fichte asserted
emphatically the power and sufficiency
of morality in its own sphere. “ Let us
consider,” he says, “the highest which
man can possess in the absence of
religion—I mean pure morality.
The
moral man obeys the law of duty in his
breast absolutely, because it is a law unto
him; and he does whatever reveals itself
to him as his duty simply because it is
duty. Let not the impudent assertion
be repeated that such an obedience,
without regard to consequences, and
without desire for consequences, is in
itself impossible and opposed to human
nature.” So much for Fichte. Faraday
was equally distinct. “ I have no inten
tion,” he says, “ of substituting anything
for religion, but I wish to take that part
of human nature which is independent
of it. Morality, philosophy, commerce,
the various institutions and habits of
society, are independent of religion and
may exist without it.” These were the
words of his youth, but they expressed
his latest convictions. I would add that
the muse of Tennyson never reached a
higher strain than when it embodied the
sentiment of duty in ./Enone :—
“And, because right is right, to follow right
Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence.”
Not in the way assumed by our dog
matic teachers has the morality of human
nature been built up. The power which
has moulded us thus far has worked
with stem tools upon a very rigid stuff.
What it has done cannot be so readily
undone; and it has endowed us with
moral constitutions which take pleasure
in the noble, the beautiful, and the true,
just as surely as it has endowed us with
sentient organisms, which find aloes
bitter and sugar sweet. That power did
not work with delusions, nor will it stay
its hand when such are removed. Facts,
rather than dogmas, have been its
ministers—hunger and thirst, heat and
cold, pleasure and pain, fervour, sym
pathy, aspiration, shame, pride, love,
hate, terror, awe—such were the forces
whose interaction and adjustment through
out an immeasurable past wove the triplex
web of man’s physical, intellectual, and
moral nature, and such are the forces
that will be effectual to the end.
You may retort that even on my own
showing “ the power which makes for
righteousness ” has dealt in delusions;
for it cannot be denied that the beliefs
of religion, including the dogmas of
theology and the freedom of the will,
have had some effect in moulding the
moral world. Granted; but I do not
think that this goes to the root of the
matter. Are you quite sure that those
beliefs and dogmas are primary, and not
derived ?—that they are not the products,
�SCIENCE AND MAN
instead of being the creators, of man’s
moral nature ?
I think it is in one of
the Latter-Day Pamphlets that Carlyle
corrects a reasoner, who deduced the
nobility of man from a belief in heaven,
by telling him that he puts the cart
before the horse, the real truth being
that the belief in heaven is derived from
the nobility of man. The bird’s instinct
to weave its nest is referred to by Emerson
as typical of the force which built cathe
drals, temples, and pyramids :—
“ Knowest thou what wove yon woodbird’s nest
Of leaves and feathers from her breast,
Or how the fish outbuilt its shell,
Painting with morn each annual cell ?
Such and so grew these holy piles
While love and terror laid the tiles;
Earth proudly wears the Parthenon
As the best gem upon her zone;
And Morning opes with haste her lids
To gaze upon the Pyramids;
O’er England’s abbeys bends the sky
As on its friends with kindred eye;
For ut of Thought’s interior sphere
These wonders rose to upper air,
And nature gladly gave them place,
Adopted them into her race,
And granted them an equal date
With Andes and with Ararat.”
Surely, many utterances which have been
accepted as descriptions ought to be
interpreted as aspirations, or as having
their roots in aspiration instead of in
objective knowledge. Does the song of
the herald angels, “ Glory to God in the
highest, and on earth peace, goodwill
toward men,” express the exaltation and
the yearning of a human soul ? or does
it describe an optical and acoustical fact
—a visible host and an audible song?
If the former, the exaltation and the
yearning are man’s imperishable posses
sion—a ferment long confined to indivi
duals, but which may by-and-by become
the leaven of the race. If the latter,
then belief in the entire transaction is
93
wrecked by non-fulfilment. Look to the
East at the present moment as a com
ment on the promise of peace on earth
and goodwill toward men. That promise
is a dream ruined by the experience of
eighteen centuries, and in that ruin is
involved the claim of the “ heavenly
host ” to prophetic vision. But though
the mechanical theory proves untenable,
the immortal song and the feelings it
expresses are still ours, to be incorporated,
let us hope, in purer and less shadowy
forms in the poetry, philosophy, and
practice of the future.
Thus, following the lead of physical
science, we are brought without solution
of continuity into the presence of pro
blems which, as usually classified, lie
entirely outside the domain of physics.
To these problems thoughtful and pene
trative minds are now applying those
methods of research which in physical
science have proved their truth by their
fruits. There is on all hands a growing
repugnance to invoke the supernatural
in accounting for the phenomena of
human life; and the thoughtful minds
just referred to, finding no trace of
evidence in favour of any other origin,
are driven to seek in the interaction of
social forces the genesis and development
of man’s moral nature. If they succeed
in their search—and I think they are
sure to succeed—social duty will be
raised to a higher level of significance,
and the deepening sense of social duty
will, it is to be hoped, lessen, if not
obliterate, the strifes and heartburnings
which now beset and disfigure our social
life. Towards this great end it behoves
us one and all to work; and devoutly
wishing its consummation, I have the
honour, ladies and gentlemen, to bid you
a friendly farewell.
�94
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
VITALITY
[i863]
The origin, growth, and energies of
living things are subjects which have
always engaged the attention of thinking
men. To account for them it was usual
to assume a special agent, free to a great
extent from the limitations observed
among the powers of inorganic nature.
This agent was called vital force ; and,
under its influence, plants and- animals
were supposed to collect their materials
and to assume determinate forms. Within
the last few years, however, our ideas of
vital processes have undergone profound
modifications ; and the interest, and
even disquietude, which the change has
excited are amply evidenced by the dis
cussions and protests which are now
common regarding the phenomena of
vitality. In tracing these phenomena
through all their modifications, the most
advanced philosophers of the present
day declare that they ultimately arrive
at a single source of power, from which
all vital energy is derived ; and the dis
quieting circumstance is that this source
is not the direct fiat of a supernatural
agent, but a reservoir of what, if we do
not accept the creed of Zoroaster, must
be regarded as inorganic force. In short,
it is considered as proved that all the
energy which we derive from plants and
animals is drawn from the sun.
A few years ago, when the sun was
affirmed to be the source of life, nine
out of ten of those who are alarmed by
the form which this assertion has latterly
assumed would have assented, in a general
way, to its correctness. Their assent,
however, was more poetic than scientific,
and they were by no means prepared to
see a rigid mechanical signification
attached to their words. This, however,
is the peculiarity of modern conclusions:
that there is no creative energy whatever
in the vegetable or animal organism, but
that all the power which we obtain from
the muscles of man and animals, as much
as that which we develop by the combus
tion of wood or coal, has been produced
at the sun’s expense. The sun is so much
the colder that we may have our fires; he
is also so much the colder that we may
have our horse-racing and Alpine climb
ing. It is, for example, certain that the
sun has been chilled to an extent capable
of being accurately expressed in num
bers, in order to furnish the power which
lifted this year a certain number of
tourists from the vale of Chamouni to
the summit of Mont Blanc.
. To most minds, however, the energy
of light and heat presents itself as a
thing totally distinct from ordinary
mechanical energy. Either of them can
nevertheless be derived from the other.
Wood can be raised by friction to the
temperature of ignition; while by properly
striking a piece of iron a skilful black
smith can cause it to glow. Thus, by
the rpde agency of his hammer, he gene
rates light and heat. This action, if
carried far enough, would produce the
light and heat of the sun. In fact, the
sun’s light and heat have actually been
referred to the fall of meteoric matter
upon his surface; and, whether the sun
is thus supported or not, it is perfectly
certain that he might be thus supported.
Whether, moreover, the whilom molten
condition of our planet was, as supposed
by eminent men, due to the collision of
cosmic masses or not, it is perfectly
certain that the molten condition might
be thus brought about. If, then, solar
light and heat can be produced by the
impact of dead matter, and if from the
light and heat thus produced we can
derive the energies which we have been
accustomed to call vital, it indubitably
follows that vital energy may have a
proximately mechanical origin.
In what sense, then, is the sun to be
regarded as the origin of the energy de
rivable from pLnts and animals? Let
�VITALITY
us try to give an intelligible answer to
this question. Water may be raised from
the sea-level to a high elevation, and
then permitted to descend. In descend
ing it may be made to assume various
forms—to fall in cascades, to spurt in
fountains, to boil in eddies, or to flow
tranquilly along a uniform bed. It may,
moreover, be caused to set complex
machinery in motion, to turn millstones,
throw shuttles, work saws and hammers,
and drive piles. But every form of
power here indicated would be derived
from the original power expended in
raising the water to the height from which
it fell. There is no energy generated by
the machinery ; the work performed by
the water in descending is merely the
parcelling out and distribution of the
work expended in raising it. In precisely
this sense is all the energy of plants and
animals the parcelling out and distribu
tion of a power originally exerted by the
sun. In the case of the water, the source
of the power consists in the forcible
separation of a quantity of the liquid
from a low level of the earth’s surface
and its elevation to a higher position, the
power thus expended being returned by
the water in its descent. In the case of
vital phenomena, the source of power
consists in the forcible separation of the
atoms of compound substances by the
sun. We name the force which draws
the water earthward “ gravity,” and that
which draws atoms together “ chemical
affinity
but these different names must
not mislead us regarding the qualitative
identity of the two forces. They are
both attractions ; and to the intellect the
falling of carbon atoms against oxygen
atoms is not more difficult of concep
tion than the falling of water to the
earth.
The building up of the vegetable, then,
is effected by the sun, through the reduc
tion of chemical compounds. The phe
nomena of animal life are more or less
complicated reversals of these processes
of reduction. We eat the vegetable and
we breathe the oxygen of the air ; and in
our bodies the oxygen, which has been
95
lifted from the carbon and hydrogen
by the action of the sun, again falls
towards them, producing animal heat and
developing animal forms. Through the
most complicated phenomena of vitality
this law runs: the vegetable is pro
duced while a weight rises; the animal is
produced while a weight falls. But the
question is not exhausted here. The
water employed in our first illustration
generates all the motion displayed in its
descent, but the form of the motion
depends on the character of the machinery
interposed in the path of the water. In a
similar way the primary action of the
sun’s rays is qualified by the atoms and
molecules among which their energy is
distributed. Molecular forces determine
the form which the solar energy will
assume. In the separation of the carbon
and oxygen this energy may be so con
ditioned as to result in one case in the
formation of a cabbage and in another
case in the formation of an oak. So also,
as regards the reunion of the carbon and
the oxygen, the molecular machinery
through which the combining energy
acts may in one case weave the texture
of a frog, while in another it may weave
the texture of a man.
The matter of the animal body is that
of inorganic nature. There is no sub
stance in the animal tissues which is not
primarily derived from the rocks, the
water, and the air. Are the forces of
organic matter, then, different in kind
from those of inorganic matter ? The
philosophy of the present day negatives
the question. It is the compounding,
in the organic world, of forces belonging
equally to the inorganic that constitutes
the mystery and the miracle of vitality.
Every portion of every animal body may
be reduced to purely inorganic matter.
A perfect reversal of this process of
reduction would carry us from the inor
ganic to the organic; and such a reversal
is at least conceivable. The tendency,
indeed, of modern science is to break
down the wall of partition between
organic and inorganic, and to reduce
both to the operation of forces which
�9o
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
are the same in kind, but which are
differently compounded.
Consider the question of personal
identity in relation to that of molecular
form. Thirty-four years ago Mayer, of
Heilbronn, with that power of genius
which breathes large meanings into
scanty facts, pointed out that the blood
was “the oil of the lamp of life,” the
combustion of which sustains muscular
action. The muscles are the machinery
by which the dynamic power of the
blood is brought into play. Thus the
blood is consumed. But the whole body,
though more slowly than the blood,
wastes also, so that after a certain number
of years it is entirely renewed. How is
the sense of personal identity maintained
across this flight of molecules ? To man,
as we know him, matter is necessary to
consciousness ; but the matter of any
period may be all changed, while con
sciousness exhibits no solution of con
tinuity. Like changing sentinels, the
oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon that depart
seem to whisper their secret to. their
comrades that arrive, and thus, while the
Non-ego shifts, the Ego remains the
same.
Constancy of form in the
grouping of the molecules, and not con
stancy of the molecules themselves, is
the correlative of this constancy of per
ception. Life is a wave which in no
two consecutive moments of its existence
is composed of the same particles.
Supposing, then, the molecules of the
human body, instead of replacing others,
and thus renewing a pre-existing form,
to be gathered first hand from nature
and put together in the same relative
positions as those which they occupy in
the body. Supposing them to have the
self-same forces and distribution of forces,
the self-same motions and distribution
of motions—would this organised con
course of molecules stand before us as a
sentient thinking being? There seems
no valid reason to believe that it would
not. Or, supposing a planet carved
from the sun, set spinning round an
axis, and revolving round the sun at a
distance from him equal to that of our
earth, would one of the consequences
of its refrigeration be the development
of organic forms ? I lean to the affirma
tive. Structural forces are certainly in
the mass, whether or not those forces
reach to the extent of forming a plant
or an animal. In an amorphous drop
of water lie latent all the marvels of
crystalline force; and who will set limits
to the possible play of molecules in a
cooling planet ? If these statements
startle, it is because matter has been
defined and maligned by philosophers
and theologians who were equally
unaware that it is, at bottom, essentially
mystical and transcendental.
Questions such as these derive their
present interest in great part from their
audacity, which is sure, in due time, to
disappear. And the sooner the public
dread is abolished with reference to such
questions the better for the cause of truth.
As regards knowledge, physical science
is polar. In one sense it knows, or
is destined to know, everything. In
another sense it knows nothing. Science
understands much of this intermediate
phase of things that we call nature, of
which it is the product; but science
knows nothing of the origin or destiny
of nature. Who or what made the
sun and gave his rays their alleged
power? Who or what made and bestowed
upon the ultimate particles of matter
their wondrous power of varied inter
action ? Science does not know : the
mystery, though pushed back, remains
unaltered. To many of us who feel
that there are more things in heaven
and earth than are dreamt of in the
present philosophy of science, but who
have been also taught, by baffled efforts,
how vain is the attempt to grapple with
the Inscrutable, the ultimate frame of
mind is that of Goethe :—
“ Who dares to name His name,
Or belief in Him proclaim,
Veiled in mystery as He is, the All-enfolder ?
Gleams across the mind His light,
Feels the lifted soul His might,
Dare it then deny His reign, the All-up
holder ?”
�REFLECTIONS ON PRA YER AND NA TURAL LA W
REFLECTIONS ON PRAYER AND NATURAL LAW
1861
Amid the apparent confusion and caprice
of natural phenomena, which roused
emotions hostile to calm investigation, it
must for ages have seemed hopeless to
seek for law or orderly relation; and
before the thought of law dawned upon
the unfolding human mind these other
wise inexplicable effects were referred to
personal agency. In the fall of a cataract
the savage saw the leap of a spirit, and
the echoed thunder-peal was to him the
hammer-clang of an exasperated god.
Propitiation of these terrible powers was
the consequence, and sacrifice was offered
to the demons of earth and air.
But observation tends to chasten the
emotions and to check those structural
efforts of the intellect which have emotion
for their base.
One by one natural
phenomena came to be associated with
their proximate causes; the idea of direct
personal volition mixing itself with the
economy of nature retreating more and
more. Many of us fear this change. Our
religious feelings are dear to us, and we
look with suspicion and dislike on any
philosophy the apparent tendency of
which is to dry them up. Probably every
change from ancient savagery to our
present enlightenment has excited, in a
greater or less degree, fears of this
kind. But the fact is, that we have not
yet determined whether its present form
is necessary to the life and warmth of
religious feeling. We may err in linking
the imperishable with the transitory, and
confound the living plant with the decay
ing pole to which it clings. My object,
however, at present is not to argue, but
to mark a tendency. We have ceased
to propitiate the powers of nature—
ceased even to pray for things in manifest
contradiction to natural laws. In Pro
testant countries, at least, I think it is
conceded that the age of miracles is
past.
At an auberge near the foot of the
Rhone glacier I met, in the summer of
1858, an athletic young priest, who, after
a solid breakfast, including a bottle of
wine, informed me that he had come up
to “ bless the mountains.” This was the
annual custom of the place. Year by
year the Highest was entreated, by official
intercessors, to make such meteorological
arrangements as should ensure food and
shelter for the flocks and herds of the
Valaisians. A diversion of the Rhone,
or a deepening of the river’s bed, would,
at the time I now mention, have been of
incalculable benefit to the inhabitants of
the valley. But the priest would have
shrunk from the idea of asking the
Omnipotent to open a new channel for
the river, or to cause a portion of it to
flow over the Grimsel pass, and down the
valley of Oberhasli to Brientz. This he
would have deemed a miracle, and he
did not come to ask the Creator to per
form miracles, but to do something which
he manifestly thought lay quite within
the bounds of the natural and nonmiraculous.
A Protestant gentleman
who was present at the time smiled at
this recital. He had no faith in the
priest’s blessing; still, he deemed his
prayer different in kind from a request
to open a new river-cut, or to cause the
water to flow up-hill.
In a similar manner the same Pro
testant gentleman would doubtless smile
at the honest Tyrolese priest who, when
he feared the bursting of a glacier dam,
offered the sacrifice of the Mass upon
the ice as a means of averting the
calamity. That poor man did not expect
to convert the ice into adamant, or to
strengthen its texture, so as to enable it
D
�LECTURES AND ESSA YS
98
then, was the mine in which our gem
must be sought. A modified and more
refined form of the ancient faith revived;
and, for aught I know, a remnant of
sanguine designers may at the present
moment be engaged on the problem
which like-minded men in former ages
left unsolved.
And why should a perpetual motion,
even under modern conditions, be impos
sible? The answer to this question is
the statement of that great generalisation
of modern science which is known under
the name of the Conservation of Energy.
This principle asserts that no power can
make its appearance in nature without
an equivalent expenditure of some other
power ; that natural agents are so related
to each other as to be mutually con
vertible, but that no new agency is
created. Light runs into heat; heat into
electricity; electricity into magnetism ;
magnetism into mechanical force; and
mechanical force again into light and
heat. The Proteus changes, but he is
ever the same; and his changes in
nature, supposing no miracle to super
vene, are the expression, not of spon
taneity, but of physical necessity. A
perpetual motion, then, is deemed impos
sible because it demands the creation
of energy, whereas the principle of Con
servation is—no creation, but infinite
conversion.
It is an old remark that the law which
moulds a tear also rounds a planet. In
the application of law in nature the
terms “great” and “small” are unknown.
Thus the principle referred to teaches us
that the Italian wind, gliding over the
crest of the Matterhorn, is as firmly
ruled as the earth in its orbital revolution
round the sun; and that the fall of its
vapour into clouds is exactly as much a
matter of necessity as the return of the
seasons. The dispersion, therefore,, of
the slightest mist by the special volition
of the Eternal would be as much a
miracle as the rolling of the Rhone over
the Grimsel precipices, down the valley
of Hasli to Meyringen and Brientz.
■ See Helmholtz, Wechselwirkung der NaturIt seems to me quite beyond the
to withstand the pressure of the water;
nor did he expect that his sacrifice would
cause the stream to roll back upon its
source and relieve him, by a miracle, of
its presence. But beyond the boundaries
of his knowledge lay a region where rain
was generated, he knew not how. He
was not so presumptuous as to expect , a
miracle, but he firmly believed that in
yonder cloud-land matters could be so
arranged, without trespass on the miracu
lous, that the stream which threatened
him and his people should be caused to
shrink within its proper bounds.
Both these priests fashioned that
which they did not understand to their
respective wants and wishes. In their
case imagination came into play, uncon
trolled by a knowledge of law.
A
similar state of mind was long prevalent
among mechanicians. Many of these,
among whom were to be reckoned men
of consummate skill, were occupied a
century ago with the question of per
petual motion. They aimed at con
structing a machine which should execute
work without the expenditure of power;
and some of them went mad in the
pursuit of this object. The faith in such
a consummation, involving, as it did,
immense personal profit to the inventor,
was extremely exciting, and every attempt
to destroy this faith was met by bitter
resentment on the part of those who
held it. Gradually, however, as men
became more and more acquainted with
the true functions of machinery, the
dream dissolved. The hope of getting
work out of mere mechanical com
binations disappeared; but still there
remained for the speculator a cloudland denser than that which filled the
imagination of the Tyrolese priest, and
out of which he still hoped to evolve
perpetual motion. There was the mystic
store of chemic force, which nobody
understood ; there were heat and light,
electricity and magnetism, all competent
to produce mechanical motion.1 Here,
kriifie.
�REFLECTIONS ON FRA YER AND NATURAL LAW
present power of science to demonstrate
that the Tyrolese priest, or his colleague
of the Rhone valley, asked for an “ im
possibility ” in praying for good weather ;
but Science can demonstrate the incom
pleteness of the knowledge of nature
which limitqfl their prayers to this narrow
ground ; and she may lessen the number
of instances in which we “^.sk amiss ” by
showing that we sometimes pray for the
performance of a miracle when we do
not intend it. She does assert, for
example, that without a disturbance of
natural law, quite as serious as the stop
page of an eclipse or the rolling of the
river Niagara up the Falls, no act of
humiliation, individual or national, could
call one shower from heaven or deflect
towards us a single beam of the sun.
Those, therefore, who believe that the
miraculous is still active in nature may,
with perfect consistency, join in our
periodic prayers for fair weather and for
rain; while those who hold that the age
of miracles is past will, if they be con
sistent, refuse to join in these petitions.
And these latter, if they wish to fall back
upon such a justification, may fairly urge
that the latest conclusions of science are
in perfect accordance with the doctrine
of the Master himself, which manifestly
was that the distribution of natural
phenomena is not affected by moral or
religious causes. “ He maketh His sun
to rise on the evil and on the good,
and sendeth rain on the just and on the
unjust.” Granting “the power of Free Will
in man,” so strongly claimed by Professor
Mansel in his admirable defence of the
belief in miracles, and assuming the
efficacy of free prayer to produce
changes in external nature, it necessarily
follows that natural laws are more or less
at the mercy of man’s volition, and no
conclusion founded on the assumed per
manence of those laws would be worthy
of confidence.
It is a wholesome sign for England
that she numbers among her clergy men
wise enough to understand all this, and
courageous enough to act up to their
knowledge. Such men do service to
99
public character by encouraging a manly
and intelligent conflict with the real
causes of disease and scarcity, instead of
a delusive reliance on supernatural aid.
But they have also a value beyond this
Local and temporary one. They prepare
the public mind for changes which,
though inevitable, could hardly, without
such preparation, be wrought without
violence. Iron is strong; still, water in
crystallising will shiver an iron envelope,
and the more unyielding the metal is
the worse for its safety. There are in the
world men who would encompass philo
sophic speculation by a rigid envelope,
hoping thereby to restrain it, but in
reality giving it explosive force. In
England, thanks to men of the stamp to
which I have alluded, scope is gradually
given to thought for changes of aggrega
tion, and the envelope slowly alters its
form, in accordance with the necessities
of the time.
The proximate origin of the foregoing slight
article, and probably the remoter origin of the
next following one, was this. Some years ago
a day of prayer and humiliation, on account of
a bad harvest, was appointed by the proper
religious authorities; but certain clergymen of
the Church of England, doubting the wisdom
of the demonstration, declined to join in the
services of the day. For this act of noncon
formity they were severely censured by some
of their brethren. Rightly or wrongly, my
sympathies were on the side of these men ; and,
to lend them a helping hand in their struggle
against odds, I inserted the foregoing chapter
in a little book entitled Mountaineering in
1861. Some time subsequently I received from a
gentleman of great weight and distinction in the
scientific world, and, I believe, of perfect ortho
doxy in the religious one, a note directing my
attention to an exceedingly thoughtful article on
Prayer and Cholera in the Pall Mall Gazette.
My eminent correspondent deemed the article
a fair answer to the remarks made by me in
i86r. I, also, was struck by the temper and
ability of the article; but I could not deem its
arguments satisfactory, and in a short note to
the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette I ventured
to state so much. The letter elicited some very
able replies, and a second leading article was
also devoted to the subject. In answer to all,
I risked the publication of a second letter, and
soon afterwards, by an extremely courteous note
from the editor, the discussion was closed.
Though thus stopped locally, the discussion
flowed in other directions.
Sermons were
�TOO
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
demonstrate earnestness, while gentlemanly
feeling was too predominant to permit that
earnestness to contract itself to bigotry or to
clothe itself in abuse. It was probably the
memory of this discussion which caused another
excellent friend of mine to recommend to my
perusal the exceedingly able work which in the
next article I have endeavoured to review.
*
preached, essays were published, articles were
written, while a copious correspondence occupied
the pages of some of the religious newspapers.
It gave me sincere pleasure to notice that the
discussion, save in a few cases where natural
coarseness had the upper hand, was conducted
with a minimum of vituperation. The severity
shown was hardly more than sufficient to
MIRACLES AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES'
1867
It is my privilege to enjoy the friendship
of a select number of religious men,
with whom I converse freely upon theo
logical subjects, expressing without dis
guise the notions and opinions I enter
tain regarding their tenets, and hearing
in return these notions and opinions
subjected to criticism. I have thus far
found them liberal and loving men,
patient in hearing, tolerant in reply, who
know how to reconcile the duties of
courtesy with the earnestness of debate.
From one of these, nearly a year ago, I
received a note, recommending strongly
to my attention the volume of Bamp ton
Lectures for 1865, in which the question
of miracles is treated by Mr. Mozley.
Previous to receiving this note, I had in
part made the acquaintance of the work
through an able and elaborate review of
it in the Times. The combined effect
of the letter and the review was to make
the book the companion of my summer
tour in the Alps. There, during the wet
and snowy days which were only too
prevalent in 1866, and during the days
of rest interpolated between days of toil,
I made myself more thoroughly con
versant with Mr. Mozley’s volume. I
found it clear and strong—an intellectual
tonic, as bracing and pleasant to my mind
as the keen air of the mountains was to
my body. From time to time I jotted
down thoughts regarding it, intending
afterwards to work them up into a
coherent whole. Other duties, however,
interfered with the complete carrying out
of this intention, and what I wrote last
summer I now publish, not hoping to
be able, within any reasonable time, to
render my defence of scientific method
more complete.
Mr. Mozley refers at the outset of his
task to the movement against miracles
which of late years has taken place, and
which determined his choice of a subject.
He acquits modern science of having had
any great share in the production of
this movement. The objection against
miracles, he says, does not arise from
any minute knowledge of the law of
nature, but simply because they are
opposed to that plain and obvious order
of nature which everybody sees. The
present movement is, he thinks, to be
ascribed to the greater earnestness and
penetration of the present age. _ For
merly miracles were accepted without
question, because without reflection; but
the exercise of the “historic imagina
tion ” is a characteristic of our own time.
Men are now accustomed to place before
themselves vivid images of historic facts;
and when a miracle rises to view, they
halt before the astounding occurrence,
and, realising it with the same clearness
1 Fortnightly Review, New Series, vol. i., p. 645.
�MIRACLES AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES
as if it were now passing before their
eyes, they ask themselves, “ Can this
have taken place ?” In some instances
the effort to answer this question has led
to a disbelief in miracles, in others to a
strengthening of belief.
The aim of
Mr. Mozley’s lectures is to show that the
strengthening of belief is the logical
result which ought to follow from the
examination of the facts.
Attempts have been made by religious
men to bring the Scripture miracles
within the scope of the order of nature,
but all such attempts are rejected by Mr.
Mozley as utterly futile and wide of the
mark. Regarding miracles as a necessary
accompaniment of a revelation, their
evidential value in his eyes depends
entirely upon their deviation from the
order of nature. Thus deviating, they
suggest and illustrate a power higher
than nature, a “ personal will ”; and they
commend the person in whom this power
is vested as a messenger from on high.
Without these credentials such a mes
senger would have no right to demand
belief, even were his assertions regarding
his Divine mission backed by a holy life.
Nor is it by miracles alone that the order
of nature is, or may be, disturbed. The
material universe is also the arena of
‘ ‘ special providences. ” Under these two
heads Mr. Mozley distributes the total
preternatural. One form of the pre
ternatural may shade into the other, as
one colour passes into another in the
rainbow; but while the line which
divides the specially providential from
the miraculous cannot be sharply drawn,
their distinction broadly expressed is this:
that, while a special providence can only
excite surmise more or less probable, it
is “ the nature of a miracle to give proof,
as distinguished from mere surmise, of
Divine design.”
Mr. Mozley adduces various illustra
tions of what he regards to be special
providences
as distinguished from
miracles. “The death of Arius,” he
says, “ was not miraculous, because the
coincidence of the death of a heresiarch
taking place when it was peculiarly
IOI
advantageous to the orthodox faith.......
was not such as to compel the inference
of extraordinary Divine agency; but it
was a special providence, because it
carried a reasonable appearance of it.
The miracle of the Thundering Legion
was a special providence, but not a
miracle, for the same reason, because
the coincidence of an instantaneous fall
of rain, in answer to prayer, carried
some appearance, but not proof, of
preternatural agency.” The eminent
lecturer’s remarks on this head brought
to my recollection certain narratives
published in Methodist magazines, which
I used to read with avidity when a
boy. The general title of these exciting
stories, if I remember right, was “The
Providence of God Asserted,” and in
them the most extraordinary escapes
from peril were recounted and ascribed
to prayer, while equally wonderful
instances of calamity were adduced as
illustrations of Divine retribution. In
such magazines, or elsewhere, I found
recorded the case of the celebrated
Samuel Hick, which, as it illustrates a
whole class of special providences ap
proaching in conclusiveness to miracles,
is worthy of mention here. It is related
of this holy man that, on one occasion,
flour was lacking to make the sacra
mental bread. Grain was present, and
a windmill was present, but there was
no wind to grind the corn. With faith
undoubting, Samuel Hick prayed to the
Lord of the winds : the sails turned, the
corn was ground, after which the wind
ceased. According to the canon of the
Bampton Lecturer, this, though carrying
a strong appearance of an immediate
exertion of Divine energy, lacks by a
hair’s-breadth the quality of a miracle.
For the wind might have arisen, and
might have ceased, in the ordinary
course of nature. Hence the occurrence
did not “ compel the inference of extra
ordinary Divine agency.” In like manner
Mr. Mozley considers that “ the appear
ance of the cross to Constantine was a
miracle, or a special providence, according
to what account of it we adopt. As
�102
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
dist and the Tyrolese peasant than in the
only a meteoric appearance in the shape
heart of Mr. Mozley. Indeed, those
of a cross, it gave some token of preter
feelings belong to the primal powers of
natural agency, but not full evidence.”
man’s nature. A “sceptic” may have
In the Catholic canton of Switzerland
them. They find vent in the battle-cry of
where I now write, and still more among
the Moslem. They take hue and form in
the pious Tyrolese, the mountains are
the hunting-grounds of the Red Indian ;
dotted with shrines, containing offerings
of all kinds, in acknowledgment of and raise all of them, as they raise the
Christian, upon a wave of victory, above
special mercies—legs, feet, arms, and
the terrors of the grave.
hands—of gold, silver, brass, and wood,
The character then of a miracle, as
according as worldly possessions enabled
the grateful heart to express its indebted distinguished from a special providence,
is that the former furnishes proof, while
ness. Most of these offerings are made
to the Virgin Mary. They are recogni in the case of the latter we have only
surmise. Dissolve the element of doubt,
tions of “ special providences,” wrought
and the alleged fact passes from the one
through the instrumentality of the Mother
class of the preternatural into the other.
of God. Mr. Mozley’s belief, that of the
In other words, if a special providence
Methodist chronicler, and that of the
could be proved to be a special provi
Tyrolese peasant, are substantially the
dence, it would cease to be a special
same. Each of them assumes that
providence and become a miracle. There
nature, instead of flowing ever onward
is not the least cloudiness about Mr.
in the uninterrupted rhythm of cause
Mozley’s meaning here. A special pro
and effect, is mediately ruled by the free
vidence is a doubtful miracle. Why,
human will. As regards direct action
then, riot call it so ? The term employed
upon natural phenomena, man’s wish
by Mr. Mozjey conveys no negative sug
and will, as expressed in prayer, are
gestion, whereas the negation of certainty
confessedly powerless; but prayer is the
is the peculiar characteristic of the thing
trigger which liberates the Divine power,
intended to be expressed. There is an
and to this extent, if the will be free, man,
apparent unwillingness on the part of
of course, commands nature.
the lecturer to call a special providence
Did the existence of this belief depend
what his own definition makes it to be.
solely upon the material benefits derived
Instead of speaking of it as a doubtful
from it, it could not, in my opinion, last
miracle, he calls it “ an invisible miracle.”
a decade. As a purely objective fact,
He speaks of the point of contact of
we should soon see that the distribution
supernatural power with the chain of
of natural phenomena is unaffected by
causation being so high up as to be
the merits or the demerits of men; that
wholly, or in part, out of sight, whereas
the law of gravitation crushes the simple
the essence of a special providence is
worshippers of Ottery St. Mary, while
the uncertainty whether there is any con
singing their hymns, just as surely as if
tact at all, either high or low. By the
they were engaged in a midnight brawl.
use of an incorrect term, however, a
The hold of this belief upon the human
grave danger is avoided. For the idea
mind is not due to outward verification,
of doubt, if kept systematically before
but to the inner warmth, force, and
the mind, would soon be fatal to the
elevation with which it is commonly
special providence, considered as a means
associated. It is plain, however, that
of edification. The term employed, on
these feelings may exist under the most
the contrary, invites and encourages the
various forms. They are not limited to
trust which is necessary to supplement the
Church of England Protestantism—they
evidence.
are not even limited to Christianity.
This inner trust, though at first rejected
Though less refined, they are certainly
by Mr. Mozley in favour of external proof,
not less strong in the heart of the Metho
�MIRACLES AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES
is subsequently called upon to do momen
tous duty in regard to miracles. When
ever the evidence of the miraculous seems
incommensurate with the fact which it
has to establish, or rather when the fact
is so amazing that hardly any evidence
is sufficient to establish it, Mr. Mozley
invokes “ the affections.” They must
urge the reason to accept the conclusion,
from which unaided it recoils.
The
affections and emotions are eminently
the court of appeal in matters of real
religion, which is an affair of the heart;
but they are not, I submit, the court in
which to weigh allegations regarding the
credibility of physical facts. These must
be judged by the dry light of the intellect
alone, appeals to the affections being
reserved for cases where moral elevation,
and not historic conviction, is the aim.
It is, moreover, because the result, in
the case under consideration, is deemed
desirable that the affections are called
upon to back it. If undesirable, they
would, with equal right, be called upon to
act the other way. Even to the disciplined
scientific mind this would be a dangerous
doctrine. A favourite theory—the desire
to establish or avoid a certain result—
can so warp the mind as to destroy its
powers of estimating facts.
I have
known men to work for years under a
fascination of this kind, unable to extri
cate themselves from its fatal influence.
They had certain data, but not, as it
happened, enough. By a process exactly
analogous to that invoked by Mr.
Mozley, they supplemented the data,
and went wrong. From that hour their
intellects were so blinded to the percep
tion of adverse phenomena • that they
never reached truth. If, then, to the
disciplined scientific mind this incon
gruous mixture of proof and trust be
fraught with danger, what must it be to
the indiscriminate audience which Mr.
Mozley addresses ? In calling upon
this agency he acts the part of Franken
stein. It is a monster thus evoked that
we see stalking abroad in the degrading
spiritualistic phenomena of the present
day. Again, I say, where the aim is to
elevate the mind, to quicken the moral
sense, to kindle the fire of religion in
the soul, let the affections by all means
be invoked ; but they must not be per
mitted to colour our reports, or to influ
ence our acceptance of reports, of occur
rences in external nature. Testimony
as to natural facts is worthless when
wrapped in this atmosphere of the affec
tions, the most earnest subjective truth
being thus rendered perfectly compatible
with the most astounding objective error.
There are questions in judging of
which the affections or sympathies are
often our best guides, the estimation of
moral goodness being one of these.
But at this precise point, where they are
really of use, Mr. Mozley excludes the
affections and demands a miracle as a
certificate of character. He will not
accept any other evidence of the perfect
goodness of Christ. “No outward life
and conduct,” he says, “ however irre
proachable, could prove His perfect sin
lessness, because goodness depends
upon the inward motive, and the per
fection of the inward motive is not
proved by the outward act.” But surely
the miracle is an outward act, and to
pass from it to the inner motive imposes
a greater strain upon logic than that
involved in our ordinary methods of
estimating men. There is, at least,
moral congruity between the outward
goodness and the inner life, but there is
no such congruity between the miracle
and the life within. The test of moral
goodness laid down by Mr. Mozley is
not the test of John, who says: “He
that doeth righteousness is righteous
nor is it the test of Jesus: “By their
fruits ye shall know them; do men
gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles ?”
But it A the test of another: “ If thou
be the Son of God, command that these
stones be made bread.” For my own
part, I prefer the attitude of Fichte to
that of Mr. Mozley. “The Jesus of
John,” says this noble and mighty
thinker, “ knows no other God than
the true God, in whom we all are, and
live, and may be blessed, and out of
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LECTURES AND ESSA VS
whom there is only death and nothing
ness.
And,” continues Fichte, “ he
appeals, and rightly appeals, in support
of this truth, not to reasoning, but to
the inward practical sense of truth in
man, not even knowing any other proof
than this inward testimony: ‘ If any
man will do the will of Him who sent
Me, he shall know of the doctrine
whether it be of God.’ ”
Accepting Mr. Mozley’s test, with
which alone I am now dealing, it is
evident that, in the demonstration of
moral goodness, the quantity of the
miraculous comes into play. Had Christ,
for example, limited himself to the con
version of water into wine, He would
have fallen short of the performance of
Jannes and Jambres; for it is a smaller
thing to convert one liquid into another
than to convert a dead rod into a living
serpent. But Jannes and Jambres, we
are informed, were not good. Hence,
if Mr. Mozley’s test be a true one, a
point must exist on the one side of
which miraculous power demonstrates
goodness, while on the other side it does
not. How is this “point of contrary
flexure ” to be determined ? It . must
lie somewhere between the magicians
and Moses, for within this space the
power passed from the diabolical to the
Divine. But how to mark the point of
passage—how, out of a purely quantita
tive difference in the visible manifestation
of power, we are to infer a total inversion
of quality—it is extremely difficult to
see. Moses, we are informed, produced
a large reptile; Jannes and Jambres
produced a small one. I do not possess
the intellectual faculty which would
enable me to infer, from those data, either
the goodness of the one or the badness
of the other ; and in the highest recorded
manifestations of the miraculous I am
equally at a loss. Let us not play fast
and loose with the miraculous; either it
is a demonstration of goodness in all
cases or in none. If Mr. Mozley accepts
Christ’s goodness as transcendent be
cause He did such works as no other
man did, he ought, logically speaking, to
accept the works of those who, in His
name, had cast out devils, as demon
strating a proportionate goodness on
their part. But it is people of this class
who are consigned to everlasting fire
prepared for the devil and his angels.
Such zeal as that of Mr. Mozley for
miracles tends, I fear, to eat his religion
up. The logical threatens to stifle the
spiritual. The truly religious soul needs
no miraculous proof of the goodness of
Christ. The words addressed to Matthew
at the receipt of custom required no
miracle to produce obedience. It was
by no stroke of the supernatural that
Jesus caused those sent to seize Him to
go backward and fall to the ground. It
was the sublime and holy effluence from
within, which needed no prodigy to
commend it to the reverence even of
his foes.
As regards the function of miracles in
the founding of a religion, Mr. Mozley
institutes a comparison between the
religion of Christ and that of Mohammed;
and he derides the latter as “irrational”
because it does not profess to adduce
miracles in proof of its supernatural
origin. But the religion of Mohammed,
notwithstanding this drawback, has
thriven in the world, and at one time it
held sway over larger populations than
Christianity itself.
The spread and
influence of Christianity are, however,
brought forward by Mr. Mozley as “a
permanent, enormous, and incalculable
practical result” of Christian miracles;
and he makes use of this result to
strengthen his plea for the miraculous.
His logical warrant for this proceeding
is not clear. It is the method of science,
when a phenomenon presents itself to
wards the production of which several
elements may contribute, to exclude
them one by one, so as to arrive at length
at the truly effective cause. Heat, for
example, is associated with a phenome
non; we exclude heat, but the phenome
non remains : hence, heat is not its cause.
Magnetism is associated with a pheno
menon; we exclude magnetism, but the
phenomenon remains: hence, magnetism
�MIRACLES AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES
is not its cause. Thus, also, when we
seek the cause of the diffusion of a religion
—whether it be due to miracles or to
the spiritual force of its founders—we
exclude the miracles, and, finding the
result unchanged, we infer that miracles
are not the effective cause. This impor
tant experiment Mohammedanism has
made for us. It has lived and spread
without miracles; and to assert, in the
face of this, that Christianity has spread
because of miracles is, I submit, opposed
both to the spirit of science and the
common sense of mankind.
The incongruity of inferring moral
goodness from miraculous power has
been dwelt upon above; in another
particular also the strain put by Mr.
Mozley upon miracles is, I think, more
than they can bear. In consistency
with his principles, it is difficult to see
how he is to draw from the miracles of
Christ any certain conclusion as to His
Divine nature. He dwells very forcibly
on what he calls “ the argument from
experience,” in the demolition of which
he takes obvious delight. He destroys
the argument, and repeats it, for the
mere pleasure of again and again knock
ing the breath out of it. Experience, he
urges, can only deal with the past; and
the moment we attempt to project expe
rience a hair’s-breadth beyond the point
it has at any moment reached we are
condemned by reason. It appears to
me that, when he infers from Christ’s
miracles a Divine and altogether super
human energy, Mr. Mozley places himself
precisely under this condemnation. For
what is his logical ground for concluding
that the miracles of the New Testament
illustrate Divine power ? May they not
be the result of expanded human power ?
A miracle he defines as something impos
sible to man. But how does he know
that the miracles of the New Testament
are impossible to man ? Seek as he may,
he has absolutely no reason to adduce
save this—that man has never hitherto
accomplished such things. But does the
fact that man has never raised the dead
prove that he can never raise the dead ?
io5
“ Assuredly not,” must be Mr. Mozley’s
reply; “ for this would be pushing ex
perience beyond the limit it has now
reached—which I pronounce unlawful.”
Then a period may come when man will
be able to raise the dead. If this be
conceded—and I do not see how Mr.
Mozley can avoid the concession—it
destroys the necessity of inferring Christ’s
Divinity from His miracles. He, it may
be contended, antedated the humanity
of the future; as a mighty tidal wave
leaves high upon the beach a mark which
by-and-by becomes the general level of
the ocean. Turn the matter as you will,
no other warrant will be found for the
all-important conclusion that Christ’s
miracles demonstrate Divine power than
an argument which has been stigmatised
by Mr. Mozley as a “ rope of sand ”—the
argument from experience.
The learned Bampton Lecturer would
be in this position, even had he seen
with his own eyes every miracle recorded
in the New Testament. But he has not
seen these miracles; and his intellectual
plight is, therefore, worse. He accepts
these miracles on testimony. Why does
he believe that testimony? How does
he know that it is not delusion; how is
he sure that it is not even fraud ? He
will answer that the writing bears the
marks of sobriety and truth ; and that in
many cases the bearers of this message
to mankind sealed it with their blood.
Granted with all my heart; but whence
the value of all this? Is it not solely
derived from the fact that men, as we
know them, do not sacrifice their lives in
the attestation of that which they know
to be untrue ? Does not the entire value
of the testimony of the Apostles depend
ultimately upon our experience of human
nature ? It appears, then, that those said
to have seen the miracles based their
inferences from what they saw on the
argument from experience, and that Mr.
Mozley bases his belief in their testimony
on the same argument. The weakness
of his conclusion is quadrupled by this
double insertion of a principle of belief
to which he flatly denies rationality. His
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LECTURES AND ESSA YS
reasoning, in fact, cuts two ways—if it
destroys our trust in the order of nature,
it far more effectually abolishes the basis
on which Mr. Mozley seeks to found the
Christian religion.
Over this argument from experience,
which at bottom is his argument, Mr.
Mozley rides rough-shod. There is a
dash of scorn in the energy with which
he tramples on it. Probably some pre
vious writer had made too much of it,
and thus invited his powerful assault.
Finding the difficulty of belief in miracles
to rise from their being in contradiction
to the order of nature, he sets himself to
examine the grounds of our belief in
that order. With a vigour of logic rarely
equalled, and with a confidence in its
conclusions never surpassed, he disposes
of this belief in a manner calculated to
startle those who, without due examina
tion, had come to the conclusion that the
order of nature was secure.
What we mean, he says, by our belief
in the order of nature is the belief that
the future will be like the past. There
is not, according to Mr. Mozley, the
slightest rational basis for this belief :—
That any cause in nature is more permanent
than its existing and known effects, extending
further, and about to produce other and more
instances besides what it has produced already,
we have no evidence. Let us imagine [he con
tinues] the occurrence of a particular physical
phenomenon for the first time. Upon that single
occurrence we should have but the very faintest
expectation of another. If it did occur again,
once or twice, so far from counting on another
occurrence, a cessation would occur as the most
natural event to us. But let it continue one
hundred times, and we should find no hesitation
in inviting persons from a distance to see it; and
if it occurred every day for years, its occurrence
would be a certainty to us, its cessation a marvel.
....... What ground of reason can we assign for an
expectation that any part of the course of nature
will be the next moment what it has been up to
this moment—i.e., for our belief in the uniformity
of nature ? None. No demonstrative reason
can be given, for the contrary to the recurrence
of a fact of nature is no contradiction. No pro
bable reason can be given; for all probable
reasoning respecting the course of nature is
founded upon this presumption of likeness, and
therefore cannot be the foundation of it. No
reason can be given for this belief. It is without
a reason. It rests upon no rational grounds,
and can be traced to no rational principle.
“ Everything,” Mr. Mozley, however,
adds, “ depends upon this belief; every
provision we make for the future, every
safeguard and caution we employ against
it, all calculation, all adjustment of means
to ends, supposes this belief; and yet
this belief has no more producible reason
for it than a speculation of fancy.........It
is necessary, all-important for the pur
poses of life, but solely practical, and
possesses no intellectual character.........
The proper function,” continues Mr.
Mozley, “ of the inductive principle, the
argument from experience, the belief in
the order of nature—by whatever phrase
we designate the same instinct—is to
operate as a practical basis for the affairs
of life and the carrying on of human
society.” To sum up, the belief in the
order of nature is general, but it is “an
unintelligent impulse, of which we can
give no rational account.” It is inserted
into our constitution solely to induce us
to till our fields, to raise our winter fuel,
and thus to meet the future on the per
fectly gratuitous supposition that it will
be like the past.
“ Thus, step by step,” says Mr. Mozley,
with the emphasis of a man who feels
his position to be a strong one, “ has
philosophy loosened the connection of
the order of nature with the ground . of
reason, befriending in exact proportion
as it has done this the principle of
miracles.” For “this belief not having
itself a foundation in reason, the ground
is gone upon which it could be main
tained that miracles, as opposed to the
order of nature, are opposed to reason.”
When we regard this belief in connec
tion with science, “ in which connection
it receives a more imposing name, and
is called the inductive principle,” the
result is the same.
“The inductive
principle is only this unreasoning impulse
applied to a scientifically ascertained
fact.........Science has led up to the fact;
but there it stops, and for converting
this fact into a law a totally unscientific
principle comes into play, the same as
�MIRACLES AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES
that which generalises the commonest
observation of nature.”
The eloquent pleader of the cause of
miracles passes over without a word the
results of scientific investigation, as
proving anything rational regarding the
principles or method by which such
results have been achieved. Here, as
elsewhere, he declines the test: “ By
their fruits shall ye know them,” Perhaps
our best way of proceeding will be to
give one or two examples of the mode in
which men of science apply the unintel
ligent impulse with which Mr. Mozley
credits them, and which shall show, by
illustration, the surreptitious method
whereby they climb from the region of
facts to that of laws.
Before the sixteenth century it was
known that water rises in a pump, the
effect being then explained by the
maxim that “ Nature abhors a vacuum.”
It was not known that there was
any limit to the height to which the
water would ascend, until, on one occa
sion, the gardeners of Florence, while
attempting to raise water to a very great
elevation, found that the column ceased
at a height of thirty-two feet. Beyond
this all the skill of the pump-maker
could not get it to rise. The fact was
brought to the notice of Galileo, and he,
soured by a world which had not treated
his science over kindly, is said to have
twitted the philosophy of the time by
remarking that nature evidently abhorred
a vacuum only to a height of thirty-two
feet. Galileo, however, did not solve
the problem. It was taken up by his
pupil Torricelli, to whom, after due
pondering, the thought occurred that
the water might be forced into the tube
by a pressure applied to the surface of
the liquid outside. But where, under
the actual circumstances, was such a
pressure to be found ? After much
reflection, it flashed upon Torricelli that
the atmosphere might possibly exert this
pressure ; that the impalpable air might
possess weight; and that a column of
water thirty-two feet high might be of
the exact weight necessary to hold the
107
pressure of the atmosphere in equili
brium.
There is much in this process of
pondering and its results which it is
impossible to analyse. It is by a kind
of inspiration that we rise from the wise
and sedulous contemplation of facts to
the principles on which they depend.
The mind is, as it were, a photographic
plate, which is gradually cleansed by the
effort to think rightly, and which, when
so cleansed, and not before, receives
impressions from the light of truth.
This passage from facts to principles is
called induction; and induction, in its
highest form, is, as I have just stated, a
kind of inspiration. But, to make it
sure, the inward sight must be shown to
be in accordance with outward fact. To
prove or disprove the induction, we must
resort to deduction and experiment.
Torricelli reasoned thus : If a column
of water thirty-two feet high holds the
pressure of the atmosphere in equili
brium, a shorter column of a heavier
liquid ought to do the same. Now,
mercury is thirteen times heavier than
water; hence, if my induction be correct,
the atmosphere ought to be able to sus
tain only thirty inches of mercury. Here,
then, is a deduction which can be imme
diately submitted to experiment. Torri
celli took a glass tube a yard or so in
length, closed at one end and open at
the other, and, filling it with mercury, he
stopped the open end with his thumb,
and inverted it into a basin filled with
the liquid metal. One can imagine the
feeling with which Torricelli removed his
thumb, and the delight he experienced
on finding that his thought had forestalled
a fact never before revealed to human
eyes. The column sank, but it ceased
to sink at a height of thirty inches, leav
ing the Torricellian vacuum over head.
From that hour the theory of the pump
was established.
The celebrated Pascal followed Tor
ricelli with another deduction. He
reasoned thus : If the mercurial column
be supported by the atmosphere, the
higher we ascend in the air, the lower
�108
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
the column ought to sink, for the less
will be the weight of the air over head.
He caused a friend to ascend the Puy
de Dome, carrying with him a barometric
column; and it was found that during
the ascent the column sank, and that
during the subsequent descent the column
rose.
Between the time here referred to and
the present, millions of experiments have
been made upon this subject. Every
village pump is an apparatus for such
experiments. In thousands of instances,
moreover, pumps have refused to work;
but on examination it has infallibly been
found that the well was dry, that the
pump required priming, or that some
other defect in the apparatus accounted
for the anomalous action. In every case
of the kind the skill of the pump-maker
has been found to be the true remedy.
In no case has the pressure of the
atmosphere ceased; constancy, as re
gards the lifting of pump-water, has been
hitherto the demonstrated rule of nature.
So also as regards Pascal’s experiment.
His experience has been the universal
experience ever since. Men have climbed
mountains, and gone up in balloons;
but no deviation from Pascal’s result has
ever been observed. Barometers, like
pumps, have refused to act; but instead
of indicating any suspension of the
operations of nature, or any interference
on the part of its author with atmospheric
pressure, examination has in every in
stance fixed the anomaly upon the
instruments themselves. It is this weld
ing, then, of rigid logic to verifying fact
that Mr. Mozley refers to an “unreasoning
impulse.”
Let us now briefly consider the case
of Newton. Before his time men had
occupied themselves with the problem of
the solar system. Kepler had deduced,
from a vast mass of observations, those
general expressions of planetary motion
known as “ Kepler’s laws.” It had
been observed that a magnet attracts
iron; and by one of those flashes of
inspiration which reveal to the human
mind the vast in the minute, the general
in the particular, it had been inferred
that the force by which bodies fall to
the earth might also be an attraction.
Newton pondered all these things. He
looked, as was his wont, into the dark
ness until it became entirely luminous.
How this light arises we cannot explain;
but, as a matter of fact, it does arise.
Let me remark here, that this kind of
pondering is a process with which the
ancients could have been but imperfectly
acquainted. They, for the most part,
found the exercise of fantasy more
pleasant than careful observation and
subsequent brooding over facts. Hence
it is that, when those whose education
has been derived from the ancients speak
of “ the reason of man,” they are apt to
omit from their conception of reason one
of its most important factors. Well,
Newton slowly marshalled his thoughts,
or, rather, they came to him while he
“ intended his mind,” rising like a series
of intellectual births out of chaos. He
made this idea of attraction his own.
But, to apply the idea to the solar system,
it was necessary to know the magnitude
of the attraction, and the law of its
variation with the distance. His con
ceptions first of all passed from the
action of the earth as a whole to that of
its constituent particles. And persistent
thought brought more and more clearly
out the final conclusion, that every par
ticle of matter attracts every other particle
with a force varying inversely as the
square of the distance between the
particles.
Here we have the flower and outcome
of Newton’s induction; and how to
verify it, or to disprove it, was the next
question. The first step of the philo
sopher in this direction was to prove,
mathematically, that if this law of attrac
tion be the true one, if the earth be con
stituted of particles which obey this law,
then the action of a sphere equal to the
earth in size on a body outside of it is
the same as that which would be exerted
if the whole mass of the sphere were
contracted to a point at its centre. Prac
tically speaking, then, the centre of the
�MIRACLES AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES
109
tions extended, the planetary motions
earth is the point from which distances
had obeyed these laws; and neither
must be measured to bodies attracted by
Kepler nor Newton entertained a doubt
the earth.
as to their continuing to obey them.
From experiments executed before his
Year after year, as the ages rolled, they
time, Newton knew the amount of the
believed that those laws would continue
earth’s attraction at the earth’s surface,
to illustrate themselves in the heavens.
or at a distance of 4,000 miles from its
But this was not sufficient. The scien
centre. His object now was to measure
tific mind can find no repose in the mere
the attraction at a greater distance, and
thus to determine the law of its diminu registration of sequence in nature. The
further question intrudes itself with
tion. But how was he to find a body
resistless might, Whence comes the
at a sufficient distance? He had no
sequence ? What is it that binds the
balloon, and, even if he had, he knew
consequent to its antecedent in nature ?
that any height to which he could attain
The truly scientific intellect never can
would be too small to enable him to
attain rest until it reaches the forces by
solve his problem. What did he do ?
which the observed succession is pro
He fixed his thoughts upon the moon, a
duced. It was thus with Torricelli; it
body 240,000 miles, or sixty times the
was thus with Newton; it is thus pre
earth’s radius, from the earth’s centre.
eminently with the scientific man of
He virtually weighed the moon, and
to-day. In common with the most
found that weight to be ^ab-oth of what
ignorant, he shares the belief that spring
it would be at the earth’s surface. This
will succeed winter, that summer will
is exactly what his theory required. I
will not dwell here upon the pause of succeed spring, that autumn will succeed
summer, and that winter will succeed
Newton after his first calculations, or
autumn. But he knows still further—
speak of his self-denial in withholding
and this knowledge is essential to his
them because they did not quite agree
with the observations then at his com intellectual repose—that this succession,
besides being permanent, is, under the
mand. Newton’s action in this matter is
circumstances, necessary ; that the gravi
the normal action of the scientific mind.
tating force exerted between the sun and
If it were otherwise—if scientific men
were not accustomed to demand verifica a revolving sphere with an axis inclined
tion—if they were satisfied with the im to the plane of its orbit must produce
the observed succession of the seasons.
perfect while the perfect is attainable,
Not until this relation between forces
their science, instead of being, as it is, a
fortress of adamant, would be a house of and phenomena has been established is
clay, ill-fitted to bear the buffetings of the law of reason rendered concentric
with the law of nature ; and not until
the theologic storms to which it is
this is effected does the mind of the
periodically exposed.
Thus we see that Newton, like Torri scientific philosopher rest in peace.
The expectation of likeness, then, in
celli, first pondered his facts, illuminated
the procession of phenomena is not that
them with persistent thought, and finally
divined the character of the force of on which the scientific mind founds its
belief in the order of nature. - If the
gravitation. But, having thus travelled
force be permanent, the phenomena are
inward to the principle, he reversed his
necessary, whether they resemble or do
steps, carried the principle outwards, and
not resemble anything that has gone
justified it by demonstrating its fitness to
before. Hence, in judging of the order
external nature.
of nature, our inquiries eventually relate
And here, in passing, I would notice a
to the permanence of force. From
point which is well worthy of attention.
Kepler had deduced his laws from obser Galileo to Newton, from Newton to our
vation. As far back as those observa 1 own time, eager eyes have been scanning
�Ito
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
the heavens, and clear heads have been
pondering the phenomena of the solar
system. The same eyes and minds have
been also observing, experimenting, and
reflecting on the action of gravity at
the surface of the earth. Nothing has
occurred to indicate that the operation
of the law has for a moment been sus
pended ; nothing has ever. intimated
that nature has been crossed by spon
taneous action, or that a state of things
at any time existed which could not be
rigorously deduced from the preceding
state.
Given the distribution of matter, and
the forces in operation, in the time of
Galileo, the competent mathematician
of that day could predict what is now
occurring in our own.
We calculate
eclipses in advance, and find our calcu
lations true to the second. We deter
mine the dates of those that have
occurred in the early times of history,
and find calculation and history in
harmony. Anomalies and perturbations
in the planets have been over and over
again observed; but these, instead of
demonstrating any inconstancy on the
part of natural law, have invariably
been reduced to consequences of that
law. Instead of referring the perturba
tions of Uranus to any interference on
the part of the author of nature with the
law of gravitation, the question which
the astronomer proposed to himself was :
“ How, in accordance with this law, can
the perturbation be produced ?” Guided
by a principle, he was enabled to fix the
point of space in which, if a mass of
matter were placed, the observed per
turbations would follow. We know the
result. The practical astronomer turned
his telescope towards the region which
the intellect of the theoretic astronomer
had already explored, and the planet
now named Neptune was found in its
predicted place.
A very respectable
outcome, it will be admitted, of an
impulse which “rests upon no rational
grounds, and can be traced to no rational
principle,” which possesses “no intel
lectual character,” which “ philosophy ”
has uprooted fiom “the ground of
reason,” and fixed in that “large irra
tional department ” discovered for it, by
Mr. Mozley, in the hitherto unexplored
wilderness of the human mind.
The proper function of the inductive
principle, or the belief in the order of
nature, says Mr. Mozley, is “ to act as a
practical basis for the affairs of life and
the carrying on of human society.” But
what, it may be asked, has the planet
Neptune, or the belts of Jupiter, or the
whiteness about the poles of Mars, to
do with the affairs of society ? How is
society affected by the fact that the sun’s
atmosphere contains sodium, or that the
nebula of Orion contains hydrogen gas ?
Nineteen-twentieths of the force employed
in the exercise of the inductive principle,
which, reiterates Mr. Mozley, is “ purely
practical,” have been expended upon
subjects as unpractical as these. What
practical interest has society in the fact
that the spots on the sun have a
decennial period, and that, when a magnet
is closely watched for half a century, it
is found to perform small motions which
synchronise with the appearance and
disappearance of the solar spots ? And
yet, I doubt not, Sir Edward Sabine
would deem a life of intellectual toil
amply rewarded by being privileged to
solve, at its close, these infinitesimal
motions.
The inductive principle is founded in
man’s desire to know—a desire arising
from his position among phenomena
which are reducible to order by his
intellect. The material universe is the
complement of the intellect; and, without
the study of its laws, reason could never
have awakened to the higher forms of
self-consciousness at all. It is the Non
ego through and by which the Ego is
endowed with self-discernment. We hold
it to be an exercise of reason to explore
the meaning of a universe to which we
stand in this relation, and the work we
have accomplished is the proper com
mentary on the methods we have pursued.
Before these methods were adopted the
unbridled imagination roamed through
�MIRACLES AND SPECIAL PROViDENCES
nature, putting in the place of law the
figments of superstitious dread. For
thousands of years witchcraft, and magic,
and miracles, and special providences,
and Mr. Mozley’s “ distinctive reason of
man,” had the world to themselves.
They made worse than nothing of it—
worse, I say, because they let and
hindered those who might have made
something of it. Hence it is that during
a single lifetime of this era of “ unintel
ligent impulse” the progress in know
ledge is all but infinite, as compared with
that of the ages which preceded ours.
The believers in magic and miracles
of a couple of centuries ago had all the
strength of Mr. Mozley’s present logic
on their side. They had done for them
selves what he rejoices in having so
effectually done for us—cleared the
ground of the belief in the order of
nature, and declared magic, miracles,
and witchcraft to be matters for “ordi
nary evidence” to decide. “The principle
of miracles” thus “befriended” had
free scope, and we know the result.
Lacking that rock-barrier of natural
knowledge which we now possess, keen
jurists and cultivated men were hurried
on to deeds the bare recital of which
makes the blood run cold. Skilled in
all the rules of human evidence, and
versed in all the arts of cross-examination,
these men, nevertheless, went systemati
cally astray, and committed the deadliest
wrongs against humanity. And why?
Because they could not put Nature into
the witness-box, and question her—of
her voiceless “testimony” they knew
nothing. In all cases between man and
man their judgment was to be relied
on; but in all cases between man and
nature they were blind leaders of the
blind.1
' “In 1664 two women were hung in Suffolk,
under a sentence of Sir Matthew Hale, who
took the opportunity of declaring that the
reality of witchcraft was unquestionable ; ‘ for
first, the Scriptures had affirmed so much ; and
secondly, the wisdom of all nations had pro
vided laws against such persons, which is an
argument of their confidence of such a crime.’
Sir Thomas Browne, who was a great physician
hi
Mr. Mozley concedes that it would be
no great result if miracles were only
accepted by the ignorant and super
stitious, “because it is easy to satisfy
those who do not inquire.” But he
does consider it “ a great result ” that
they have been accepted by the edu
cated. In what sense educated ? Like
those statesmen, jurists, and Church
dignitaries whose education was unable
to save them from the frightful errors
glanced at above? Not even in this
sense; for the great mass of Mr. Mozley’s
educated people had no legal training,
and must have been absolutely defence
less against delusions which could set
even that training at naught. Like ninetenths of our clergy at the present day,
they were versed in the literature of
Greece, Rome, and Judea; but as
regards a knowledge of nature, which is
here the one thing needful, they were
“ noble savages,” and nothing more. In
the case of miracles, then, it behoves us
to understand the weight of the negative
before we assign a value to the positive;
to comprehend the depositions of nature
before we attempt to measure, with them,
the evidence of men. We have only to
open our eyes to see what honest and
even intellectual men and women are
capable of, as to judging evidence, in
this nineteenth century of the Chris
tian era, and in latitude fifty-two
degrees north.
The experience thus
gained ought, I imagine, to influence
our opinion regarding the testimony of
people inhabiting a sunnier clime, with
a richer imagination and without a
particle of that restraint which the dis
coveries of physical science have imposed
upon mankind.
Having thus submitted Mr. Mozley’s
views to the examination which they chal
lenged at the hands of a student of nature,
I am unwilling to quit his book without
expressing my admiration of his genius
as well as a great writer, was called as a witness,
and swore ‘ that he was clearly of opinion that
the persons were bewitched.’ ”—Lecky’s History
of Rationalism, vol. i., p. 120.
�I 12
LECTURES AND ESSA VS
and my respect for his character. Though
barely known to him personally, his
recent death affected me as that of a
friend. With regard to the style of his
book, I heartily subscribe to the descrip
tion with which the Times winds up its
able and appreciative review: “ It is
marked throughout with the most serious
and earnest conviction, but is without a
single word from first to last of asperity
or insinuation against opponents ; and
this not from any deficiency of feeling as
to the importance of the issue, but from
a deliberate and resolutely maintained
self-control, and from an over-ruling,
ever-present sense of the duty, on themes
like these, of a more than judicial calm
ness.”
ADDITIONAL REMARKS ON
MIRACLES
Among the scraps of manuscripts,
written at the time when Mr. Mozley’s
work occupied my attention, I find the
following reflections :—
With regard to the influence of modern
science, which Mr. Mozley rates so low,
one obvious effect of it is to enhance the
magnitude of many of the recorded
miracles, and to increase proportionably
the difficulties of belief. The ancients
knew but little of the vastness of the
universe. The Rev. Mr. Kirkman, for
example, has shown what inadequate
notions the Jews entertained regarding
the “ firmament of heaven
and Sir
George Airy refers to the case of a Greek
philosopher who was persecuted for
hazarding the assertion, then deemed
monstrous, that the sun might be as large
as the whole country of Greece. The
concerns of a universe, regarded from
this point of view, were much more com
mensurate with man and his concerns
than those of the universe which science
now reveals to us; and hence that to
suit man’s purposes, or that in compli
ance with his prayers, changes should
occur in the order of the universe, was
more easy of belief in the ancient world
than it can be now. In the very magni
tude which it assigns to natural pheno
mena, science has augmented the dis
tance between them and man, and in
creased the popular belief in their orderly
progression.
As a natural consequence, the demand
for evidence is more exacting than it
used to be whenever it is affirmed that
the order of nature has been disturbed.
Let us take as an illustration the miracle
by which the victory of Joshua over the
Amorites was rendered complete. In
this case the sun is reported to have
stood still for “ about a whole day ” upon
Gibeon, and the moon in the valley of
Ajalon. An Englishman of average edu
cation at the present day would naturally
demand a greater amount of evidence to
prove that this occurrence took place
than would have satisfied an Israelite in
the age succeeding that of Joshua. For
to the one the miracle probably con
sisted in the stoppage of a fiery ball less
than a yard in diameter, while to the other
it would be the stoppage of an orb fourteen
hundred thousand times the earth in size.
And even accepting the interpretation
that Joshua dealt with what was apparent
merely, -but that what really occurred was
the suspension of the earth’s rotation, I
think the right to exercise a greater
reserve in accepting the miracle, and to
demand stronger evidence in support of
it than that which would have satisfied
an ancient Israelite, will still be con
ceded to a man of science.
There is a scientific as well as an
historic imagination; and when, by the
exercise of the former, the stoppage of
the earth’s rotation is clearly realised,
the event assumes proportions so vast, in
comparison with the result to be obtained
by it, that belief reels under the reflec
tion. The energy here involved is equal
to that of six trillions of horses working
for the whole of the time employed by
Joshua in the destruction of his foes.
The amount of power thus expended
would be sufficient to supply every indi
vidual of an army a thousand times the
strength of that of Joshua, with a thousand
�MIRACLES AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES
times the fighting power of each of
Joshua’s soldiers, not for the few hours
necessary to the extinction of a handful
of Amorites, but for millions of years.
All this wonder is silently passed over by
the sacred historian, manifestly because
he knew nothing about it. Whether,
therefore, we consider the miracle as
purely evidential, or as a practical means
of vengeance, the same lavish squander
ing of energy stares us in the face. If
evidential, the energy was wasted because
the Israelites knew nothing of its amount;
if simply destructive, then the ratio of
the quantity lost to the quantity em
ployed may be inferred from the fore
going figures.
To other miracles similar remarks
apply. Transferring our thoughts from
this little sand-grain of an earth to the
immeasurable heavens, where countless
worlds with freights of life probably
revolve unseen, the very suns whicb
warm them being barely visible across
abysmal space, reflecting that beyond
these sparks of solar fire suns innumer
able may burn, whose light can never
stir the optic nerve at all, and bringing
these reflections face to face with the
idea of the Builder and Sustainer of it
all showing Himself in a burning bush,
exhibiting His hinder parts, or behaving
in other familiar ways ascribed to Him in
the Jewish Scriptures, the incongruity
mus.t appear. Did this credulous prattle
of the ancients about miracles stand
alone; were it not associated with words
of imperishable wisdom, and with ex
amples of moral grandeur unmatched
elsewhere in the history of the human
race, both the miracles and th^ir “ evi
dences ” would have long since ceased to
be the transmitted inheritance of intelli
gent men. Influenced by the thoughts
which this universe inspires, well may we
exclaim in David’s spirit, if not in David’s
words : “ When I consider the heavens,
the work of thy fingers, the moon, and
the stars, which thou hast ordained,
what is man that thou shouldst be mind
ful of him, or the son of man that thou
shouldst so regard him ?”
J13
If you ask me who is to limit the out
goings of Almighty power, my answer is,
Not I. If you should urge that, if the
Builder and Maker of this universe chose
to stop the rotation of the earth, or to
take the form of a burning bush, there is
nothing to prevent Him from doing so,
I am not prepared to contradict you. I
neither agree with you nor differ from
you, for it is a subject of which I know
nothing. But I observe that in such
questions regarding Almighty power your
inquiries relate, not to that power as
*it is actually displayed in the universe,
but to the power of your own imagina
tion. Your question is, not Has the
Omnipotent done so and so ? or Is it in
the least degree likely that the Omni
potent should do so and so ? but, Is my
imagination competent to picture aBeing
able and willing to do so and so ? I am
not prepared to deny your competence.
To the human mind belongs the faculty
of enlarging and diminishing, of distort
ing and combining, indefinitely the
objects revealed by the senses. It can
imagine a mouse as large as an elephant,
an elephant as large as a mountain, and
a mountain as high as the stars. It can
separate congruities and unite incon
gruities. We see a fish and we see a
woman ; we can drop one half of each,
and unite in idea the other two halves to
a mermaid. We see a horse and we see
a man; we are able to drop one half of
each, and unite the other two halves to
a centaur. Thus also the pictorial repre
sentations of the Deity, the bodies and
wings of cherubs and seraphs, the hoofs,
horns, and tail of the Evil One, the joys
of the blessed, and the torments of the
damned, have been elaborated from
materials furnished to the imagination
by the senses. It behoves you and me
to take care that our notions of the
Power which rules the universe are not
mere fanciful or ignorant enlargements
of human power. The capabilities of
what you call your reason are not denied.
By the exercise of the faculty here ad
verted to, you can picture to yourself a
Being able and willing to do any and
�114
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
every conceivable thing. You are right
in saying that in opposition to this Power
science is of no avail—that it is “ a
weapon of air.” The man of science,
however, while accepting the figure,
would probably reverse its application,
thinking it is not science which is nere
the thing of air, but that unsubstantial
pageant of the imagination to which the
solidity of science is opposed.
ON PRAYER AS A FORM OF PHYSICAL ENERGY
fct_S72]
The Editor of the Contemporary Review
is liberal enough to grant me space
for some remarks upon a subject which,
though my relation to it was simply
that of a vehicle of transmission, has
brought down upon me a consider
able amount of animadversion.
It may be interesting to some of my
readers if I glance at a few cases illustra
tive of the history of the human mind
in relation to this and kindred questions.
In the fourth century the belief in
Antipodes was deemed unscriptural and
heretical. The pious Lactantius was as
angry with the people who held this
notion as my censors are now with me,
and quite as unsparing in his denuncia
tions of their “ Monstrosities.” Lactan
tius was irritated because, in his mind,
by education and habit, cosmogony and
religion were indissolubly associated, and,
therefore, simultaneously disturbed. In
the early part of the seventeenth century
the notion that the earth was fixed, and
that the sun and stars revolved round
it daily, was interwoven with religious
feeling, the separation then attempted
by Galileo rousing the animosity and
kindling the persecution of the Church.
Men still living can remember the indig
nation excited by the first revelations of
geology regarding the age of the earth,
the association between chronology and
religion being for the time indissoluble.
In our day, however, the best informed
theologians are prepared to admit that
our views of the Universe and its Author
are not impaired, but improved, by the
abandonment of the Mosaic account of
the Creation. Look, finally, at the
excitement caused by the publication of
the Origin of Species, and compare it
with the calm attendant on the appear
ance of the far more outspoken and,
from the old point of view, more impious
Descent of Man.
Thus religion survives after the removal
of what had been long considered essen
tial to it. In our day the Antipodes are
accepted; the fixity of the earth is given
up; the period of Creation and the
reputed age of the world are alike dissi
pated ; Evolution is looked upon with
out terror; and other changes have
occurred in the same direction too
numerous to be dwelt upon here. In
fact, from the earliest times to the pre
sent, religion has been undergoing a
process of purification, freeing .itself
slowly and painfully from the physical
errors which the active but uninformed
intellect mingled with the aspirations of
the soul. Some of us think that a final
act of purification is needed, while others
oppose ihis notion with the confidence
and the warmth of ancient times. The
bone of contention at present is the
physical value of prayer. It is not my
wish to excite surprise, much less to
draw forth protest, by the employment
of this phrase. I would simply ask any
intelligent person to look the problem
honestly in the face, and then to say
whether, in the estimation of the great
body of those who sincerely resort to it,
prayer does not, at all events upon special
�ON PRA YER AS A FORM OF PHYSICAL ENERGY
occasions, invoke a Power which checks
andlaugments the descent of rain, which
changes the force and direction of
winds, which affects the growth of corn
and the health of men and cattle—a
Power, in short, which, when appealed
to under pressing circumstances, pro
duces the precise effects caused by
physical energy in the ordinary course
of things. To any person who deals
sincerely with the subject, and refuses to
blur his moral vision by intellectual sub
tleties, this, I think, will appear a true
statement of the case.
It is under this aspect alone that the
scientific student, so far as I represent
him, has any wish to meddle with prayer.
Forced upon his attention as a form of
physical energy, or as the equivalent of
such energy, he claims the right of sub
jecting it to those methods of examina
tion from which all our present knowledge
of the physical universe is derived. And
if his researches lead him to a conclusion
adverse to its claims—if his inquiries
rivet him still closer to the philosophy
implied in the words, “ He maketh His
sun to shine on the evil and on the good,
and sendeth rain upon the just and upon
the unjust”—he contends only for the
displacement of prayer, not for its
extinction. He simply says, physical
nature is not its legitimate domain.
This conclusion, moreover, must be
based on pure physical evidence, and not
on any inherent unreasonableness in the
act of prayer- The theory that the
system of nature is under the control of
a Being who changes phenomena in
compliance with the prayers of men is,
in my opinion, a perfectly legitimate one.
It may, of course, be rendered futile by
being associated with conceptions which
contradict it; but such conceptions form
no necessary part of the theory. It is a
matter of experience that an earthly
father, who is at the same time both
wise and tender, listens to the requests
of his children, and, if they do not ask
amiss, takes pleasure in granting their
requests. We know also that this com
pliance extends to the alteration, within I
115
certain limits, of the current of events
on earth. With this suggestion offered
by experience, it is no departure from
scientific method to place behind natural
phenomena a Universal Father, who, in
answer to the prayers of his children,
alters the currents of those phenomena.
Thus far theology and science go hand
in hand. The conception of an aether,
for example, trembling with the waves of
light, is suggested by the ordinary phe
nomena of wave-motion in water and in
air; and in like manner the conception
of personal volition in nature is suggested
by the ordinary action of man upon
earth. I, therefore, urge no impossi
bilities, though I am constantly charged
with doing so. I do not even urge
inconsistency, but, on the contrary,
frankly admit that the theologian has as
good a right to place his conception at
the root of phenomena as I have to
place mine.
But without verification a theoretic
conception is a mere figment of the
intellect, and I am sorry to find us
parting company at this point. The
region of theory, both in science and
theology, lies behind the world of the
senses, but the verification of theory
occurs in the sensible world. To check
the theory, we have simply to compare
the deductions from it with the facts of
observation. If the deductions be in
accordance with the facts, we accept the
theory; if in opposition, the theory is
given up.
A single experiment is
frequently devised by which the theory
must stand or fall. Of this character
was the determination of the velocity of
light in liquids as a crucial test of the
Emission Theory. According to it, light
travelled faster in water than in air;
according to the Undulatory Theory, it
travelled faster in air than in water.
An experiment suggested by Arago, and
executed by Fizeau and Foucault, was
conclusive against Newton’s theory.
But while science cheerfully submits to
this ordeal, it seems impossible to devise
a mode of verification of their theories
which does not rouse resentment in
�116
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
theological minds. Is it that, while the
pleasure of the scientific man culminates
in the demonstrated harmony between
theory and fact, the highest pleasure of
the religious man has been already tasted
in the very act of praying prior to verifi
cation, any further effort in this direction
being a mere disturbance of his peace ?
Or is it that we have before us a residue
of that mysticism of the Middle Ages,
so admirably described by Whewell—
that “practice of referring things and
events, not to clear and distinct notions,
not to general rules capable of direct
verification, but to notions vague, distant,
and vast, which we cannot bring into
contact with facts, as when we connect
natural events with moral and historic
causes”? “Thus,” he continues, “the
character of mysticism is that it refers
particulars not to generalisations homo
geneous and immediate, but to such as
are heterogeneous and remote; to which
we must add, that the process of this
reference is not a calm act of the intellect,
but is accompanied with a glow of enthu
siastic feeling.”
Every feature here depicted, and some
more questionable ones, have shown
themselves of late; most conspicuously,
I regret to say, in the “ leaders ” of a
weekly journal of considerable influence,
and one, on many grounds, entitled
to the respect of thoughtful men. In
the correspondence, however, published
by the same journal, are to be found two
or three letters well calculated to correct
the temporary flightiness of the journal
itself.
It is not my habit of mind to think
otherwise than solemnly of the feeling
which prompts prayer. It is a power I
which I should like to see guided, not
extinguished — devoted to practicable
objects instead of wasted upon air. In
some form or other, not yet evident, it
may, as alleged, be necessary to man’s
highest culture. Certain it is that,
while I rank many persons who resort
to prayer low in the scale of being
natural foolishness, bigotry, and intoler
ance being in their case intensified by
the notion that they have access to the
ear of God—I regard others who employ
it as forming part of the very cream of
the earth. The faith that adds to the
folly and ferocity of the one is turned to
enduring sweetness, holiness, abounding
charity, and self-sacrifice by the other.
Religion, in fact, varies with the nature
upon which it falls. Often unreasonable,
if not contemptible, prayer, in its purer
forms, hints at disciplines which few of
us can neglect without moral loss. But
no good can come of giving it a delusive
value, by claiming for it a power in
physical nature. It may strengthen the
heart to meet life’s losses, and thus
indirectly promote physical well-being,
as the digging of 2Esop’s orchard brought
a treasure of fertility greater than the
golden treasure sought. Such indirect
issues we all admit; but it would be
simply dishonest to affirm that it is such
issues that are always in view. Here,
for the present, I must end. I ask no
space to reply to those railers who make
such free use of the terms “insolence,”
“outrage,”“profanity,’’and “ blasphemy.”
They obviously lack the sobriety of mind
necessary to give accuracy to their state
ments, or to render their charges worthy
of serious refutation.
�SCIENCE AND THE “SPIRITS
”
11?
______________________________________ —------------------ *---------------------------—
:
SCIENCE AND THE “SPIRITS”
[1864]
TtlEiR refusal to investigate “ spiritual
phenomena” is often urged as a reproach
against scientific men. I here propose
to give a sketch of an attempt to apply
to the “ phenomena ” those methods of
inquiry which are found available in
dealing with natural truth.
Some years ago, when the spirits
were particularly active in this country,
Faraday was invited, or rather entreated,
by one of his friends to meet and ques
tion them. He had, however, already
made their acquaintance, and did not
wish to renew it. I had not been so
privileged, and he therefore kindly
arranged a transfer of the invitation to
me. The spirits themselves named the
time of meeting, and I was conducted to
the place at the day and hour appointed.
Absolute unbelief in the facts was by
no means my condition of mind. On
the contrary, I thought it probable that
some physical principle, not evident to
the spiritualists themselves, might under
lie their manifestations. Extraordinary
effects are produced by the accumulation
of small impulses. Galileo set a heavy
pendulum in motion by the well-timed
puffs of his breath. Ellicot set one
dock going by the ticks of another, even
when the two clocks were separated by
a wall. Preconceived notions can, more
over, vitiate, to an extraordinary degree,
the testimony of even veracious persons.
Hence my desire to witness those extra
ordinary phenomena, the existence of
which seemed placed beyond a doubt by
the known veracity of those who had
witnessed and described them.
The
Sheeting took place at a private residence
ia the neighbourhood of London. My
host, his intelligent wife, and a gentleman
who may be called X. were in the house
when I arrived. I was informed that
the ** medium ” had not vet made her
appearance ; that she was sensitive, and
might resent suspicion. It was therefore
requested that the tables and chairs
should be examined before her arrival,
in order to be assured that there was no
trickery in the furniture.
This was
done; and I then first learned that my
hospitable host had arranged that the
stance should be a dinner-party. This
was to me an unusual form of investiga
tion •, but I accepted it, as one of the
accidents of the occasion.
The “ medium ” arrived—a delicatelooking young lady, who appeared to
have suffered much from ill-health. I
took her to dinner and sat close beside
her. Facts were absent for a consider
able time, a series of very wonderful
narratives supplying their place. The
duty of belief on the testimony of wit
nesses was frequently insisted on. X.
appeared to be a chosen spiritual agent,
and told us many surprising things. He
affirmed that, when he took a pen in his
hand, an influence ran from his shoulder
downwards, and impelled him to write
oracular sentences.
I listened for a
time, offering no observation.' “ And
now,” continued X., “ this power has so
risen as to reveal to me the thoughts of
others. Only this morning I told a
friend what he was thinking of, and what
he intended to do during the day.”
Here, I thought, is something that can
be at once tested. I said immediately
to X.: “If you wish to win to your cause
an apostle, who will proclaim your
principles to the world from the house
top, tell me what I am now thinking of.”
X. reddened, and did not tell me my
thought.
Some time previously I had visited
Baron Reichenbach, in Vienna, and I
> now asked the young lady who sat beside
me whether she could see any of the
�118
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
curious things which he describes—the
be able to see the interior of my own
light emitted by crystals, for example ?
eyes. The medium affirmed that she
Here is the conversation which followed,
could see actual waves of light coming
as extracted from my notes, written on
from the sun. I retorted that men of
the day following the stance :—
science could tell the exact number of
Medium.—“ Oh, yes ; but I see light
waves emitted in a second, and also their
around all bodies.”
exact length.
The medium spoke of
I.—“ Even in perfect darkness ?”
the performances of the spirits on
Medium.—“Yes; I see luminous atmo musical instruments. I said that such
spheres round all people. The atmo performance was gross, in comparison
sphere which surrounds Mr. R. C.
with a kind of music which had been
would fill this room with light.”
discovered some time previously by a
I.—“You are aware of the effects
scientific man. Standing at a distance
ascribed by Baron Reichenbach to
of twenty feet from a jet of gas, he could
magnets ?”
command the flame to emit a melodious
Medium.—“ Yes; but a magnet makes
note; it would obey, and continue its
me terribly ill.”
song for hours. So loud was the music
I.—“ Am I to understand that, if this
emitted by the gas-flame that it might
room were perfectly dark, you could tell
be heard by an assembly of a thousand
whether it contained a magnet, without
people. These were acknowledged to
being informed of the fact ?”
be as great marvels as any of those of
Medium.—“ I should know of its pre
spiritdom. The spirits were then con
sence on entering the room.”
sulted, and I was pronounced to be a
I.—“ How ?”
first-class medium.
Medium.—“I should be rendered
During this conversation a low knock
instantly ill.”
ing was heard from time to time under
I.—“ How do you feel to-day ?”
the table. These, I was told, were the
Medium.—“ Particularly well; I have
spirits’ knocks. I was informed that one
not been so well for months.”
knock, in answer to a question, meant
I.—“ Then, may I ask you whether
“No”; that two knocks meant “Not
there is, at the present moment, a
yet ”; and that three knocks meant
magnet in my possession ?”
“Yes.” In answer to a question whether
The young lady looked at me, blushed,
I was a medium, the response was three
brisk and vigorous knocks. I noticed
and stammered :
“ No ; I am not en rapport with you.”
that the knocks issued from a particular
I sat at her right hand, and a left locality, and therefore requested the
spirits to be good enough to answer
hand pocket, within six inches of her
from another corner of the table. They
person, contained a magnet.
did not comply; but I was assured that
Our host here deprecated discussion,
as it “exhausted the medium.”
The
they would do it, and much more, byand-by.
The knocks continuing, I
wonderful narratives were resumed; but
turned a wine-glass upside down, and
I had narratives of my own quite as
placed my ear upon it, as upon a stetho
wonderful. These spirits, indeed, seemed
scope. The spirits seemed disconcerted
clumsy creations, compared with those
by the act; they lost their playfulness,
with which my own work had made me
and did not recover it for a considerable
familiar. I therefore began to match
the wonders related to me by other
time.
Somewhat weary of the proceedings, I
wonders. A lady present discoursed on
once threw myself back against my chair
spiritual atmospheres, which she could
and gazed listlessly out of the window.
see as beautiful colours when she closed
While thus engaged, the table was rudely
her eyes. I professed myself able to see
pushed. Attention was drawn to the
similar colours, and, more than that, to
�SCIENCE AND THE “SPIRITS”
wine, still oscillating in the glasses, and
I was asked whether that was not con
vincing. I readily granted the fact of
motion, and began to feel the delicacy of
my position. There were several pairs
of arms upon the table, and several pairs
of legs under it; but how was I, without
offence, to express the conviction which
I really entertained ? To ward off the
difficulty, I again turned a wine-glass
upside down and rested my ear upon it.
The rim of the glass was not level,, and
my hair, on touching it, caused it. to
vibrate, and produce a peculiar buzzing
sound. A perfectly candid and warm
hearted old gentleman at the opposite
Side of the table, whom I may call A.,
drew attention to the sound, and ex
pressed his entire belief that it was
spiritual. I, however, informed him that
it was the moving hair acting on the
glass. The explanation was not well
received; and X., in a tone of severe
pleasantry, demanded whether it was the
hair that had moved the table. The
promptness of my negative probably
satisfied him that my notion was a very
different one.
The superhuman power of the spirits
was next dwelt upon. The strength of
man, it was stated, was unavailing in
opposition to theirs. No human power
could prevent the table from moving
when they pulled it. During the evening
this pulling of the table occurred, or
rather was attempted, three times.
Twice the table moved when my atten
tion was withdrawn from it; on a third
occasion, I tried whether the act could
be provoked by an assumed air of
inattention. Grasping the table firmly
between my knees, I threw myself back
in the chair, and waited, with eyes fixed
on vacancy, for the pull. It came. For
some seconds it was pull spirit, hold
muscle; the muscle, however, prevailed,
and the table remained at rest. Up to
the present moment, this interesting fact
is known only to the particular spirit in
question and myself.
A species of mental scene-painting,
with which my own pursuits had long
,
119
rendered me familiar, was employed to
figure the changes and distribution of
spiritual power.
The spirits, it was
alleged, were provided with atmospheres,
which combined with and interpenetrated
each other, and considerable ingenuity
was shown in demonstrating the neces
sity of time in effecting the adjustment
of the atmospheres.
A re-arrange
ment of our positions was proposed
and carried out; and soon afterwards
my attention was drawn to a scarcely
sensible vibration on the part of the
table. Several persons were leaning on
the table at the time, and I asked per
mission to touch the medium’s hand.
“ Oh 1 I know I tremble,” was her reply.
Throwing one leg across the other, I
accidentally nipped a muscle, and pro
duced thereby an involuntary vibration
of the free leg. This vibration, I knew,
must be communicated to the floor, and
thence to the chairs of all present. I
therefore intentionally promoted it. My
attention was promptly drawn to the
motion; and a gentleman beside me,
whose value as a witness I was particu
larly desirous to test, expressed his belief
that it was out of the compass of human
power to produce so strange a tremor.
“ I believe,” he added, earnestly, “ that
it is entirely the spirits’ work.” “ So do
I,” added, with heat, the candid and
warm-hearted old gentleman A. “Why,
sir,” he continued, “ I feel them at this
moment shaking my chair.” I stopped
the motion of the leg. “ Now, sir,” A.
exclaimed, “they are gone.” I began
again, and A. once more affirmed their
presence. I could, however, notice that
there were doubters present, who did not
quite know what to think of the mani
festations. I saw their perplexity ; and,
as there was sufficient reason to believe
that the disclosure of the secret would
simply provoke anger, I kept it to myself.
Again a period of conversation inter
vened, during which the spirits became
animated. The evening was confessedly
a dull one, but matters appeared to
brighten towards its close. The spirits
were requested to spell the name by
�120
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
which I was known in the heavenly
world. Our host commenced repeating
the alphabet, and when he reached the
letter “ P ” a knock was heard. He
began again, and the spirits knocked at
the letter “0.”
1 was puzzled, but
waited for'the end. The next letter
knocked down was “E.” I laughed, and
remarked that the spirits were going to
make a poet of me. Admonished for
my levity, I was informed that the frame
of mind proper for the occasion ought to
have been superinduced by a perusal of
the Bible immediately before the seance.
The spelling, however, went on, and
sure enough I came out a poet. But
matters did not end here. Our host
continued his repetition of the alphabet,
and the next letter of the name proved
to be “ O.” Here was manifestly an
unfinished word ; and the spirits were
apparently in their most communicative
mood. The knocks came from under
the table, but no person present evinced
the slightest desire to look under it. I
asked whether I might go underneath;
the permission was granted ; so I crept
under the table. Some tittered; but the
candid old A. exclaimed: “ He has a
right to look into the very dregs of it, to
convince himself.” Having pretty well
assured myself that no sound could be
produced under the table without its
origin being revealed, I requested our
host to continue his questions. He did
so, but in vain. He adopted a tone of
tender entreaty ; but the “dear spirits ”
had become dumb dogs, and refused to
be entreated. I continued under that
table for at least a quarter of an hour,
after which, with a feeling of despair as
regards the prospects of humanity never
before experienced, I regained my chair.
Once there, the spirits resumed their
loquacity, and dubbed me “ Poet of
Science.”
This, then, is the result of an attempt
made by a scientific man to look into
these spiritual phenomena.
It is not
encouraging ; and for this reason. The
present promoters of spiritual pheno
mena divide themselves into two classes,
one of which needs no demonstration,
while the other is beyond the reach of
proof. The victims like to believe, and
they do not like to be undeceived.
Science is perfectly powerless in the
presence of this frame of mind. It is,
moreover, a state perfectly compatible
with extreme intellectual subtlety and a
capacity for devising hypotheses which
only require the hardihood engendered
by strong conviction, or by callous
mendacity, to render them impregnable.
The logical feebleness of science is not
sufficiently borne in mind. It keeps
down the weed of superstition, not by
logic, but by slowly rendering the mental
soil unfit for its cultivation.
When
science appeals to uniform experience,
the spiritualist will retort : “ How do you
know that a uniform experience will
continue uniform ? You tell me that
the sun has risen for six thousand years :
that is no proof that it will rise to
morrow ; within the next twelve hours it
may be puffed out by the Almighty.**
Taking this ground, a man may maintain
the story of “ Jack and the Beanstalk ” in
the face of all the science in the world.
You urge, in vain, that science has given
us all the knowledge of the universe
which we now possess, while spiritualism
has added nothing to that knowledge.
The drugged soul is beyond the reach of
reason. It is in vain that impostors are
exposed, and the special demon cast out.
He has but slightly to change his shape,
return to his house, and find it “ empty,
swept, and garnished.”
Since the time when the foregoing
remarks were written I have been more
than once among the spirits, at their own
invitation.
They do not improve on
acquaintance. Surely no baser delusion
ever obtained dominance over the weak
mind of man.
�THE
RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION,
LIMITED.
Registered Office—Nos. 5 and 6, Johnson’s Court, Fleet Street, London, E.C.
Chairman :
EDWARD CLODD.
Alfred William Benn
Bjornstjerne Bjornson
George Brandes
Dr. Charles Callaway
Dr. Paul Carus
Prof. B. H. Chamberlain
Dr. Stanton Coit
Honorary Associates:
Dr. F. J. Furnivall
F. J. Gould
Prof. Ernst Haeckel
Leonard Huxley
Prof. Cesare Lombroso
Joseph McCabe
Eden Phillpotts
John M. Robertson
Dr. _W. R. Washington
Sullivan
Prof. Lester F. Ward
Prof. Ed. A.Westermarck
and
Thomas Whittaker
A Brief Statement of the Objects and Methods of the
Association.
The “Spirit of Rationalism.”
The prevalence of the “spirit of Rationalism,” as Mr. Lecky has called it, is one of
the chief features distinguishing modern from mediaeval thought and life. This
spirit has permeated all nations and all classes comprised in the world of Western
civilisation. It is not any definite and reasoned doctrine, but simply a sceptical
attitude towards magic and miracles, assumptions of occult power and insight on the
part of men, and alleged divine interferences.
We believe that this spirit of Rationalism is closely connected with the progress
of modern science and critical research. The “ spirit ” assumes unconsciously and
as a general, practical rule that uniformity of nature which science and research
repeatedly prove to exist in particular cases. In other words, it assumes that
exceptional occurrences are due to unfamiliar combinations of familiar conditions,
and do not require superhuman conscious agency to account for them. But the
spirit of Rationalism is, after all, only a mental tendency. As such, it is liable, to
exist in the modern mind side by side with the supernaturalism of a pre-scientific
age. It does so conspicuously under present-day Protestantism. Most Protestants
are Rationalists in their attitude towards contemporary instances of alleged miracle
and inspiration. They are Rationalists in their attitude towards the sacred literatures
of Buddhists, Brahmans, Parsees, and Mohammedans, and towards the distinctive
teachings of the Church of Rome. As regards the narrative and theology contained
in the Bible, however, they are not Rationalists, but at best compromisers between
traditional reverence and scientific inquiry. Thus, while the spirit of Rationalism
is rife, the attempt to raise Rationalism into a consistent rule of the intellectual life
is extremely unpopular,, having to face both active opposition and widespread
indifference. That, nevertheless, is the aim which the Association keeps steadily
in view.
�THE RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION, Limited
Embodiment of the Rationalistic Spirit.
The physical sciences are, within their respective limits, the most consistent
embodiments of the spirit of Rationalism. Astronomy, geology, and biology have
successively broken away from Biblical tradition. They have become genuine
sciences through an exercise of the freest and most serious inquiry, combined with
the expectation of discovering natural uniformities where men formerly saw nothing
but supernatural mysteries. But the special sciences belong primarily to specialists.
What the average thinking man requires is a good synopsis of the object-matter and
results of science, an insight into its nature and methods, and a habit of mind which
will enable him to form sensible and serviceable judgments as to the many questions
which cannot yet (and perhaps never can) be decided with scientific accuracy.
Thus the spirit of Rationalism has needed to embody itself, not only in science
and exact research, but in certain types of human thought which form, as it were,
the atmosphere of science. Among the more highly-cultivated intellects it has given
rise to the various schools of modern philosophy. Among the people and certain
of their democratic leaders it has given rise to the various parties of modern
Freethought. . Philosophy is, on the whole, somewhat conservative, although it is
far more anxious to conserve the wide outlook of Plato and Aristotle than the
theology of Paul and Augustine. The tendency of popular Freethought is more
revolutionary and impatient for a new start in human ideas. With the spread of
education and democracy, however, these two types of advanced thought must
increasingly coalesce. In coalescing, Freethought should gain breadth of view and
lose the “ scoffing ” habit which only hardens foes and alienates many who would
otherwise be friends. Philosophy, on the other hand, should gain a certain down
rightness and relation to practical life which it generally lacks, and at the same time
learn to relinquish such speculations as are not even possessed of probability in the
light of experience and science. To temper Freethought with philosophy, and to
assist in freeing philosophy from all academic trammels and fanciful excrescences,
are among the objects for which the R. P. A. has been formed.
The Limits of Compromise.
The semi-philosophic works which have acquired wide popularity in recent years
are those which have set forth some new compromise (or what has really amounted
to a compromise) between certain tenets of Christianity and certain views of
modem science. We believe that this accommodating spirit, though a long way in
advance of the spirit of sheer intolerance, lags equally far behind the philosophic
spirit of truth seeking.
Compromise is inevitable, and, to a certain extent, salutary, in politics. This is
because political measures have to be adjusted to the existing views of the most
influential body of citizens, no matter whether those views be sound or the reverse.
But the very fact which makes compromise legitimate in politics makes it illegitimate
as regards religious and abstract social questions. Thus a consistent Rationalism is
the direct antithesis, the uncompromising rejection, of that religious faith which deems
it necessary to accept traditional and reputedly sacred opinions, without seriously
inquiring into their evidential value. In saying this, we do not, of course, mean
that all traditional religious opinions are necessarily to be rejected, nor do we
pretend to be in a position to teach the whole philosophy of Rationalism. That is
still in the making, and it is that which the R. P. A. must help, directly or
indirectly, to make.
Our contention is that the appeal to experience and
reason must alone decide what elements of traditional Christianity are worthy
to be retained, and that theological dogmas and scriptural prejudices must be
�THE RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION, Limited
allowed no more influence over the philosophic thinker than has the legend
of creation contained in the book of Genesis over the present-day astronomer or
gwlogist.
After careful consideration, aided by the advice of several well-known thinkers,
tile following definition of Rationalism has been adopted and embodied in the
Memorandum of Association :—
9
“ Rationalism may be defined as the mental attitude which unreservedly accepts
the supremacy of reason and aims at establishing a system of philosophy and
ethics verifiable by experience and independent of all arbitrary assumptions or
authority.”
In making direct mention of ethics we wish to accentuate the fact that the philosophy
of Rationalism cannot fail to have important bearings on human conduct, which
will, we believe, be far more beneficent in the long run than those of traditional
theology.
The Need of Propaganda.
Although the spirit of Rationalism has permeated the Protestant clergy, con
forming and non-conformist alike, and, in many cases, the preachers are more
liberal-minded than their flocks, professional needs naturally make them, as a body,
hostile to Rationalism in any consistent shape. They and their lay supporters spare
neither pains nor money in promulgating views which, though differing widely
according to the church or sect from which they proceed, agree in attributing
unique authority and surpassing excellence to the Christian religion, and defending,
rather than dispassionately inquiring into, its supposed essentials. Many powerful
associations, among which the Religious Tract Society and the Society for Promoting,
IChristian Knowledge are perhaps the most widely known, are carried on largely with
the object of vindicating Christian tradition against Rationalist criticism.
Philosophic Rationalists, on the other hand, have been disposed to trust to the
progress of science and the ultimate triumph of truth, and have made comparatively
little effort to propagate their opinions. It is believed that the R. P. A. will
be a means of arousing and directing the energies of such torpid sympathisers.
Concerted action among Rationalists was never more needed than now, in
face of the present widespread reaction towards relatively irrational beliefs
and practices. This reaction shows itself in the disposition to assert the
sufficiency of instinct and sentiment, as well as to magnify the claims of custom,
I ritual, and authority, while making light of reason, evading the duty of critical
inquiry, and ignoring the need of a broad human and scientific outlook, such as
constructive philosophic thought alone can give.
The cause of Rationalism cannot be assisted more materially than by promoting
the publication and distribution of works which the organised weight of religious
prejudice, the stolid indifference of the general public to philosophic inquiry, and
the consequent policy of the popular press and the booksellers, all tend to discourage,
if not to taboo—provided, of course, that such works have intrinsic value.
Publications of the R. P. A., Ltd.
Works of a serious, and especially those of a seriously philosophic character, are
■ heavily handicapped in the competition for popular favour. Still more is this the
case when such works soberly advocate unpopular views. The notion that the most
successful books are the best may be partially true as regards works of imagination.
It is very far indeed from being true as regards works of research and reflection.
�THE RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION, Limited
Thus one of the objects of the Association is to assist in issuing the works of
competent authors whose religious heterodoxy places them at a disadvantage in
approaching the ordinary publishing firms. Another object, equally important to
the cause of Rationalism, and in carrying out which the Association has already
met with striking success, is to re-issue, in cheap and convenient form, standard or
notable books of a scientific, critical, ethical, or philosophical character.
Conditions of Membership.
The Rationalist Press Association, Ltd., is “a Company Limited by Guarantee,
and not having a Capital divided into shares.” It is a propagandist, not a com
mercial, undertaking. Each member becomes liable for a sum not exceeding one
pound, in the case of the Association being wound up; but even should the
necessity for winding up occur (a highly improbable contingency), it is not likely
that the members would be called upon for the amount of their guarantee, as the
Directors are careful to refrain from embarking on any undertaking for which
pecuniary provision has not been made.
Any person above the age of twenty-one may, with the consent of the Board,
become a member, on payment of an annual subscription of not less than five
shillings. The subscription is payable in advance on the first of January of each
year. A member may retire from the Association upon giving notice in writing ft)
the Secretary.
Members are entitled to receive, post free, publications of the Association within
the value of their annual subscriptions, and it is usual to send the new publications
as issued. Those, however, who prefer to specify “ Books by request ” can make
their own selection from the R. P. A. lists which are issued from time to time.
Donations and Bequests.
It is hoped that all who are in fact Rationalists will give their open support to
the Association, and take part so far as possible in its meetings; but sympathisers
who do not wish to be incorporated as members, or who prefer to conceal their
identity, can aid the funds by informal annual subscriptions or special donations,
strict confidence being observed when desired. Donations, no matter hoy small,
will be welcome from members who can spare such sums at the present time, but
do not care to include them in the amount of their annual subscription.
Rationalists and sympathisers with Rationalism should, when making their.wills,
bear in mind the work which the Association is doing. As a legally-constituted
body, having stringent rules to prevent any possible misapplication of funds, it is
eminently fitted to carry out the wishes or instructions of persons who bequeath
sums of money for specified objects—-literary, scientific, or educational—which are in
accord with its general principles. A suggested form of bequest will be sent to any
applicant.
For further particulars address the Secretary—Charles E. Hooper,
Nos. y and 6, Johnson's Court, Fleet Street, London, E.C.
�List of Publications
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No work of the same size and dealing with this important theme contains
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The First Volume treats of the superstitions of savages and primitive man, and
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Lectures and essays (Cullings from "Fragments of Science")
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Tyndall, John [1820-1893]
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 120, [8] p. ; 22 cm.
Series title: R.P.A. Cheap Reprints
Series number: No. 10
Notes: Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Includes bibliographical references. Issued for the Rationalist Press Association, Ltd. Printed in double columns. Fragments of science first published in 1871. Brief statement of RPA's objects and methods, and publisher's list on unnumbered pages at the end.
Contents: Biographical sketch -- The Belfast address -- Apology for the Belfast address -- Scientific materialism -- Scientific use of the imagination -- Science and man -- Vitality -- Reflections on prayer and natural law -- Miracles and special providences -- On prayer as a form of physical energy -- Science and the "spirits".
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Watts & Co.
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1903
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RA1800
N647
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essays
Imagination
Lectures
Materialism
NSS
Prayer
Psychic phenomena
Science
Science-Addresses
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Text
No. 13.—R. P. A. CHEAP REPRINTS.
A Renowned Work
53
Ol® LIBERTY
BY
T<JOHN STUART MILL
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With. Biographical Sketch
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Jesus Christ:
HIS APOSTLES AND DISCIPLES IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY.
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Of this work 100,000 copies have been sold in France and
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No. 2 ABOVE SERIES.
HAECKEL’S CRITICS ANSWERED.
*•-W '
By JOSEPH McCABE,
LATE VERY REV. FATHER ANTONY, O.S.F.
(Translator of Haeckel’s “Riddle of the Universe,” author of “Twelve
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�CONTENTS
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
Introductory
9
CHAPTER II.
Of the Liberty of Thought
and
Discussion
19
CHAPTER III.
Of Individuality, as one of the Elements of Well-being
46
CHAPTER IV.
Of
the Limits to the
Individual -
Authority of Society over the
- .
60
CHAPTER V.
Applications
74
A
�ON LIBERTY
BY
JOHN STUART MILL
[issued for
the rationalist press association, limited]
WATTS & CO.,
17, JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, LONDON, E.C.
1903
�The grand, leading principle, towards which every argument
unfolded in these pages directly converges, is the absolute and
essential importance of human development in its richest diversity.
—Wilhelm von Humboldt : Sphere and Duties of Government.
�JOHN STUART MILL
John Stuart Mill, philosopher, politi house of Jeremy Bentham; had contributed
cal economist, and reformer—described by to the Traveller • and had written to the
Mr. Gladstone as “the saint of Rationalism” Morning Chronicle letters of protest against
—was born in London on May 20th, 1806. the savage prosecutions for blasphemy
He died at Avignon on May Sth, 1873. which raged so fiercely round the heroic
The sixty-seven years of his life were filled figure of Richard Carlile during the stormy
with strenuous intellectual labour, and with years of reaction which followed Waterloo.
loyal and devoted service to the causes of Professor Bain tells us that when, in 1822,
goodness, humanity, and truth. If it may Mill visited Cambridge, “his immense con
be truly said that to labour is to worship, versational power ” made a deep impression
these were the shrines at which Mill on the undergraduates, notwithstanding
worshipped with a fervour that could not their familiarity with the copious verbal
be surpassed by the devotee of any super resources of Macaulay and Austin.
Mill soon stepped into the wider literary
natural religion.
Under the stern tuition of his father, and philosophical arena in which he was
James Mill—himself an acute thinker, and destined to render so much valuable
a distinguished ■writer—John Stuart Mill service. In 1824 he became a frequent
began to study Greek when he was three contributor to the new Westminster
years old, passed on to Latin in his eighth Review, and acquired considerable reputa
year, and, at the age of twelve, commenced tion as a powerful advocate of the philo
an elaborate course of study in political sophical Radicalism which was associated
economy, logic, and metaphysics. In 1823 with the names of Bentham and Jameshe entered the India House as junior clerk Mill. But it is worthy of note that he had1
in the Examiner’s office, and it is not sur not been converted by his father’s system
prising to find that, at this period, he was of education into a mere intellectual
described as “ a disquisitive youth ” by the machine, or reduced to an empty echo of
Examiner, Thomas Love Peacock, the his father’s thought. Throughout life he
poet and novelist. His intellectual attain was distinguished by extreme candour and
ments were immense. He had read widely honesty of intellect; he was always anxious
on many subjects in Greek, English, Latin, to accord to others the independence and
and French, and was already a logician, a liberty of thought and speech which hemetaphysician, and a political and social claimed for himself; and there was no
reformer. His practical achievements were thinker more ready to admit and to adopt
also remarkable for his years, and seemed whatever might be sound in the argument
to foreshadow an illustrious career. He of an opponent. It was this openness and
had formed a Utilitarian Society at the freedom of mind which led him to widen
�6
JOHN STUART MILL
the somewhat narrow grooves of Benthamic
thought, and, on certain questions, to take
up an attitude with which the original Utili
tarians could have no sympathy.
In 1826 Mill entered on a period of
mental crisis which lasted for two or three
years. Asking himself whether, supposing
all his objects in life were realised, it would
be a great joy and happiness to him, “ an
irrepressible self-consciousness distinctly
answered, ‘No.’” At this his heart sank
within him; “ the end had ceased to charm,
and how could there ever again be any
interest in the means ? I seemed to have
nothing left to live for.” Mill tells us that at
this time he was “ in a dull state of nerves,”
and we agree with Professor Bain that the
crisis was mainly due to physical causes
and to the overworking of the brain. Mr.
W. L. Courtney, in his Life ofJohn Stuart
Mill, describes this period of melancholy
as “ the shipwreck of Rationalism,” but
that is clearly a misstatement. The feeling
that there is nothing worth living for is not
uncommon among young people of a
thoughtful type; it has no necessary
connection either with Rationalism or with
■Christianity ; and Mill’s depression would
not have been removed if he could have
believed that the end of man was to glorify
God and enjoy him for ever. Time, new
and congenial companionships, and the
poetry of Wordsworth and Shelley, formed
the healing influences under which Mill’s
despair slowly passed away, never to return.
This crisis over, he gradually settled
down to the serious work of his life. He
had made rapid progress in the India
House, his salary rising from £30 per
annum, in 1823, to £600 per annum, in
1828; and in 1856 he was appointed
Examiner, with a salary of £2,000 a year.
This post he held until the end of 1858,
when the East India Company was extin
guished by the British Government, and
Mill was superannuated on a pension of
£1,500 per annum. His official duties left
him ample time for his cherished literary
and philosophical pursuits. His industry
was very great. He remarks that his
writings from 1832 to 1834, even if the
newspaper articles were left out, would
make a large volume. For several years,
from 1834 onward, his intellectual energies
were mainly concentrated on his System of
Logic, which was published in 1843, and
ultimately ran through eight editions. No
student of philosophy can afford to neglect
this masterly work. Acute, lucid, and
profound, it has been used as a text-book
at the Universities, and it would be difficult
to overrate its value as a philosophical
presentation of the principles underlying
modern scientific investigation.
The Logic was followed, in 1848, by
Principles of Political Economy, which is,
perhaps, the most interesting and sugges
tive book in the English language on this
great topic. Taking as its foundation
some of the main propositions of Ricardo
and Malthus, Mill adds the ripe results of
his own varied and extensive reading,
thinking, and observation, and applies the
principles of the science in a practical
manner to existing social conditions.
With his introduction to Mrs. John
Taylor in 1831 there had commenced the
most remarkable and most valued friend
ship of his life. Twenty years afterwards,
on the death of her husband, she became
Mill’s wife, and the perfect happiness of
this ideal union remained unbroken until
her death at Avignon in 1858. No one
doubts that the relations which existed
between Mill and Mrs. Taylor during her
first husband’s lifetime were of a purely
platonic character; and it is equally impos
sible to doubt that, while she exerted great
�JOHN STUART MILL
7
influence over Mill, his extravagant lauda member for Westminster, and, although
tions of her genius rested on a very slender scarcely fitted to shine as an orator, he
basis of fact. She appears to have been achieved considerable success by speeches
a woman of considerable ability and of on Reform, on the Cattle Plague Bill, on
a highly sympathetic temperament, and
Irish questions, and on other subjects.
it is probable that Mill, being powerfully He was defeated at the general election of
attracted by her sympathy, was led to take an 1868 by Mr. W. H. Smith (who afterwards
exaggerated view of her talents. He tells us became Conservative leader of the House
that the article on “The Enfranchisement of Commons), and retired, not unwillingly,
of Women ” which appeared in the West- into private life at Avignon. In 1867 he
minster Review for July, 1851, and is published his Subjection of Women, which
reprinted in his Dissertations and Discus is an amplification of the article on “ The
sions, Vol. II., was mainly her production ; Enfranchisement of Women” referred to
and we are able to gather from this essay above. It is a powerful plea for the
that, although possessed of great talent, equality of the sexes, urging that there
she was not the extraordinary genius so should be “ no power or privilege on the
loudly proclaimed by Mill.
one side nor disability on the other.” The
Meanwhile, through all the joys and Autobiography was completed, and the
vicissitudes of private life—personal illness, third of his posthumous Essays on Religion
marriage, bereavement—the current of was written, between the years 1868 and
Mill’s public work flowed steadily onward.
1873The essay On Liberty, which, he tells us,
Mill was educated by his father as a
was the joint production of himself and Rationalist, and he remained a Rationalist
his wife, was published in 1859, after her to the end of his life. As he himself wrote,
death. Charles Kingsley, who read it he was one who had “ not thrown off
through at a sitting, declared that “it made religious belief, but never had it: I grew
him a clearer-headed, braver-minded man up in a negative state with regard to it.”
on the spot.” Between the years 1858 and On the subject of religion, both the Mills
1865 Mill also published several important held opinions which are now included
political and philosophical works, including under the term Agnosticism. But, though
Representative Government, essays on a Rationalist, John Mill, we read, had a
Utilitarianism, and An Examination of favourite text: “ Work while it is day, for
Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy. All the night cometh when no man can work ”;
these books possess permanent value, and and when, shortly before his death, he was
will repay close and careful study. During told that the end was near, he calmly said,
the American Civil War Mill’s sympathies “ My work is done.” Yes, his work was
and interest were strongly enlisted in favour done, and may we not say with truth of
of the North, and, by articles contributed this “saint of Rationalism” that his “works
in 1862 to Fraser's Magazine and the do follow ” him ? He has joined
Westminster Review, he did something to
“ The choir invisible
stem the tide of feeling which ran so
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence.”
strongly in England on the side of the
Confederate States.
W. B. Columbine.
In 1865 he entered Parliament as
�DEDICATION
To the beloved and deplored memory of her who was the inspirer,
and in part the author, of all that is best in my writings—the friend
and wife whose exalted sense of truth and right was my strongest
incitement, and whose approbation was my chief reward—I dedicate
this volume.
Like all that I have written for many years, it belongs
as much to her as to me; but the work as it stands has had, in a
very insufficient degree, the inestimable advantage of her revision;
some of the most important portions having been reserved for a
more careful re-examination, which they are now never destined to
receive.
Were I but capable of interpreting to the world one half
the great thoughts and noble feelings which are buried in her grave,
I should be the medium of a greater benefit to it than is ever likely
to arise from anything that I can write, unprompted and unassisted
by her all but unrivalled wisdom.
�ON LIBERTY
Chapter I.
INTRODUCTORY
The subject of this Essay is not the socalled Liberty of the Will, so unfortu
nately opposed to the misnamed doctrine
of Philosophical Necessity ; but Civil or
Social Liberty : the nature and limits of
the power which can be legitimately
exercised by society over the individual.
A question seldom stated, and hardly
ever discussed, in general terms, but
which profoundly influences the prac
tical controversies of the age by its latent
presence, and is likely soon to make
itself recognised as the vital question of
the future. It is so far from being new
that, in a certain sense, it has divided
mankind almost from the remotest ages;
but in the stage of progress into which
the more civilised portions of the species
have now entered it presents itself under
new conditions, and requires a different
and more fundamental treatment.
The struggle between Liberty and
Authority is the most conspicuous
feature in the portions of history with
which we are earliest familiar, particu
larly in that of Greece, Rome, and
England. But in old times this contest
was between subjects, or some classes of
subjects, and the Government. By
liberty was meant protection against the
tyranny of the political rulers. The
rulers were conceived (except in some of
the popular Governments of Greece) as
in a necessarily antagonistic position to
the people whom they ruled. They con
sisted of a governing One, or a govern
ing tribe or caste, who derived their
authority from inheritance or conquest,
who, at all events, did not hold it at the
pleasure of the governed, and whose
supremacy men did not venture, perhaps
did not desire, to contest, whatever pre
cautions might be taken against its
oppressive exercise. Their power was
regarded as necessary, but also as highly
dangerous—as a weapon which they
would attempt to use against their sub
jects, no less than against external
enemies. To prevent .the weaker mem
bers of the community from being preyed
upon by innumerable vultures, it was
needful that there should be an animal
of prey stronger than the rest commis
sioned to keep them down. But as the
•king of the vultures •would be no less
bent upon preying on the flock than any
of the minor harpies, it was indispen
sable to be in a perpetual attitude of
defence against his beak and claws. The
aim, therefore, of patriots was to set
limits to the power which the ruler
should be suffered to exercise over the
community; and this limitation was what
they meant by liberty. It was attempted
�IO
ON LIBERTY
in two ways. First, by obtaining a re
cognition of certain immunities, called
political liberties or rights, which it was
to be regarded as a breach of duty in the
ruler to infringe, and which, if he did
infringe, specific resistance, or general
rebellion, was held to be justifiable. A
second, and generally a later, expedient
was the establishment of constitutional
checks, by which the consent of the
community, or of a body of some sort, sup
posed to represent its interests, was made
a necessary condition to some of the more
important acts of the governing power.
To the first of these modes of limitation
the ruling power, in most European
countries, was compelled, more or less, to
submit. It was not so with the second;
and, to attain this—or, when already in
some degree possessed, to attain it more
completely — became everywhere the
principal object of the lovers of liberty.
And so long as mankind were content to
combat one enemy by another, and to
be ruled by a master, on condition of
being guaranteed more or less effica
ciously against his tyranny, they did not
carry their aspirations beyond this point.
A time, however, came, in the progress
of human affairs, when men ceased to
think it a necessity of nature that their
governors should be an independent
power, opposed in interest to themselves.
It appeared to them much better that
the various magistrates of the State should
be their tenants or delegates, revocable
at their pleasure. In that way alone, it
seemed, could they have complete security
that the powers of government would
never be abused to their disadvantage.
By degrees this new demand for elective
and temporary rulers became the promi
nent object of the exertions of the
popular party, wherever any such party
existed; and superseded, to a con
siderable extent, the previous efforts to
limit the power of rulers. As the struggle
proceeded for making the ruling power
emanate from the periodical choice of
the ruled, some persons began to think
that too much importance had been
attached to the limitation of the power
itself.
That (it might seem) was a
resource against rulers whose interests
were habitually opposed to those of the
people. What was now wanted was,
that the rulers should be identified with
the people; that their interest and will
should be the interest and will of the
nation. The nation did not need to be
protected against its own will. There
was no fear of its tyrannising over itself.
Let the rulers be effectually responsible
to it, promptly removable by it, and it
could afford to trust them with power
of which it could itself dictate the use
to be made. The power was but the
nation’s own power, concentrated, and
in a form convenient for exercise. This
mode of thought, or rather perhaps of
feeling, was common among the last
generation of European liberalism, in
the Continental section of which it still
apparently predominates. Those who
admit any limit to what a Government
may do, except in the case of such
Governments as they think ought not to
exist, stand out as brilliant exceptions
among the political thinkers of the Con
tinent. A similar tone of sentiment
might by this time have been prevalent
in our own country if the circumstances
which for a time encouraged it had con
tinued unaltered.
But in political and philosophical
theories, as well as in persons, success
discloses faults and infirmities which
failure might have concealed from obser
vation. The notion, that the people
have no need to limit their power over
�INTRODUCTOR Y
themselves, might seem axiomatic, when
popular government was a thing only
dreamed about, or read of as having
existed at some distant period of the
past. Neither was that notion neces
sarily disturbed by such temporary aber
rations as those of the French Revolu
tion, the worst of which were the work
of an usurping few, and which, in any
case, belonged, not to the permanent
working of popular institutions, but to a
sudden and convulsive outbreak against
monarchical and aristocratic despotism.
In time, however, a democratic republic
came to occupy a large portion of the
earth’s surface, and made itself felt as
one of the most powerful members of
the community of nations; and elective
and responsible government became sub
ject to the observations and criticisms
which wait upon a great existing fact.
It was now’ perceived that such phrases
as “self-government” and “the power
of the people over themselves ” do not
express the true state of the case. The
“ people ” who exercise the pow’er are
not always the same people with those
over whom it is exercised; and the “ selfgovernment ” spoken of is not the
government of each by himself, but of
each by all the rest. The will of the
people, moreover, practically means the
will of the most numerous or the most
active part of the people ; the majority,
or those who succeed in making them
selves accepted as the majority: the
people, consequently, may desire to
oppress a part of their number, and
precautions are as much needed against
this as against any other abuse of power.
The limitation, therefore, of the power of
government over individuals loses none
of its importance w’hen the holders of
pow'er are regularly accountable to the
community—that is, to the strongest party |
ii
therein. This view of things, recom
mending itself equally to the intelligence
of thinkers and to the inclination of
those important classes in European
society to whose real or supposed inte
rests democracy is adverse, has had no
difficulty in establishing itself; and in
political speculations “ the tyranny of the
majority ” is now generally included
among the evils against which society
requires to be on its guard.
Like other tyrannies, the tyranny of
the majority was at first, and is still
vulgarly, held in dread, chiefly as operat
ing through the acts of the public autho
rities. But reflecting persons perceived
that when society is itself the tyrant—society collectively, over the separate
individuals who compose it—its means
of tyrannising are not restricted to the
acts which it may do by the hands of its
political functionaries. Society can and
does execute its own mandates: and if it
issues wrong mandates instead of right,
or any mandates at all in things with
which it ought not to meddle, it practises a
social tyranny more formidable than many
kinds of political oppression, since, though
not usually upheld by such extreme penal
ties, it leaves fewer means of escape,
penetrating much more deeply into the
details of life, and enslaving the soul
itself. Protection, therefore, against the
tyranny of the magistrate is not enough :
there needs protection also against the
tyranny of the prevailing opinion and
feeling; against the tendency of society
to impose, by other means than civil/
penalties, its own ideas and practices as
rules of conduct on those who dissent
from them ; to fetter the development,
and, if possible, prevent the formation,
of any individuality not in harmony with
its ways, and compels all characters to
fashion themselves upon the model of its
�12
ON LIBERTY
own. There is a limit to the legitimate
interference of collective opinion with
individual independence : and to find
that limit, and maintain it against en
croachment, is as indispensable to a
good condition of human affairs as pro
tection against political despotism.
But, though this proposition is not
likely to be contested in general terms,
the practical question, where to place the
limit—how to make the fitting adjust
ment between individual independence
and social control—is a subject on which
nearly everything remains to be done.
All that makes existence valuable to any
one depends on the enforcement of
restraints upon the actions of other
people. Some rules of conduct, there
fore, must be imposed, by law in the
first place, and by opinion on many
things which are not fit subjects for the
operation of law. What these rules
should be is the principal question in
human affairs; but if we except a few of
the most obvious cases, it is one of those
which least progress has been made in
resolving. No two ages, and scarcely
any two countries, have decided it alike;
and the decision of one age or country
is a wonder to another. Yet the people
of any given age and country no more
suspect any difficulty in it than if it were
a subject on which mankind had always
been agreed. The rules which obtain
among themselves appear to them selfevident and self-justifying. This all but
universal illusion is one of the examples
of the magical influence of custom,
which is not only, as the proverb says, a
second nature, but is continually mis
taken for the first. The effect of custom,
in preventing any misgiving respecting
the rules of conduct which mankind
impose on one another, is all the more
complete because the subject is one on
which it is not generally considered
necessary that reasons should be given,
either by one person to others, or by
each to himself. People are accustomed
to believe, and have been encouraged in
the belief by some who aspire to the
character of philosophers, that their
feelings on subjects of this nature are
better than reasons, and render reasons
unnecessary.
The practical principle
which guides them to their opinions on
the regulation of human conduct is the
feeling in each person’s mind that every
body should be required to act as he,
and those with whom he sympathises,
would like them to act. No one, indeed,
acknowledges to himself that his stan
dard of judgment is his own liking; but
an opinion on a point of conduct not
supported by reasons can only count as
one person’s preference; and if the
reasons, when given, are a mere appeal
to a similar preference felt by other
people, it is still only many people’s
liking instead of one. To an ordinary
man, however, his own preference, thus
supported, is not only a perfectly satis
factory reason, but the only one he
generally has for any of his notions of
morality, taste, or propriety which are
not expressly written in his religious
creed; and his chief guide in the inter
pretation even of that. Men’s opinions,
accordingly, on what is laudable or
blameable are affected by all the multi
farious causes which influence their
wishes in regard to the conduct of
others, and which are as numerous as
those which determine their wishes on
any other subject.
Sometimes their
reason—at other times their prejudices
or superstitions : often their social affec
tions, not seldom their anti-social ones,
their envy or jealousy, their arrogance or
contemptuousness: but most commonly,
�INTRODUCTORY
their desires or fears for themselves—
their legitimate or illegitimate self-inte
rest. Wherever there is an ascendant
class, a large portion of the morality of
the country emanates from its class
interests, and its feelings of class supe
riority. The morality between Spartans
and Helots, between planters and
negroes, between princes and subjects,
between nobles and roturiers, between
men and women, has been for the most
part the creation of these class interests
and feelings; and the sentiments thus
generated react in turn upon the moral
feelings of the members of the ascendant
class in their relations among themselves.
Where, on the other hand, a class, for
merly ascendant, has lost its ascendancy,
or where its ascendancy is unpopular, the
prevailing moral sentiments frequently
bear the impress of an impatient dislike
of superiority. Another grand deter
mining principle of the rules of conduct,
both in act and forbearance, which have
been enforced by law or opinion has
been the servility of mankind towards
the supposed preferences or aversions of
their temporal masters or of their gods.
This servility, though essentially selfish,
is not hypocrisy : it gives rise to perfectly
genuine sentiments of abhorrence; it
made men burn magicians and heretics.
Among so many baser influences, the
general and obvious interests of society
have of course had a share, and a large
one, in the direction of the moral senti
ments: less, however, as a matter of
reason, and on their own account, than
as a consequence of the sympathies and
antipathies which grew out of them; and
sympathies and antipathies which had
little or nothing to do with the interests
of society have made themselves felt in
the establishment of moralities with
quite as great force.
13
The likings and dislikings of society,
or of some powerful portion of it, are
thus the main thing which has practi
cally determined the rules laid down for
general observance, under the penalties
of law or opinion. And, in general, those
who have been in advance of society in
thought and feeling have left this con
dition of things unassailed in principle,
however they may have come into con
flict with it in some of its details. They
have occupied themselves rather in inquir
ing what things society ought to like or
dislike than in questioning whether its
likings or dislikings should be a law
to individuals. They preferred endea
vouring to alter the feelings of mankind
on the particular points on which they
were themselves heretical, rather than
make common cause in defence of free
dom, with heretics generally. The only
case in which the higher ground has been
taken on principle and maintained with
consistency, by any but an individual
here and there, is that of religious belief:
a case instructive in many ways, and
not least so as forming a most striking
instance of the fallibility of what is called
the moral sense; for the odium theologicum, in a sincere bigot, is one of the
most unequivocal cases of moral feeling.
Those who first broke the yoke of what
called itself the Universal Church were,
in general, as little willing to permit
difference of religious opinion as that
Church itself. But when the heat of the
conflict was over, without giving a com
plete victory to any party, and each Church
or sect was reduced to limit its hopes
to retaining possession of the ground
it already occupied; minorities, seeing
that they had no chance of becoming
majorities, were under the necessity of
pleading to those whom they could not
convert, for permission to differ. It is
�U
ON LIBERTY
accordingly on this battle field, almost
solely, that the rights of the individual
against society have been asserted on
broad grounds of principle, and the
claim of society to exercise authority
over dissentients openly controverted.
The great writers to whom the world
owes what religious liberty it possesses
have mostly asserted freedom of con
science as an indefeasible right, and
denied absolutely that a human being is
accountable to others for his religious
belief. Yet so natural to mankind is
intolerance in whatever they really care
about that religious freedom has hardly
anywhere been practically realised, except
where religious indifference, which dis
likes to have its peace disturbed by
theological quarrels, has added its weight
to the scale. In the minds of almost all
religious persons, even in the most tole
rant countries, the duty of toleration is
admitted with tacit reserves. One person
will bear with dissent in matters of
Church government, but not of dogma;
another can tolerate everybody, short of
a Papist or an Unitarian ; another, every
one who believes in revealed religion; a
few extend their charity a little further,
but stop at the belief in a God and in a
future state. Wherever the sentiment of
the majority is still genuine and intense,
it is found to have abated little of its
claim to be obeyed.
In England, from the peculiar circum
stances of our political history, though
the yoke of opinion is perhaps heavier,
that of law is lighter, than in most other
countries of Europe; and there is con
siderable jealousy of direct interference,
by the legislative or the executive power,
with private conduct; not so much from
any just regard for the independence of
the individual, as from the still subsisting
habit of looking on the Government as
representing an opposite interest to the
public. The majority have not yet
learnt to feel the power of the Govern
ment their power, or its opinions their
opinions. When they do so, individual
liberty will probably be as much exposed
to invasion from the Government as it
already is from public opinion. But, as
yet, there is a considerable amount of
feeling ready to be called forth against
any attempt of the law to control indi
viduals in things in which they have not
hitherto been accustomed to be con
trolled by it; and this with very little
discrimination as to whether the matter
is, or is not, within the legitimate sphere
of legal control; insomuch that the
feeling, highly salutary on the whole, is
perhaps quite as often misplaced as well
grounded in the particular instances of
its application. There is, in fact, no
recognised principle by which the pro
priety or impropriety of Government inter
ference is customarily tested. People
decide according to their personal pre
ferences. Some, whenever they see any
good to be done, or evil to be remedied,
would willingly instigate the Government
to undertake the business ; while others
prefer to bear almost any amount of
social evil rather than add one to the
departments of human interests amenable
to governmental control. And men
range themselves on one or the other
side in any particular case, according to
this general direction of their sentiments ;
or according to the degree of interest
which they feel in the particular thing
which it is proposed that the Govern
ment should do; or according to the
belief they entertain that the Government
would or would not do it in the manner
they prefer; but very rarely on account
of any opinion to which they consistently
adhere, as to what things are fit to be
�INTRODUCTORY
done by a Government. And it seems
to me that, in consequence of this
absence of rule or principle, one side is
at present as often wrong as the other:
the interference of Government is, with
about equal frequency, improperly in
voked and improperly condemned.
The object of this Essay is to assert
one very simple principle, as entitled to
govern absolutely the dealings of society
with the individual in the way of com
pulsion and control, whether the means
used be physical force in the form of
legal penalties, or the moral coercion of
public opinion. The principle is, that
the sole end for which mankind are
warranted, individually or collectively,
in interfering with the liberty of action
of any of their number is self-protec
tion. That the only purpose for which
power can be rightfully exercised over
any member of a civilised community,
against his will, is to prevent harm to
others. His own good, either physical
or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.
He cannot rightfully be compelled to do
or forbear because it will be better for
him to do so, because it will make him
happier, because, in the opinions of
others, to do so would be wise, or even
right. These are good reasons for
remonstrating with him, or reasoning
with him, or pursuing him, or entreating
him, but not for compelling him, or
visiting him with an evil in case he do
otherwise. To justify that, the conduct
from which it is desired to deter him must
be calculated to produce evil to some one
else. The only part of the conduct of
any one, for which he is amenable to
society, is that which concerns others.
In the part which merely concerns him
self his independence is, of right, abso
lute. Over himself, over his own body
and mind, the individual is sovereign.
15
It is, perhaps, hardly necessary to say
that this doctrine is meant to apply
only to human beings in the maturity of
their faculties. We are not speaking of
children, or of young persons below the
age which the law may fix as that of
manhood or womanhood. Those who
are still in a state to require being taken
care of by others must be protected
against their own actions as well as
against external injury. For the same
reason, we may leave out of considera
tion those backward states of society in
which the race itself may be considered
as in its nonage. The early difficulties
in the way of spontaneous progress are
so great that there is seldom any choice
of means for overcoming them; and a
ruler full of the spirit of improvement is
warranted in the use of any expedients
that will attain an end perhaps other
wise unattainable. Despotism is a legiti
mate mode of government in dealing with
barbarians, provided the end be their
improvement, and the means justified by
actually effecting that end. Liberty, as
a principle, has no application to any
state of things anterior to the time when
mankind have become capable of being
improved by free and equal discussion.
Until then there is nothing for them
but implicit obedience to an Akbar or a
Charlemagne, if they are so fortunate as
to find one. But as soon as mankind
have attained the capacity of being
guided to their own improvement by
conviction or persuasion (a period long
since reached in all nations with whom
we need here concern ourselves), com
pulsion, either in the direct form or in
that of pains and penalties for noncompliance, is no longer admissible as
a means to their own good, and justifi
able only for the security of others.
It is proper to state that I forego any
�i6
ON LIBERTY
advantage which could be derived to my
argument from the idea of abstract right,
as a thing independent of utility. I
regard utility as the ultimate appeal on
all ethical questions; but it must be
utility in the largest sense, grounded on
the permanent interests of a man as a
progressive being. Those interests, I
contend, authorise the subjection of
individual spontaneity to external control
only in respect to those actions of each
which concern the interest of other
people. If any one does an act hurtful
to others, there is a frima facie case for
punishing him, by law, or, where legal
penalities are not safely applicable, by
general disapprobation. There are also
many positive acts for the benefit of
others which he may rightfully be com
pelled to perform—such as to give
evidence in a court of justice; to bear
his fair share in the common defence,
or in any other joint work necessary to
the interest of the society of which he
enjoys the protection; and to perform
certain acts of individual beneficence,
such as saving a fellow-creature’s life, or
interposing to protect the defenceless
against ill-usage—things which, whenever
it is obviously a man’s duty to do, he
may rightfully be made responsible to
society for not doing. A person may
cause evil to others not only by his
actions, but by his inaction; and in either
case he is justly accountable to them for
the injury. The latter case, it is true,
requires a much more cautious exercise
of compulsion than the former.
To
make any one answerable for doing evil
to others is the rule; to make him
answerable for not preventing evil is,
comparatively speaking, the exception.
Yet there are many cases clear enough
and grave enough to justify that excep
tion. In all things which regard the
external relations of the individual he is
jure amenable to those whose inte
rests are concerned, and, if need be, to
society as their protector. There are
often good reasons for not holding him
to the responsibility; but these reasons
must arise from the special expediences
of the case: either because it is a kind
of case in which he is on the whole
likely to act better when left to his own
discretion than when controlled in any
way in which society have it in their
power to control him, or because the
attempt to exercise control would pro
duce other evils greater than those
which it would prevent. When such
reasons as these preclude the enforce
ment of responsibility, the conscience of
the agent himself should step into the
vacant judgment-seat, and protect those
interests of others which have no ex
ternal protection, judging himself all
the more rigidly because the case does
not admit of his being made accountable
to the judgment of his fellow-creatures.
But there is a sphere of action in
which society, as distinguished from the
individual, has, if any, only an indirect
interest—comprehending all that portion
of a person’s life and conduct which
affects only himself, or, if it also affects
others, only with their free, voluntary,
and undeceived consent and participa
tion. When I say only himself, I mean
directly, and in the first instance, for
whatever’ affects himself may affect
others through himself; and the objec
tion which may be grounded on this con
tingency will receive consideration in the
sequel. This, then, is the appropriate
region of human liberty. It comprises,
first, the inward domain of conscious
ness : demanding liberty of conscience,
in the most comprehensive sense ; liberty
of thought and feeling ; absolute freedom
�INTRODUCTORY
of opinion and sentiment on all subjects,
practical or speculative, scientific, moral,
or theological. The liberty of expressing
and publishing opinions may seem to
fall under a different principle, since it
belongs to that part of the conduct of an
individual which concerns other people;
but, being almost of as much importance
as the liberty of thought itself, and resting
in great part on the same reasons, is
practically inseparable from it. Secondly,
the principle requires liberty of tastes
and pursuits; of framing the plan of our
life to suit our own character; of doing
as we like, subject to such consequences
as may follow—without impediment from
our fellow-creatures so long as what we
do does not harm them, even though
they should think our conduct foolish,
perverse, or wrong. Thirdly, from this
liberty of each individual follows the
liberty, within the same limits, of com
bination among individuals ; freedom to
unite, for any purpose not involving harm
to others, the persons combining being
supposed to be of full age, and not forced
or deceived.
No society in which these liberties
are not, on the whole, respected is free,
whatever may be its form of government;
and none is completely free in which
they do not exist absolute and unqualified.
The only freedom which deserves the
name is that of pursuing our own good
in our own way, so long as we do not
attempt to deprive others of theirs, or
impede their efforts to obtain it. Each
is the proper guardian of his own health,
whether bodily or mental and spiritual.
Mankind are greater gainers by suffering
each other to live as seems good to them
selves than by compelling each to live
as seems good to the rest.
Though this doctrine is anything but
new, and, to some persons, may have the
17
air of a truism, there is no doctrine which
stands more directly opposed to the
general tendency of existing opinion and
practice. Society has expended fully as
much effort in the attempt (according to
its lights) to compel people to conform
to its notions of personal as of social
excellence. The ancient commonwealths
thought themselves entitled to practise,
and the ancient philosophers counte
nanced, the regulation of every part of
private conduct by public authority, on
the ground that the State had a deep
interest in the whole bodily and mental
discipline of every one of its citizens—a
mode of thinking which may have been
admissible in small Republics surrounded
by powerful enemies, in constant peril
of being subverted by foreign attack or
internal commotion, and to which even
a short interval of relaxed energy and
self-command might so easily be fatal,
that they could not afford to wait for the
salutary permanent effects of freedom.
In the modern world the greater size of
political communities, and, above all, the
separation between spiritual and temporal
authority (which placed the direction of
men’s consciences in other hands than
those which controlled their worldly
affairs), prevented so great an interference
by law in the details of private life; but
the engines of moral repression have
been wielded more strenuously against
divergence from the reigning opinion in
self-regarding than even in social matters;
religion, the most powerful of the elements
which have entered into the formation of
moral feeling, having almost always been
governed either by the ambition of a
hierarchy, seeking control over every
department of human conduct, or by the
spirit of Puritanism. And some of those
modern reformers who have placed them
selves in strongest opposition to the
c
�i8
ON LIBERTY
religions of the past have been noway
behind either Churches or sects in their
assertion of the right of spiritual domina
tion : M. Comte, in particular, whose
social system, as unfolded in his Systeme
de Politique Positive, aims at establishing
(though by moral more than by legal
appliances) a despotism of society over
the individual surpassing anything con
templated in the political ideal of the
most rigid disciplinarian among the
ancient philosophers.
Apart from the peculiar tenets of in
dividual thinkers, there is also in the
world at large an increasing inclination
to stretch unduly the powers of society
over the individual, both by the force of
opinion and even by that of legislation ;
and as the tendency of all the changes
taking place in the world is to strengthen
society and diminish the power of the
individual, this encroachment is not one
of the evils which tend spontaneously to
disappear, but, on the contrary, to grow
more and more formidable. The dis
position of mankind, whether as rulers
or as fellow-citizens, to impose their own
opinions and inclinations as a rule of
conduct on others, is so energetically
supported by some of the best and by
some of the worst feelings incident to
human nature that it is hardly ever kept
under restraint by anything but want of
power; and as the power is not declin
ing, but growing, unless a strong barrier
of moral conviction can be raised against
the mischief, we must expect, in the
present circumstances of the world, to
see it increase.
It will be convenient for the argument
if, instead of at once entering upon the
general thesis, we confine ouselves, in the
first instance, to a single branch of it, on
which the principle here stated is, if not
fully, yet to a certain point, recognised by
the current opinions. This one branch is
the Liberty of Thought, from which it is
impossible to separate the cognate liberty
of speaking and of writing. Although
these liberties, to some considerable
amount, form part of the political morality
of all countries which profess religious
toleration and free institutions, the
grounds, both philosophical and practical,
on which they rest are perhaps not so
familiar to the general mind, nor so
thoroughly appreciated by many, even of
the leaders of opinion, as might have
been expected. Those grounds, when
rightly understood, are of much wider
application than to only one division of
the subject, and a thorough consideration
of this part of the question will be found
the best introduction to the remainder.
Those to whom nothing which I am about
to say will be new may, therefore, I hope,
excuse me if, on a subject which for now
three centuries has been so often dis
cussed, I venture on one discussion more.
�1
OF THE LIBERTY OF THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION
Chapter II.
OF THE LIBERTY OF THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION
The time, it is to be hoped, is gone by
when any defence would be necessary of
the “ liberty of the press ” as one of
the securities against corrupt or tyrannical
government. No argument, we may
suppose, can now be needed against
permitting a legislature or an executive,
not identified in interest with the people,
to prescribe opinions to them, and deter
mine what doctrines or what arguments
they shall be allowed to hear. This
aspect of the question, besides, has been
so often and so triumphantly enforced
by preceding writers that it needs not
be especially insisted on in this place.
Though the law of England, on the
subject of the press, is as servile to this
day as it was in the time of the Tudors,
there is little danger of it being actually
put in force against political discussion,
except during some temporary panic,
when fear of insurrection drives ministers
and judges from their propriety / and,
j
1 These words had scarcely been written when,
as if to give them an emphatic contradiction,
occurred the Government Press Prosecutions of
1858. That ill-judged interference with the
liberty of public discussion has not, however,
induced me to alter a single word in the text,
nor has it at all weakened my conviction that,
moments of panic excepted, the era of pains and
penalties for political discussion has, in our own
country, passed away. For, in the first place,
the prosecutions were not persisted in ; and, in
the second, they were never, properly speaking,
political prosecutions. The offence charged was
not that of criticising institutions, or the acts or
persons of rulers, but of circulating what was
deemed an immoral doctrine, the lawfulness of
Tyrannicide.
If the arguments of the present chapter are of
speaking generally, it is not, in constitu
tional countries, to be apprehended that
the Government, whether completely
responsible to the people or not, will
often attempt to control the expression
of opinion, except when in doing so it
makes itself the organ of the general
intolerance of the public.
Let us
suppose, therefore, that the Government
is entirely at one with the people, and
never thinks of exerting any power of
coercion unless in agreement with what
it conceives to be their voice. But
I deny the right of the people to exercise
such coercion, either by themselves or
by their Government. The power itself
any validity, there ought to exist the fullest
liberty of professing and discussing, as a matter
of ethical conviction, any doctrine, however
immoral it may be considered. It would, there
fore, be irrelevant and out of place to examine
here whether the doctrine of Tyrannicide
deserves that title. I shall content myself with
saying that the subject has been at all times one
of the open questions of morals ; that the act
of a private citizen in striking down a criminal
who, by raising himself above the law, has
placed himself beyond the reach of legal punish
ment or control, has been accounted by whole
nations, and by some of the best and wisest of
men, not a crime, but an act of exalted virtue ;
and that, right or wrong, it is not of the nature of
assassination, but of civil war. As such, I hold
that the instigation to it, in a specific case, may
be a proper subject of punishment, but only if
an overt act has followed, and at least a probable
connection can be established between the act
and the instignation. Even then it is not a
foreign Government, but the very Government
assailed, which alone, in the exercise of selfdefence, can legitimately punish attacks directed
against its own existence.
�20
ON LIBERTY
is illegitimate. The best Government has
no more title to it than the worst. It
is as noxious, or more noxious, when
exerted in accordance with public opinion
than when in opposition to it. If all
mankind minus one were of one opinion,
and only one person were of the contrary
opinion, mankind would be no more
justified in silencing that one person
than he, if he had the power, would be
justified in silencing mankind. Were an
opinion a personal possession of no
value except to the owner; if to be
obstructed in the enjoyment of it were
simply a private injury, it would make
some difference whether the injury was
inflicted only on a few persons or on
many. But the peculiar evil of silencing
the expression of an opinion is that it is
robbing the human race ; posterity as
well as the existing generation; those
who dissent from the opinion, still more
than those who hold it. If the opinion
is right, they are deprived of the oppor
tunity of exchanging error for truth; if
wrong, they lose, what is almost as great
a benefit, the clearer perception and
livelier impression of truth, produced by
its collision with error.
It is necessary to consider separately
these two hypotheses, each of which has
a distinct branch of the argument corre
sponding to it. We can never be sure
that the opinion we are endeavouring to
stifle is a false opinion; and if we were
sure, stifling it would be an evil still.
First, the opinion which it is attempted
to suppress by authority may possibly be
true. Those who desire to suppress it
of course deny its truth ; but they are
not infallible. They have no authority
to decide the question for all mankind,
and exclude every other person from the
means of judging. To refuse a hearing
to an opinion because they are sure that
it is false is to assume that their certainty
is the same thing" as absolute certainty.
All silencing of discussion is an assump
tion of infallibility. Its condemnation may
be allowed to rest on this common argu
ment, not the worse for being common.
Unfortunately for the good sense of
mankind, the fact of their fallibility is far
from carrying the weight in their practical
judgment which is always allowed to
it in theory; for, w’hile every one well
knows himself to be fallible, few think it
necessary to take any precautions against
their own fallibility, or admit the suppo
sition that any opinion of which they
feel very certain may be one of the
examples of the error to which they
acknowledge themselves to be liable.
Absolute princes, or others who are
accustomed to unlimited deference,
usually feel this complete confidence in
their own opinions on nearly all subjects.
People more happily situated, who some
times hear their opinions disputed, and
are not wholly unused to be set right
when they are wrong, place the same
unbounded reliance only on such of
their opinions as are shared by all who
surround them, or to whom they habitu
ally defer ; for in proportion to a man’s
want of confidence in his own solitary
judgment does he usually repose, with
implicit trust, on the infallibility of “ the
world ” in general. And the world, to
each individual, means the part of it with
which he comes in contact—his party,
his sect, his church, his class of society :
the man may be called, by comparison,
almost liberal and large-minded to whom
it means anything so comprehensive as
his own country or his own age. Nor is
his faith in this collective authority at all
shaken by his being aware that other
ages, countries, sects, churches, classes,
�OF THE LIBERTY OF THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION
and parties have thought, and even now
think, the exact reverse. He devolves
upon his own world the responsibility of
being in the right against the dissentient
worlds of other people; and it never
troubles him that mere accident has
decided which of these numerous worlds
is the object of his reliance, and that the
same causes which make him a Church
man in London would have made him
a Buddhist or a Confucian in Pekin. Yet
it is as evident in itself as any amount
of argument can make it that ages are
no more infallible than individuals—every
age having held many opinions which
subsequent ages have deemed not only
false but absurd; and it is as certain that
many opinions, now general, will be
rejected by future ages as it is that many,
once general, are rejected by the present.
The objection likely to be made to
this argument would probably take some
such form as the following. There is no
greater asstfmption of infallibility in for
bidding the propagation of error than in
any other thing which is done by public
authority on its own judgment and respon
sibility. Judgment is given to men that
they may use it. Because it may be used
erroneously, are men to be told that they
ought not to use it at all ? To prohibit
what they think pernicious is not claiming
exemption from error, but fulfilling the
duty incumbent on them, although fal
lible, of acting on their conscientious
conviction. If we were never to act on
our opinions because those opinions
may be wrong, we should leave all our
interests uncared for and all our duties
unperformed. An objection which applies
to all conduct can be no valid objection
to any conduct in particular. It is the
duty ot Governments, and of individuals,
to form the truest opinions they can ; to
form them carefully, and never impose
21
them upon others unless they are quite
sure of being right. But when they are
sure (such reasoners may say), it is
not conscientiousness, but cowardice, to
shrink from acting on their opinions, and
allow doctrines which they honestly think
dangerous to the welfare of mankind,
either in this life or in another, to be scat
tered abroad without restraint, because
other people, in less enlightened times,
have persecuted opinions now believed
to be true. Let us take care, it may be
said, not to make the same mistake ; but
Governments and nations have made
mistakes in other things which are not
denied to be fit subjects for the exercise
of authority: they have laid on bad
taxes, made unjust wars. Ought we,
therefore, to lay on no taxes, and, under
whatever provocation, make no wars?
Men and Governments must act to the
best of their ability. There is no such
thing as absolute certainty, but there is
assurance sufficient for the purposes of
human life. We may, and must, assume
our opinion to be true for the guidance
of our own conduct; and it is assuming
no more when we forbid bad men to
pervert society by the propagation of
opinions which we regard as false and
pernicious.
I answer, that it is assuming very much
more. There is the greatest difference
between presuming an opinion to be true,
because, with every opportunity for con
testing it, it has not been refuted, and
assuming its truth for the purpose of
not permitting its refutation. Complete
liberty of contradicting and disproving
our opinion is the very condition which
justifies us in assuming its truth for
purposes of action; and on no other
terms can a being with human faculties
have any rational assurance of beinz
right.
�22
ON LIBERT Y
When we consider either the history so ? Because he has kept his mind open
of opinion or the ordinary conduct of to criticism of his opinions and conduct.
human life, to what is it to be ascribed Because it has been his practice to listen
that the one and the other are no worse to all that could be said against him ;
than they are? Not certainly to the to profit by as much of it as was just,
inherent force of the human under and expound to himself, and upon occa
standing ; for, on any matter not self- sion to others, the fallacy of what was
evident, there are ninety-nine persons fallacious. Because he has felt that the
totally incapable of judging of it for one only way in which a human being can
who is capable; and the capacity of the make some approach to knowing the
hundredth person is only comparative; whole of a subject is by hearing what
for the majority of the eminent men of can be said about it by persons of every
every past generation held many opinions variety of opinion, and studying all modes
now known to be erroneous, and did or in which it can be looked at by every
approved numerous things which no one character of mind. No wise man ever
will now justify. Why is it, then, that acquired his wisdom in any mode but
there is on the whole a preponderance this, nor is it in the nature of human
among mankind of rational opinions and intellect to become wise in any other
rational conduct ? If there really is this manner. The steady habit of correcting
preponderance — which there must be and completing his own opinion by col
unless human affairs are, and have always lating it with those of others, so far from
been, in an almost desperate state—it is causing doubt and hesitation in carrying
owing to a quality of the human mind, it into practice, is the only stable founda
the source of everything respectable in tion for a just reliance on it; for, being
man either as an intellectual or as a cognisant of all that can, at least obviously,
moral being—namely, that his errors are be said against him, and having taken
corrigible. He is capable of rectifying his up his position against all gainsay er s—
knowing that he has sought for objections
mistakes by discussion and experience.
and difficulties, instead of avoiding them,
Not by experience alone. There must
be discussion, to show how experience and has shut out no light which can be
is to be interpreted. Wrong opinions thrown upon the subject from any quarter
and practices gradually yield to fact and —he has a right to think his judgment
argument; but facts and arguments, to better than that of any person, or any
produce any effect on the mind, must be multitude, who have not gone through a
brought before it. Very dew facts are similar process.
It is not too much to require that
able to tell their own story without
comments to bring out their meaning. what the wisest ot mankind, those who
The whole strength and value, then, of are best entitled to trust their own judg
human judgment, depending on the one ment, find necessary to warrant their
property, that it can be set right when it relying on it, should be submitted to by
is wrong, reliance can be placed on it only that miscellaneous collection of a few
when the means of setting it right are kept wise and many foolish individuals, called
constantly at hand. In the case of any the public. The most intolerant of
person whose judgment is really deserv Churches, the Roman Catholic Church,
ing of confidence, how has it become even at the canonisation of a saint, admits,
�OF THE LIBERTY OF THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION
and listens patiently to, a “devil’s advo
cate.” The holiest of men, it appears,
cannot be admitted to posthumous
honours until all that the devil could say
against him is known and weighed. If
even the Newtonian philosophy were not
permitted to be questioned, mankind
could not feel as complete assurance of
its truth as they now do. The beliefs
which we have most warrant for have
no safeguard to rest on, but a standing
invitation to the whole world to prove
them unfounded. If the challenge is
not accepted, or is accepted and the
attempt fails, we are far enough from
certainty still; but we have done the
best that the existing state of human
reason admits of; we have neglected
nothing that could give the truth a
chance of reaching us; if the lists are
kept open, we may hope that, if there be
a better truth, it will be found when the
human mind is capable of receiving it;
and in the meantime we may rely on
having attained such approach to truth
as is possible in our own day. This is
the amount of certainty attainable by a
fallible being, and this the sole way of
attaining it.
Strange it is that men should admit
the validity of the arguments for free
discussion, but object to their being
“pushed to an extreme”; not seeing
that, unless the reasons are good for an
extreme case, they are not good for any
case. Strange that they should imagine
that they are not assuming infallibility
when they acknowledge that there should
be free discussion on all subjects which
can possibly be doubtful, but think that
some particular principle or doctrine
should be forbidden to be questioned
because it is so certain; that is, because
they are certain that it is certain. To
call any proposition certain while there
23
is anyone who would deny its certainty
if permitted, but who is not permitted,
is to assume that we ourselves and those
who agree with us are the judges of
certainty, and judges without hearing the
other side.
In the present age—which has been
described as “ destitute of faith, but
terrified at scepticism ”—in which people
feel sure, not so much that their opinions
are true, as that they should not know
what to do without them—the claims of
an opinion to be protected from public
attack are rested not so much on its
truth as on its importance to society.
There are, it is alleged, certain beliefs,
so useful, not to say indispensable, to
well-being that it is as much the duty of
Governments to uphold those beliefs as
to protect any other of the interests of
society. In a case of such necessity,
and so directly in the line of their duty,
something less than infallibility may, it
is maintained, warrant, and even bind,
Governments to act on their own opinion,
confirmed by the general opinion of man
kind. It is also often argued, and still
oftener thought, that none but bad men
would desire to weaken these salutary
beliefs; and there can be nothing wrong,
it is thought, in restraining bad men, and
prohibiting what only such men would
wish to practise. This mode of thinking
makes the justification of restraints on
discussion not a question of the truth of
doctrines, but of their usefulness, and
flatters itself by that means to escape the
responsibility of claiming to be an infal
lible judge of opinions. But those who
thus satisfy themselves do not perceive
that the assumption of infallibility is
merely shifted from one point to another.
The usefulness of an opinion is itself
matter of opinion : as disputable, as open
to discussion, and requiring discussion as
�24
ON LIBERTY
much as the opinion itself. There is fix down the discussion to a concrete
the same need of an infallible judge of case; and I choose, by preference, the
opinions to decide an opinion to be cases which are least favourable to me—
noxious as to decide it to be false, unless in which the argument against freedom
the opinion condemned has full oppor of opinion, both on the score of truth
tunity of defending itself. And it will and on that of utility, is considered the
not do to say that the heretic may be strongest. Let the opinions impugned
allowed to maintain the utility or harm be the belief in a God and in a future
lessness of his opinion, though forbidden state, or any of the commonly received
to maintain its truth. The truth of an doctrines of morality. To fight the
opinion is part of its utility. If we would battle on such ground gives a great
know whether or not it is desirable that advantage to an unfair antagonist; since
a proposition should be believed, is it he will be sure to say (and many who
possible to exclude the consideration of have no desire to be unfair will say it
whether or not it is true ? In the opinion, internally), Are these the doctrines which
not of bad men, but of the best men, no you do not deem sufficiently certain to be
belief which is contrary to truth can be taken under the protection of law ? Is
really useful; and can you prevent such the belief in a God one of the opinions
men from urging that plea when they to feel sure of which you hold to be
are charged with culpability for denying assuming infallibility? But I must be
some doctrine which they are told is permitted to observe that it is not the
useful, but which they believe to be false? feeling sure of a doctrine (be it what it
Those who are on the side of received may) which I call an assumption of
opinions never fail to take all possible infallibility. It is the undertaking to
advantage of this plea: you do not find decide that question for others, without
them handling the question of utility as allowing them to hear what can be said
if it could be completely abstracted from on the contrary side. And I denounce
that of truth ; on the contrary, it is, above and reprobate this pretension not the
all, because their doctrine is “ the truth ” less if put forth on the side of my most
that the knowledge or the belief of it is solemn convictions. However positive
held to be so indispensable. There can anyone’s persuasion may be, not only of
be no fair discussion of the question of the falsity, but of the pernicious conse
usefulness when an argument so vital quences— not only of the pernicious
may be employed on one side but not consequences, but (to adopt expressions
on the other. And, in point of fact, when which I altogether condemn) the immo
law or public feeling do not permit the rality and impiety of an opinion; yet if,
truth of an opinion to be disputed, they in pursuance of that private judgment,
are just as little tolerant of a denial of its though backed by the public judgment
usefulness. The utmost they allow is an of his country or his cotemporaries, he
extenuation of its absolute necessity, or prevents the opinion from being heard
in its defence, he assumes infallibility.
of the positive guilt of rejecting it.
In order more fully to illustrate the And so far from the assumption being
mischief of denying a hearing to opinions less objectionable or less dangerous
because we, in our own judgment, have because the opinion is called immoral or
condemned them, it will be desirable to I impious, this is the case of all others in
�OF THE LIBERTY OF THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION
which it is most fatal. These are exactly
the occasions on which the men of one
generation commit those dreadful mis
takes which excite the astonishment and
horror of posterity. It is among such
that we find the instances memorable in
history when the arm of the law has
been employed to root out the best men
and the noblest doctrines—with deplor
able success as to the men, though some
of the doctrines have survived to be (as
if in mockery) invoked in defence of.
similar conduct towards those who dissent
from them, or from their 'received inter
pretation.
Mankind can hardly be too often re
minded that there was once a man
named Socrates, between whom and the
legal authorities and public opinion of
his time there took place a memorable
collision. Born in an age and country
abounding in individual greatness, this
man has been handed down to us by
those who best knew both him and the
age as the most virtuous man in it;
while we know him as the head and
prototype of all subsequent teachers of
virtue, the source equally of the lofty
inspiration of Plato and the judicious
utilitarianism of Aristotle, “ i maestri di
color che sanno” the two headsprings of
ethical as of all other philosophy. This
acknowledged master of all the eminent
thinkers who have since lived—whose
fame, still growing after more than two
thousand years, all but outweighs the
whole remainder of the names which
make his native city illustrious—was put
to death by his countrymen, after a
judicial conviction, for impiety and im
morality. Impiety, in denying the gods
recognised by the State; indeed, his
accuser asserted (see the Apologia) that
he believed in no gods at all. Im
morality, in being, by his doctrines and
25
instructions, a “corrupter of youth.”
Of these charges the tribunal, there is
every ground for believing, honestly found
him guilty, and condemned the man who
probably of all then born had deserved
best of mankind to be put to death as a
criminal.
To pass from this to the only other
instance of judicial iniquity, the mention
of which, after the condemnation of
Socrates, would not be an anti-climax—
the event which took place on Calvary
rather more than eighteen hundred years
ago. The man who left on the memory
of those who witnessed his life and con
versation such an impression of his moral
grandeur that eighteen subsequent cen
turies have done homage to him as the
Almighty in person was ignominiously
put to death, as what ? Asa blasphemer.
Men did not merely mistake their bene
factor ; they mistook him for the exact
contrary of what he was, and treated him
as that prodigy of impiety, which they
themselves are now held to be, for their
treatment of him. The feelings with
which mankind now regard these lament
able transactions, especially the later of
the two, render them extremely unjust
in their judgment of the unhappy actors.
These were, to all appearance, not bad
men—not worse than men commonly
are, but rather the contrary; men who
possessed in a full, or somewhat more
than a full, measure the religious, moral,
and patriotic feelings of their time and
people : the very kind of men who, in
all times, our own included, have every
chance of passing through life blameless
and respected. The high-priest who rent
his garments when the words were pro
nounced, which, according to all the
ideas of his country, constituted the
blackest guilt, was in all probability quite
as sincere in his horror and indignation
�26
ON LIBERTY
as the generality of respectable and pious
men now are in the religious and moral
sentiments they profess; and most of
those who now shudder at his conduct,
if they had lived in his time, and been
born Jews, would have acted precisely as
he did. Orthodox Christians who are
tempted to think that those who stoned
to death the first martyrs must have
been worse men than they themselves are
ought to remember that one of those
persecutors was Saint Paul.
Let us add one more example, the
most striking of all, if the impressiveness
of an error is measured by the wisdom
and virtue of him who falls into it. If
ever anyone, possessed of power, had
grounds for thinking himself the best
and most enlightened among his con
temporaries, it was the Emperor Marcus
Aurelius. Absolute monarch of the
whole civilised world, he preserved
through life not only the most un
blemished justice, but, what was less to
be expected from his Stoical breeding,
the tenderest heart. The few failings
which are attributed to him were all on
the side of indulgence; while his writings,
the highest ethical product of the ancient
mind, differ scarcely perceptibly, if they
differ at all, from the most characteristic
teachings of Christ. This man, a better
Christian in all but the dogmatic sense
of the word than almost any of the
ostensibly Christian sovereigns who have
since reigned, persecuted Christianity.
Placed at the summit of all the previous
attainments of humanity, with an open,
unfettered intellect, and a character
which led him of himself to embody in
his moral writings the Christian ideal,
he yet failed to see that Christianity was
to be a good and not an evil to the
world, with his duties to which he was
so deeply penetrated. Existing society
he knew to be in a deplorable state.
But such as it was, he saw, or thought
he saw, that it was held together, and
prevented from being worse, by belief
and reverence of the received divinities.
As a ruler of mankind, he deemed it his
duty not to suffer society to fall in pieces;
and saw not how, if its existing ties were
removed, any others could be formed
which could again knit it together. The
new religion openly aimed at dissolving
these ties: unless, therefore, it was his
duty to adopt that religion, it seemed to
be his duty to put it down. Inasmuch,
then, as the theology of Christianity did
not appear to him true or of divine origin;
inasmuch as this strange history of a cru
cified God was not credible to him, and a
system which purported to rest entirely
upon a foundation to him so wholly
unbelievable could not be foreseen by
him to be that renovating agency which,
after all abatements, it has in fact proved
to be; the gentlest and most amiable of
philosophers and rulers, under a solemn
sense of duty, authorised the persecution
of Christianity. To my mind, this is one
of the most tragical facts in all history.
It is a bitter thought how different a
thing the Christianity of the world might
have been if the Christian faith had been
adopted as the religion of the empire
under the auspices of Marcus Aurelius
instead of those of Constantine. But it
would be equally unjust to him, and false
to truth, to deny that no one plea which
can be urged for punishing anti-Christian
teaching was wanting to Marcus Aurelius
for punishing, as he did, the propaga
tion of Christianity. No Christian more
firmly believes that Atheism is false, and
tends to the dissolution of society, than
Marcus Aurelius believed the same things
of Christianity—he who, of all men then
living, might have been thought the most
�OF THE LIBERTY OF THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION
capable of appreciating it. Unless any
one who approves of punishment for the
promulgation of opinions flatters himself
that he is a wiser and better man than
Marcus Aurelius—more deeply versed in
the wisdom of his time, more elevated
in his intellect above it; more earnest
in his search for truth, or more singleminded in his devotion to it when found—
let him abstain from that assumption of
the joint infallibility of himself and the
multitude which the great Antoninus
made with so unfortunate a result.
Aware of the impossibility of defend
ing the use of punishment for restraining
irreligious opinions, by any argument
which will not justify Marcus Antoninus,
the enemies of religious freedom, w’hen
hard pressed, occasionally accept this
consequence, and say, with Dr. Johnson,
that the persecutors of Christianity were
in the right; that persecution is an
ordeal through which truth ought to pass,
and always passes successfully, legal
penalties being, in the end, powerless
against truth, though sometimes bene
ficially effective against mischievous
errors. This is a form of the argument for
religious intolerance sufficiently remark
able not to be passed without notice.
A theory which maintains that truth
may justifiably be persecuted because
persecution cannot possibly do it any
harm cannot be charged with being
intentionally hostile to the reception of
new truths; but we cannot commend
the generosity of its dealing with the
persons to whom mankind are indebted
for them. To discover to the world
something which deeply concerns it, and
of which it was previously ignorant; to
prove to it that it had been mistaken on
some vital point of temporal or spiritual
interest, is as important a service as a
human being can render to his fellow
27
creatures, and in certain cases, as in
those of the early Christians and of the
Reformers, those who think with Dr.
Johnson believe it to have been the most
precious gift which could be bestowed
on mankind. That the authors of such
splendid benefits should be requited by
martyrdom ; that their reward should be
to be dealt with as the vilest of criminals,
is not, upon this theory, a deplorable
error and misfortune, for which humanity
should mourn in sackcloth and ashes,
but the normal and justifiable state of
things. The propounder of a new truth,
according to this doctrine, should stand,
as stood, in the legislation of the Locrians,
the proposer of a new law, with a halter
round his neck, to be instantly tightened
if the public assembly did not, on hearing
his reasons, then and there adopt his pro
position. People who defend this mode of
treating benefactors cannot be supposed
to set much value on the benefit; and I
believe this view of the subject is mostly
confined to the sort of persons who think
that new truths may have been desirable
once, but that we have had enough of
them now.
But, indeed, the dictum that truth
always triumphs over persecution is one
of those pleasant falsehoods which men
repeat after one another till they pass
into commonplaces, but which all expe
rience refutes. History teems with in
stances of truth put down by persecution.
If not suppressed for ever, it may be
thrown back for centuries. To speak
only of religious opinions : the Refor
mation broke out at least twenty times
before Luther, and was put down.
Arnold of Brescia was put down. Fra
Dolcino was put down. Savonarola was
put down. The Albigeois wrere put
down. The Vaudois w’ere put down.
The Lollards were put down.
The
�28
ON LIBERTY
Hussites were put down. Even after the
era of Luther, wherever persecution was
persisted in it was successful. In Spain,
Italy, Flanders, the Austrian empire,
Protestantism was rooted out; and, most
likely, would have been so in England
had Queen Mary lived, or Queen
Elizabeth died. Persecution has always
succeeded, save where the heretics were
too strong a party to be effectually per
secuted.
No reasonable person can
doubt that Christianity might have
been extirpated in the Roman Empire.
It spread, and became predominant,
because the persecutions were only occa
sional, lasting but a short time, and
separated by long intervals of almost
undisturbed propagandism. It is a piece
of idle sentimentality that truth, merely
as truth, has any inherent power denied
to error, of prevailing against the dungeon
and the stake. Men are not more zealous
for truth than they often are for error,
and a sufficient application of legal or
even of social penalties will generally
succeed in stopping the propagation of
either. The real advantage which truth
has consists in this, that when an opinion
is true it may be extinguished once,
twice, or many times, but in the course
of ages there will generally be found
persons to rediscover it, until some one
of its reappearances falls on a time when
from favourable circumstances it escapes
persecution until it has made such head
as to withstand all subsequent attempts
to suppress it.
It will be said that we do not now
put to death the introducers of new
opinions; we are not like our fathers,
who slew the prophets : we even build
sepulchres to them. It is true we no
longer put heretics to death; and the
amount of penal infliction which modern
feeling would probably tolerate, even
against the most obnoxious opinions, is
not sufficient to extirpate them. But let
us not flatter ourselves that we are yet
free from the stain even of legal persecu
tion. Penalties for opinion, or at least
for its expression, still exist by law; and
their enforcement is not, even in these
times, so unexampled as to make, it at
all incredible that they may some day be
revived in full force. In the year 1857,
at the summer assizes of the county of
Cornwall, an unfortunate man,1 said to
be of unexceptionable conduct in all
relations of life, was sentenced to twentyone months’ imprisonment for uttering
and writing on a gate some offensive
words concerning Christianity. Within
a month of the same time, at the Old
Bailey, two persons, on two separate
occasions,2 were rejected as jurymen,
and one of them grossly insulted by the
judge and by one of the counsel, because
they honestly declared that they had
no theological belief; and a third, a
foreigner,3 for the same reason, was
denied justice against a thief. This
refusal of redress took place in virtue of
the legal doctrine that no person can be
allowed to give evidence in a court of
justice who does not profess belief in a
God (any god is sufficient) and in a
future state; which is equivalent to
declaring such persons to be outlaws,
excluded from the protection of the
tribunals; who may not only be robbed
or assaulted with impunity, if no one but
themselves, or persons of similar opinions,
be present, but anyone else may be
1 Thomas Pooley, Bodmin Assizes, July 31st,
1857. In December following he received a
free pardon from the Crown.
2 George Jacob Holyoake, August 17th, 1857;
Edward Truelove, July, 1857.
3 Baron de Gleichen, Marlborough Street
Police Court, August 4th, 1857.
�OF THE LIBERTY OF THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION
robbed or assaulted with impunity, if the
proof of the fact depends on their evi
dence. The assumption on which this
is grounded is that the oath is worthless
of a person who does not believe in a
future state, a proposition which betokens
much ignorance of history in those who
assent to it (since it is historically true
that a large proportion of infidels in all
ages have been persons of distinguished
integrity and honour), and would be
maintained by no one who had the
smallest conception how many of the
persons in greatest repute with the world,
both for virtues and attainments, are well
known, at least to their intimates, to
be unbelievers. The rule, besides, is
suicidal, and cuts away its own founda
tion. Under pretence that Atheists must
be liars, it admits the testimony of all
Atheists who are willing to lie, and rejects
only those who brave the obloquy of
publicly confessing a detested creed
rather than affirm a falsehood. A rule
thus self-convicted of absurdity, so far as
regards its professed purpose, can be
kept in force only as a badge of hatred,
a relic of persecution—a persecution,
too, having the peculiarity that the
qualification for undergoing it is the
being cleaily proved not to deserve it.
The rule and the theory it implies are
hardly less insulting to believers than to
infidels. For if he who does not believe
in a future state necessarily lies, it
follows that they who do believe are only
prevented from lying, if prevented they
are, by the fear of hell. We will not do
the authors and abettors of the rule the
injury of supposing that the conception
which they have formed of Christian
virtue is drawn from their own conscious
ness.
These, indeed, are but rags and rem
nants of persecution, and may be thought
29
to be not so much an indication of the
wish to persecute as an example of that
very frequent infirmity of English minds
which makes them take a preposterous
pleasure in the assertion of a bad prin
ciple when they are no longer bad enough
to desire to carry it really into practice.
But, unhappily, there is no security in the
state of the public mind that the suspen
sion of worse forms of legal persecution,
which has lasted for about the space of a
generation, will continue. In this age the
quiet surface of routine is as often ruffled
by attempts to resuscitate past evils as
to introduce new benefits. What is
boasted of at the present time as the
revival of religion is always, in narrow
and uncultivated minds, at least as much
the revival of bigotry ; and where there
is the strong permanent leaven of intole
rance in the feelings of a people, which
at all times abides in the middle classes
of this country, it needs but little to
provoke them into actively persecuting
those whom they have never ceased to
think proper objects of persecution.1
1 Ample warning maybe drawn from the large
infusion of the passions of a persecutor, which
mingled with the general display of the worst
parts of our national character on the occasion
of the Sepoy insurrection. The ravings of
fanatics or charlatans from the pulpit may be
unworthy of notice ; but the heads of the
Evangelical party have announced as their
principle for the government of Hindoos and
Mohammedans, that no schools be supported by
public money in which the Bible is not taught,
and, by necessary consequence, that no public
employment be given to any but real or pretended
Christians. An Under-Secretary of State, in a
speech delivered to his constituents on November
12th, 1857, is reported to have said : “Tolera
tion of their faith” (the faith of a hundred
millions of British subjects), “ the superstition
which they called religion, by the British
Government, had had the effect of retarding the
■ ascendancy of the British name, and preventing
�3°
ON LIBERTY
For it is this—it is the opinions men
entertain, and the feelings they cherish,
respecting those who disown the beliefs
they deem important, which makes this
country not a place of mental freedom.
For a long time past, the chief mischief of
the legal penalties is that they strengthen
the social stigma. It is that stigma
which is really effective, and so effective
is it that the profession of opinions
which are under the ban of society is
much less common in England than is,
in many other countries, the avowal of
those which incur risk of judicial punish
ment. In respect to all persons but
those whose pecuniary circumstances
make them independent of the goodwill
of other people, opinion on this subject
is as efficacious as law; men might as
well be imprisoned as excluded from the
means of earning their bread. Those
whose bread is already secured, and who
desire no favours from men in power, or
from bodies of men, or from the public,
have nothing to fear from the open
avowal of any opinions, but to be illthought of and ill-spoken of, and this
it ought not to require a very heroic
mould to enable them to bear. There
the salutary growth of Christianity.......Tolera
tion was the great corner-stone of the religious
liberties of this country ; but do not let them
abuse that precious word ‘toleration.’ As he
understood it, it meant the complete liberty to
all, freedom of worship, among Christians who
worshipped upon the same foundation. It meant
toleration of all sects and denominations of Chris
tians who believed in the one mediation.'1' I
’
desire to call attention to the fact, that a man
who has been deemed fit to fill a high office in
the government of this country under a Liberal
Ministry maintains the doctrine that all who do
not believe in the divinity of Christ are beyond
the pale of toleration. Who, after this imbecile
display, can indulge the illusion that religious
persecution has passed away, never to return ?
is no room for any appeal ad misericordiam in behalf of such persons. But
though we do not now inflict so much
evil on those who think differently from
us as it was formerly our custom to do,
it may be that we do ourselves as much
evil as ever by our treatment of them.
Socrates was put to death, but the
Socratic philosophy rose like the sun in
heaven, and spread its illumination over
the whole intellectual firmament. Chris
tians were cast to the lions, but the
Christian Church grew up a stately and
spreading tree, overtopping the older
and less vigorous growths, and stifling
them by its shade. Our merely social
intolerance kills no one, roots out no
opinions, but induces men to disguise
them, or to abstain from any active effort
for their diffusion. With us heretical
opinions do not perceptibly gain, or
even lose ground in each decade or
generation; they never blaze out far and
wide, but continue to smoulder in the
narrow circles of thinking and studious
persons among whom they originate,
without ever lighting up the general
affairs of mankind with either a true or
deceptive light. And thus is kept up a
state of things very satisfactory to some
minds, because, without the unpleasant
process of fining or imprisoning anybody,
it maintains all prevailing opinions out
wardly undisturbed, while it does not
absolutely interdict the exercise of reason
by dissentients afflicted with the malady
of thought. A convenient plan for
having peace in the intellectual world,
and keeping all things going on therein
very much as they do already. But the
price paid for this sort of intellectual
pacification is the sacrifice of the entire
moral courage of the human mind. A
state of things in which a large portion
of the most active and inquiring intellects
�OF THE LIBERTY OF THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION
find it advisable to keep the general
principles and grounds of their convic
tions within their own breasts, and
attempt, in what they address to the
public, to fit as much as they can of
their own conclusions to premises which
they have internally renounced, cannot
send forth the open, fearless characters,
and logical, consistent intellects, who
once adorned the thinking world. The
sort of men who can be looked for under
it are either mere conformers to common
place or time-servers for truth, whose
arguments on all great subjects are meant
for their hearers, and are not those which
have convinced themselves. Those who
avoid this alternative do so by narrow
ing their thoughts and interest to things
which can be spoken of without venturing
within the region of principles—that is,
to small practical matters, which would
come right of themselves, if but the
minds of mankind were strengthened
and enlarged, and which will never be
made effectually right until then ; while
that which would strengthen and enlarge
men’s minds, free and daring speculation
on the highest subjects, is abandoned.
Those in whose eyes this reticence on
the part of heretics is no evil should
consider, in the first place, that in conse
quence of it there is never any fair and
thorough discussion of heretical opinions;
and that such of them as could not stand
such a discussion, though they may be
prevented from spreading, do not disap
pear. But it is not the minds of heretics
that are deteriorated most by the ban
placed on all inquiry which does not
end in the orthodox conclusions. The
greatest harm done is to those who are
not heretics, and whose whole mental
development is cramped, and their reason
cowed, by the fear of heresy. Who can
compute what the world loses in the
3i
multitude of promising intellects com
bined with timid characters, who dare
not follow out any bold, vigorous, inde
pendent train of thought, lest it should
land them in something which would
admit of being considered irreligious or
immoral? Among them we may occa
sionally see some man of deep conscien
tiousness and subtle and refined under
standing, who spends a life in sophisti
cating with an intellect which he cannot
silence, and exhausts the resources of
ingenuity in attempting to reconcile the
promptings of his conscience and reason
with orthodoxy, which yet he does not
perhaps to the end succeed in doing.
No one can be a great thinker who does
not recognise that as a thinker it is his
first duty to follow his intellect to what
ever conclusions it may lead. Truth
gains more even by the errors of one
who, with due study and preparation,
thinks for himself than by the true
opinions of those who only hold them
because they do not suffer themselves to
think. Not that it is solely or chiefly
to form great thinkers that freedom of
thinking is required. On the contrary, it
is as much and even more indispensable
to enable average human beings to attain
the mental stature which they are capable
of. There have been, and may again be,
great individual thinkers in a general
atmosphere of mental slavery. But there
never has been, nor ever will be, in
that atmosphere an intellectually active
people. Where any people has made a
temporary approach to such a character,
it has been because the dread of hetero
dox speculation was for a time suspended.
Where there is a tacit convention that
principles are not to be disputed; where
the discussion of the greatest questions
which can occupy humanity is considered
to be closed, we cannot hope to find that
�32
ON LIBERTY
generally high scale of mental activity
which has made some periods of history
so remarkable. Never when controversy
avoided the subjects which are large and
important enough to kindle enthusiasm
was the mind of a people stirred up from
its foundations and the impulse given
which raised even persons of the most
ordinary intellect to something of the
dignity of thinking beings. Of such we
have had an example in the condition
of Europe during the times immediately
following the Reformation; another,
though limited to the continent and to
a more cultivated class, in the specula
tive movement of the latter half of the
eighteenth century; and a third, of still
briefer duration, in the intellectual fermen
tation of Germany during the Goethian
and Fichtean period. These periods
differed widely in the particular opinions
which they developed; but were alike
in this, that during all three the yoke of
authority was broken. In each an old
mental despotism had been thrown off,
and no new one had yet taken its place.
The impulse given at these three periods
has made Europe what it now is. Every
single improvement which has taken
place either in the human mind or in
institutions may be traced distinctly to
one or other of them. Appearances have
for some time indicated that all three
impulses are well-nigh spent; and we
can expect no fresh start until we again
assert our mental freedom.
Let us now pass to the second division
of the argument, and, dismissing the
supposition that any of the received
opinions may be false, let us assume
them to be true, and examine into the
worth of the manner in which they are
likely to be held when their truth is not
freely and openly canvassed. However
unwillingly a person who has a strong
opinion may admit the possibility that
his opinion may be false, he ought to be
moved by the consideration that, however
true it may be, if it is not fully, frequently,
and fearlessly discussed, it will be held
as a dead dogma, not a living truth.
There is a class of persons (happily
not quite so numerous as formerly) who
think it enough if a person assents undoubtingly to what they think true,
though he has no knowledge whatever
of the grounds of the opinion, and could
not make a tenable defence of it against
the most superficial objections. Such
persons, if they can once get their creed
taught from authority, naturally think
that no good, and some harm, comes
of its being allowed to be questioned.
Where their influence prevails, they make
it nearly impossible for the received
opinion to be rejected wisely and con
siderately, though it may still be rejected
rashly and ignorantly; for to shut out
discussion entirely is seldom possible,
and, when it once gets in, beliefs not
grounded on conviction are apt to give
way before the slightest semblance of an
argument. Waving, however, this possi
bility—assuming that the true opinion
abides in the mind, but abides as a
prejudice, a belief independent of, and
proof against, argument—this is- not the
way in which truth ought to be held by
a rational being. This is not knowing
the truth. Truth, thus held, is but one
superstition the more, accidentally cling
ing to the words which enunciate a truth.
If the intellect and judgment of man
kind ought to be cultivated, a thing which
Protestants at least do not deny, on what
can these faculties be more appropriately
exercised by anyone than on the things
which concern him so much that it is
considered necessary for him to hold
opinions on them? If the cultivation
�OF THE LIBERTY OF THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION
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of the understanding consists in one
thing more than in another, it is surely
in learning the grounds of one’s own
opinions. Whatever people believe, on
subjects on which it is of the first impor
tance to believe rightly, they ought to
be able to defend against at least the
common objections. But someone may
say: “ Let them be taught the grounds
of their opinions. It does not follow
that opinions must be merely parroted
because they are never heard contro
verted. Persons who learn geometry
do not simply commit the theorems to
memory, but understand and learn like
wise the demonstrations; and it would
be absurd to say that they remain
ignorant of the grounds of geometrical
truths because they never hear anyone
deny and attempt to disprove them.”
Undoubtedly ; and such teaching suffices
on a subject like mathematics, where
there is nothing at all to be said on
the wrong side of the question. The
peculiarity of the evidence of mathe
matical truths is that all the argument
is on one side. There are no objections,
and no answers to objections. But on
every subject on which difference of
opinion is possible the truth depends
on a balance to be struck between two
sets of conflicting reasons. Even in
natural philosophy there is always some
other explanation possible of the same
facts; some geocentric theory instead of
heliocentric, some phlogiston instead of
oxygen; and it has to be shown why
that other theory cannot be the true one;
and until this is shown, and until we
know how it is shown, we do not under
stand the grounds of our opinion. But
when we turn to subjects infinitely more
complicated, to morals, religion, politics,
social relations, and the business of life,
three-fourths of the arguments for every
33
disputed opinion consist in dispelling
the appearances which favour some
opinion different from it. The greatest
orator save one of antiquity has left it
on record that he always studied his
adversary’s case with as great, if not still
greater, intensity than even his own.
What Cicero practised as the means of
forensic success requires to be imitated
by all who study any subject, in order to
arrive at the truth. He who knows only
his own side of the case knows little of
that. His reasons may be good, and no
one may have been able to refute them.
But if he is equally unable to refute the
reasons on the opposite side, if he does
not so much as know what they are, he
has no ground for preferring either
opinion. The rational position for him
would be suspension of judgment; and,
unless he contents himself with that, he
is either led by authority, or adopts, like
the generality of the world, the side to
which he feels most inclination. Nor
is it enough that he should hear the
arguments of adversaries from his own
teachers presented as they state them,
and accompanied by what they offer as
refutations. That is not the way to do
justice to the arguments or bring them
into real contact with his own mind.
He must be able to hear them from
persons who actually believe them, who
defend them in earnest, and do their
very utmost for them. He must know
them in their most plausible and persua
sive form; he must feel the whole force
of the difficulty which the true view of
the subject has to encounter and dispose
of; else he will never really possess him
self of the portion of truth which meets
and removes that difficulty. Ninety-nine
in a hundred of what are called educated
men are in this condition—even of those
who can argue fluently for their opinions.
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Their conclusion may be true, but it
might be false for anything they know;
they have never thrown themselves into
the mental position of those who think
differently from them, and considered
what such persons may have to say ; and
consequently they do not, in any proper
sense of the word, know the doctrine
which they themselves profess. They
do not know those parts of it which
explain and justify the remainder; the
considerations which show that a fact
which seemingly conflicts with another
is reconcilable with it, or that, of two
apparently strong reasons, one and not
the other ought to be preferred. All
that part of the truth which turns the
scale, and decides the judgment of a
completely informed mind, they are
strangers to; nor is it ever really known
but to those who have attended equally
and impartially to both sides, and en
deavoured to see the reasons of both in
the strongest light. So essential is this
discipline to a real understanding of
moral and human subjects that, if oppo
nents of all important truths do not exist,
it is indispensable to imagine them, and
supply them with the strongest arguments
which the most skilful devil’s advocate
can conjure up.
To abate the force of these considera
tions, an enemy of free discussion may
be supposed to say that there is no
necessity for mankind in general to know
and understand all that can be said
against or for their opinions by philoso
phers and theologians. That it is not
needful for common men to be able to
expose all the misstatements or fallacies
of an ingenious opponent. That it is
enough if there is always somebody
capable of answering them, so that
nothing likely to mislead uninstructed
persons remains unrefuted. That simple
minds, having been taught the obvious
grounds of the truths inculcated on them,
may trust to authority for the rest, and,
being aware that they have neither know
ledge nor talent to resolve every difficulty
which can be raised, may repose in the
assurance that all those which have been
raised have been or can be answered by
those who are specially trained to the
task.
Conceding to this view of the subject
the utmost that can be claimed for it by
those most easily satisfied with the
amount of understanding of truth which
ought to accompany the belief of it—
even so, the argument for free discussion
is no way weakened. For even this
doctrine acknowledges that mankind
ought to have a rational assurance that
all objections have been satisfactorily
answered; and how are they to be
answered if that which requires to be
answered is not spoken ? or how can the
answer be known to be satisfactory if
the objectors have no opportunity of
showing that it is unsatisfactory ? If not
the public, at least the philosophers and
theologians who are to resolve the diffi
culties, must make themselves familiar
with those difficulties in their most
puzzling form; and this cannot be accom
plished unless they are freely stated, and
placed in the most advantageous light
which they admit of. The Catholic
Church has its own way of dealing with
this embarrassing problem. It makes a
broad separation between those who can
be permitted to receive its doctrines on
conviction and those who must accept
them on trust. Neither, indeed, are
allowed any choice as to what they will
accept; but the clergy, such at least as
can be fully confided in, may admissibly
and meritoriously make themselves ac
quainted with the arguments of opponents,
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in order to answer them, and may, there
fore, read heretical books—the laity, not
unless by special permission, hard to be
obtained. This discipline recognises a
knowledge of the enemy’s case as bene
ficial to the teachers, but finds means,
consistent with this, of denying it to the
rest of the world; thus giving to the
elite more mental culture, though not
more mental freedom, than it allows to
the mass. By this device it succeeds in
obtaining the kind of mental superiority
which its purposes require ; for, though
culture without freedom never made a
large and liberal mind, it can make a
clever nisi prius advocate of a cause.
But in countries professing Protestantism
this resource is denied; since Protestants
hold, at least in theory, that the respon
sibility for the choice of a religion must
be borne by each for himself, and cannot
be thrown off upon teachers. Besides,
in the present state of the world it is
practically impossible that writings which
are read by the instructed can be kept
from the uninstructed. If the teachers
of mankind are to be cognisant of all
they ought to know, everything must be
free to be written and published without
restraint.
If, however, the mischievous operation
of the absence of free discussion, when
the received opinions are true, were
confined to leaving men ignorant of the
grounds of those opinions, it might be
thought that this, if an intellectual, is no
moral evil, and does not affect the worth
of the opinions regarded in their influence
on the character. The fact, however, is
that not only the grounds of the opinion
are forgotten in the absence of discussion,
but too often the meaning of the opinion
itself. The words which convey it cease
to suggest ideas, or suggest only a small
portion of those they were originally
35
employed to communicate. Instead of
a vivid conception and a living belief,
there remain only a few phrases retained
by rote ; or, if any part, the shell and
husk only of the meaning is retained,
the finer essence being lost. The great,
chapter in human history which this fact
occupies and fills cannot be too earnestly
studied and meditated on.
It is illustrated in the experience of
almost all ethical doctrines and religious
creeds. They are all full of meaning and
vitality to those who originate them, and
to the direct disciples of the originators.
Their meaning continues to be felt in
undiminished strength, and is perhaps
brought out into even fuller conscious
ness, so long as the struggle lasts to give
the doctrine or creed an ascendancy over
other creeds. At last it either prevails
and becomes the general opinion, or its
progress stops : it keeps possession of
the ground it has gained, but ceases to
spread further. When either of these
results has become apparent, controversy
on the subject flags, and gradually dies
away. The doctrine has taken its place,
if not as a received opinion, as one of
the admitted sects or divisions of opinion;
those who hold it have generally inherited
not adopted it; and conversion from one
of these doctrines to another, being now
an exceptional fact, occupies little place
in the thoughts of their professors.
Instead of being, as at first, constantly
on the alert either to defend themselves
against the world or to bring the world
over to them, they have subsided into
acquiescence, and neither listen when they
can help it to arguments against their
creed nor trouble dissentients (if there
be such) with arguments in its favour.
From this time may usually be dated the
decline in the living power of the doctrine.
We often hear the teachers of all creeds
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lamenting the difficulty of keeping up in
To what an extent doctrines intrinsi
the minds of believers a lively apprehen cally fitted to make the deepest impres
sion of the truth which they nominally sion upon the mind may remain in it as
recognise, so that it may penetrate the dead beliefs, without being ever realised
feelings and acquire a real mastery over in the imagination, the feeling, or the
the conduct. No such difficulty is com understanding, is exemplified by the
plained of while the creed is still fighting manner in which the majority of believers
for its existence; even the weaker com hold the doctrines of Christianity. By
batants then know and feel what they are Christianity I here mean what is accoun
fighting for, and the difference between it ted such by all Churches and sects—the
and other doctrines; and in that period maxims and precepts contained in the
of every creed’s existence not a few New Testament. These are considered
persons may be found who have realised sacred, and accepted as laws, by all pro
its fundamental principles in all the forms fessing Christians. Yet it is scarcely too
of thought, have weighed and considered much to say that not one Christian in a;
them in all their important bearings, and thousand guides or tests his individual
have experienced the full effect on the conduct by reference to those laws. The
character which belief in that creed standard to which he does refer it is the
ought to produce in a mind thoroughly custom of his nation, his class, or his
imbued with it. But when it has come religious profession. He has thus, on
to be an hereditary creed, and to be the one hand, a collection of ethical
received passively, not actively—when maxims which he believes to have been
the mind is no longer compelled, in the vouchsafed to him by infallible wisdom
same degree as at first, to exercise its as rules for his government; and, on the
vital powers on the questions which its other, a set of every-day judgments and
belief presents to it, there is a progressive practices which go a certain length with
tendency to forget all of the belief except some of those maxims, not so great a
the formularies, or to give it a dull and length with others, stand in direct oppo
torpid assent, as if accepting it on trust sition to some, and are, on the whole, a
dispensed with the necessity of realising compromise between the Christian creed
it in consciousness, or testing it by per and the interests and suggestions of
sonal experience, until it almost ceases worldly life. To the first of these stan
to connect itself at all with the inner life dards he gives his homage; to the other
of the human being. Then are seen the his real allegiance. All Christians believe ’
cases, so frequent in this age of the world that the blessed are the poor and humble
as almost to form the majority, in which and those who are ill-used by the world;
the creed remains, as it were, outside the that it is easier for a camel to pass
mind, incrusting and petrifying it against through the eye of a needle than for a
all other influences addressed to the rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven;
higher parts of our nature; manifesting that they should judge not, lest they be
its power by not suffering any fresh and judged; that they should swear not at
living conviction to get in, but itself doing all; that they should love their neighbour
nothing for the mind or heart, except as themselves; that if one take their cloak,
standing sentinel over them to keep them they should give him their coat also; that
they should take no thought for the
vacant.
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37
morrow; that, if they would be perfect, owing that Christianity now makes so
they should sell all that they have and little progress in extending its domain,
give it to the poor. They are not insincere and, after eighteen centuries, is still nearly
when they say that they believe these confined to Europeans and the descen
things. They do believe them, as people dants of Europeans. Even with the
believe what they have always heard strictly religious, who are much in earnest
lauded and never discussed. But, in the about their doctrines, and attach a greater
sense of that living belief which regulates amount of meaning to many of them
conduct, they believe these doctrines just than people in general, it commonly
up to the point to which it is usual to happens that the part which is thus
act upon them. The doctrines in their comparatively active in their minds is
integrity are serviceable to pelt adversaries that which was made by Calvin, or Knox,
with ", and it is understood that they are or some such person much nearer in
to be put forward (when possible) as the character to themselves. The sayings
reasons for whatever people do that they of Christ co-exist passively in their minds,
think laudable. But anyone who re producing hardly any effect beyond what
minded them that the maxims require is caused by mere listening to words soan affinity of things which they never amiable and bland. There are many
even think of doing, would gain nothing reasons, doubtless, why doctrines which
but to be classed among those very un- | are the badge of a sect retain more of
popular characters who affect to be better their vitality than those common to all
than other people. The doctrines have recognised sects, and why more pains
no hold on ordinary believers—are not are taken by teachers to keep their
a power in their minds. They have an meaning alive ; but one reason certainly
habitual respect for the sound of them, is that the peculiar doctrines are more
but no feeling which spreads from the questioned, and have to be oftener de
words to the things signified, and forces fended against gainsayers. Both teachers
the mind to take them in, and make and learners go to sleep at their post as
them conform to the formula. Whenever soon as there is no enemy in the field.
The same thing holds true, generally
conduct is concerned, they look round
for Mr. A and B to direct them how far speaking, of all traditional doctrines—
those of prudence and knowledge of life
to go in obeying Christ
Now, we may be well assured that the as well as of morals or religion. All lan
case was not thus, but far otherwise, with guages and literatures are full of general
the early Christians. Had it been thus, observations on life, both as to what it is;
Christianity never would have expanded and how to conduct oneself in it—obser
from an obscure sect of the despised vations which everybody knows, which
Hebrews into the religion of the Roman everybody repeats, or hears with acquies
Empire. When their enemies said, “ See cence, which are received as truisms,
how these Christians love one another ” yet of which most people first truly learn
(a remark not likely to be made by any the meaning when experience, generally
body now), they assuredly had a much of a painful kind, has made it a reality
livelier feeling of the meaning of their to them. How often, when smarting
creed than they have ever had since. under some unforeseen misfortune or
And to this cause, probably, it is chiefly disappointment, does a person call to
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CA' LIBERTY
mind some proverb or common saying,
familiar to him all his life, the meaning
of which, if he had ever before felt it as
he does now, would have saved him from
the calamity. There are, indeed, reasons
for this other than the absence of discus
sion : there are many truths of which the
full meaning cannot be realised until
personal experience has brought it home.
But much more of the meaning even of
these would have been understood, and
what was understood would have been
far more deeply impressed on the mind,
if the man had been accustomed to hear
it argued pro and con. by people who did
understand it. The fatal tendency of
mankind to leave off thinking about a
thing when it is no longer doubtful is
the cause of half their errors. A co
temporary author has well spoken of “the
deep slumber of a decided opinion.”
But what! (it may be asked) Is the
absence of unanimity an indispensable
condition of true knowledge ? Is it
necessary that some part of mankind
should persist in error to enable any to
realise the truth? Does a belief cease to
be real and vital as soon as it is generally
received — and is a proposition never
thoroughly understood and felt unless
some doubt of it remains ? As soon as
mankind have unanimously accepted a
truth, does the truth perish within them?
The highest aim and best result of im
proved intelligence, it has hitherto been
thought, is to unite mankind more and
more in the acknowledgment of all im
portant truths; and does the intelligence
only last as long as it has not achieved
Its object? Do the fruits of conquest
perish by the very completeness of the
victory ?
I affirm no such thing. As mankind
improve the number of doctrines which
are no longer disputed or doubted will
be constantly on the increase; and the
well-being of mankind may almost be
measured by the number and gravity of
the truths which have reached the point
of being uncontested. The cessation,
on one question after another, of serious
controversy is one of the necessary inci
dents of the consolidation of opinion—-a
consolidation as salutary in the case of
true opinions as it is dangerous and
noxious when the opinions are erroneous.
But though this gradual narrowing of the
bounds of diversity of opinion is neces
sary in both senses of the term, being at
once inevitable and indispensable, we are
not therefore obliged to conclude that
all its consequences must be beneficial.
The loss of so important an aid to the
intelligent and living apprehension of a
truth as is afforded by the necessity of
explaining it to, or defending it against,
opponents, though not sufficient to out
weigh, is no trifling drawback from, the
benefitofits universal recognition. Where
this advantage can no longer be had, I
confess I should like to see the teachers
of mankind endeavouring to provide a
substitute for it—some contrivance for
making the difficulties of the question as
present to the learner’s consciousness as
if they were pressed upon him by a dis
sentient champion, eager for his conver
sion.
But, instead of seeking contrivances
for this purpose, they have lost those
they formerly had. The Socratic dia
lectics, so magnificently exemplified in
the dialogues of Plato, were a contrivance
of this description. They were essentially
a negative discussion of the great ques
tions of philosophy and life, directed with
consummate skill to the purpose of con
vincing anyone who had merely adopted
the commonplaces of received opinion,
that he did not understand the subject
�OF THE LIBERTY OF THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION
—that he as yet attached no definite I
meaning to the doctrines he professed;
in order that, becoming aware of his igno
rance, he might be put in the way to
obtain a stable belief, resting on a clear
apprehension both of the meaning of
doctrines and of their evidence. The
school disputations of the Middle Ages
had a somewhat similar object. They
were intended to make sure that the pupil
understood his own opinion, and (by
necessary correlation) the opinion opposed
to it, and could enforce the grounds of
the one and confute those of the other.
These last-mentioned contests had indeed
the incurable defect that the premises
appealed to were taken from authority,
not from reason; and, as a discipline to
the mind, they were in every respect
inferior to the powerful dialectics which
formed the intellects of the “ Socratici
viri”; but the modern mind owes far
more to both than it is generally willing
to admit, and the present modes of
education contain nothing which in the
smallest degree supplies the place either
of the one or of the other. A person who
derives all his instruction from teachers
or books, even if he escape the besetting
temptation of contenting himself with
cram, is under no compulsion to hear
both sides; accordingly, it is far from a
frequent accomplishment, even among
thinkers, to know both sides; and the
weakest part of what everybody says in
defence of his opinion is what he intends
as a reply to antagonists. It is the fashion
of the present time to disparage negative
logic—that which points out weaknesses
in theory or errors in practice, without
establishing positive truths. Such nega
tive criticism would, indeed, be poor
enough as an ultimate result; but, as a
means to attaining any positive know
ledge or conviction worthy the name, it
39
cannot be valued too highly; and until
people are again systematically trained
to it there will be few great thinkers,
and a low general average of intellect, in
any but the mathematical and physical
departments of speculation. On any
other subject no one’s opinions deserve
the name of knowledge, except so far as
he has either had forced upon him by
others, or gone through of himself, the
same mental process which would have
been required of him in carrying on an
active controversy with opponents. That,
therefore, which, when absent, it is so
indispensable, but so difficult, to create,
how worse than absurd it is to forego
when spontaneously offering itself! If
there are any persons who contest a
received opinion, or who will do so if law
or opinion will let them, let us thank
them for it, open our minds to listen to
them, and rejoice that there is someone
to do for us what we otherwise ought, if
we have any regard for either the certainty
or the vitality of our convictions, to do
with much greater labour for ourselves.
It still remains to speak of one of the
principal causes which make diversity of
opinion advantageous, and will continue
to do so until mankind shall have entered
a stage of intellectual advancement which
at present seems at an incalculable dis
tance. We have hitherto considered
only two possibilities: that the received
opinion may be false, and some other
opinion, consequently, true; or that, the
received opinion being true, a conflict
with the opposite error is essential to a
clear apprehension and deep feeling of
its truth. But there is a commoner case
than either of these : when the conflicting
doctrines, instead of being one true and
the other false, share the truth between
them, and the nonconforming opinion
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ON LIBERTY
is needed to supply the remainder of the
truth, of which the received doctrine
embodies only a part. Popular opinions,
on subjects not palpable to sense, are
often true, but seldom or never the whole
truth. They are a part of the truth—
sometimes a greater, sometimes a smaller
part, but exaggerated, distorted, and dis
joined from the truths by which they
ought to be accompanied and limited.
Heretical opinions, on the other hand,
are generally some of these suppressed
and neglected truths, bursting the bonds
which kept them down, and either seek
ing reconciliation with the truth contained
in the common opinion, or fronting it as
enemies, and setting themselves up, with
similar exclusiveness, as the whole truth.
The latter case is hitherto the most
frequent, as, in the human mind, one
sidedness has always been the rule and
many-sidedness the exception. Hence,
even in revolutions of opinion, one part
of the truth usually sets while the other
rises. Even progress, ’ which ought to
superadd, for the most part only substi
tutes, one partial and incomplete truth
for another; improvement consisting
chiefly in this, that the new fragment of
truth is more wanted, more adapted to
the needs of the time, than that which
it displaces. Such being the partial
character of prevailing opinions, even
when resting on a true foundation, every
opinion which embodies somewhat of
the portion of truth which the common
opinion omits ought to be considered
precious, with whatever amount of error
and confusion that truth may be blended.
No sober judge of human affairs will feel
bound to be indignant because those who
force on our notice truths which we should
otherwise have overlooked, overlook some
of those which we see. Rather, he will
think that, so long as popular truth is
one-sided, it is more desirable than
otherwise that unpopular truth should
have one-sided assertors too; such
being usually the most energetic and
the most likely to compel reluctant
attention to the fragment of wisdom
which they proclaim as if it were the
whole.
Thus in the eighteenth century, when
nearly all the instructed, and all those of
the uninstructed who were led by them,
were lost in admiration of what is called
civilisation, and of the marvels of modern
science, literature, and philosophy, and,
while greatly overrating the amount of
unlikeness between the men of modern
and those of ancient times, indulged the
belief that the whole of the difference was
in their own favour—with what a salutary
shock did the paradoxes of Rousseau
explode like bombshells in the midst,
dislocating the compact mass of one
sided opinion, and forcing its elements
to recombine in a better form and
with additional ingredients. Not that the
current opinions were on the whole farther
from the truth than Rousseau’s were; on
the contrary, they were nearer to it: they
contained more of positive truth, and
very much less of error. Nevertheless,
there lay in Rousseau’s doctrine, and has
floated down the stream of opinion along
with it, a considerable amount of exactly
those truths which the popular opinion
wanted; and these are the deposit which
was left behind when the flood subsided.
The superior worth of simplicity of life,
the enervating and demoralising effect of
the trammels and hypocrisies of artificial
society, are ideas which have never been
entirely absent from cultivated minds
since Rousseau wrote; and they will in
time produce their due effect, though at
present needing to be asserted as much
as ever, and to be asserted by deeds,
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for words on this subject have nearly
exhausted their power.
In politics, again, it is almost a com
monplace, that a party of order or stability,
and a party of progress or reform, are both
necessary elements of a healthy state of
political life ; until the one or the other
shall have so enlarged its mental grasp
as to be a party equally of order and of
progress, knowing and distinguishing what
is fit to be preserved from what ought to
be swept away. Each of these modes
of thinking derives its utility from the
deficiencies of the other; but it is in a
great measure the opposition of the other
that keeps each within the limits of reason
and sanity. Unless opinions favourable
to democracy and to aristocracy, to
property and to equality, to co-operation
and to competition, to luxury and to
abstinence, to sociality and individuality,
to liberty and discipline, and all the other
standing antagonisms of practical life, are
expressed with equal freedom, and en
forced and defended with equal talent
and energy, there is no chance of both
elements obtaining their due : one scale
is sure to go up and the other down.
Truth, in the great practical concerns of
life, is so much a question of the recon
ciling and combining of opposites that
very few have minds sufficiently capacious
and impartial to make the adjustment
with an approach to correctness, and it
has to be made by the rough process of
a struggle between combatants fighting
under hostile banners. On any of the
great open questions just enumerated, if
either of the two opinions has a better
claim than the other, not merely to be
tolerated, but to be encouraged and
countenanced, it is the one which happens
at the particular time and place to be in a
minority. That is the opinion which, for
the time being, represents the neglected
41
interests, the side of human well-being
which is in danger of obtaining less than
its share. I am aware that there is not,
in this country, any intolerance of differ
ences of opinion on most of these topics.
They are adduced to show, by admitted
and multiplied examples, the universality
of the fact that only through diversity
of opinion is there, in the existing state
of human intellect, a chance of fair play
to all sides of the truth. When there are
persons to be found who form an excep
tion to the apparent unanimity of the
world on any subject, even if the world
is in the right, it is always probable that
dissentients have something worth hear
ing to say for themselves, and that truth
would lose something by their silence.
It may be objected, “ But some received
principles, especially on the highest and
most vital subjects, are more than half
truths. The Christian morality, for
instance, is the whole truth on that
subject, and if anyone teaches a morality
which varies from it, he is wholly in error.”
As this is of all cases the most important
in practice, none can be fitter to test the
general maxim. But before pronouncing
what Christian morality is or is not, it
would be desirable to decide what is
meant by Christian morality. If it means
the morality of the New Testament, I
wonder that anyone who derives his
knowledge of this from the book itself
can suppose that it was announced, or
intended, as a complete doctrine of
morals. The Gospel always refers to a
pre-existing morality, and confines its
precepts to the particulars in which that
morality was to be corrected, or super
seded by a wider and higher; expressing
itself, moreover, in terms most general,
often impossible to be interpreted literally,
and possessing rather the impressiveness
of poetry or eloquence than the precision
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ON LIBERTY
of legislation. To extract from it a body
of ethical doctrine has never been possible
without eking it out from the Old Testa
ment—that is, from a system elaborate
indeed, but in many respects barbarous,
and intended only for a barbarous people.
St. Paul, a declared enemy to this Judaical
mode of interpreting the doctrine and
filling up the scheme of his Master,
equally assumes a pre-existing morality—
namely, that of the Greeks and Romans;
and his advice to Christians is in a great
measure a system of accommodation to
that; even to the extent of giving an
apparent sanction to slavery. What is
called Christian, but should rather be
termed theological, morality was not the
work of Christ or the Apostles, but is of
much later origin, having been gradually
built up by the Catholic Church of the
first five centuries, and, though not
implicitly adopted by moderns and Pro
testants, has been much less modified
by them than might have been expected.
For the most part, indeed, they have
contented themselves with cutting off the
additions which had been made to it in
the Middle Ages, each sect supplying
the place by fresh additions, adapted to
its own character and tendencies. That
mankind owe a great debt to this morality,
and to its early teachers,, I should be the
last person to deny; but I do not scruple
to say of it that it is, in many important
points, incomplete and one-sided, and
that unless ideas and feelings, not
sanctioned by it, had contributed to the
formation of European life and character,
human affairs would have been in a
worse condition than they now are.
Christian morality (so called) has all the
characters of a reaction; it is, in great
part, a protest against Paganism. Its
ideal is negative rather than positive ;
passive rather than active; Innocence
----------------- :------ r ;
rather than Nobleness ; Abstinence trom
Evil rather than energetic Pursuit of
Good; in its precepts (as has been well
said) “thou shalt not” predominates
over “ thou shalt.” In its horror
of sensuality, it made an idol of asceticism, which has been gradually compro
mised away into one of legality. It
holds out the hope of heaven and the
threat of hell, as the appointed and ap
propriate motives to a virtuous life; in
this falling far below the best of the
ancients, and doing what lies in it to give
to human morality an essentially selfish
character, by disconnecting each man’s
feelings of duty from the interests of his
fellow-creatures, except so far as a selfinterested inducement is offered to him
for consulting them. It is essentially a
doctrine of passive obedience; it incul
cates submission to all authorities found
established; who indeed are not to be
actively obeyed when they command
what religion forbids, but who are not to
be resisted, far less rebelled against, for
any amount of wrong to ourselves. And
while, in the morality of the best Pagan
nations, duty to the State holds even a
disproportionate place, infringing on the
just liberty of the individual, in purely
Christian ethics that ground department
of duty is scarcely noticed or acknow
ledged. It is in the Koran, not the New
Testament, that we read the maxim—•
“ A ruler who appoints any man to an
office when there is in his dominions
another man better qualified for it, sins
against God and against the State.”
What little recognition the idea of obli
gation to the public obtains in modern
morality is derived from Greek and
Roman sources, not from Christian; as
even in the morality of private life what
ever exists of magnanimity, highmindedness, personal dignity, even the sense of
!
■
j
1
�OF THE LIBERTY OF THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION
honour, is derived from the purely human,
not the religious, part of our education,
and never could have grown out of a
standard of ethics in which the only
worth, professedly recognised, is that of
obedience.
I am as far as anyone from pretending
that these defects are necessarily inherent
in the Christian ethics, in every manner
in which it can be conceived, or that the
many requisites of a complete moral
doctrine which it does not contain do
not admit of being reconciled with it.
Far less would I insinuate this of the
doctrines and precepts of Christ himself.
I believe that the sayings of Christ are
all that I can see any evidence of their
having been intended to be; that they
are irreconcilable with nothing which a
comprehensive morality requires; that
everything which is excellent in ethics
may be brought within them with no
greater violence to their language than
has been done to it by all who have
attempted to deduce from them any
practical system of conduct whatever.
But it is quite consistent with this to
believe that they contain, and were
meant to contain, only a part of the
truth; that many essential elements of the
highest morality are among the things
which are not provided for, nor intended
to be provided for, in the recorded
deliverances of the Founder of Chris
tianity, and which have been entirely
thrown aside in the system of ethics
erected on the basis of those deliverances
by the Christian Church.
And this
being so, I think it a great error to
persist in attempting to find in the Chris
tian doctrine that complete rule for our
guidance which its author intended it to
sanction and enforce, but only partially
to provide. I believe, too, that this
narrow theory is becoming a grave prac
43
tical evil, detracting greatly from the
moral training and instruction which so
many well-meaning persons are now at
length exerting themselves to promote.
I much fear that by attempting to form
the mind and feelings on an exclusively
religious type, and discarding those secu
lar standards (as for want of a better
name they may be called) which hereto
fore co-existed with and supplemented
the Christian ethics, receiving some of
its spirit, and infusing into it some of
theirs, there will result, and is even now
resulting, a low, abject, servile type of
character, which, submit itself as it may
to what it deems the Supreme Will, is
incapable of rising to or sympathising in>
the conception of Supreme Goodness.
I believe that other ethics than any
which can be evolved from exclusively
Christian sources must exist side by
side with Christian ethics to produce the
moral regeneration of mankind; and that
the Christian system is no exception to
the rule, that in an imperfect state of
the human mind the interests of truth
require a diversity of opinions. It is not
necessary that, in ceasing to ignore the
moral truths not contained in Chris
tianity, men should ignore any of those
which it does contain. Such prejudice,
or oversight, when it occurs, is altogether
an evil; but it it is one from which we
cannot hope to be always exempt, and
must be regarded as the price paid for
an inestimable good. The exclusive pre
tension made by a part of the truth to be
the whole must and ought to be pro
tested against; and if a reactionary im
pulse should make the protesters unjust
in their turn, this one-sidedness, like the
other, may be lamented, but must be
tolerated. If Christians would teach
infidels to be just to Christianity, they
should themselves be just to infidelity.
�44
ON LIBERTY
It can do truth no service to blink the
fact, known to all who have the most
ordinary acquaintance with literary history,
that a large portion of the noblest and
most valuable moral teaching has been
the work, not only of men who did not
know, but of men who knew and rejected,
the Christian faith.
I do not pretend that the most un
limited use of the freedom of enunciating
all possible opinions would put an end
to the evils of religious or philosophical
sectarianism. Every truth which men of
narrow capacity are in earnest about is
•sure to be asserted, inculcated, and in
many ways even acted on, as if no other
truth existed in the world, or at all
events none that could limit or qualify
the first. I acknowledge that the ten
dency of all opinions to become sectarian
?is not cured by the freest discussion,
but is often heightened and exacerbated
thereby; the truth which ought to have
been, but was not, seen being rejected
all the more violently because proclaimed
by persons regarded as opponents. But
it is not on the impassioned partisan, it
is on the calmer and more disinterested
bystander, that this collision of opinions
works its salutary effect. Not the violent
conflict between parts of the truth, but
the quiet suppression of half of it, is the
formidable evil; there is always hope
when people are forced to listen to both
sides; it is when they attend only to one
that errors harden into prejudices, and
truth itself ceases to have the effect of
truth by being exaggerated into false
hood. And since there are few mental
attributes more rare than that judicial
faculty which can sit in intelligent judg
ment between two sides of a question, of
which only one is represented by an
advocate before it, truth has no chance
but in proportion as every side of it,
every opinion which embodies any frac
tion of the truth, not only finds advo
cates, but is so advocated as to be
listened to.
We have now recognised the necessity
to the mental well-being of mankind (on
which all their other well-being depends)
of freedom of opinion, and freedom of
the expression of opinion, on four distinct
grounds, which we will now briefly re
capitulate.
First, if any opinion is compelled to
silence, that opinion may, for aught we
can certainly know, be true. To deny
this is to assume our own infallibility.
Secondly, though the silenced opinion
be an error, it may, and very commonly
does, contain a portion of truth ; and
since the general or prevailing opinion
on any subject is rarely or never the
whole truth, it is only by the collision of
adverse opinions that the remainder of
the truth has any chance of being
supplied.
Thirdly, even if the received opinion
be not only true, but the whole truth,
unless it is suffered to be, and actually
is, vigorously and earnestly contested, it
will, by most of those who receive it, be
held in the manner of a prejudice, with
little comprehension or feeling of its
rational grounds. And not only this,
but, fourthly, the meaning of the doctrine
itself, will be in danger of being lost, or
enfeebled, and deprived of its vital effect
on the character and conduct: the
dogma becoming a mere formal pro
fession, inefficacious for good, but
cumbering the ground, and preventing
the growth of any real and heartfelt
conviction, from reason or personal
experience.
Before quitting the subject of freedom
of opinion, it is fit to take some notice
of those who say that the free expression
�OF THE LIBERTY OF THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION
cf all opinions should be permitted, on
condition that the manner be temperate,
and do not pass the bounds of fair dis
cussion. Much might be said on the
impossibility of fixing where these sup
posed bounds are to be placed; for if
the test be offence to those whose
opinions are attacked, I think experience
testifies that this offence is given when
ever the attack is telling and powerful,
and that every opponent who pushes
them hard, and whom they find it difficult
to answer, appears to them, if he shows
any strong feeling on the subject, an
intemperate opponent. But this, though
an important consideration in a practical
point of view, merges in a more funda
mental objection.
Undoubtedly the
manner of asserting an opinion, even
though it be a true one, may be very
objectionable, and may justly incur
severe censure.
But the principal
offences of the kind are such as it is
mostly impossible, unless by accidental
self-betrayal, to bring home to con
viction. The gravest of them is, to
argue sophistically, to suppress facts or
arguments, to misstate the elements
of the case, or misrepresent the oppo
site opinion.
But all this, even to
the most aggravated degree, is so con
tinually done in perfect good faith by
persons who are not considered, and in
many other respects may not deserve
to be considered, ignorant or incom
petent, that it is rarely possible, on
adequate grounds, conscientiously to
stamp the misrepresentation as morally
culpable ; and still less could law pre-;
sume to interfere with this kind of con
troversial misconduct. With regard to
what is commonly meant by intemperate
discussion—namely, invective, sarcasm,
personality, and the like—the denuncia
tion of these weapons would deserve
45
more sympathy if it were ever proposed
to interdict them equally to both sides ;
but it is only desired to restrain the
employment of them against the pre
vailing opinion; against the unprevailing
they may not only be used without
general disapproval, but will be likely to
obtain for him who uses them the praise
of honest zeal and righteous indignation.
Yet whatever mischief arises from their
use is greatest when they are employed
against the comparatively defenceless;
and whatever unfair advantage can be
derived by any opinion from this mode
of asserting it accrues almost exclu
sively to received opinions. The worst
offence of this kind which can be com
mitted by a polemic is to stigmatise
those who hold the contrary opinion as
bad and immoral men. To calumny of
this sort those who hold any unpopular
opinion are peculiarly exposed, because
they are in general few and uninfluential,
and nobody but themselves feels much
interested in seeing justice done them ;
but this weapon is, from the nature of
the case, denied to those who attack a
prevailing opinion; they can neither use
it with safety to themselves, nor, if they
could, would it do anything but recoil on
their own cause. In general, opinions
contrary to those commonly received
can only obtain a hearing by studied
moderation of language, and the most
cautious avoidance of unnecessary
offence, from which they hardly ever
deviate even in a slight degree without
losing ground; while unmeasured vitu
peration employed on the side of the
prevailing opinion really does deter
people from professing contrary opinions,
and from listening to those who profess
them. For the interest, therefore, of
truth and justice, it is far more imporI tant to restrain this employment of
�46
ON LIBERTY
vituperative language than the other;
and, for example, if it were necessary to
choose, there would be much more need
to discourage offensive attacks on infi
delity than on religion. It is, however,
obvious that law and authority have no
business with restraining either, while
opinion ought, in every instance, to de
termine its verdict by the circumstances
of the individual case; condemning
every one, on which ever side of the argu
ment he places himself, in whose mode
of advocacy either want of candour, or
malignity, bigotry, or intolerance of feel
ing, manifest themselves ; but not infer
ring these vices from the side which a
person takes, though it be the contrary
side of the question to our own: and
giving merited honour to every one,
whatever opinion he may hold, who has
calmness to see and honesty to state
what his opponents and their opinions
really are, exaggerating nothing to their
discredit, keeping nothing back which
tells, or can be supposed to tell, in their
favour. This is the real morality of
public discussion : and if often violated,
I am happy to think that there are
many controversialists who to a great
extent observe it, and a still greater
number who conscientiously strive to
wards it.
Chapter III.
OF INDIVIDUALITY, AS ONE OF THE ELEMENTS
OF WELL-BEING
Such being the reasons which make it
imperative that human beings should be
free to form opinions, and to express
their opinions without reserve; and such
the baneful consequences to the intel
lectual, and through that to the moral,
nature of man, unless this liberty is either
conceded, or asserted in spite of prohibi
tion; let us next examine whether the
same reasons do not require that men
should be free to act upon their opinions
—to carry these out in their lives, with
out hindrance, either physical or moral,
from their fellow men, so long as it is at
their own risk and peril. This last pro
viso is, of course, indispensable. No one
pretends that actions should be as free
as opinions. On the contrary, even
opinions lose their immunity when the
circumstances in which they are ex
pressed are such as to constitute their
expression a positive instigation to some
mischievous act. An opinion that corn
dealers are starvers of the poor, or that
private property is robbery, ought to
be unmolested when simply circulated
through the press, but may justly incur
punishment when delivered orally to an
excited mob assembled before the house
of a corn-dealer, or when handed about
among the same mob in the form of a pla
card. Acts, of whatever kind, which, with
out justifiable cause, do harm to others,
may be, and in the more important cases
absolutely require to be, controlled by
the unfavourable sentiments, and, when
�OF INDIVIDUALITY, AS ONE OF THE ELEMENTS OF WELL-BEING 47
needful, by the active interference of the indifference of persons in general to
mankind. The liberty of the individual the end itself. If it were felt that the
must be thus far limited; he must not free development of individuality is one of
make himself a nuisance to other people. the leading essentials of well-being; that
But if he refrains from molesting others it is not only a co-ordinate element with
in what concerns them, and merely acts all that is designated by the terms civili
according to his own inclination and judg sation, instruction, education, culture,
ment in things which concern himself, the but is itself a necessary part and con
same reasons which show that opinion dition of all those things; there would
should be free prove also that he should be no danger that liberty should be
be allowed, without molestation, to carry undervalued, and the adjustment of the
his opinions into practice at his own boundaries between it and social control
cost. That mankind are not infallible; would present no extraordinary difficulty.
But the evil is that individual spontaneity
that their truths, for the most part,
are only half-truths; that unity of is hardly recognised by the common
opinion, unless resulting from the modes of thinking, as having any intrinsic
fullest and freest comparison of op worth, or deserving any regard on its
posite opinions, is not desirable, and own account. The majority, being satis
fied with the ways of mankind as they
diversity not an evil, but a good
until mankind are much more capable now are (for it is they who make them
than at present of recognising all sides what they are), cannot comprehend why
of the truth, are principles applicable to those ways should not be good enough
men’s modes of action, not less than to for everybody: and what is more, spon
their opinions. As it is useful that while taneity forms no part of the ideal of the
mankind are imperfect there should be majority of moral and social reformers,
different opinions, so it is that there but is rather looked on with jealousy,
should be different experiments of living ; as a troublesome and perhaps rebellious
that free scope should be given to varieties obstruction to the general acceptance
of character, short of injury to others; of what these reformers, in their own
and that the worth of different modes of judgment, think would be best for man
life should be proved practically, when kind. Few persons, out of Germany,
anyone thinks fit to try them. It is even comprehend the meaning of the
desirable, in short, that in things which doctrine which Wilhelm von Humboldt,
do not primarily concern others, indi so eminent both as a savant and as a
politician, made the text of a treatise—
viduality should assert itself. Where,
that “ the end of man, or that which is
not the person’s own character, but the
traditions or customs of other people, prescribed by the eternal or immutable
are the rule of conduct, there is wanting dictates of reason, and not suggested by
one of the principal ingredients of human vague and transient desires, is the highest
happiness, and quite the chief ingredient and most harmonious development of
his powers to a complete and consistent
of individual and social progress.
that, therefore, the object
In maintaining this principle, the whole
greatest difficulty to be encountered “ towards which every human being
does not lie in the appreciation of means must ceaselessly direct his efforts, and on
towards an acknowledged end, but in which especially those who design to
�48
ON LIBERTY
influence their fellow-men must ever
keep their eyes, is the individuality of
power and development”; that for this
there are two requisites, “freedom, and
variety of situations”; and that from the
union of these arise “ individual vigour
and manifold diversity,” which combine
themselves in “ originality.”1
Little, however, as people are accus
tomed to a doctrine like that of Von
Humboldt, and surprising as it may
be to them to find so high a value
attached to individuality, the question,
one must nevertheless think, can only
be one of degree. No one’s idea of
excellence in conduct is that people
should do absolutely nothing but copy
one another. No one would assert that
people ought not to put into their mode
of life, and into the conduct of their
concerns, any impress whatever of their
own judgment, or of their own individual
character. On the other hand, it would
be absurd to pretend that people ought
to live as if nothing whatever had been
known in the world before they came
into it; as if experience had as yet
done nothing towards showing that
one mode of existence, or of conduct,
is preferable to another.
Nobody
denies that people should be so
taught and trained in youth as to
know and benefit by the ascertained
results of human experience. But it
is the privilege and proper condition of
a human being, arrived at the maturity
of his faculties, to use and interpret
experience in his own way. It is for
him to find out what part of recorded
experience is properly applicable to his
own circumstances and character. The
traditions and customs of other people
1 The Sphere and Duties of Government, from
the German of Baron Wilhelm von Humboldt,
np. II-13.
are, to a certain extent, evidence of what
their experience has taught them; pre
sumptive evidence, and as such, have
a claim to his deference: but, in the
first place, their experience may be too
narrow; or they may not have inter
preted it rightly. Secondly, their inter
pretation of experience may be correct,
but unsuitable to him. Customs are
made for customary circumstances and
customary characters ; and his circum
stances or his character may be un
customary. Thirdly, though the customs
be both good as customs, and suitable
to him, yet to conform to custom merely
as custom does not educate or develop
in him any of the qualities which are the
distinctive endowment of a human being.
The human faculties of perception,
judgment, discriminative feeling, mental
activity, and even moral preference, are
exercised only in making a choice. He
who does anything because it is the
custom makes no choice. He gains no
practice either in discerning or in desir
ing what is best. The mental and moral,
like the muscular powers, are improved
only by being used. The faculties are
called into no exercise by doing a thing
merely because others do it, no more
than by believing a thing only because
others believe it. If the grounds of an
opinion are not conclusive to the person’s
own reason, his reason cannot be
strengthened, but is likely to be
weakened, by his adopting it; and if the
inducements to an act are not such as
are consentaneous to his own feelings
and character (where affection, or the
rights of others, are not concerned), it is
so much done towards rendering his
feelings and character inert and torpid,
instead of active and energetic.
He who lets the world, or his own
portion of it, choose his plan of life for
�OF INDIVIDUALITY, AS ONE OF THE ELEMENTS OF WELL-BEING 49
him has no need of any other faculty
than the ape-like one of imitation. He
who chooses his plan for himself employs
all his faculties. He must use observa
tion to see, reasoning and judgment to
foresee, activity to gather materials for
decision, discrimination to decide, and,
when he has decided, firmness and self
control to hold to his deliberate decision.
And these qualities he requires and
exercises exactly in proportion as the
part of his conduct which he determines
according to his own judgment and
feelings is a large one. It is possible
that he might be guided in some good
path, and kept out of harm’s way, without
any of these things. But what will be
his comparative worth as a human being ?
It really is of importance, not only what
men do, but also what manner of men
they are that do it. Among the works
of man which human life is rightly
employed in perfecting and beautifying,
the first in importance surely is man
himself. Supposing it were possible to
get houses built, corn grown, battles
fought, causes tried, and even churches
erected and prayers said, by machinery
—by automatons in human form—it
would be a considerable loss to exchange
for these automatons even the men and
women who at present inhabit the more
civilised parts of the world, and who
assuredly are but starved specimens of
what nature can and will produce.
Human nature is not a machine to be
built after a model, and set to do exactly
the work prescribed for it, but a tree,
which requires to grow and develop itself
on all sides, according to the tendency
of the inward forces which make it a
living thing.
It will probably be conceded that it is
desirable people should exercise their
understandings, and that an intelligent
following of custom, or even occasionally
an intelligent deviation from custom, is
better than a blind and simply mechanical
adhesion to it. To a certain extent it is
admitted that our understanding should
be our own; but there is not the same
willingness to admit that our desires and
impulses should be our own likewise ; or
that to possess impulses of our own, and
of any strength, is anything but a peril
and a snare. Yet desires and impulses
are as much a part of a perfect human
being as beliefs and restraints; and
strong impulses are only perilous when
not properly balanced ; when one set of
aims and inclinations is developed into
strength, while others, which ought to
co-exist with them, remain weak and
inactive. It is not because men’s desires
are strong that they act ill; it is because
their consciences are weak. There is
no natural connection between strong
impulse and a weak conscience. The
natural connection is the other way. To
say that one person’s desires and feelings
are stronger and more various than those
of another is merely to say that he has
more of the raw material of human
nature, and is therefore capable, perhaps
of more evil, but certainly of more good.
Strong impulses are but another name
for energy. Energy may be turned to
bad uses ; but more good may always
be made of an energetic nature than of
an indolent and impassive one. Those
who have most natural feeling are always
those whose cultivated feelings may be
made the strongest. The same strong
susceptibilities which make the personal
impulses vivid and powerful are also the
source from whence are generated the
most passionate love of virtue and the
sternest self-control. It is through the
cultivation of these that society both
does its duty and protects its interests:
E
�5°
ON LIBERTY
not by rejecting the stuff of which heroes
are made, because it knows not how to
make them. A person whose desires
and impulses are his own—are the
expressions of his own nature, as it has
been developed and modified by his
own culture—is said to have a character.
One whose desires and impulses are not
his own has no character, no more than
a steam-engine has a character. If, in
addition to being his own, his impulses
are strong, and are under the government
of a strong will, he has an energetic char
acter. Whoever thinks that individu
ality of desires and impulses should not
be encouraged to unfold itself must
maintain that society has no need of
strong natures—is not the better for
containing many persons who have much
character—and that a high general
average of energy is not desirable.
In some early states of society these
forces might be, and were, too much
ahead of the power which society then
possessed of disciplining and controlling
them. There has been a time when the
element of spontaneity and individuality
was in excess, and the social principle
had a hard struggle with it. The diffi
culty then was, to induce men of strong
bodies or minds to pay obedience to any
rules which required them to control
their impulses. To overcome this diffi
culty, law and discipline, like the Popes
struggling against the Emperors, asserted
a power over the whole man, claiming to
control all his life in order to control his
character—which society had not found
any other sufficient means of binding.
But society has now fairly got the better
of individuality; and the danger which
threatens human nature is not the ex
cess, but the deficiency, of personal
impulses and preferences. Things are
vastly changed, since the passions of
those who were strong by station or by
personal endowment were in a state of
habitual rebellion against laws and ordi
nances, and required to be rigorously
chained up to enable the persons within
their reach to enjoy any particle of secu
rity. In our times, from the highest
class of society down to the lowest,
every one lives as under the eye of a
hostile and dreaded censorship. Not only
in what concerns others, but in what con
cerns only themselves, the individual or
the family do not ask themselves—What
do I prefer ? or, What would suit my
character and disposition? or, What would
allow the best and highest in me to have
fair play, and enable it to grow and
thrive ? They ask themselves—What is
suitable to my position ? What is usually
done by persons of my station and
pecuniary circumstances? or (worse still),
What is usually done by persons of a
station and circumstances superior to
mine ? I do not mean that they choose
what is customary in preference to what
suits their own inclination. It does not
occur to them to have any inclination,
except for what is customary. Thus the
mind itself is bowed to the yoke; even
in what people do for pleasure confor
mity is the first thing thought of; they
like in crowds; they exercise choice
only among things commonly done;
peculiarity of taste, eccentricity of con
duct, are shunned equally with crimes;
until, by dint of not following their own
nature, they have no nature to follow ;
their human capacities are withered and
starved; they become incapable of any
strong wishes or native pleasures, and are
generally without either opinions or
feelings of home growth, or properly
their own. Now, is this, or is it
not, the desirable condition of human
nature?
�OF INDIVIDUALITY, AS ONE OF THE ELEMENTS OF WELL-BEING 51
It is so, on the Calvinistic theory. consistent with that faith to believe that
According to that, the one great offence this Being gave all human faculties that
of man is self-will. All the good of they might be cultivated and unfolded,
not rooted out and consumed, and that
which humanity is capable is comprised
in obedience. You have no choice; he takes delight in every nearer approach
thus you must do, and no otherwise; made by his creatures to the ideal con
“ whatever is not a duty is a sin.” ception embodied in them, every increase
in any of their capabilities of comprehen
Human nature being radically corrupt,
there is no redemption for any one until sion, of action, or of enjoyment. There
human nature is killed within him. To is a different type of human excellence
one holding this theory of life, crushing from the Calvinistic : a conception of
out any of the human faculties, capaci humanity as having its nature bestowed
on it for other purposes than merely to
ties, and susceptibilities is no evil; man
needs no capacity but that of surrender be abnegated. “Pagan self-assertion”
ing himself to the will of God ; and if is one of the elements of human worth,
he uses any of his faculties for any other as well as “Christian self-denial.”1 There
purpose but to do that supposed will is a Greek ideal of self-development,
more effectually, he is better without which the Platonic and Christian ideal
them. This is the theory of Calvinism; of self-government blends with, but does
and it is held, in a mitigated form, by not supersede. It may be better to be a
many who do not consider themselves John Knox than an Alcibiades, but it is
Calvinists; the mitigation consisting in better to be a Pericles than either; nor
giving a less ascetic interpretation to the would a Pericles, if we had one in these
alleged will of God; asserting it to be days, be without anything good which
his will that mankind should gratify belonged to John Knox.
It is not by wearing down into uni
some of their inclinations; of course, not
in the manner they themselves prefer, formity all that is individual in them
but in the way of obedience—that is, in selves, but by cultivating it, and calling
a way prescribed to them by authority; it forth, within the limits imposed by the
and, therefore, by the necessary condition rights and interests of others, that human
beings become a noble and beautiful
of the case, the same for all.
In some such insidious form there is object of contemplation; and as the
at present a strong tendency to this works partake the character of those
narrow theory of life, and to the who do them, by the same process human
pinched and hidebound type of human life also becomes rich, diversified, and
character which it patronises. Many animating, furnishing more abundant
persons, no doubt, sincerely think that aliment to high thoughts and elevating
human beings thus cramped and dwarfed feelings, and strengthening the tie which
are as their Maker designed them to be; binds every individual to the race, by
just as many have thought that trees are making the race infinitely better worth
a much finer thing when clipped into belonging to. In proportion to the
pollards, or cut out into figures of animals, development of his individuality, each
than as nature made them. But if it be person becomes more valuable to
any part of religion to believe that man
was made by a good Being, it is more
1 Sterling’s Essays.
�52
ON LIBERTY
himself, and is therefore capable of it is only the cultivation of individ
being more valuable to others. There uality which produces, or can produce,
is a greater fulness of life about his own well-developed human beings, I might
existence, and when there is more life in here close the argument: for what more
the units there is more in the mass which or better can be said of any condition of
is composed of them. As much com human affairs than that it brings human
pression as is necessary to prevent the beings themselves nearer to the best
stronger specimens of human nature thing they can be ? Or what worse can
from encroaching on the rights of others be said of any obstruction to good than
cannot be dispensed with; but for this that it prevents this ? Doubtless, how
there is ample compensation even in the ever, these considerations will not suffice
point of view of human development. to convince those who most need con
The means of development which the vincing; and it is necessary further to
individual loses by being prevented show that these developed human beings
from gratifying his inclinations to the are of some use to the undeveloped—
injury of others are chiefly obtained at to point out to those who do not desire
the expense of the development of other liberty, and would not avail themselves
people. And even to himself there is a of it, that they may be in some intelli
full equivalent in the better development gible manner rewarded for allowing other
of the social part of his nature, rendered people to make use of it without
possible by the restraint put upon the hindrance.
selfish part. To be held to rigid rules
In the first place, then, I would
of justice for the sake of others developes ■suggest that they might possibly learn
the feelings and capacities which have something from them. It will not be
the good of others for their object. But denied by anybody that originality is
to be restrained in things not affecting a valuable element in human affairs.
their good, by their mere displeasure, There is always need of persons not
developes nothing valuable, except such only to discover new truths, and point
force of character as may unfold itself in out when what were once truths are
resisting the restraint. If acquiesced in, true no longer, but also to commence
it dulls and blunts the whole nature. new practices, and set the example of
To give any fair play to the nature of more enlightened conduct, and better
each, it is essential that different persons taste and sense in human life. This
should be allowed to lead different lives. cannot well be gainsaid by anybody
In proportion as this latitude has been who does not believe that the world has
exercised in any age, has that age been already attained perfection in all its
noteworthy to posterity. Even despotism ways and practices. It is true that this
does not produce its worst effects, so long benefit is not capable of being rendered
as individuality exists under it; and by everybody alike: there are but few
whatever crushes individuality is despot persons, in comparison with the whole
ism, by whatever name it may be called, of mankind, whose experiments, if
and whether it professes to be enforcing adopted by others, would be likely to
the will of God or the injunctions of men. be any improvement on established
Having said that individuality is the practice. But these few are the salt of
same thing with development, and that the earth; without them human life
�OF INDIVIDUALITY, AS ONE OF THE ELEMENTS OF WELL-BEING 53
would become a stagnant pool. Not
only is it they who introduce good things
which did not before exist; it is they who
keep the life in those which already exist.
If there were nothing new to be done,
would human intellect cease to be
necessary ? Would it be a reason why
those wrho do the old things should
forget wrhy they are done, and do them
like cattle, not like human beings?
There is only too great a tendency in
the best beliefs and practices to
degenerate into the mechanical; and
unless there were a succession of persons
whose ever-recurring originality prevents
the grounds of those beliefs and prac
tices from becoming merely traditional,
such dead matter would not resist the
smallest shock from anything really alive,
and there wrould be no reason why
civilisation should not die out, as in the
Byzantine Empire. Persons of genius,
it is true, are, and are always likely to
be, a small minority; but, in order to
have them, it is necessary to preserve
the soil in which they grow. Genius
can only breathe freely in an atmosphere
of freedom. Persons of genius are, ex
vi termini, more individual than any
other people—less capable, consequently,
of fitting themselves, without hurtful
compression, into any of the small
number of moulds which society pro
vides in order to save its members the
trouble of forming their own character.
If from timidity they consent to be
forced into one of these moulds, and to
let all that part of themselves which
cannot expand under the pressure remain
unexpanded, society will be little the
better for their genius. If they are of
a strong character, and break their
fetters, they become a mark for the
society which has not succeeded in
reducing them to commonplace, to point
out with solemn warning as “wild,”
“erratic,” and the like; much as if one
should complain of the Niagara river
for not flowing smoothly between its
banks like a Dutch canal.
I insist thus emphatically on the
importance of genius, and the necessity
of allowing it to unfold itself freely both
in thought and in practice, being well
aware that no one will deny the position
in theory, but knowing also that almost
everyone, in reality, is totally indifferent
to it. People think genius a fine thing
if it enables a man to write an exciting
poem, or paint a picture. But, in its
true sense, that of originality in thought
and action, though no one says that it is
not a thing to be admired, nearly all, at
heart, think that they can do very well
without it. Unhappily this is too natural
to be wrondered at. Originality is the
one thing which unoriginal minds cannot
feel the use of. They cannot see what
it is to do for them : how should they ?
If they could see what it would do for
them, it would not be originality. The
first service which originality has to
render them is that of opening their
eyes ; which, being once fully done, they
would have a chance of being themselves
original. Meanwhile, recollecting that
nothing wras ever yet done which some
one was not the first to do, and that all
good things which exist are the fruits of
originality, let them be modest enough
to believe that there is something still
left for it to accomplish, and assure
themselves that they are more in need
of originality the less they are conscious
of the want.
In sober truth, whatever homage may
be professed, or even paid, to real or
supposed mental superiority, the general
tendency of things throughout the world
is to render mediocrity the ascendant
�54
ON LIBERTY
power among mankind. In ancient
history, in the Middle Ages, and in a
diminishing degree through the long
transition from feudality to the present
time, the individual was a power in him
self; and if he had either great talents
or a high social position, he was a con
siderable power. At present individuals
are lost in the crowd. In politics it is
almost a triviality to say that public
opinion now rules the world. The only
power deserving the name is that of
masses, and of governments while they
make themselves the organ of the
tendencies and instincts of masses. This
is as true in the moral and social rela
tions of private life as in public tran
sactions. Those whose opinions go by
the name of public opinion are not
always the same sort of public; in
America they are the whole white
population; in England, chiefly the
middle class. But they are always a
mass—that is to say, collective medi
ocrity. And, what is a still greater
novelty, the mass do not now take their
opinions from dignitaries in Church or
State, from ostensible leaders, or from
books. Their thinking is done for
them by men much like themselves,
addressing them or speaking in their
name, on the spur of the moment,
through the newspapers. I am not com
plaining of all this. I do not assert
that anything better is compatible, as
a general rule, with the present low
state of the human mind. But that
does not hinder the government of
mediocrity from being mediocre govern
ment. No government by a democracy
or a numerous aristocracy, either in
its political acts or in the opinions,
qualities, and tone of mind which it
fosters, ever did or could rise above
mediocrity, except in so far as the
sovereign Many have let themselves be
guided (which, in their best times, they
always have done) by the counsels and
influence of a more highly gifted and
instructed One or Few. The initiation
of all wise or noble things comes, and
must come, from individuals; generally
at first from some one individual.
The honour and glory of the average
man is that he is capable of following
that initiative; that he can respond
internally to wise and noble things, and
be led to them with his eyes open.
I am not countenancing the sort of
“ hero-worship ” which applauds the
strong man of genius for forcibly seizing
on the government of the world and
making it do his bidding in spite of
itself. All he can claim is freedom to
point out the way. The power of com
pelling others into it is not only incon
sistent with the freedom and develop
ment of all the rest, but corrupting to
the strong man himself. It does seem,
however, that when the opinions of
masses of merely average men are
everywhere become or becoming the
dominant power, the counterpoise and
corrective to that tendency would be
the more and more pronounced indi
viduality of those who stand on the
higher eminences of thought. It is in
these circumstances most especially that
exceptional individuals, instead of being
deterred, should be encouraged in
acting differently from the mass. In
other times there was no advantage in
their doing so, unless they acted not
only differently, but better. In this
age the mere example of non-con
formity, the mere refusal to bend the
knee to custom, is itself a service.
Precisely because a tyranny of opinion
is such as to make eccentricity a
reproach, it is desirable, in order
�OF INDIVIDUALITY, AS ONE OF THE ELEMENTS OF WELL-BEING 55
to break through that tyranny, that one model. But different persons also
people should be eccentric. Eccentricity require different conditions for their
has always abounded when and where spiritual development, and can no more
strength of character has abounded ; and exist healthily in the same moral than
the amount of eccentricity in a society all the variety of plants can in the same
has generally been proportional to the physical, atmosphere and climate. The
amount of genius, mental vigour, and same things which are helps to one
moral courage it contained. That so person towards the cultivation of his
few now dare to be eccentric marks the higher nature are hindrances to another.
The same mode of life is a healthy
chief danger of the time.
I have said that it is important to give excitement to one, keeping all his faculties
the freest scope possible to uncustomary of action and enjoyment in their best
things, in order that it may in time order, while to another it is a distracting
appear which of these are fit to be con burthen, which suspends or crushes all
verted into customs. But independence internal life. Such are the differences
of action and disregard of custom are among human beings in their sources of
not solely deserving of encouragement pleasure, their susceptibilities of pain,
for the chance they afford that better and the operation on them of different
modes of action, and customs more physical and moral agencies, that, unless
worthy of general adoption, may be there is a corresponding diversity in their
struck out; nor is it only persons of modes of life, they neither obtain their
decided mental superiority who have a fair share of happiness nor grow up to
just claim to carry on their lives in their the mental, moral, and aesthetic stature
own way. There is no reason that all of which their nature is capable. Why,
human existence should be constructed then, should tolerance, as far as the
on some one or some small number of public sentiment is concerned, extend
patterns. If a person possesses any only to tastes and modes of life which
tolerable amount of common sense and extort acquiescence by the multitude of
experience, his own mode of laying out their adherents ? Nowhere (except in
his existence is the best, not because it some monastic institutions) is diversity
is the best in itself, but because it is of taste entirely unrecognised; a person
his own mode. Human beings are not may, without blame, either like or dislike
like sheep; and even sheep are not rowing, or smoking, or music, or athletic
undistinguishably alike. A man cannot exercises, or chess, or cards, or study,
get a coat or a pair of boots to fit him because both those who like each of these
unless they are either made to his things and those who dislike them are
measure or he has a whole warehouseful too numerous to be put down. But the
to choose from; and is it easier to fit man, and still more the woman, who can
him with a life than with a coat, or are be accused either of doing “ what nobody
human beings more like one another in does,” or of not doing “ what everybody
their whole physical and spiritual con does,” is the subject of as much depre
formation than in the shape of their feet? ciatory remark as if he or she had com
If it were only that people have diver mitted some grave moral delinquency.
sities of taste, that is reason enough for Persons require to possess a title, or
not attempting to shape them all after some other badge of rank, or of the
�56
ON LIBERTY
consideration of people of rank, to be able
to indulge somewhat in the luxury of
doing as they like without detriment to
their estimation. To indulge somewhat,
I repeat; for whoever allow themselves
much of that indulgence incur the risk
of something worse than disparaging
speeches—they are in peril of a com
mission de lunatico, and of having their
property taken from them and given to
their relations.1
There is one characteristic of the
present direction of public opinion,
1 There is something both contemptible and
frightful in the sort of evidence on which, of late
years, any person can be judicially declared unfit
for the management of his affairs ; and after his
death his disposal of his property can be set
aside, if there is enough of it to pay the expenses
of litigation—which are charged on the property
itself. All the minute details of his daily life
are pried into, and whatever is found which,
seen through the medium of the perceiving and
describing faculties of the lowest of the low,
bears an appearance unlike absolute common
place, is laid before the jury as evidence of
insanity, and often with success; the jurors
being little, if at all, less vulgar and ignorant
than the witnesses; while the judges, with that
extraordinary want of knowledge of human
nature and life which continually astonishes us
in English lawyers, often help to mislead them.
These trials speak volumes as to the state of
feeling and opinion among the vulgar with regard
to human liberty. So far from setting any value
on individuality—so far from respecting the right
of each individual to act, in things indifferent, as
seems good to his own judgment and inclinations,
judges and juries cannot even conceive that a
person in a state of sanity can desire such
freedom. In former days, when it was proposed
to burn atheists, charitable people used to suggest
putting them in a madhouse instead : it would
be nothing surprising nowadays were we to see
this done, and the doers applauding themselves,
because, instead of persecuting for religion, they
had adopted so humane and Christian a mode
of treating these unfortunates, not without a
silent satisfaction at their having thereby obtained
their deserts.
peculiarly calculated to make it intole
rant of any marked demonstration of
individuality. The general average of
mankind are not only moderate in in
tellect, but also moderate in inclina
tions : they have no tastes or wishes
strong enough to incline them to do
anything unusual, and they consequently
do not understand those who have,
and class all such with the wild and
intemperate whom they are accustomed
to look down upon. Now, in addition
to this fact, which is general, we have
only to suppose that a strong move
ment has set in towards the improve
ment of morals, and it is evident what
we have to expect. In these days such
a movement has set in; much has
actually been effected in the way of
increased regularity of conduct, and
discouragement of excesses; and there
is a philanthropic spirit abroad, for
the exercise of wrhich there is no
more inviting field than the moral and
prudential improvement of our fellow
creatures.
These tendencies of the
times cause the public to be more dis
posed than at most former periods to
prescribe general rules of conduct, and
endeavour to make every one conform
to the approved standard. And that
standard, express or tacit, is to desire
nothing strongly. Its ideal of character
is to be without any marked character ;
to maim by compression, like a Chinese
lady’s foot, every part of human nature
which stands out prominently, and tends
to make the person markedly dissimilar
in outline to commonplace humanity.
As is usually the case with ideals
which exclude one-half of what is de
sirable, the present standard of appro
bation produces only an inferior imita
tion of the other half. Instead of great
energies guided by vigorous reason, and
�of Individuality, as one of the elements of well-being y
strong feelings strongly controlled by a
conscientious will, its result is weak feel
ings and weak energies, which therefore
can be kept in outward conformity to
rule without any strength either of will
or of reason. Already energetic char
acters on any large scale are becoming
merely traditional. There is now scarcely
any outlet for energy in this country
except business. The energy expended
in this may still be regarded as consider
able. What little is left from that
employment is expended on some hobby ;
which may be a useful, even a philan
thropic hobby, but is always some one
thing, and generally a thing of small
dimensions. The greatness of England
is now all collective : individually small,
we only appear capable of anything
great by our habit of combining; and
with this our moral and religious philan
thropists are perfectly contented. But
it was men of another stamp than this
that made England what it has been;
and men of another stamp will be needed
to prevent its decline.
The despotism of custom is every
where the standing hindrance to human
advancement, being in unceasing an
tagonism to that disposition to aim at
something better than customary, which
is called, according to circumstances,
the spirit of liberty, or that of progress
or improvement. The spirit of improve
ment is not always a spirit of liberty,
for it may aim at forcing improvements
on an unwilling people; and the spirit of
liberty, insofar as it resists such attempts,
may ally itself locally and temporarily
with the opponents of improvement;
but the only unfailing and permanent
source of improvement is liberty, since
by it there are as many possible indepen
dent centres of improvement as there are
individuals. The progressive principle,
however, in either shape, whether as the
love of liberty or of improvement, is
antagonistic to the sway of Custom,
involving at least emancipation from
that yoke; and the contest between the
two constitutes the chief interest of the
history of mankind. The greater part of
the world has, properly speaking, no
history, because the despotism of Custom
is complete. This is the case over the
whole East. Custom is there, in all
things, the final appeal; justice and right
mean conformity to custom; the argu
ment of custom no one, unless some
tyrant intoxicated with power, thinks of
resisting. And we see the result. Those
nations must once have had originality ;
they did not start out of the ground
populous, lettered, and versed in many of
the arts of life; they made themselves
all this, and were then the greatest and
most powerful nations of the world.
What are they now ? The subjects or
dependents of tribes whose forefathers
wandered in the forests when theirs had
magnificent palacesand gorgeous temples,
but over whom custom exercised only a
divided rule with liberty and progress.
A people, it appears, may be progressive
for a certain length of time, and then
stop: when does it stop? When it
ceases to possess individuality. If a
similar change should befall the nations
of Europe, it will not be in exactly the
same shape: the despotism of custom
with which these nations are threatened
is not precisely stationariness. It pro
scribes singularity, but it does not
preclude change, provided all change
together. We have discarded the fixed
costumes of our forefathers: everyone
must still dress like other people, but the
fashion may change once or twice a year.
We thus take care that, when there is a
change, it shall be for change’s sake, and
�58
ON LIBERTY
not from any idea of beauty or con
venience; for the same idea of beauty
or convenience would not strike all the
world at the same moment, and be
simultaneously thrown aside by all at
another moment. But we are progressive
as well as changeable : we continually
make new inventions in mechanical
things, and keep them until they are
again superseded by better; we are eager
for improvement in politics, in education,
even in morals, though in this last our
idea of improvement chiefly consists in
persuading or forcing other people to be
as good as ourselves. It is not progress
that we object to ; on the contrary, we
flatter ourselves that we are the most
progressive people who ever lived. It
is individuality that we war against:
we should think we had done wonders
if we had made ourselves all alike;
forgetting that the unlikeness of one
person to another is generally the first
thing which draws the attention of
either to the imperfection of his own
type, and the superiority of another, or
the possibility, by combining the ad
vantages of both, of producing some
thing better than either. We have a
warning example in China—a nation
of much talent, and, in some respects,
even wisdom, owing to the rare good
fortune of having been provided at an
early period with a particularly good
set of customs, the work, in some
measure, of men to whom even the most
enlightened European must accord,
under certain limitations, the title of sages
and philosophers. They are remark
able, too, in the excellence of their
apparatus for impressing, as far as pos
sible, the best wisdom they possess
upon every mind in the community,
and securing that those who have ap
propriated most of it shall occupy the
posts of honour and power. Surely the
people who did this have discovered
the secret of human progressiveness,
and must have kept themselves steadily
at the head of the movement of the
world. On the contrary, they have
become stationary—have remained so
for thousands of years ; and if they are
ever to be farther improved, it must be
by foreigners. They have succeeded
beyond all hope in what English philan
thropists are so industriously working at
—in making a people all alike, all
governing their thoughts and conduct by
the same maxims and rules; and these
are the fruits. The modern regime of
public opinion is, in an unorganised
form, what the Chinese educational and
political systems are in an organised; and
unless individuality shall be able success
fully to assert itself against this yoke,
Europe, notwithstanding its noble ante
cedents and its professed Christianity,
will tend to become another China.
What is it that has hitherto preserved
Europe from this lot ? What has made
the European family of nations an im
proving, instead of a stationary, portion
of mankind ? Not any superior excellence
in them, which, when it exists, exists as
the effect, not as the cause; but their
remarkable diversity of character and
culture. Individuals, classes, nations,
have been extremely unlike one another;
they have struck out a great variety of
paths, each leading to something valu
able ; and although at every period
those who travelled in different paths
have been intolerant of one another,
and each would have thought it an ex
cellent thing if all the rest could have
been compelled to travel his road, their
attempts to thwart each other’s develop
ment have rarely had any permanent
success, and each has in time endured
�OF INDIVIDUALITY, AS ONE OF THE ELEMENTS OF WELL-BEING 59
to receive the good which the others
have offered. Europe is, in my judg
ment, wholly indebted to this plurality
of paths for its progressive and manysided 'development.
But it already
begins to possess this benefit in a con
siderably less degree. It is decidedly
advancing towards the Chinese ideal of
making all people alike. M. de Toc
queville, in his last important work,
remarks how much more the French
men of the present day resemble one
another than did those even of the last
generation. The same remark might be
made of Englishmen in a far greater
degree. In a passage already quoted from
Wilhelm von Humboldt, he points out
two things as necessary conditions of
human development, because necessary
to render people unlike one another;
namely, freedom, and variety of situa
tions. The second of these two con
ditions is in this country every day
diminishing. The circumstances which
surround different classes and indivi
duals, and shape their characters, are
daily becoming more assimilated. For
merly, different ranks, different neigh
bourhoods, different trades and pro
fessions, lived in what might be called
different worlds; at present, to a great
degree in the same. Comparatively
speaking, they now read the same
things, listen to the same things, see
the same things, go to the same places,
have their hopes and fears directed
to the same objects, have the same
rights and liberties, and the same means
of asserting them. Great as are the
differences of position which remain,
they are nothing to those which have
ceased. And the assimilation is still
proceeding. All the political changes
of the age promote it, since they all
tend to raise the low and to lower
the high. Every extension of educa
tion promotes it, because education
brings people under common influences,
and gives them access to the general
stock of facts and sentiments. Improve
ment in the means of communication
promotes it, by bringing the inhabitants
of distant places into personal contact,
and keeping up a rapid flow of changes
of residence between one place and
another. The increase of commerce and
manufactures promotes it, by diffusing
more widely the advantages of easy
circumstances, and opening all objects
of ambition, even the highest, to general
competition, whereby the desire of rising
becomes no longer the character of a
particular class, but of all classes. A
more powerful agency than even all these,
in bringing about a general similarity
among mankind, is the complete estab
lishment, in this and other free coun
tries, of the ascendancy of public opinion
in the State. As the various social
eminences which enabled persons en
trenched on them to disregard the
opinion of the multitude gradually be
come levelled; as the very idea of
resisting the will of the public, when it
is positively known that they have a will,
disappears more and more from the
minds of practical politicians; there
ceases to be any social support for non
conformity—any substantive power in
society, which, itself opposed to the ascen
dancy of numbers, is interested in taking
under its protection opinions and tenden
cies at variance with those of the public.
The combination of all these causes
forms so great a mass of influences
hostile to individuality that it is not
easy to see how it can stand its ground.
It will do so with increasing difficulty,
unless the intelligent part of the public
can be made to feel its value—to see
�6o
ON LIBERTY
that it is good there should be differences,
even though not for the better; even
though, as it may appear to them, some
should be for the worse. If the claims
of individuality are ever to be asserted,
the time is now, while much is still
wanting to complete the enforced assimi
lation. It is only in the earlier stages
that any stand can be successfully made
against the encroachment. The demand
that all other people shall resemble our
selves grows by what it feeds on. If
resistance waits till life is reduced nearly
to one uniform type, all deviations from
that type will come to be considered
impious, immoral, even monstrous and
contrary to nature. Mankind speedily
become unable to conceive diversity,
when they have been for some time
unaccustomed to see it.
Chapter IV.
OF THE LIMITS TO THE AUTHORITY OF SOCIETY
OVER THE INDIVIDUAL
What, then, is the rightful limit to the
sovereignty of the individual over him
self? Where does the authority of
society begin ? How much of human
life should be assigned to individuality,
and how much to society ?
Each will receive its proper shape, if
each has that which more particularly
concerns it. To individuality should
belong the part of life in which it is
chiefly the individual that is interested;
to society, the part which chiefly interests
society.
Though society is not founded on a
contract, and though no good purpose is
answered by inventing a contract in order
to deduce social obligations from it, every
one who receives the protection of society
owes a return for the benefit, and the
fact of living in society renders it
indispensable that each should be bound
to observe a certain line of conduct towards
the rest. This conduct consists, first, in I
not injuring the interests of one another;
or rather certain interests, which, either
by express legal provision or by tacit
understanding, ought to be considered
as rights; and secondly, in each person’s
bearing his share (to be fixed on some
equitable principle) of the labours and
sacrifices incurred for defending the
society or its members from injury and
molestation. These conditions society
is justified in enforcing, at all costs to
those who endeavour to withhold fulfil
ment. Nor is this all that society may
do. The acts of an individual may be
hurtful to others, or wanting in due con
sideration for their welfare, without going
to the length of violating any of their
constituted rights. The offender may
then be justly punished by opinion,
though not by law. As soon as any part
of a person’s conduct affects prejudicially
the interests of others, society has jurisdiction over it, and the question whether
�OF LIMITS TO AUTHORITY OF SOCIETY OVER THE INDIVIDUAL 61
the general welfare will or will not be
promoted by interfering with it becomes
open to discussion. But there is no
room for entertaining any such question
when a person’s conduct affects the
interests of no persons besides himself,
or needs not affect them unless they like
(all the persons concerned being of full
age and the ordinary amount of under
standing). In all such cases there should
be perfect freedom, legal and social, to
do the action and stand the conse
quences.
It would be a great misunderstanding
of this doctrine to suppose that it is one
of selfish indifference, which pretends
that human beings have no business
with each other’s conduct in life, and
that they should not concern themselves
about the well-doing or well-being of one
another, unless their own interest is
involved. Instead of any diminution,
there is need of a great increase of
disinterested exertion to promote the
good of others. But disinterested bene
volence can find other instruments to
persuade people to their good than
whips and scourges, either of the literal
or the metaphorical sort. I am the last
person to undervalue the self-regarding
virtues; they are only second in impor
tance, if even second, to the social. It
is equally the business of education to
cultivate both. But even education
works by conviction and persuasion as
well as by compulsion, and it is by the
former only that, when the period of
education is passed, the self-regarding
virtues should be inculcated. Human
beings owe to each other help to dis
tinguish the better from the worse, and
encouragement to choose the former
and avoid the latter. They should be for
ever stimulating each other to increased
exercise of their higher faculties, and
increased direction of their feelings and
aims towards wise instead of foolish,
elevating instead of degrading, objects
and contemplations. But neither one
person, nor any number of persons, is
warranted in saying to another human
creature of ripe years that he shall not
do with his life for his own benefit what
he chooses to do with it. He is the
person most interested in his own well
being : the interest which any other
person, except in cases of strong personal
attachment, can have in it, is trifling,
compared with that which he himself
has; the interest which society has in
him individually (except as to his conduct
to others) is fractional, and altogether
indirect: while with respect to his own
feelings and circumstances, the most
ordinary man or woman has means of
knowledge immeasurably surpassing those
that can be possessed by anyone else.
The interference of society to overrule
his judgment and purposes in what only
regards himself must be grounded on
general presumptions; which may be
altogether wrong, and, even if right, are
as likely as not to be misapplied to indi
vidual cases, by persons no better
acquainted with the circumstances of
such cases than those are who look at
them merely from without. In this
department, therefore, of human affairs
individuality has its proper field of
action. In the conduct of human
beings towards one another it is neces
sary that general rules should for the
most part be observed, in order that
people may know what they have to
expect; but in each person’s own con
cerns his individual spontaneity is
entitled to free exercise. Considera
tions to aid his judgment, exhortations
to strengthen his will, may be offered to
him, even obtruded on him, by others;
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ON LIBERTY
but he himself is the final judge. All
errors which he is likely to commit
against advice and warning are far
outweighed by the evil of allowing
others to constrain him to what they
deem his good.
I do not mean that the feelings with
which a person is regarded by others
ought not to be in any way affected
by his self-regarding qualities or defi
ciencies. This is neither possible nor
desirable. If he is eminent in any of
the qualities which conduce to his own
good, he is, so far, a proper object of
admiration. He is so much the nearer
to the ideal perfection of human nature.
If he is grossly deficient in those qualities,
a sentiment the opposite of admiration
will follow. There is a degree of folly,
and a degree of what may be called
(though the phrase is not unobjection
able) lowness or depravation of taste,
which, though it cannot justify doing
harm to the person who manifests it,
renders him necessarily and properly a
subject of distaste, or, in extreme cases,
even of contempt: a person could not
have the opposite qualities in due
strength without entertaining these
feelings. Though doing no wrong to
anyone, a person may so act as to
compel us to judge him, and feel to him,
as a fool, or as a being of an inferior
order: and since this judgment and
feeling are a fact which he would prefer
to avoid, it is doing him a service to
warn him of it beforehand, as of any
other disagreeable consequence to which
he exposes himself. It would be well,
indeed, if this good office were much
more freely rendered than the common
notions of politeness at present permit,
and if one person could honestly point
out to another that he thinks him in fault,
without being considered unmannerly
or presuming. We have a right also, in
various ways, to act upon our unfavour
able opinion of anyone, not to the
oppression of his individuality, but in
the exercise of ours. We are not bound,
for example, to seek his society: we have
a right to avoid it (though not to parade
the avoidance), for we have a right to
choose the society most acceptable to us.
We have a right, and it may be our duty,
to caution others against him, if we think
his example or conversation likely to
have a pernicious effect on those with
whom he associates. We may give others
a preference over him in optional good
offices, except those which tend to his
improvement. In these various modes
a person may suffer very severe penalties
at the hands of others, for faults which
directly concern only himself; but he
suffers these penalties only insofar as they
are the natural, and, as it were, the
spontaneous, consequences of the faults
themselves, not because they are
purposely inflicted on him for the sake
of punishment. A person who shows
rashness, obstinacy, self-conceit—who
cannot live within moderate means—
who cannot, restrain himself from hurtful
indulgences — who pursues animal
pleasures at the expense of those of
feeling and intellect—must expect to be
lowered in the opinion of others, and to
have a less share of their favourable
sentiments; but of this he has no right
to complain, unless he has merited their
favour by special excellence in his social
relations, and has thus established a title
to their good offices, which is not
affected by his demerits towards himself.
What I contend for is that the incon
veniences which are strictly inseparable
from the unfavourable judgment of others
are the only ones to which a person
should ever be subjected for that portion
�OF LIMITS TO AUTHORITY OF SOCIETY OVER THE INDIVIDUAL 63
of his conduct and character which
concerns his own good, but which does
not affect the interests of others in their
relations with him. Acts injurious to
others require a totally different treat
ment. Encroachment on their rights;
infliction on them of any loss or damage
not justified by his own rights; falsehood
or duplicity in dealing with them; unfair
or ungenerous use of advantages over
them: even selfish abstinence from
defending them against injury—these
are fit objects of moral reprobation,
and, in grave cases, of moral retribution
and punishment. And not only these
acts, but the dispositions which lead to
them, are properly immoral, and fit
subjects of disapprobation, which may
rise to abhorrence. Cruelty of dis
position ; malice and ill-nature; that
most anti-social and odious of all
passions, envy; dissimulation and in
sincerity; irascibility on insufficient cause,
and resentment disproportioned to the
provocation; the love of domineering
over others; the desire to engross more
than one’s share of advantages (the
TrXeove^ta of the Greeks); the pride
which derives gratification from the
abasement of others; the egotism which
thinks self and its concerns more impor
tant than everything else, and decides all
doubtful questions in its own favour—
these are moral vices, and constitute a
bad and odious moral character : unlike
the self-regarding faults previously men
tioned, which are not properly immorali
ties, and, to whatever pitch they may be
carried, do not constitute wickedness.
They may be proofs of any amount of
folly, or want of personal dignity and
self-respect; but they are only a subject
of moral reprobation when they involve
a breach of duty to others, for whose
sake the individual is bound to have care
for himself. What are called duties to
ourselves are not socially obligatory,
unless circumstances render them at
the same time duties to others. The
term duty to oneself, when it means
anything more than prudence, means
self-respect or self-development; and
for none of these is anyone accountable
to his fellow-creatures, because for none
of them is it for the good of mankind
that he be held accountable to them.
The distinction between the loss of
consideration which a person may
rightly incur by defect of prudence or
of personal dignity, and the reproba
tion which is due to him for an offence
against the rights of others, is not a
merely nominal distinction. It makes
a vast difference both in our feelings
and in our conduct towards him, whether
he displeases us in things in which we
think we have a right to control him or
in things in which we know that we have
not. If he displeases us, we may express
our distaste, and we may stand aloof
from a person as well as from a thing
that displeases us; but we shall not,
therefore, feel called on to make his life
uncomfortable. We shall reflect that he
already bears, or will bear, the whole
penalty of his error; if he spoils his life
by mismanagement, we shall not, for
that reason, desire to spoil it still further :
instead of wishing to punish him, we
shall rather endeavour to alleviate his
punishment, by showing him how he
may avoid or cure the evils his conduct
tends to bring upon him. He may be
to us an object of pity, perhaps of
dislike, but not of anger or resentment;
we shall not treat him like an enemy of
society: the worst we shall think our
selves justified in doing is leaving him to
himself, if we do not interfere benevo
lently by showing interest or concern for
a
�64
ON LIBERTY
him. It is far otherwise if he has in
fringed the rules necessary for the
protection of his fellow-creatures, in
dividually or collectively.
The evil
consequences of his acts do not then fall
on himself, but on others; and society,
as the protector of all its members, must
retaliate on him; must inflict pain on
him for the express purpose of punish
ment, and must take care that it be
sufficiently severe. In the one case, he
is an offender at our bar, and we are
called on not only to sit in judgment on
him, but, in one shape or another, to
execute our own sentence; in the other
case, it is not our part to inflict any
suffering on him, except what may inci
dentally follow from our using the same
liberty in the regulation of our own
affairs which we allow to him in his.
The distinction here pointed out
between the part of a person’s life which
concerns only himself and that which
concerns others many persons will
refuse to admit. How (it may be asked)
can any part of the conduct of a member
of society be a matter of indifference to
the other members? No person is an
entirely isolated being; it is impossible
for a person to do anything seriously
or permanently hurtful to himself, with
out mischief reaching at least to his near
connections, and often far beyond them.
If he injures his property, he does harm
to those who directly or indirectly
derived support from it, and usually
diminishes, by a greater or less amount,
the general resources of the community.
If he deteriorates his bodily or mental
faculties, he not only brings evil upon all
who depended on him for any portion
of their happiness, but disqualifies him
self for rendering the services which he
owes to his fellow-creatures generally;
perhaps becomes a burthen on their
affection or benevolence; and, if such Iddff
conduct were very frequent, hardly any Lrir
offence that is committed would detract'fiori
more from the general sum of good. |.b’w
Finally, if by his vices or follies a person Lhcra
does no direct harm to others, he is,
nevertheless (it may be said), injurious ;>ire
by his example—and ought to be com ■■mi
pelled to control himself, for the sake of . to'■:Lthose whom the sight or knowledge of ‘Id?
his conduct might corrupt or mislead.
And even (it will be added) if the
consequences of misconduct could be
confined to the vicious or thoughtless
individual, ought society to abandon to
their own guidance those who are mani
festly unfit for it ? If protection against
themselves is confessedly due to children
and persons under age, is not society
equally bound to afford it to persons of
mature years who are equally incapable
of self-government? If gambling, or
drunkenness, or incontinence, or idle
ness, or uncleanliness, are as injurious
to happiness, and as great a hindrance
to improvement, as many or most of the
acts prohibited by law, why (it may be
asked) should not law, so far as is con
sistent with practicability and social
convenience, endeavour to repress these
also? And as a supplement to the
unavoidable imperfections of law, ought
b
not opinion at least to organise a
powerful police against these vices, and
visit rigidly with social penalties those
who are known to practise them ? There
is no question here (it may be said) about
restricting individuality, or impeding the
trial of new and original experiments in
living. The only things it is sought to
prevent are things which have been tried
and condemned from the beginning of
the world until now; things which experi
ence has shown not to be useful or
suitable to any person’s individuality.
�OF LIMITS TO AUTHORITY OF SOCIETY OVER THE INDIVIDUAL 65
There must be some length of time and
amount of experience after which a
moral or prudential truth may be
regarded as established; and it is merely
desired to prevent generation after
generation from falling over the same
precipice which has been fatal to their
predecessors.
I fully admit that the mischief which
a person does to himself may seriously
affect, both through their sympathies
and their interests, those nearly con
nected with him, and, in a minor degree,
society at large. When, by conduct of
this sort, a person is led to violate a
distinct and assignable obligation to
any other person or persons, the case
is taken out of the self-regarding class,
and becomes amenable to moral disap
probation in the proper sense of the
term. If, for example, a man, through
intemperance or extravagance, becomes
unable to pay his debts, or, having
undertaken the moral responsibility of a
family, becomes from the same cause
incapable of supporting or educating
them, he is deservedly reprobated, and
might be justly punished; but it is for
the breach of duty to his family or
creditors, not for the extravagance. If
the resources which ought to have been
devoted to them had been diverted
from them for the most prudent invest
ment, the moral culpability would have
been the same. George Barnwell
murdered his uncle to get money for
his mistress; but if he had done it to
set himself up in business, he would
equally have been hanged. Again, in
the frequent case of a man who causes
grief to his family by addiction to bad
habits, he deserves reproach for his
unkindness or ingratitude; but so he
may for cultivating habits not in them
selves vicious, if they are painful to
those with whom he passes his life, or
who from personal ties are dependent
on him for their comfort. Whoever fails
in the consideration generally due to the
interests and feelings of others, not
being compelled by some more impera
tive duty, or justified by allowable self
preference, is a subject of moral disap
probation for that failure, but not for the
cause of it, nor for the errors, merely
personal to himself, which may have
remotely led to it. In like manner,
when a person disables himself, by
conduct purely self-regarding, from the
performance of some definite duty
incumbent on him to the public, he is
guilty of a social offence. No person
ought to be punished simply for being
drunk; but a soldier or a policeman
should be punished for being drunk on
duty. Whenever, in short, there is a
definite damage, or a definite risk of
damage, either to an individual or to
the public, the case is taken out of the
province of liberty, and placed in that
of morality or law.
But with regard to the merely con
tingent, or, as it may be called, con
structive injury which a person causes
to society, by conduct which neither
violates any specific duty to the public
nor occasions perceptible hurt to any
assignable individual except himself,
the inconvenience is one which society
can afford to bear, for the sake of the
greater good of human freedom. If
grown persons are to be punished for
not taking proper care of themselves, I
would rather it were for their own sake,
than under pretence of preventing them
from impairing their capacity of render
ing to society benefits which society does
not pretend it has a right to exact. But
I cannot consent to argue the point as if
society had no means of bringing its
F
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ON LIBERTY
weaker members up to its ordinary
standard of rational conduct, except
waiting till they do something irrational,
and then punishing them, legally or
morally, for it. Society has had absolute
power over them during all the early
portion of their existence: it has had the
whole period of childhood and nonage
in which to try whether it could make
them capable of rational conduct in life.
The existing generation is master both of
the training and the entire circumstances
of the generation to come; it cannot
indeed make them perfectly wise and
good, because it is itself so lamentably
deficient in goodness and wisdom; and
its best efforts are not always, in individual
cases, its most successful ones; but it is
perfectly well able to make the rising
generation, as a whole, as good as, and a
little better than, itself. If society lets
any considerable number of its members
grow up mere children, incapable of
being acted on by rational consideration
of distant motives, society has itself to
blame for the consequences. Armed
not only with all the powers of education,
but with the ascendancy which the
authority of a received opinion always
exercises over the minds who are least
fitted to judge for themselves; and aided
by the natural penalties which cannot be
prevented from falling on those who incur
the distaste or the contempt of those who
know them ; let not society pretend that
it needs, besides all this, the power to
issue commands and enforce obedience
in the personal concerns of individuals,
in which, on all principles of justice and
policy, the decision Qught to rest with
those who are to abide the consequences.
Nor is there anything which tends more
to discredit and frustrate the better means
of influencing conduct than a resort to
the worse. If there be among those
whom it is attempted to coerce into
prudence or temperance any of the
material of which vigorous and inde
pendent characters are made, they will
infallibly rebel against the yoke. No
such person will ever feel that others
have a right to control him in his con
cerns, such as they have to prevent him
from injuring them in theirs; and it
easily comes to be considered a mark
of spirit and courage to fly in the face
of such usurped authority, and do with
ostentation the exact opposite of what it
enjoins; as in the fashion of grossness
which succeeded, in the time of Charles
II., to the fanatical moral intolerance of
the Puritans. With respect to what is
said of the necessity of protecting society
from the bad example set to others by
the vicious or the self-indulgent, it is
true that bad example may have a perni
cious effect, especially the example of
doing wrong to others with impunity to
the wrong-doer. But we are now speak
ing of conduct which, while it does no
wrong to others, is supposed to do great
harm to the agent himself; and I do
not see how those who believe this can
think otherwise than that the example,
on the whole, must be more salutary
than hurtful, since, if it displays the mis
conduct, it displays also the painful or
degrading consequences which, if the
conduct is justly censured, must be sup
posed to be in all or most cases attendant
on it.
But the strongest of all the arguments
against the interference of the public
with purely personal conduct is that,
when it does interfere, the odds are that
it interferes wrongly, and in the wrong
place. On questions of social morality, of
duty to others, the opinion of the public
—that is, of an overruling majority—•
though often wrong, is likely to be still
�OF LIMITS TO AUTHORITY OF SOCIETY OVER THE INDIVIDUAL
oftener right; because on such questions
they are only required to judge of their
own interests ; of the manner in which
some mode of conduct, if allowed to be
practised, would affect themselves. But
the opinion of a similar majority, imposed
as a law on the minority, on questions of
self-regarding conduct, is quite as likely
to be wrong as right; for in these cases
public opinion means, at the best, some
people’s opinion of what is good or bad
for other people ; while very often it does
not even mean that; the public, with the
most perfect indifference, passing over
the pleasure or convenience of those
whose conduct they censure, and con
sidering only their own preference.
There are many who consider as an
injury to themselves any conduct which
they have a distaste for, and resent it as
an outrage to their feelings; as a religious
bigot, when charged with disregarding
the religious feelings of others, has been
known to retort that they disregard his
feelings, by persisting in their abominable
worship or creed. But there is no parity
between the feeling of a person for his
own opinion and the feeling of another
who is offended at his holding it; no
more than between the desire of a thief
to take a purse and the desire of the
right owner to keep it. And a person’s
taste is as much his own peculiar concern
as his opinion or his purse. It is easy
for anyone to imagine an ideal public,
which leaves the freedom and choice of
individuals in all uncertain matters
undisturbed, and only requires them to
abstain from modes of conduct which
universal experience has condemned.
But where has there been seen a public
which set any such limit to its censorship?
or when does the public trouble itself
about universal experience ? In its inter
ferences with personal conduct it is
67
seldom thinking of anything but the
enormity of acting or feeling differently
from itself; and this standard of judg
ment, thinly disguised, is held up to
mankind as the dictate of religion and
philosophy by nine-tenths of all moralists
and speculative writers. These teach
that things are right because they are
right; because we feel them to be so.
They tell us to search in our own minds
and hearts for laws of conduct binding
on ourselves and on all others. What
can the poor public do but apply these
instructions, and make their own personal
feelings of good and evil, if they are
tolerably unanimous in them, obligatory
on all the world ?
The evil here pointed out is not one
which exists only in theory; and it may,
perhaps, be expected that I should
specify the instances in which the public
of this age and country improperly
invests its own preferences with the
character of moral laws. I am not
writing an essay on the aberrations of
existing moral feeling. That is too
weighty a subject to be discussed paren
thetically, and by way of illustration.
Yet examples are necessary, to show that
the principle I maintain is of serious and
practical moment, and that I am not
endeavouring to erect a barrier against
imaginary evils. And it is not difficult
to show, by abundant instances, that to
extend the bounds of what may be called
moral police, until it encroaches on the
most unquestionably legitimate liberty
of the individual, is one of the most
universal of all human propensities.
As a first instance, consider the anti
pathies which men cherish on no better
grounds than that persons whose religious
opinions are different from theirs do not
practise their religious observances,
especially their religious abstinences. To
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ON LIBERTY
cite a rather trivial example, nothing in the
creed or practice of Christians does more
to envenom the hatred of Mohamme
dans against them than the fact of their
eating pork. There are few acts which
Christians and Europeans regard with
more unaffected disgust than Mussulmans
regard this particular mode of satisfying
hunger. It is, in the first place, an
offence against their religion; but this
circumstance by no means explains
either the degree or the kind of their
repugnance; for wine also is forbidden
by their religion, and to partake of it
is by all Mussulmans accounted wrong,
but not disgusting. Their aversion to
the flesh of the “ unclean beast ” is, on
the contrary, of that peculiar character
resembling an instinctive antipathy which
the idea of uncleanness, when once it
thoroughly sinks into the feelings, seems
always to excite even in those whose
personal habits are anything but scrupu
lously cleanly, and of which the senti
ment of religious impurity, so intense in
the Hindoos, is a remarkable example.
Suppose, now, that in a people of whom
the majority were Mussulmans, that
majority should insist upon not per
mitting pork to be eaten within the
limits of the country. This would be
nothing new in Mohammedan countries.1
Would it be a legitimate exercise of the
moral authority of public opinion? and
if not, why not ? The practice is really
1 The case of the Bombay Parsees is a curious
instance in point. When this industrious and
enterprising tribe, the descendants of the Persian
fire-worshippers, flying from their native country
before the Caliphs, arrived in Western India,
they were admitted to toleration by the Hindoo
sovereigns, on condition of not eating beef.
When those regions afterwards fell under the
dominion of Mohammedan conquerors, the Parsees
obtained from them a continuance of indulgence,
on condition of refraining from pork. What was
revolting to such a public. They also
sincerely think that it is forbidden and
abhorred by the Deity. Neither could
the prohibition be censured as religious
persecution. It might be religious in its
origin ; but it would not be persecution
for religion, since nobody’s religion makes
it a duty to eat pork. The only tenable
ground of condemnation would be that
with the personal tastes and self-regarding
concerns of individuals the public has
no business to interfere.
To come somewhat nearer home : the
majority of Spaniards consider it a gross
impiety, offensive in the highest degree
to the Supreme Being, to worship him
in any other manner than the Roman
Catholic; and no other public worship
is lawful on Spanish soil. The people of
all Southern Europe look upon a married
clergy as not only irreligious, but un
chaste, indecent, gross, disgusting. What
do Protestants think of these perfectly
sincere feelings, and of the attempt to
enforce them against non-Catholics ?
Yet, if mankind are justified in inter
fering with each other’s liberty in things
which do not concern the interests of
others, on what principle is it possible
consistently to exclude these cases? or
who can blame people for desiring to
suppress what they regard as a scandal
in the sight of God and man? No
stronger case can be shown for prohibit
ing anything which is regarded as a
personal immorality than is made out
for suppressing these practices in the
eyes of those who regard them as im
pieties ; and unless we are willing to
at first obedience to authority became a second
nature, and the Parsees to this day abstain both
from beef and pork. Though not required by
their religion, the double abstinence has had
time to grow into a custom of their tribe—and
custom in the East is a religion.
�OF LIMITS TO AUTHORITY OF SOCIETY OVER THE INDIVIDUAL Gg
adopt the logic of persecutors, and to say
that we may persecute others because we
are right, and that they must not persecute
us because they are wrong, we must
beware of admitting a principle of which
we should resent as a gross injustice the
application to ourselves.
The preceding instances may be ob
jected to, although unreasonably, as
drawn from contingencies impossible
among us : opinion, in this country, not
being likely to enforce abstinence from
meats, or to interfere with people for
worshipping, and for either marrying or
not marrying, according to their creed or
inclination. The next example, however,
shall be taken from an interference with
liberty which we have by no means
passed all danger of. Wherever the
Puritans have been sufficiently powerful,
as in New England, and in Great Britain
at the time of the Commonwealth, they
have endeavoured, with considerable
success, to put down all public, and
nearly all private, amusements: especially
music, dancing, public games, or other
assemblages for purposes of diversion,
and the theatre. There are still in this
country large bodies of persons by whose
notions of morality and religion these
recreations are condemned; and those
persons belonging chiefly to the middle
class, who are the ascendant power in
the present social and political condition
of the kingdom, it is by no means im
possible that persons of these sentiments
may at some time or other command a
majority in Parliament. How will the
remaining portion of the community like
to have the amusements that shall be
permitted to them regulated by the reli
gious and moral sentiments of the stricter
Calvinists and Methodists? Would they
not, with considerable peremptoriness,
desire these intrusively pious members of
society to mind their own business ?
This is precisely what should be said to
every Government and every public who
have the pretension that no person shall
enjoy any pleasure which they think
wrong. But if the principle of the pre
tension be admitted, no one can reason
ably object to its being acted on in the
sense of the majority, or other prepon
derating power in the country; and all
persons must be ready to conform to the
idea of a Christian commonwealth, as
understood by the early settlers in New
England, if a religious profession similar
to theirs should ever succeed in regaining
its lost ground, as religions supposed to be
declining have so often been known to do.
To imagine another contingency, per
haps more likely to be realised than the
one last mentioned. There is confessedly
a strong tendency in the modern world
towards a democratic constitution of
society, accompanied or not by popular
political institutions. It is affirmed that
in the country where this tendency ismost completely realised—where both
society and the Government are most
democratic—the United States—the feel
ing of the majority, to whom any appear
ance of a more showy or costly style of
living than they can hope to rival is dis
agreeable, operates as a tolerably effectual
sumptuary law, and that in many parts
of the Union it is really difficult for a
person possessing a very large income
to find any mode of spending it which
will not incur popular disapprobation.
Though such statements as these are
doubtless much exaggerated as a repre
sentation of existing facts, the state of
things they describe is not only a con
ceivable and possible, but a probable,
result of democratic feeling, combined
with the notion that the public has a
right to a veto on the manner in which
�7°
ON LIBERTY
individuals shall spend their incomes.
We have only further to suppose a con
siderable diffusion of Socialist opinions,
and it may become infamous in the eyes
of the majority to possess more property
than some very small amount, or any
income not earned by manual labour.
Opinions similar in principle to these
already prevail widely among the artisan
class, and weigh oppressively on those
who are amenable to the opinion chiefly
of that class—namely, its own members.
It is known that the bad workmen, who
form the majority of the operatives in
many branches of industry, are decidedly
of opinion that bad workmen ought to
receive the same wages as good, and that
no one ought to be allowed, through
piecework or otherwise, to earn by supe
rior skill or industry more than others
■ can without it. And they employ a
moral police which occasionally becomes
. a physical one, to deter skilful workmen
from receiving, and employers from
giving, a larger remuneration for a more
useful service. If the public have any
jurisdiction over private concerns, I
cannot see that these people are in fault,
or that any individual’s particular public
can be blamed for asserting the same
authority over his individual conduct
which the general public asserts over
people in general.
But, without dwelling upon suppositi
tious cases, there are, in our own day,
gross usurpations upon the liberty of
private life actually practised, and still
greater ones threatened with some expec
tation of success, and opinions pro
pounded which assert an unlimited right
in the public not only to prohibit by law
everything which it thinks wrong, but, in
order to get at what it thinks wrong, to
prohibit a number of things which it
admits to be innocent.
Under the name of preventing in
temperance, the people of one English
colony, and of nearly half the United
States, have been interdicted by law from
making any use whatever of fermented
drinks, except for medical purposes : for
prohibition of their sale is in fact, as it is
intended to be, prohibition of their use.
And though the impracticability of
executing the law has caused its repeal
in several of the States which had
adopted it, including the one from which
it derives its name, an attempt has not
withstanding been commenced, and is
prosecuted with considerable zeal by
many of the professed philanthropists, to
agitate for a similar law in this country.
The association, or “Alliance” as it
terms itself, which has been formed for
this purpose, has acquired some notoriety
through the publicity given to a corres
pondence between its secretary and one
of the very few English public men who
hold that a politician’s opinions ought to
be founded on principles. Lord Stanley’s
share in this correspondence is cal
culated to strengthen the hopes already
built on him by those who know how
rare such qualities as are manifested in
some of his public appearances un
happily are among those who figure in
political life. The organ of the Alliance,
who would “ deeply deplore the recog
nition of any principle which could be
wrested to justify bigotry and persecu
tion,” undertakes to point out the “broad
and impassable barrier ” which divides
such principles from those of the associa
tion. “All matters relating to thought,
opinion, conscience, appear to me,” he
says, “to be without the sphere of legis
lation ; all pertaining to social act, habit,
relation, subject only to a discretionary
power vested in the State itself, and not
in the individual, to be within it.” No
�OF LIMITS TO AUTHORITY OF SOCIETY OVER THE INDIVIDUAL 71
mention is made of a third class, different
from either of these—viz., acts and habits
which are not social, but individual;
although it is to this class, surely, that
the act of drinking fermented liquors
belongs.
Selling fermented liquors,
however, is trading, and trading is a
social act. But the infringement com
plained of is not on the liberty of the
seller, but on that of the buyer and
consumer; since the State might just
as well forbid him to drink wine as
purposely make it impossible for him
to obtain it. The secretary, however,
says : “ I claim, as a citizen, a right to
legislate whenever my social rights are
invaded by the social act of another.”
And now for the definition of these
“ social rights.” “ If anything invades
my social rights, certainly the traffic
in strong drink does. It destroys my
primary right of security, by constantly
creating and stimulating social disorder.
It invades my right of equality, by
deriving a profit from the creation of a
misery I am taxed to support. It
impedes my right to free moral and
intellectual development, by surrounding
my path with dangers, and by weakening
and demoralising society, from which I
have a right to claim mutual aid and
intercourse.” A theory of ‘‘ social rights ”
the like of which probably never before
found its way into distinct language:
being nothing short of this—that it is
the absolute social right of every indi
vidual that every other individual shall
act in every respect exactly as he ought;
that, whosoever fails thereof in the
smallest particular, violates my social
right, and entitles me to demand from
the legislature the removal of the griev
ance. So monstrous a principle is far
more dangerous than any single inter
ference with liberty; there is no violation
of liberty which it would not justify ;
it acknowledges no right to any freedom
whatever, except perhaps to that of
holding opinions in secret, without ever
disclosing them: for, the moment an
opinion which I consider noxious passes
anyone’s lips, it invades all the “social
rights ” attributed to me by the Alliance.
The doctrine ascribes to all mankind a
vested interest in each other’s moral,
intellectual, and even physical perfection,
to be defined by each claimant according
to his own standard.
Another important example of ille
gitimate interference with the rightful
liberty of the individual, not simply
threatened, but long since carried into
triumphant effect, is Sabbatarian legisla
tion. Without doubt, abstinence on
one day in the week, so far as the
exigencies of life permit, from the usual
daily occupation, though in no respect
religiously binding on any except Jews,
is a highly beneficial custom. And
inasmuch as this custom cannot be ob
served without a general consent to that
effect among the industrious classes,
therefore, in so far as some persons by
working may impose the same neces
sity on others, it may be allowable and
right that the law should guarantee to
each the observance by others of the
custom, by suspending the greater opera
tions of industry on a particular day.
But this justification, grounded on the
direct interest which others have in each
individual’s observance of the practice,
does not apply to the self-chosen occupa
tions in which a person may think fit to
employ his leisure; nor does it hold good
in the smallest degree for legal restric
tions on amusements. It is true that the
amusement of some is the day’s work of
others; but the pleasure, not to say the
useful recreation, of many is worth the
�72
ON LIBERTY
labour of a few, provided the occupa
tion is freely chosen and can be freely
resigned. The operatives are perfectly
right in thinking that, if all worked on
Sunday, seven days’ work would have to
be given for six days’ wages; but so long
as the great mass of employments are
suspended, the small number who for the
enjoyment of others must still work obtain
a proportional increase of earnings; and
they are not obliged to follow those
occupations if they prefer leisure to
emolument.
If a further remedy is
sought, it might be found in the estab
lishment by custom of a holiday on
some other day of the week for those
particular classes of persons. The only
ground, therefore, on which restrictions
on Sunday amusements can be defended
must be that they are religiously wrong—
a motive of legislation which can never be
too earnestly protested against. Deorum
injuria Diis cura. It remains to be
proved that society or any of its officers
holds a commission from on high to
avenge any supposed offence to Omni
potence which is not also a wrong to
our fellow-creatures. The notion that it
is one man’s duty that another should
be religious was the foundation of all
the religious persecutions ever perpe
trated, and, if admitted, would fully
justify them. Though the feeling which
breaks out in the repeated attempts to
stop railway travelling on Sunday, in the
resistance to the opening of museums,
and the like, has not the cruelty of the
old persecutors, the state of mind indi
cated by it is fundamentally the same.
It is a determination not to tolerate
others in doing what is permitted by
their religion, because it is not permitted
by the persecutor’s religion. It is a
belief that God not only abominates
the act of the misbeliever, but will
not hold us guiltless if we leave him
unmolested.
I cannot refrain from adding to these
examples of the little account commonly
made of human liberty the language of
downright persecution which breaks out
from the press of this country whenever
it feels called on to notice the remarkable
phenomenon of Mormonism. Much
might be said on the unexpected and
instructive fact that an alleged new
revelation, and a religion founded on it,
the product of palpable imposture, not
even supported by the prestige of extra
ordinary qualities in its founder, is be
lieved by hundreds of thousands, and has
been made the foundation of a society,
in the age of newspapers, railways, and
the electric telegraph. What here con
cerns us is that this religion, like other
and better religions, has its martyrs; that
its prophet and founder was for his
teaching put to death by a mob; that
others of its adherents lost their lives by
the same lawless violence; that they
were forcibly expelled in a body from
the country in which they first grew up ;
while, now that they have been chased
into a solitary recess in the midst of a
desert, many in this country openly
declare that it would be right (only that
it is not convenient) to send an expedi
tion against them, and compel them by
force to conform to the opinions of other
people. The article of the Mormonite
doctrine which is the chief provocative
to the antipathy which thus breaks
through the ordinary restraints of reli
gious tolerance is its sanction of poly
gamy; which, though permitted to
Mohammedans, and Hindoos, and
Chinese, seems to excite unquenchable
animosity when practised by persons
who speak English, and profess to be
a kind of Christians. No one has a
�OF LIMITS TO AUTHORITY OF SOCIETY OVER THE INDIVIDUAL 73
deeper disapprobation than I have of
this Mormon institution; both for other
reasons and because, far-from being in
any way countenanced by the principle
of liberty, it is a direct infraction of
that principle, being a mere riveting
of the chains of one half of the com
munity, and an emancipation of the
other from reciprocity of obligation
towards them. Still, it must be
remembered that this relation is as
much voluntary on the part of the
women concerned in it, and who may be
deemed the sufferers by it, as is the
case with any other form of the marriage
institution; and, however surprising this
fact may appear, it has its explanation
in the common ideas and customs of
the world, which, teaching women to
think marriage the one thing needful,
make it intelligible that many a woman
should prefer being one of several wives
to not being a wife at all. Other
countries are not asked to recognise
such unions, or release any portion of
their inhabitants from their own laws
on the score of Mormonite opinions.
But when the dissentients have con
ceded to the hostile sentiments of others
far more than could justly be demanded ;
when they have left the countries to
which their doctrines were unacceptable,
and established themselves in a remote
corner of the earth which they have
been the first to render habitable to
human beings; it is difficult to see on
what principles but those of tyranny
they can be prevented from living
there under what laws they please,
provided they commit no aggression
on other nations, and allow perfect
freedom of departure to those who are
dissatisfied with their ways. A recent
writer, in some respects of considerable
merit, proposes (to use his own words)
not a crusade, but a civilisade, against
this polygamous community, to put an
end to what seems to him a retrograde
step in civilisation. It also appears so
to me, but I am not aware that any
community has a right to force another
to be civilised. So long as the sufferers
by the bad law do not invoke assistance
from other communities, I cannot admit
that persons entirely unconnected with
them ought to step in and require that
a condition of things with which all who
are directly interested appear to be satis
fied should be put an end to because it
is a scandal to persons some thousands
of miles distant, who have no part or
concern in it. Let them send mission
aries, if they please, to preach against it;
and let them, by any fair means (of
which silencing the teachers is not one),
oppose the progress of similar doctrines
among their own people. If civilisation
has got the better of barbarism when
barbarism had the world to itself, it is
too much to profess to be afraid lest
barbarism, after having been fairly got
under, should revive and conquer civili
sation. A civilisation that can thus
succumb to its vanquished enemy must
first have become so degenerate that
neither its appointed priests and teachers
nor anybody else has the capacity, or
will take the trouble, to stand up for it.
If this be so, the sooner such a civilisa
tion receives notice to quit the better.
It can only go on from bad to worse,
until destroyed and regenerated (like
the Western Empire) by energetic bar
barians.
�74
ON LIBERTY
Chapter V.
APPLICATIONS
The principles asserted in these pages
must be more generally admitted as the
basis for discussion of details, before a
consistent application of them to all the
various departments of government and
morals can be attempted with any pros
pect of advantage. The few observations
I propose to make on questions of detail
are designed to illustrate the principles,
rather than to follow them out to their
consequences. I offer, not so much
applications, as specimens of application;
which may serve to bring into greater
clearness the meaning and limits of the
two maxims which together form the
entire doctrine of this Essay, and to
assist the judgment in holding the
balance between them, in the cases
where it appears doubtful which of them
is applicable to the case.
The maxims are, first, that the indi
vidual is not accountable to society for
his actions, in so far as these concern
the interests of no person but himself.
Advice, instruction, persuasion, and
avoidance by other people, if thought
necessary by them for their own good,
are the only measures by which society
can justifiably express its dislike or dis
approbation of his conduct. Secondly,
that, for such actions as are prejudicial to
the interests of others, the individual is
accountable, and may be subjected either
to social or to legal punishment, if society
is of opinion that the one or the other is
requisite for its protection.
In the first place, it must by no means
be supposed, because damage, or proba
bility of damage, to the interests of others
can alone justify the interference of
society, that therefore it always does
justify such interference. In many cases
an individual, in pursuing a legitimate
object, necessarily, and therefore legiti
mately, causes pain or loss to others, or
intercepts a good which they had a
reasonable hope of obtaining. Such oppo
sitions of interest between individuals
often arise from bad social institutions,
but are unavoidable while those institu
tions last; and some would be unavoid
able under any institutions. Whoever
succeeds in an overcrowded profession,
or in a competitive examination; whoever
is preferred to another in any contest for
an object which both desire, reaps benefit
from the loss of others, from their wasted
exertion and their disappointment. But
it is, by common admission, better for the
general interest of mankind that persons
should pursue their objects undeterred
by this sort of consequences. In other
words, society admits no right, either
legal or moral, in the disappointed com
petitors, to immunity from this kind of
suffering; and feels called on to interfere
only when means of success have been
employed which it is contrary to the
general interest to permit—namely, fraud
or treachery, and force.
Again, trade is a social act. Whoever
undertakes to sell any description of
goods to the public does what affects
the interest of other persons, and of
society in general; and thus his conduct,
in principle, comes within the jurisdiction
�APPLICATIONS
of society : accordingly, it was once held
to be the duty of governments, in all cases
which were considered of importance, to
fix prices and regulate the processes of
manufacture. But it is now recognised,
though not till after a long struggle, that
both the cheapness and the good quality
of commodities are most effectually pro
vided for by leaving the producers and
sellers perfectly free, under the sole check
of equal freedom to the buyers for sup
plying themselves elsewhere. This is the
so-called doctrine of Free Trade, which
rests on grounds different from, though
equally solid with, the principle of indi
vidual liberty asserted in this Essay.
Restrictions on trade, or on production
for purposes of trade, are indeed re
straints ; and all restraint, qua restraint,
is an evil: but the restraints in question
affect only that part of conduct which
society is competent to restrain, and are
wrong solely because they do not really
produce the results which it is desired to,
produce by them. As the principle of
individual liberty is not involved in the
doctrine of Free Trade, so neither is it in
most of the questions which arise respect
ing the limits of that doctrine; as, for
example, what amount of public control
is admissible for the prevention of fraud
by adulteration; how far sanitary pre
cautions, or arrangements to protect
workpeople employed in dangerous occu
pations, should be enforced on employers.
Such questions involve considerations of
liberty, only in so far as leaving people to
themselves is always better, caterisparibus,
than controlling them; but that they
may be legitimately controlled for these
ends is in principle undeniable. On the
other hand, there are questions relating
to interference with trade which are
essentially questions of liberty ; such as
the Maine Law, already touched upon ;
75
the prohibition of the importation of
opium into China; the restriction of the
sale of poisons ; all cases, in short, where
the object of the interference is to make
it impossible or difficult to obtain a
particular commodity. These interfer
ences are objectionable, not as infringe
ments on the liberty of the producer or
seller, but on that of the buyer.
One of these examples, that of the
sale of poisons, opens a new question;
the proper limits of what may be called
the functions of police ; how far liberty
may legitimately be invaded for the
prevention of crime, or of accident. It
is one of the undisputed functions of
government to take precautions against
crime before it has been committed, as
well as to detect and punish it afterwards.
The preventive function of government,.
however, is far more liable to be abused,
to the prejudice of liberty, than the
punitory function; for there is hardly
any part of the legitimate freedom of
action of a human being which would
not admit of being represented, and
fairly too, as increasing the facilities
for some form or other of delinquency.
Nevertheless, if a public authority, or
even a private person, sees anyone
evidently preparing to commit a crime,
they are not bound to look on inactive
until the crime is committed, but may
interfere to prevent it. If poisons were
never bought or used for any purpose
except the commission of murder, it would
be right to prohibit their manufacture and
sale. They may, however, be wanted
not only for innocent but for useful
purposes, and restrictions cannot be
imposed in the one case without operat
ing in the other. Again, it is a proper
office of public authority to guard against
accidents. If either a public officer or
any one else saw a person attempting to
�76
ON LIBERTY
cross a bridge which had been ascertained
to be unsafe, and there were no time to
warn him of his danger, they might seize
him and turn him back, without any real
infringement of his liberty; for liberty
consists in doing what one desires, and
he does not desire to fall into the river.
Nevertheless, when there is not a cer
tainty, but only a danger of mischief, no
one but the person himself can judge of
the sufficiency of the motive which may
prompt him to incur the risk: in this
case, therefore (unless he is a child, or
delirious, or in some state of excitement
or absorption incompatible with the full
use of the reflecting faculty), he ought,
.1 conceive, to be only warned of the
danger, not forcibly prevented from
exposing himself to it. Similar con
siderations, applied to such a question
as the sale of poisons, may enable us to
decide which among the possible modes
of regulation are or are not contrary to
principle. Such a precaution, for ex
ample, as that of labelling the drug with
some word expressive of its dangerous
character may be enforced without
violation of liberty: the buyer cannot
wish not to know that the thing he
possesses has poisonous qualities. But
to require in all cases the certificate of
a medical practitioner would make it
sometimes impossible, always expensive,
to obtain the article for legitimate uses.
The only mode apparent to me, in which
difficulties may be thrown in the way
of crime committed through this means,
without any infringement, worth taking
into account, upon the liberty of those
who desire the poisonous substance for
other purposes, consists in providing
what, in the apt language of Bentham,
is called “preappointed evidence.” This
provision is familiar to every one in
the case of contracts. It is usual and i
right that the law, when a contract is
entered into, should require, as the con
dition of its enforcing performance, that
certain formalities should be observed,
such as signatures, attestation of wit
nesses, and the like, in order that in case
of subsequent dispute there may be evi
dence to prove that the contract was really
entered into, and that there was nothing
in the circumstances to render it legally
invalid : the effect being to throw great
obstacles in the way of fictitious con
tracts, or contracts made in circumstances
which, if known, would destroy their
validity. Precautions of a similar nature
might be enforced in the sale of articles
adapted to be instruments of crime. The
seller, for example, might be required to
enter in a register the exact time of the
transaction, the name and address of the
buyer, the precise quality and quantity
sold; to ask the purpose for which it
was wanted, and record the answer he
received. When there was no medical
prescription, the presence of some third
persoh might be required, to bring home
the fact to the purchaser, in case there
should afterwards be reason to believe
that the article had been applied to
criminal purposes. Such regulations
would in general be no material impedi
ment to obtaining the article, but a very
considerable one to making an improper
use of it without detection.
The right inherent in society, to ward
off crimes against itself by antecedent
precautions, suggests the obvious limita
tions to the maxim, that purely self
regarding misconduct cannot properly
be meddled with in the way of preven
tion or punishment. Drunkenness, for
example, in ordinary cases is not a fit
subject for legislative interference; but I
should deem it perfectly legitimate that
a person who had once been convicted
�APPLICA PIONS
of any act of violence to others under
the influence of drink should be placed
under a special legal restriction, personal
to himself; that, if he were afterwards
found drunk, he should be liable to a
penalty, and that, if when in that state he
committed another offence, the punish
ment to which he would be liable for
that other offence should be increased in
severity. The making himself drunk, in
a person whom drunkenness excites to
do harm to others, is a crime against
others. So, again, idleness, except in a
person receiving support from the public,
or except when it constitutes a breach
of contract, cannot without tyranny be
made a subject of legal punishment; but
if, either from idleness or from any other
avoidable cause, a man fails to perform
his legal duties to others, as, for instance,
to support his children, it is no tyranny
to force him to fulfil that obligation by
compulsory labour if no other means are
available.
Again, there are many acts which,
being directly injurious only to the agents
themselves, ought not to be legally inter
dicted, but which, if done publicly, are a
violation of good manners, and, coming
thus within the category of . offences
against others, may rightly be prohibited.
Of this kind are offences against decency;
on which it is unnecessary to dwell, the
rather as they are only connected
indirectly with our subject, the objection
to publicity being equally strong in the
case of many actions not in themselves
condemnable, nor supposed to be so.
There is another question to which an
answer must be found, consistent with
the principles which have been laid down.
In cases of personal conduct supposed
to be blameable, but which respect for
liberty precludes society from preventing
or punishing, because the evil directly '
77
resulting falls wholly on the agent; what
the agent is free to do, ought other
persons to be equally free to counsel or
instigate ? This question is not free
from difficulty. The case of a person
who solicits another to do an act is not
strictly a case of self-regarding conduct.
To give advice or offer inducements to
anyone is a social act, and may, therefore,
like actions in general which affect others,
be supposed amenable to social control.
But a little reflection corrects the first
impression, by showing that, if the case
is not strictly within the definition of
individual liberty, yet the reasons on
which the principle of individual liberty
is grounded are applicable to it. If
people must be allowed, in whatever
concerns only themselves, to act as
seems best to themselves, at their own
peril, they must equally be free to con
sult with one another about what is fit
to be so done; to exchange opinions,
and give and receive suggestions. What
ever it is permitted to do, it must be
permitted to advise to do. The question
is doubtful only when the instigator
derives a personal benefit from his
advice; when he makes it his occupation,
for subsistence or pecuniary gain, to
promote what society and the State con
sider to be an evil. Then, indeed, a
new element of complication is intro
duced ; namely, the existence of classes
of persons with an interest opposed to
what is considered as the public weal,
and whose mode of living is grounded
on the counteraction of it. Ought this
to be interfered with, or not ? Fornica
tion, for example, must be tolerated, and
so must gambling; but should a person
be free to be a pimp, or to keep a
gambling-house ? The case is one of
those which lie on the exact boundary
line between two principles, and it is not
�78
ON LIBERTY
at once apparent to which of the two it
properly belongs. There are arguments
on both sides. On the side of toleration
it may be said that the fact of following
anything as an occupation, and living or
profiting by the practice of it, cannot
make that criminal which would other
wise be admissible; that the act should
•either be consistently permitted or con
sistently prohibited; that, if the principles
■which we have hitherto defended are
true, society has no business, as society,
to decide anything to be wrong which
concerns only the individual; that it
cannot go beyond dissuasion, and that
one person should be as free to persuade
as another to dissuade. In opposition
to this it may be contended that, although
the public, or the State, are not warranted
in authoritatively deciding, for purposes
of repression or punishment, that such
•or such conduct affecting only the in
terests of the individual is good or bad,
they are fully justified in assuming, if
they regard it as bad, that its being so
or not is at least a disputable question :
That, this being supposed, they cannot
be acting wrongly in endeavouring to
exclude the influence of solicitations
which are not disinterested, of instigators
who cannot possibly be impartial—who
have a direct personal interest on one
side, and that side the one which
the State believes to be wrong, and
who confessedly promote it for personal
objects only. There can surely, it may
be urged, be nothing lost, no sacrifice of
good, by so ordering matters that persons
shall make their election, either wisely
or foolishly, on their own prompting, as
free as possible from the arts of persons
who stimulate their inclinations for inte
rested purposes of their own. Thus (it
may be said), though the statutes respect
ing unlawful games are utterly indefen
sible—though all persons should be free
to gamble in their own or each other’s
houses, or in any place of meeting
established by their own subscriptions,
and open only to the members and their
visitors — yet public gambling-houses
should not be permitted. It is true that
the prohibition is never effectual, and
that, whatever amount of tyrannical
power may be given to the police,
gambling-houses can always be main
tained under other pretences ; but they
may be compelled to conduct their
operations with a certain degree of
secrecy and mystery, so that nobody
knows anything about them but those
who seek them; and more than this
society ought not to aim at. There is
considerable force in these arguments.
I will not venture to decide whether
they are sufficient to justify the moral
anomaly of punishing the accessory,
when the principal is (and must be)
allowed to go free; of fining or imprison
ing the procurer, but not the fornicator
—the gambling-house keeper, but not
the gambler. Still less ought the
common operations of buying and selling
to be interfered with on analogous
grounds. Almost every article which is
bought and sold may be used in excess,
and the sellers have a pecuniary interest
in encouraging that excess ; but no argu
ment can be founded on this, in favour,
for instance, of the Maine Law ; because
the class of dealers in strong drinks,
though interested in their abuse, are
indispensably required for the sake of
their legitimate use. The interest, how
ever, of these dealers in promoting
intemperance is a real evil, and justifies
the State in imposing restrictions and
requiring guarantees which, but for that
justification, would be infringements of
legitimate liberty.
�APPLICA TIONS
A further question is, whether the
State, while it permits, should neverthe
less indirectly discourage conduct which
it deems contrary to the best interests of
the agent; whether, for example, it
should take measures to render the
means of drunkenness more costly, or
add to the difficulty of procuring them
by limiting the number of the places of
sale. On this, as on most other practical
questions, many distinctions require to
be made. To tax stimulants for the sole
purpose of making them more difficult
to be obtained is a measure differing
only in degree from their entire prohi
bition, and would be justifiable only if
that were justifiable. Every increase of
cost is a prohibition to those whose
means do not come up to the augmented
price; and to those who do, it is a
penalty laid on them for gratifying a
particular taste. Their choice of plea
sures, and their mode of expending their
income, after satisfying their legal and
moral obligations to the State and to
individuals, are their own concern, and
must rest with their own judgment.
These considerations may seem at first
sight to condemn the selection of
stimulants as special subjects of taxation
for purposes of revenue. But it must
be remembered that taxation for fiscal
purposes is absolutely inevitable; that
in most countries it is necessary that a
considerable part of. that taxation should
be indirect; that the State, therefore,
cannot help imposing penalties, which
to some persons may be prohibitory, on
the use of some articles of consumption.
It is hence the duty of the State to con
sider, in the imposition of taxes, what
commodities the consumers can best
spare; and, b fortiori, to select in
preference those of which it deems the
use, beyond a very moderate quantity,
79
to be positively injurious. Taxation,
therefore, of stimulants, up to the point
which produces the largest amount of
revenue (supposing that the State needs
all the revenue which it yields), is not
only admissible, but to be approved of.
The question of making the sale of
these commodities a more or less exclusive
privilege must be answered differently
according to the purposes to which the
restriction is intended to be subservient.
All places of public resort require the
restraint of a police, and places of this
kind peculiarly, because offences against
society are especially apt to originate
there. It is, therefore, fit to confine the
power of selling these commodities (at
least, for consumption on the spot) to
persons of known or vouched-for respect
ability of conduct; to make such regula
tions respecting hours of opening and
closing as may be requisite for public
surveillance, and to withdraw the licence
if breaches of the peace repeatedly take
place through the connivance or inca
pacity of the keeper of the house, or if
it becomes a rendezvous for concocting
and preparing offences against the law.
Any further restriction I do not conceive
to be, in principle, justifiable. The
limitation in number, for instance, of
beer and spirit houses, for the express
purpose of rendering them more difficult
of access, and diminishing the occasions
of temptation, not only exposes all to an
inconvenience because there are some
by whom the facility would be abused,
but is suited only to a state of society in
which the labouring classes are avowedly
treated as children or savages, and placed
under an education of restraint, to fit
them for future admission to the privi
leges of freedom. This is not the
principle on which the labouring classes
are professedly governed in any free
�8o
ON LIBERTY
country; and no person who sets due
value on freedom will give his adhesion
to their being so governed, unless after
all efforts have been exhausted to educate
them for freedom and govern them as
freemen, and it has been definitively
proved that they can only be governed
as children. The bare statement of the
alternative shows the absurdity of sup
posing that such efforts have been made
in each case which needs be considered
here. It is only because the institutions
of this country are a mass of inconsis
tencies that things find admittance into
our practice which belong to the system
of despotic, or what is called paternal,
government, while the general freedom
of our institutions precludes the exercise
of the amount of control necessary to
render the restraint of any real efficacy
as a moral education.
It was pointed out in an early part of
this Essay that the liberty of the indi
vidual, in things wherein the individual
is alone concerned, implies a correspond
ing liberty in any number of individuals
to regulate by mutual agreement such
things as regard them jointly, and regard
no persons but themselves. This ques
tion permits no difficulty, so long as the
will of all the persons implicated remains
unaltered; but, since that will may
change, it is often necessary, even in
things in which they alone are concerned,
that they should enter into engagements
with one another; and, when they do, it
is fit, as a general rule, that those engage
ments should be kept. Yet, in the laws,
probably of every country, this general
rule has some exceptions. Not only
persons are not held to engagements
which violate the rights of third parties,
but it is sometimes considered a sufficient
reason for releasing them from an engage
ment that it is injurious to themselves.
In this and most other civilised countries,
for example, an engagement by which a
person should sell himself, or allow him
self to be sold, as a slave, would be null
and void—neither enforced by law nor
by opinion. The ground for thus limit
ing his power of voluntarily disposing of
his own lot in life is apparent, and is
very clearly seen in this extreme case.
The reason for not interfering, unless for
the sake of others, with a person’s volun
tary acts is consideration for his liberty.
His voluntary choice is evidence that
what he so chooses is desirable, or at the
least endurable, to him, and his good is
on the whole best provided for by allow
ing him to take his own means of pur
suing it. But by selling himself for a
slave he abdicates his liberty; he fore
goes any future use of it beyond that
single act. He therefore defeats, in his
own case, the very purpose which is the
justification of allowing him to dispose
of himself. He is no longer free, but is
thenceforth in a position which has no
longer the presumption in its favour
that would be afforded by his voluntarily
remaining in it. The principle of free
dom cannot require that he should be
free not to be free. It is not freedom
to be allowed to alienate his freedom.
These reasons, the force of which is so
conspicuous in this peculiar case, are
evidently of far wider application; yet a
limit is everywhere set to them by the
necessities of life, which continually
require, not indeed that we should resign
our freedom, but that wye should consent
to this and the other limitation of it.
The principle, how’ever, which demands
uncontrolled freedom of action in all
that concerns only the agents themselves,
requires that those who have become
bound to one another, in things which
concern no third party, should be able
�APPLICATIONS
to release one another from the engage
ment ; and even without such voluntary
release there are, perhaps, no contracts
or engagements, except those that relate
to money or money’s worth, of which
one can venture to say that there ought
to be no liberty whatever of retractation.
Baron Wilhelm von Humboldt, in the
excellent essay from which I have already
quoted, states it as his conviction that
engagements which involve personal re
lations or services should never be
legally binding beyond a limited duration
of time; and that the most important of
these engagements, marriage, having the
peculiarity that its objects are frustrated
unless the feelings of both the parties
are in harmony with it, should require
nothing more than the declared will of
either party to dissolve it. This subject
is too important and too complicated to
be discussed in a parenthesis, and I touch
on it only so far as is necessary for pur
poses of illustration. If the conciseness
and generality of Baron Humboldt’s dis
sertation had not obliged him, in this
instance, to content himself with enun
ciating his conclusion without discussing
the premises, he would doubtless have
recognised that the question cannot be
decided on grounds so simple as those
to which he confines himself. When a
person, either by express promise or by
conduct, has encouraged another to rely
upon his continuing to act in a certain way
—to build expectations and calculations,
and stake any part of his plan of life upon
that supposition—a new series of moral
obligations arises on his part towards
that person, which may possibly be over
ruled, but cannot be ignored. And
again, if the relation between two con
tracting parties has been followed by
consequences to others ; if it has placed
third parties in any peculiar position, or,
81
as in the case of marriage, has even
called third parties into existence, obli
gations arise on the part of both the
contracting parties towards those third
persons, the fulfilment of which, or at
all events the mode of fulfilment, must
be greatly affected by the continuance
or disruption of the relation between
the original parties to the contract. It
does not follow, nor can I admit, that
these obligations extend to requiring the
fulfilment of the contract at all costs
to the happiness of the reluctant party;
but they are a necessary element in the
question; and even if, as Von Humboldt
maintains, they ought to make no dif
ference in the legal freedom of the
parties to release themselves from the
engagement (and I also hold that they
ought not to make much difference),
they necessarily make a great difference
in the moral freedom. A person is
bound to take all these circumstances
I into account before resolving on a step
which may affect such important inte
rests of others; and if he does not allow
proper weight to those interests, he is
morally responsible for the wrong. I
have made these obvious remarks for
the better illustration of the general
principle of liberty, and not because
they are at all needed on the particular
question, which, on the contrary, is
usually discussed as if the interest of
children was everything, and that of
grown persons nothing.
I have already observed that, owing to
the absence of any recognised general
principles, liberty is often granted where
it should be withheld, as well as withheld
where it should be granted ; and one of
the cases in which, in the modern Euro
pean world, the sentiment of liberty is
the strongest, is a case where, in my view,
it is altogether misplaced. A person
G
�82
ON LIBERTY
should be free to do as he likes in his
own concerns; but he ought not to be
free to do as he likes in acting for
another, under the pretext that the affairs
of the other are his own affairs. The
State, while it respects the liberty of each
in what specially regards^imself, is bound
to maintain a vigilant control over his
exercise of any power which it allows him
to possess over others. This obligation
is almost entirely disregarded in the case
of the family relations—a case, in its
direct influence on human happiness,
more important than all others taken
together. The almost despotic power of
husbands over wives needs not be
enlarged upon here, because nothing
more is needed for the complete removal
of the evil than that wives should have
the same rights, and should receive the
protection of the law in the same manner,
as all other persons; and because, on this
subject, the defenders of established in
justice do not avail themselves of the
plea of liberty, but stand forth openly as
the champions of power. It is in the
case of children that misapplied notions
of liberty are a real obstacle to the fulfil
ment by the State of its duties. One
would almost think that a man’s children
were supposed to be literally, and not
metaphorically, a part of himself, so
jealous is opinion of the smallest inter
ference of law with his absolute and
exclusive controlover them—morejealous
than of almost any interference with his
own freedom of action : so much less do
the generality of mankind value liberty
than power. Consider, for example, the
case of education. Is it not almost a
self-evident axiom that the State should
require and compel the education, up to
a certain standard, of every human being
who is born its citizen? Yet who is
there that is not afraid to recognise
and assert this truth ? Hardly anyone,
indeed, will deny that it is one of the
most sacred duties of the parents (or, as
law and usage now stand, the father),
after summoning a human being into the
world, to give to that being an education
fitting him to perform his part well in life
towards others and towards himself. But
while this is unanimously declared to be
the father’s duty, scarcely anybody, in
this country, will bear to hear of obliging
him to perform it. Instead of his being
required to make any exertion or sacri
fice for securing education to his child, it
is left to his choice to accept it or not
when it is provided gratis 1 It still
remains unrecognised that to bring a
child into existence without a fair pros
pect of being able, not only to provide
food for its body, but instruction and
training for its mind, is a moral crime,
both against the unfortunate offspring
and against society; and that, if the
parent does not fulfil this obligation, the
State ought to see it fulfilled, at the
charge, as far as possible, of the parent.
Were the duty of enforcing universal
education once admitted, there would be
an end to the difficulties about what the
State should teach, and how it should
teach, which now convert the subject
into a mere battle-field for sects and
parties, causing the time and labour
which should have been spent in educat
ing to be wasted in quarrelling about
education. If the Government would
make up its mind to require for every
child a good education, it might save
itself the trouble of providing one. It
might leave to parents to obtain the
education where and how they pleased,
and content itself with helping to pay
the school fees of the poorer classes of
children, and defraying the entire school
expenses of those who have no one else
�APPLICA TIONS
to pay for them. The objections which
arc urged with reason against State edu
cation do not apply to the enforcement
of education by the State, but to the
State’s taking upon itself to direct that
education: which is a totally different
thing. That the whole or any large part
of the education of the people should be
in State hands I go as far as any one in
deprecating. All that has been said of
the importance of individuality of cha
racter, and diversity in opinions and
modes of conduct, involves, as of the
same unspeakable importance, diversity
of education. A general State education
is a mere contrivance for moulding people
to be exactly like one another; and as
the mould in which it casts them is 'that
which pleases the predominant power
in the Government, whether this be a
monarch, a priesthood, an aristocracy,
or the majority of the existing generation:
in proportion as it is efficient and success
ful, it establishes a despotism over the
mind, leading by natural tendency to
one over the body. An education estab
lished and controlled by the State should
only exist, if it exist at all, as one among
many competing experiments, carried on
for the purpose of example and stimulus,
to keep the others up to a certain
standard of excellence. Unless, indeed,
when society in general is in so backward
a state that it could not or would not
provide for itself any proper institutions
of education, unless the Government
undertook the task: then, indeed, the
Government may, as the less of two great
evils, take upon itself the business of
schools and universities, as it may that
of joint-stock companies, when private
enterprise, in a shape fitted for under
taking great works of industry, does not
exist in the country. But in general, if
the country contains a sufficient number
83
of persons qualified to provide education
under Government auspices, the same
persons would be able and willing to
give an equally good education on the
voluntary principle, under the assurance
of remuneration afforded by a law render
ing education compulsory, combined
with State aid to those unable to defray
the expense.
The instrument for enforcing the law
could be no other than public examina
tions, extending to all children, and begin
ning at an early age. An age might be
fixed at which every child must be exa
mined, to ascertain if he (or she) is able to
read. If a child proves unable, the father,
unless he has some sufficient ground of
excuse, might be subjected to a moderate
fine, to be worked out, if necessary, by
his labour, and the child might be put
to school at his expense. Once in every
year the examination should be renewed,
with a gradually extending range of
subjects, so as to make the universal
acquisition, and, what is more, retention, of
a certain minimum of general knowledge
virtually compulsory. Beyond that mini
mum there should be voluntary examina
tions on all subjects, at which all who
come up to a certain standard of pro
ficiency might claim a certificate. To
prevent the State from exercising, through
these arrangements, animproper influence
over opinion, the knowledge required
for passing an examination (beyond the
merely instrumental parts of knowledge,
such as languages and their use) should,
even in the higher classes of examina
tions, be confined to facts and positive
science exclusively. The examinations
on religion, politics, or other disputed
topics should not turn on the truth or
falsehood of opinions, but on the matter
of fact that such and such an opinion is
held, on such grounds, by such authors,
�84
ON LIBERTY
or schools, or Churches. Under this
system the rising generation would be
no worse off in regard to all disputed
truths than they are at present; they
would be brought up either Churchmen
or Dissenters, as they now are, the State
merely taking care that they should be
instructed Churchmen or instructed.
Dissenters. There would be nothing to
hinder them from being taught religion,
if their parents chose, at the same
schools where they were taught other
things. All attempts by the State to
bias the conclusions of its citizens on
disputed subjects are evil; but it may
very properly offer to ascertain and certify
that a person possesses the knowledge,
requisite to make his conclusions, on
any given subject worth attending to.
A student of philosophy would be the
better for being able to stand an exami
nation both in Locke and in Kant,
whichever of the two he takes up with,
or even if with neither; and there is no
reasonable objection to examining an
Atheist in the evidences of Christianity,
provided he is not required to profess
a belief in them. The examinations,
however, in the higher branches of
knowledge should, I conceive, be entirely
voluntary.
It would be giving too
dangerous a power to Governments were
they allowed to exclude any one from
professions, even from the profession of
teacher, for alleged deficiency of qualifi
cations ; and I think, with Wilhelm von
Humboldt, that degrees, or other public
certificates of scientific or professional
acquirements, should be given to all
who present themselves for examination,
and stand the test; but that such certifi
cates should confer no advantage over
competitors, other than the weight which
may be attached to their testimony by
public opinion.
It is not in the matter of education
only that misplaced notions of liberty
prevent moral obligations on the part of
parents from being recognised, and legal
obligations from being imposed, where
there are the strongest grounds for the
former always, and in many cases for the
latter also. The fact itself, of causing
the existence of a human being, is one
of the most responsible actions in the
range of human life. To undertake this
responsibility—to bestow a life which
may be either a curse or a blessing—
unless the being on whom it is to be
bestowed will have at least the ordinary
chances of a desirable existence, is a
crime against that being. And in a
country either over-peopled, or threatened
with being so, to produce children,
beyond a very small number, with the
effect of reducing the reward of labour
by their competition, is a serious offence
against all who live by the remuneration
of their labour. The laws which, in
many countries on the Continent, forbid
marriage unless the parties can show
that they have the means of support
ing a family do not exceed the legiti
mate powers of the State; and whether
such laws be expedient or not (a ques
tion mainly dependent on local circum
stances and feelings), they are not ob
jectionable as violations of liberty. Such
laws are interferences of the State to
prohibit a mischievous act—an act in
jurious to others, which ought to be
a subject of reprobation and social
stigma, even when it is not deemed expe
dient to superadd legal punishment. Yet
the current ideas of liberty, which bend
so easily to real infringements of the
freedom of the individual in things which
concern only himself, would repel the
attempt to put any restraint upon his
inclinations when the consequence of
�APPLICA TIONS
their indulgence is a life or lives of
wretchedness and depravity to the off
spring, with manifold evils to those suffi
ciently within reach to be in any way
affected by their actions. When we
compare the strange respect of mankind
for liberty with their strange want of
respect for it, we might imagine that a man
had an indispensable right to do harm to
others, and no right at all to please him
self without giving pain to any one.
I have reserved for the last place a
large class of questions respecting the
limits of Government interference, which,
though closely connected with the subject
of this Essay, do not, in strictness, belong
to it. These are cases in which the
reasons against interference do not turn
upon the principle of liberty: the question
is not about restraining the actions of
individuals, but about helping them : it
is asked whether the Government should
do, or cause to be done, something for
their benefit, instead of leaving it to be
done by themselves, individually or in
voluntary combination.
The objections to Government inter
ference, when it is not such as to involve
infringement of liberty, may be of three
kinds.
The first is, when the thing to be done
is likely to be better done by individuals
than by the Government. Speaking
generally, there is no one so fit to conduct
any business, or to determine how or by
whom it shall be conducted, as those
who are personally interested in it. This
principle condemns the interferences,
once so common, of the Legislature, or
the officers of Government, with the
ordinary processes of industry. But this
part of the subject has been sufficiently
enlarged upon by political economists,
and is not particularly related to the
principles of this Essay.
85
The second objection is more nearly
allied to our subject. In many cases,
though individuals may not do the par
ticular thing so well, on the average, as
the officers of Government, it is neverthe
less desirable that it should be done by
them, rather than by the Government, as
a means to their own mental education
—a mode of strengthening their active
faculties, exercising their judgment, and
giving them a familiar knowledge of the
subjects with which they are thus left to
deal. This is a principal, though not the
sole, recommendation of jury trial (in
cases not political); of free and popular
local and municipal institutions ; of the
conduct of industrial and philanthropic
enterprises by voluntary associations.
These are not questions of liberty, and
are connected with that subject only by
remote tendencies ; but they are ques
tions of development. It belongs to a
different occasion from the present to
dwell on these things as parts of national
education; as being, in truth, the peculiar
training of a citizen, the practical part
of the political education of a free
people, taking them out of the narrow
circle of personal and family selfishness,
and accustoming them to the compre
hension of joint interests, the manage
ment of joint concerns—habituating
them to act from public or semi-public
motives, and guide their conduct by aims
which unite instead of isolating them
from one another. Without these habits
and powers, a free constitution can
neither be worked nor preserved ; as is
exemplified by the too often transitory
nature of political freedom in countries
where it does not rest upon a sufficient
basis of local liberties. The manage
ment of purely local business by the
localities, and of the great enterprises of
industry by the union of those who
�86
ON LIBERTY
voluntarily supply the pecuniary means,
is further recommended by all the advan
tages which have been set forth in this
Essay as belonging to individuality of
development and diversity of modes of
action. Government operations tend to
be everywhere alike. With individuals
and voluntary associations, on the con
trary, there are varied experiments, and
endless diversity of experience. What
the State can usefully do is to make itself
a central depository, and active circulator
and diffuser, of the experience resulting
from many trials. Its business is to
enable each experimentalist to benefit
by the experiments of others, instead of
tolerating no experiments but its own.
The third and most cogent reason for
restricting the interference of Govern
ment is the great evil of adding unneces
sarily to its power. Every function super
added to those already exercised by the
Government causes its influence over
hopes and fears to be more widely
diffused, and converts, more and more,
the active and ambitious part of the
public into hangers-on of the Govern
ment, or of some party which aims at
becoming the Government. If the roads,
the railways, the banks, the insurance
offices, the great joint-stock companies,
the universities, and the public charities,
wrere all of them branches of the Govern
ment ; if, in addition, the municipal
corporations and local boards, with all
that now devolves on them, became
departments of the central administra
tion; if the employes of all these different
enterprises were appointed and paid by
the Government, and looked to the
Government for every rise in life; not
all the freedom of the press and popular
constitution of the Legislature would
make this or any other country free other
wise than in name. And the evil would
be greater the more efficiently and scien
tifically the administrative machinery
was constructed—the more skilful the
arrangements for obtaining the best
qualified hands and heads with which to
work it. In England it has of late been
proposed that all the members of the
civil service of government should be
selected by competitive examination, to
obtain for those employments the most
intelligent and instructed persons pro
curable ; and much has been said and
written for and against this proposal.
One of the arguments most insisted on
by its opponents is that the occupation
of a permanent official servant of the
State does not hold out sufficient pros
pects of emolument and importance to
attract the highest talents, which will
always be able to find a more inviting
career in the professions, or in the service
of companies and other public bodies.
One would not have been surprised if
this argument had been used by the
friends of the proposition, as an answer
to its principal difficulty. Coming from
the opponents, it is strange enough. What
is urged as an objection is the safetyvalve of the proposed system. If, indeed,
all the high talent of the country could
be drawn into the service of the Govern
ment, a proposal tending to bring about
that result might well inspire uneasiness.
If every part of the business of society
which required organised concert, or
large and comprehensive views, were in
the hands of the Government, and if
Government offices were universally filled
by the ablest men, all the enlarged
culture and practised intelligence in the
country, except the purely speculative,
would be concentrated in a numerous
bureaucracy, to whom alone the rest of
the community would look for all things :
the multitude for direction and dictation
�APPLICA TIONS
in all they had to do; the able and aspir
ing for personal advancement. To be
admitted into the ranks of this bureau
cracy, and, when admitted, to rise therein,
would be the sole objects of ambition.
Under this regime, not only is the outside
public ill-qualified, for want of practical
experience, to criticise or check the mode
of operation of the bureaucracy, but even
if the accidents of despotic or the natural
working of popular institutions occasion
ally raise to the summit a ruler or rulers
of reforming inclinations, no reform can
be effected which is contrary to the
interest of the bureaucracy. Such is
the melancholy condition of the Russian
Empire, as shown in the accounts of those
who have had sufficient opportunity of
observation. The Czar himself is power
less against the bureaucratic body; he
can send any one of them to Siberia,
but he cannot govern without them, or
against their will. On every decree of
his they have a tacit veto, by merely
refraining from carrying it into effect.
In countries of more advanced civilisa
tion and of a more insurrectionary spirit,
the public, accustomed to expect every
thing to be done for them by the State,
or at least to do nothing for themselves
without asking from the State not only
leave to do it, but even how it is to be
done, naturally hold the State respon
sible for all evil which befalls them, and
when the evil exceeds their amount of
patience, they rise against the Govern
ment, and make what is called a revolu
tion ; whereupon somebody else, with or
without legitimate authority from the
nation, vaults into the seat, issues his
orders to the bureaucracy, and every
thing goes on much as it did before, the
bureaucracy being unchanged, and no
body else being capable of taking their
place.
87
A very different spectacle is exhibited
among a people accustomed to transact
their own business. In France, a large
part of the people having been engaged
in military service, many of whom have
held at least the rank of non-commis
sioned officers, there are in every popular
insurrection several persons competent
to take the lead, and improvise some
tolerable plan of action. What the
French are in military affairs, the
Americans are in every kind of civil
business : let them be left without a
Government, every body of Americans
is able to improvise one, and to carry on
that or any other public business with a
sufficient amount of intelligence, order,
and decision. This is what every free
people ought to be ; and a people capable
of this is certain to be free ; it will never
let itself be enslaved by any man or body
of men because these are able to seize
and pull the reins of the central adminis
tration. No bureaucracy can hope to
make such a people as this do or undergo
anything that they do not like. But
where everything is done through the
bureaucracy, nothing to which the bureau
cracy is really adverse can be done at all.
The constitution of such countries is
an organisation of the experience and
practical ability of the nation into a
disciplined body for the purpose of
governing the rest; and the more perfect
that organisation is in itself, the more
successful in drawing to itself and
educating for itself the persons of greatest
capacity from all ranks of the community,
the more complete is the bondage of all,
the members of the bureaucracy included.
For the governors areas much the slaves
of their organisation and discipline as
the governed are of the governors. A
Chinese mandarin is as much the tool
and creature of a despotism as the
�ON LIBERTY
humblest cultivator.
An individual
Jesuit is to the utmost degree of abase
ment the slave of his order, though the
order itself exists for the collective power
and importance of its members.
It is not, also, to be forgotten that
the absorption of all the principal ability
of the country into the governing body
is fatal, sooner or later, to the mental
activity and progressiveness of the body
itself. Banded together as they are—
working a system which, like all systems,
necessarily proceeds in a great measure
by fixed rules—the official body are
under the constant temptation of sinking
into indolent routine, or, if they now and
then desert the mill-horse round, of
rushing into some half-examined crudity
which has struck the fancy of some lead
ing member of the corps : and the sole
check to these closely-allied, though
seemingly opposite, tendencies, the only
stimulus which can keep the ability of
the body itself up to a high standard, is
liability to the watchful criticism of equal
ability outside the body. It is indis
pensable, therefore, that the means should
exist, independently of the Government,
of forming such ability, and furnishing
it with the opportunities and experience
necessary for a correct judgment of great
practical affairs. If we would possess
permanently a skilful and efficient body
of functionaries—above all, a body able
to originate and willing to adopt im
provements ; if we would not have our
bureaucracy degenerate into a pedantocracy, this body must not engross all
the occupation’s which form and cultivate
the faculties required for the government
of mankind.
To determine the point at which evils,
so formidable to human freedom and
advancement, begin, or rather at which
they begin to predominate over the
benefits attending the collective applica
tion of the force of society, under its
recognised chiefs, for the removal of the
obstacles which stand in the way of its
well-being; to secure as much of the
advantages of centralised power and
intelligence as can be had without turn
ing into governmental channels too great
a proportion of the general activity—is
one of the most difficult and complicated
questions in the art of government. It
is, in a great measure, a question of
detail, in which many and various con
siderations must be kept in view, and no
absolute rule can be laid down. But I
believe that the practical principle in
which safety resides, the ideal to be kept
in view, the standard by which to test
all arrangements intended for overcoming
the difficulty, may be conveyed in these
words: the greatest dissemination of
power consistent with efficiency; but
the greatest possible centralisation of
information, and diffusion of it from the
centre. Thus, in municipal administra
tion, there would be, as in the New
England States, a very minute division
among separate officers, chosen by the
localities, of all business which is not
better left to the persons directly inte
rested ; but, besides this, there would be,
in each department of local affairs, a
central superintendence, forming a
branch of the general government. The
organ of this superintendence would
concentrate, as in a focus, the variety ot
information and experience derived from
the conduct of that branch of public
business in all the localities, from every
thing analogous which is done in foreign
countries, and from the general principles
of political science. This central organ
should have a right to know all that is
done, and its special duty should be
that of making the knowledge acquired
�APPLICA TIONS
in one place available for others.
Emancipated from the petty prejudices
and narrow views of a locality by its
elevated position and comprehensive
sphere of observation, its advice would
naturally carry much authority; but its
actual power, as a permanent institution,
should, I conceive, be limited to com
pelling the local officers to obey the laws
laid down for their guidance. In all
things not provided for by general rules
those officers should be left to their own
judgment, under responsibility to their
constituents. For the violation of rules
they should be responsible to law, and
the rules themselves should be laid down
by the Legislature; the central admin
istrative authority only watching over
their execution, and, if they were not
properly carried into effect, appealing,
according to the nature of the case, to
the tribunals to enforce the law, or to
the constituencies to dismiss the func
tionaries who had not executed it
according to its spirit. Such, in its
general conception, is the central super
intendence which the Poor Law Board
is intended to exercise over the admin
istrators of the Poor Rate throughout
the country. Whatever powers the
Board exercises beyond this limit were
right and necessary in that peculiar
case, for the cure of rooted habits of
maladministration in matters deeply
affecting not the localities merely, but
the whole community; since no locality
has a moral right to make itself, by
mismanagement, a nest of pauperism,
necessarily overflowing into other loca
lities, and impairing the moral and
physical condition of the whole labour
ing community. The powers of ad
89
ministrative coercion and subordinate
legislation possessed by the Poor Law
Board (but which, owing to the state of
opinion on the subject, are very scantily
exercised by them), though perfectly
justifiable in a case of first-rate national
interest, would be wholly out of place in
the superintendence of interests purely
local. But a central organ of informa
tion and instruction for all the localities
would be equally valuable in all depart
ments of administration. A Government
cannot have too much of the kind of
activity which does not impede, but aids
and stimulates, individual exertion and
development. The mischief begins when,
instead of calling forth the activity and
powers of individuals and bodies, it
substitutes its own activity for theirs;
when, instead of informing, advising, and,
upon occasion, denouncing, it makes
them work in fetters, or bids them stand
aside and does their work instead of them.
The worth of a State, in the long run, is
the worth of the individuals composing
it; and a State which postpones the
interests of their mental expansion and
elevation, to a little more of administrative
skill, or of that semblance of it which
practice gives, in the details of business ;
a State which dwarfs its men, in order
that they may be more docile instru
ments in its hands even for beneficial
purposes—will find that with small men
no great thing can reallybe accomplished ;
and that the perfection of machinery to
which it has sacrificed everything will in
the end avail it nothing, for want of the
vital power which, in order that the
machine might work more smoothly, it
has preferred to banish.
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London : Watts & Co., 17, Johnson’s Court, Fleet Street, E.C.
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Association
(Limited).
[Founded 1899.
Chairman—GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE.
Honorary Associates:
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Edward Clodd
Leonard Huxley
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Prof. Ernst Haeckel
W. C. Coupland, D.Sc., M.A.
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F. J. Gould
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are the encouragement and dissemination
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mere tradition and to its proper exercise
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that part of truth which has already been
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needs that the ignorant shall be taught,
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exposed, and irrational dogmas refuted.
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A Definition of Rationalism.
Those who join the Association do
not thereby subscribe to any definite
creed, positive or negative. There is
breadth enough in Rationalism for all
views which do not contradict the ascer
tained truths of science. At the same
time, something more is to be understood
by Rationalism than a mere rationalistic
spirit or tendency. Rationalism repu
diates irrational authority. It takes
actual human experience to be the
material, and trained human intelligence
to be the builder, of the growing edifice
of truth. It challenges the believers
in miraculous revelation to produce evi
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race, and its moral influence, despite all
the efforts of ecclesiastical bodies, has
only sufficed to affect the lives of the
few.
It is often assumed that those who
relinquish the ancient religious beliefs
leave themselves without motives or
incentives to resist temptation and to
lead good and upright lives. But,
Rationalism may be defined as the whenever this appears to be the case,
mental attitude which unreservedly the blame is to be laid (i) on the religions
accepts the supremacy of reason and themselves, which have held out illusory
aims at establishing a system ofi philo and largely ineffectual bribes of superna
sophy and ethics verifiable by experience tural reward, or threats of supernatural
and independent ofall arbitrary assump retribution, and ignored the powerful
tions or authority.
reasons for morality which lie in man’s
It is to be observed that most Pro social nature and needs; (2) on the
testants are rationalists in their attitude individual doubters, who are not suffi
towards contemporary or recent instances ciently earnest in their search for truth
of alleged miracle and inspiration. They to make a serious study of the natural
are rationalists in their attitude towards and human grounds of moral law. The
the sacred literatures of Buddhists, Brah mental realisation of these grounds must
mans, Parsees, and Mohammedans, and tend towards the practical realisation of
towards the distinctive teachings of the the good life, although acquired habits
Church of Rome. As regards the narra of character cannot be suddenly trans
tive and theology contained in the Bible, formed by changes of opinion. While
however, they are not rationalists, but the R. P. A. has not at present any
at best compromisers between traditional organisation to take the place of the
reverence and scientific inquiry. Thus, older religious churches (such as the
while what has been called “ the spirit Positivist and Ethical Societies possess),
of rationalism ” is rife, the attempt to it is hoped that a tacit fellowship will
raise rationalism into a consistent rule grow up among its widely scattered
of the intellectual life is by no means members, tending to promote the ulti
popular. This, however, is the task mate unity of the various sections of
liberal thinkers. W'herever there is true
which the R. P. A. seeks to accomplish.
devotion to human well-being, and
proper regard for the happiness of all
Rationalism and Morality.
sentient creatures, there is true religion,
In making direct mention of ethics in or (if exception be taken to that word)
the foregoing definition of Rationalism, something better than religion; and,
it is desired to accentuate the fact that whatever our views of the constitution
the philosophy of Rationalism cannot of the universe may be, Nature remains,
fail to have bearings on human conduct for those who follow the paths of reason
which will be far more beneficent in the and science, a supreme source of interest,
long run than those of traditional theo wonder, and inspiration.
logy. Granting that supernaturalism
has had its place in the evolution of a Conditions of Membership.
rational code of morals, it has, neverthe
The Rationalist Press Association, Ltd.,
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what right certain people seek to impose
theological or other dogmas upon man
kind. Thus, after careful consideration,
aided by the advice of several wellknown thinkers, the following definition
of Rationalism has been adopted and
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BUCHNER, Professor LUDWIG.
Last Words on Materialism,
and
Kindred Subjects.
Translated by Joseph McCabe. With Por
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GOULD, F. J.
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NO. ll.- R. P. A. CHEAP REPRINTS.
A Historic Work
&
The Origin of
Species
CHARLES DARWIN
WATTS & Co.,
17, JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, LONDON, E.C.
(issued
for the rationalist press association, limited)
............................... .........................
The Next R.P.A. CHEAP REPRINT will be “LECTURES AND ESSAYS.”
�2S. 6d. net, by post 2s.
An Easy Outline
of Evolution.
By DENNIS HIRD
(Principal of Ruskin College).
>
�^2377
$£
— -ry
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
.I
yr ■
�PUBLISHERS’ NOTE
This edition of The Origin of Species is an exact reprint
of the first edition (published 1859-60), which has now
gone out of copyright. The third and subsequent editions
were considerably revised and amplified by Mr. Darwin,
but without any alteration of fundamental importance
being made. He strengthened, but did not rebuild, the
structure.
Mr. John Murray, the original publisher, is now
issuing the final edition in cloth binding at 2s. 6d. net,
and in paper covers at is. net. Students and all
admirers of Darwin should compare the first and last
editions of this great work in order to fully understand
the development of the doctrine of Evolution.
�ON THE
ORIGIN OF SPECIES
BY MEANS OF NATURAL SELECTION
THE PRESERVATION OF FAVOURED RACES IN
THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE
BY
CHARLES DARWIN, M.A.
[issued
for the rationalist press association, limited]
WATTS & CO.,
17, JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, LONDON, E.C.
1903
��CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER
Introduction
y
......
I. Variation under Domestication
II. Variation under Nature
III. Struggle for Existence
-
n
....
25
-
31
-
-
IV. Natural Selection
.....
39
V. Laws of Variation
.....
58
VI. Difficulties of Theory
....
VII. Instinct
VIII. Hybridism
73,,
87-
-
-
-
-
-
-
10a
IX. On the Imperfection of the Geological Record
114
X. On the Geological Succession of Organic Beings
127
XI. Geographical Distribution
....
XII.Geographical Distribution—Continued
-
-
140
154
XIII. Mutual Affinities of Organic Beings : Morpho
logy
: Embryology : Rudimentary Organs
XIV. Recapitulation and Conclusion
Index
-*
-
-
165
-
183
196
�> . *■
3 p
_
'
!>”
k
k
ii
>
....
■
*'*s
f"
�ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
INTRODUCTION
When on board H. M. S. Beagle, as [ this Abstract.
naturalist, I was much struck with certain
facts in the distribution of the inhabitants
of South America, and in the geological
relations of the present to the past
inhabitants of that continent. These
facts seemed to me to throw some light
on the origin of species—that mystery
of mysteries, as it has been called by one
of our greatest philosophers. On my
return home, it occurred to me, in 1837,
that something might perhaps be made
out on this question by patiently accumu
lating and reflecting on all sorts of facts
which could possibly have any bearing
on it. After five years’ work, I allowed
myself to speculate on the subject, and
drew up some short notes; these I
enlarged in 1844 into a sketch of the
conclusions, which then seemed to me
probable : from that period to the present
day I have steadily pursued the same
object. I hope that I may be excused
for entering on these personal details, as
I give them to show that I have not been
hasty in coming to a decision. My work is now nearly finished ; but
as it will take me two or three more years
to complete it, and as my health is far
from strong, I have been urged to publish
I have more especially
been induced to do this, as Mr. Wallace,
who is now studying the natural history
of the Malay archipelago, has arrived at
almost exactly the same general conclu
sions that I have on the origin of species.
Last year he sent me a memoir on this
subject, with a request that I would
forward it to Sir Charles Lyell, who sent
it to the Linnean Society, and it is
published in the third volume of the
Journal of that Society. Sir C. Lyell
and Dr. Hooker, who both knew of my
work—the latter having read my sketch
of 1844—honoured me by thinking it
advisible to publish, with Mr. Wallace’s
excellent memoir, some brief extracts
from my manuscripts.
This Abstract, which I now publish,
must necessarily be imperfect. I cannot
here give references and authorities for
my several statements; and I must trust
to the reader reposing some confidence
in my accuracy. No doubt errors will
have crept in, though I hope I have
always been cautious in trusting to good
authorities alone. I can here give only
the general conclusions at which I have
arrived, with a few facts in illustration,
but which, I hope, in most cases will
�8
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
suffice. No.one can feel more sensible
than I do of the necessity of hereafter
publishing in detail all the facts, with
references, on which my conclusions
have been grounded; and I hope in a
future work to do this. For I am well
aware that scarcely a single point is dis
cussed in this volume on which facts
cannot be adduced, often apparently
leading to conclusions directly opposite
to those at which I have arrived. A
fair result can be obtained only by fully
stating and balancing the facts and argu
ments on both sides of each question;
and this cannot possibly be here done.
I much regret that want of space pre
vents my having the satisfaction of
acknowledging the generous assistance
which I have received from very many
naturalists, some of them personally
unknown to me. I cannot, however, let
this opportunity pass without expressing
my deep obligations to Dr. Hooker, who
for the last fifteen years has aided me in
every possible way by his large stores of
knowledge and his excellent judgment.
In considering the Origin of Species,
it is quite conceivable that a naturalist,
reflecting on the mutual affinities of
organic' beings, on their embryological
relations, their geographical distribution,
geological succession, and other such
facts, might come to the conclusion that
each species had not been independently
created, but had descended, like varieties,
from other species. Nevertheless, such
a conclusion, even if well founded, would
be unsatisfactory, until it could be shown
how the innumerable species inhabiting
this world have been modified, so as to
acquire that perfection of structure and
coadaptation which most justly excites
our admiration. Naturalists continually
refer to external conditions, such as
climate, food, etc., as the only possible
cause of variation. In one very limited
sense, as we shall hereafter see, this may
be true; but it is preposterous to attri
bute to mere external conditions the
structure, for instance, of the wood
pecker, with its feet, tail, beak, and
tongue, so admirably adapted to catch
insects under the bark of trees. In the
case of the mistletoe, which draws its
nourishment from certain trees, which
has seeds that must be transported by
certain birds, and which has flowers with
separate sexes absolutely requiring the
agency of certain insects to bring pollen
from one flower to the other, it is equally
preposterous to account for the structure
of this parasite, with its relations to
several distinct organic beings, by the
effects of external conditions, or of habit,
or of the volition of the plant itself.
The author of the Vestiges of Creation
would, I presume, say that, after a certain
unknown number of generations, some
bird had given birth to a woodpecker,
and some plant to the mistletoe, and
that these had been produced perfect as
we now see them; but this assumption
seems to me to be no explanation, for it
leaves the case of the coadaptations of
organic beings to each other and to their
physical conditions of life untouched
and unexplained.
It is, therefore, of the highest impor
tance to gain a clear insight into the
means of modification and coadaptation.
�INTRODUCTION
At the commencement of my observa
tions it seemed to me probable that a
careful study of domesticated animals
and of cultivated plants would offer the
best chance of making out this obscure
problem. Nor have I been disappointed;
in this and in all other perplexing cases
I have invariably found that our know
ledge, imperfect though it be, of variation
under domestication, afforded the best
and safest clue.
I may venture to
express my conviction of the high
value of such studies, although they
have been very commonly neglected by
naturalists.
From these considerations I shall
devote the first chapter of this Abstract
to Variation under Domestication. We
shall thus see that a large amount of
hereditary modification is at least pos
sible; and, what is equally or more
important, we shall see how great is the
power of man in accumulating by his
Selection successive slight variations.
I will then pass on to the variability
of species in a state of nature; but I
shall, unfortunately, be compelled to
treat this subject far too briefly, as it
can be treated properly only by giving
long catalogues of facts. We shall,
however, be enabled to discuss what
circumstances are most favourable to
variation.
In the next chapter the
Struggle for Existence among all organic
beings throughout the world, which inevi
tably follows from the high geometrical
ratio of their increase, will be treated of.
This is the doctrine of Malthus, applied
to the whole animal and vegetable king
doms. As many more individuals of
9
each species are born than can possibly
survive, and as, consequently, there is
a frequently recurring struggle for exis
tence, it follows that any being, if it vary
however slightly in any manner profitable
to itself, under the complex and some
times varying conditions of life, will
have a better chance of surviving, and
thus be naturally selected. From the
strong principle of inheritance, any
selected variety will tend to propagate
its new and modified form.
This fundamental subject of Natural
Selection will be treated at some length
in the fourth chapter; and we shall
then see how Natural Selection almost
inevitably causes much Extinction of
the less improved forms of life, and
leads to what I have called Divergence
of Character. In the next, chapter I
shall discuss the complex and little
known laws of variation and of correla
tion of growth. In the four succeeding
chapters the most apparent and gravest
difficulties on the theory will be given—
namely, first, the difficulties of transi
tions, or in understanding how a simple
being or a simple organ can be changed
and perfected into a highly-developed
being or elaborately-constructed organ;
secondly, the subject of Instinct, or the
mental powers of animals; thirdly,
Hybridism, or the infertility of species
and the fertility of varieties when inter
crossed; and, fourthly, the imperfection
of the Geological Record. In the next
chapter I shall consider the geological
succession of organic beings throughout
time; in the eleventh and twelfth,* their
geographical distribution throughout
�IO
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
space; in the thirteenth, their classifica
tion or mutual affinities, both when
maturp and in an embryonic condition.
In-the last chapter I shall give a brief
recapitulation of the whole work, and a
few concluding remarks.
No one ought to feel surprise at much
remaining as yet unexplained in regard
to the origin of species and varieties, if
he makes due allowance for our profound
ignorance in regard to the mutual rela
tions of all the beings which live around
us. Who can explain why one species
ranges widely and is very numerous, and
why another allied species has a narrow
range and is rare ? Yet these relations
are of the highest importance, for they
determine the present welfare, and, as I
believe, the future success and modifica
tion of every inhabitant of this world.
Still less do we know of the mutual
relations of the innumerable inhabitants
of the world during the many past geo
logical epochs in its history. Although
much remains obscure, and will long
remain obscure, I can entertain no
doubt, after the most deliberate study
and dispassionate judgment of which I
am capable, that the view Mitch most
naturalists entertain, and which I
formerly entertained—namely, that each
species has been independently created
—is erroneous. I am fully convinced
that species are not immutable; but that
those belonging to what are called the
same genera are lineal descendants of
some other and generally extinct species,
in the same manner as the acknow
ledged varieties of any one species are1
the descendants of that species. Further
more, I am convinced that Natural
Selection has been the main, but not
exclusive, means of modification.
�Chapter I.
VARIATION UNDER DOMESTICATION
Causes of Variability—Effects of Habit—Correla
tion of Growth—Inheritance—Character of
Domestic Varieties—Difficulty of distinguish
ing between Varieties and Species—Origin of
Domestic Varieties from one or more Species—■
Domestic Pigeons, their Differences and Origin
—Principle of Selection anciently followed,
its Effects—-Methodical and Unconscious
Selection—Unknown Origin of our Domestic
Productions — Circumstances favourable to
Man’s power of Selection.
When we look to the individuals of the
same variety or sub-variety of our older
cultivated plants and animals, one of the
first points which strikes us is, that they
generally differ more from each other than
do the individuals of any one species or
variety in a state of nature. When we
reflect on ;the vast diversity of the plants
and animals which have been cultivated,
and which have varied during all ages
under the most different climates and
treatment, I think we are driven to con
clude that this great variability is simply
due to our domestic productions having
been raised under conditions of life not so
uniform as, and somewhat different from,
those to which the parent-species have
been exposed under nature. There is also,
I think, some probability in the view pro
pounded by Andrew Knight, that this
variability may be partly connected with
excess of food. It seems pretty clear that
organic beings must be exposed during
several generations to the new conditions
of life to cause any appreciable amount of
variation ; and that when the organisation
has once begun to vary, it generally con
tinues to vary for many generations. No
case is on record of a variable being ceasing
to be variable under cultivation.
Our
oldest cultivated plants, such as wheat,
still often yield new varieties ; our oldest
domesticated animals are still capable of
rapid improvement or modification.
It has been disputed at what period of
life the causes of variability, whatever they
may be, generally act; whether during the
early or late period of development of the
embryo, or at the instant of conception.
Geoffroy St. Hilaire’s experiments show
that unnatural treatment of the embryo
causes monstrosities; and monstrosities
cannot be separated by any clear line of
distinction from mere variations. But I
am strongly inclined to suspect that the
most frequent cause of variability, may be
attributed to the male and female repro
ductive elements having been affected prior
to the act of conception. Several reasons
make me believe in this ; but the chief
one is the remarkable effect which confine
ment or cultivation has on the function
of the reproductive system, this system
appearing to be far more susceptible than
any other part of the organisation to the
action of any change in the conditions of
life. Nothing is more easy than to. tame
an animal, and few things more difficult .
than to get it to breed freely under con
finement, even in the many cases when
the male and female unite. How many
animals there are which will not breed,
though living long under not very close
confinement in their native country! This
is generally attributed to vitiated instincts;
but how many cultivated plants display
the utmost vigour, and yet rarely or never
seed ! In some few such cases it has been
discovered that very trifling changes, such
as a little more or less water at some
particular period of growth, will determine
whether or not the plant sets a seed. I
cannot here enter on the copious details
which I have collected on this curious
subject ; but to show how singular the laws
are which determine the reproduction of
animals under confinement, I may just
mention that carnivorous animals, even
from the tropics, breed in this country
pretty freely under confinement, with the
exception of the plantigrades or bear family;
whereas carnivorous birds, with the rarest
exceptions, hardly ever lay fertile eggs.
Many exotic plants have pollen utterly
worthless, in the same exact condition as
in the most sterile hybrids. When, on the
�12
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
one hand, we see domesticated animals
and plants, though often weak and sickly,
yet breeding quite freely under confine
ment ; and when, on the other hand, we
see individuals, though taken young from
a state of nature, perfectly tamed, longlived, and healthy (of which I could give
numerous instances), yet having their repro
ductive system so seriously affected by
unperceived causes as to fail in acting, we
need not be surprised at this system, when
it does act under confinement, acting not
quite regularly, and producing offspring not
perfectly like their parents.
Sterility has been said to be the bane of
horticulture ; but on this view we owe
variability to the same cause which pro
duces sterility ; and variability is the source
•of all the choicest productions of the
garden. I may add that, as some organ
isms will breed freely under the most
unnatural conditions (for instance, the
rabbit and ferret kept in hutches), showing
that their reproductive system has not
Been thus affected ; so will some animals
and plants withstand domestication or
cultivation, and vary very slightly—perhaps
hardly more than in a state of nature.
A long list could easily be given of
“sporting plants”; by this term gardeners
mean a single bud or offset, which suddenly
assumes a new and sometimes very different
character from that of the rest of the plant.
Such buds can be propagated by grafting,
■etc., and sometimes by seed. These
“ sports ” are extremely rare under naturfe,
but far from rare under cultivation ; and
in this case we see that the treatment of the
parent has affected a bud or offset, and not
the ovules or pollen. But it is the opinion
of most physiologists that there is no
essential difference between a bud and an
ovule in their earliest stages of formation ;
so that, in fact, “ sports ” support my view,
that variability may be largely attributed
to the ovules or pollen, or to both, having
been affected by the treatment of the parent
prior to the act of conception. These cases
anyhow show that variation is not neces
sarily connected, as some authors have
supposed, with the act of generation.
Seedlings from the same fruit and the
young of the same litter, sometimes differ
considerably from each other, though both
the young and the parents, as Muller has
remarked, have apparently been exposed
to exactly the same conditions of life ; and
this shows how unimportant the direct
effects of the conditions of life are in com
parison with the laws of reproduction, of
growth, and of inheritance; for had the
action of the conditions been direct, if any
of the young had -varied, all would probably
have varied in the same manner. To judge
how much, in the case of any variation, we
should attribute to the direct action of
heat, moisture, light, food, etc., is most
difficult: my impression is, that with
animals such agencies have produced very
little direct effect, though apparently more
in the case of plants. Under this point of
view, Mr. Buckman’s recent experiments
on plants are extremely valuable. When
all or nearly all the individuals exposed to
certain conditions are affected in the same
way, the change at first appears to be
directly due to such conditions; but in
some cases it can be shown that quite
opposite conditions produce similar changes
of structure. Nevertheless, some slight
amount of change may, I think, be attri
buted to the direct action of the conditions
of life—as, in some cases, increased size
from amount of food, colour from particular
kinds of food or from light, and perhaps
the thickness of fur from climate.
Habit also has a decided influence, as in
the period of flowering with plants when
transported from one climate to another.
In animals it has a more marked effect ;
for instance, I find in the domestic duck
that the bones of the wing weigh less and
the bones of the leg more, in proportion to
the whole skeleton, than do the same bones
in the wild duck; and I presume that this
change may be safely attributed to the
domestic duck flying much less, and walking
more, than its wild parent. The great and
inherited development of the udders in
cows and goats in countries where they are
habitually milked, in comparison with the
state of these organs in other countries, is
another instance of the effect of use. Not
a single domestic animal can be named
which has not in some country drooping
ears ; and the view suggested by some
authors, that the drooping is due to the
disuse of the muscles of the ear, from the
animals not being much alarmed by danger,
seems probable.
There are many laws regulating varia
tion, some few of which can be dimly seen,
and will be hereafter briefly mentioned.
I will here only allude to what may be
called correlation of growth. Any change
in the embryo or larva will almost certainly
entail changes in the mature animal.
In monstrosities the correlations between
quite distinct parts are very curious ; and
many instances are given in Isidore Geoffroy
�VARIATION UNDER DOMESTICATION
St. Hilaire’s great work on this subject.
Breeders believe that long limbs are almost
always accompanied by an elongated head.
Some instances of correlation are quite
whimsical: thus cats with blue eyes are
invariably deaf; colour and constitutional
peculiarities go together, of which many
remarkable cases could be given among ani
mals and plants. From the facts collected
by Heusinger, it appears that white sheep
and pigs are differently affected from
coloured individuals by certain vegetable
poisons. Hairless dogs have imperfect
teeth ; long-haired and coarse-haired ani
mals are apt to have, as is asserted, long
or many horns ; pigeons with feathered feet
have skin between their outer toes ; pigeons
with short beaks have small feet, and those
with long beaks large feet. Hence, if man
goes on selecting, and thus augmenting, any
peculiarity, he will almost certainly uncon
sciously modify other parts of the structure,
owing to the mysterious laws of the correla
tion of growth.
The result of the various, quite unknown,
or dimly-seen laws of variation is infinitely
complex and diversified. It is well worth
while carefully to study the several treatises
published on some of our old cultivated
plants, as on the hyacinth, potato, even the
dahlia, etc.; and it is really surprising to
note the endless points in structure and
constitution in which the varieties and sub
varieties differ slightly from each other.
The whole organisation seems to have
become plastic, and tends to depart in
some small degree from that of the parental
type.
.
.
. , . , .
Any variation which is not inherited is
unimportant for us. But the number and
diversity of inheritable deviations of struc
ture, both those of slight and those of
considerable physiological importance, is
endless. Dr. Prosper Lucas’s treatise, in
two large volumes, is the fullest and the
best on this subject. No breeder doubts
how strong is the tendency to inheritance :
like produces like is his fundamental belief:
doubts have been thrown on this principle
by theoretical writers alone. When any
deviation of structure often appears, and
we see it in the father and child, we cannot
tell whether it may not be due to the same
cause having acted on both ; but when
among individuals, apparently exposed to
the same conditions, any very rare devia
tion, due to some extraordinary combination
of circumstances, appears in the parent—
say, once among several million individuals
—and it reappears in the child, the mere
13
doctrine of chances almost compels us to
attribute its reappearance to inheritance.
Every one must have heard of cases of
albinism, prickly skin, hairy bodies, etc.,
appearing in several members of the same
family. If strange and rare deviations of
structure are truly inherited, less strange
and commoner deviations may be freely
admitted to be inheritable. Perhaps the
correct way of viewing the whole subject
would be to look at the inheritance of every
character whatever as the rule, and non
inheritance as the anomaly.
The laws governing inheritance are quite
unknown; no one can say why a peculiarity
in different individuals of the same species,
or in individuals of different species, is
sometimes inherited and sometimes not
so ; why the child often reverts in certain
characters to its grandfather or grand
mother or other more remote ancestor
why a peculiarity is often transmitted from
one sex to both sexes, or to one sex alone,
more commonly but not exclusively to the
like sex. It is a fact of some little impor
tance to us, that peculiarities appearing in
the males of our domestic breeds are often
transmitted either exclusively, or in a much
greater degree, to males alone. A much
more important rule, which I think may be
trusted, is that, at whatever period of life a
peculiarity first appears, it tends to appear
in the offspring at a corresponding age,
though sometimes earlier. In many cases
this could not be otherwise: thus the
inherited peculiarities in the horns of cattle
could appear only in the offspring when
nearly mature; peculiarities in the silk
worm are known to appear at the corre
sponding caterpillar or cocoon stage. But
hereditary diseases and some other facts
make me believe that the rule has a wider
extension, and that when there is no appa
rent reason why a peculiarity should appear
at any particular age, yet that it does tend
to appear in the offspring at the same
period at which it first appeared in the
parent. I believe this rule to be of the
highest importance in explaining the laws
of embryology. These remarks are of
course confined to the first appearance of
the peculiarity, and not to its primary
cause, which may have acted on the ovules
or male element ; in nearly the same
manner as in the crossed offspring from a
short-horned cow by a long-horned bull,
the greater length of horn, though appearing
late in life, is clearly due to the male element.
Having alluded to the subject of rever
sion, I may here refer to a statement often
�14
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
made by naturalists—namely, that our
domestic varieties, when run wild, gradually
but certainly revert in character to their
aboriginal stocks. Hence it has been
argued that no deductions can be drawn
from domestic races to species in a state
of nature. I have in vain endeavoured to
discover on what decisive facts the above
statement' has so often and so boldly been
made. There would be great difficulty in
proving its truth : we may safely conclude
that very many of the most strongly-marked
domestic varieties could not possibly live
in a wild state. In many cases we do not
know what the aboriginal stock was, and
so could not tell whether or not nearly
perfect reversion had ensued. It would be
quite necessary, in order to prevent the
effects of intercrossing, that only a single
variety should be turned loose in its new
home. Nevertheless, as our varieties cer
tainly do occasionally revert in some of
their characters to ancestral forms, it seems
to me not improbable that, if we could
succeed in naturalising, or were to cultivate,
during many generations, the several races,
for instance, of the cabbage, in very poor
soil (in which case, however, some effect
would have to be attributed to the direct
action of the poor soil), that they would to
a large extent, or even wholly, revert to
the wild aboriginal stock. Whether or not
the experiment would succeed is not of
great importance for our line of argument;
for by the experiment itself the conditions
■of life are changed. If it could be shown
that our domestic varieties manifested a
strong tendency to reversion—that is, to
lose their acquired characters, while kept
under the same conditions, and while kept
in a considerable body, so that free inter
crossing might check, by blending together,
any slight deviations in their structure—in
such case I grant that we could deduce
nothing from domestic varieties in regard
to species. But there is not a shadow of
evidence in favour of this view : to assert
that we could not breed our cart and race
horses, long and short horned cattle, and
poultry of various breeds, and esculent
vegetables, for an almost infinite number
of generations, would be opposed to all
experience. I may add that, when under
nature the conditions of life do change,
variations and reversions of character pro
bably do occur ; but natural selection, as
will hereafter be explained, will determine
how far the new characters thus arising
shall be preserved.
When we look to the hereditary varieties 1
or races of our domestic animals and plants,
and compare them with closely-allied
species, we generally perceive in each
domestic race, as already remarked, less
uniformity of character than in true species.
Domestic races of the same species, also,
often have a somewhat monstrous character;
by which I mean that, although differingfrom
each other, and from other species of the
same genus, in several trifling respects, they
often differ in an extreme degree in some one
part, both when compared one with another,
and more especially when compared with
all the species in nature to which they are
nearest allied. With these exceptions (and
with that of the perfect fertility of varieties
when crossed—a subject hereafter to be
discussed), domestic races of the same
species differ from each other in the same
manner as, only in most cases in a lesser
degree than, do closely-allied species of
the same genus in a state of nature. I
think this must be admitted, when we find
that there are hardly any domestic races,
either among animals or plants, which have
not been ranked by competent judges as
mere varieties, and by other competent
judges as the descendants of aboriginally
distinct species. If any marked distinction
existed between domestic races and species,
this source of doubt could not so per
petually recur. It has often been stated
that domestic races do not differ from each
other in characters of generic value. I
think it could be shown that this statement
is hardly correct; but natmalists differ
widely in determining what characters are
of generic value, all such valuations being
at present empirical. Moreover, on the
view of the origin of genera which I shall
presently give, we have no right to expect
often to meet with generic differences in
our domesticated productions.
When we attempt to estimate the amount
of structural difference between the domestic
races of the same species, we are soon
involved in doubt, from not knowing
whether they have descended from one or
several parent species. This point, if it
could be cleared up, would be interesting ;
if, for instance, it could be shown that the
greyhound, bloodhound, terrier, spaniel,
and bull-dog, which we all know propagate
their kind so ti;uly, were the offspring of
any single species, then such facts would
have great weight in making us doubt
about the immutability of the many very
closely-allied natural species—for instance,
of the many foxes—inhabiting different
quarters of the world. I do not believe, as
�VARIATION UNDER DOMESTICATION
we shall presently see, that the whole
amount of difference between the several
breeds of the dog has been produced under
domestication ; 1“ believe that some small
part of the difference is due to their being
descended from distinct species. In the
case of some other domesticated species,
there is presumptive, or even strong evi
dence, that all the breeds have descended
from a single wild stock.
It has often been assumed that man has
chosen for domestication animals and
plants having an extraordinary inherent
tendency to vary, and likewise to withstand
diverse climates. I do not dispute that
these capacities have added largely to the
value of most of our domesticated produc
tions ; but how could a savage possibly
know, when he first tamed an animal,
whether it would vary in succeeding genera
tions, and whether it would endure other
climates ? Has the. little variability of the
ass or guinea-fowl, or the small power of
endurance of warmth by the reindeer, or of
cold by the common camel, prevented their
domestication ? I cannot doubt that if
other animals and plants, equal in number
to our domesticated productions, and
belonging to equally diverse classes and
countries, were taken from a state of
nature, and could be made to breed for an
equal number of generations under domes
tication, they would vary on an average as
largely as the parent species of our existing
domesticated productions have varied.
In the case of most of our anciently
dom^ifcated animals and plants, I do not
think it is possible to come to any definite
conclusion, whether they have descended
from one or several wild species. The
argument mainly relied on by those who
believe in the multiple origin of our domestic
animals is, that we find in the most ancient
records, more especially on the monuments
of Egypt, much diversity in the breeds ;
and that some of the breeds closely
resemble, perhaps are identical with, those
still existing. Even if this latter fact were
found more strictly and generally true than
seems to me to be the case, what does it
show but that some of our breeds originated
there four or five thousand years ago?
But Mr. Horner’s researches have rendered
it in some degree probable that man suffi
ciently civilised to have manufactured
pottery existed in the valley of the Nile
thirteen or fourteen thousand years ago ;
and who will pretend to say how long
before these ancient periods savages, like
those of Tierra del Fuego or Australia, who
15
possess a semi-domestic dog, may not have
existed in Egypt ?
The whole subject must, I think, remain
vague; nevertheless, I may, without here
entering on any details, state that, from
geographical and other considerations, I
think it highly probable that our domestic
dogs have descended from several wild
species. Knowing, as we do, that savages
are very fond of taming animals, it seems
to me unlikely, in the case of the dog-genus,
which is distributed in a wild state through
out the world, that since man first appeared
one single species alone should have been
domesticated. In regard to sheep and
goats I can form no opinion. I should
think, from facts communicated to me by
Mr. Blyth on the habits, voice, and con
stitution, etc., of the humped Indian cattle,
that these had descended from a different
aboriginal stock from our European cattle ;
and several competent judges believe that
these latter have had more than one wild
parent. With respect to horses, from
reasons which I cannot give here, I am
doubtfully inclined to believe, in opposition
to several authors, that all the races have
descended from one wild stock. Mr. Blyth,
whose opinion, from his large and varied
stores of knowledge, I should value more
than that of almost anyone, thinks that all
the breeds of poultry have proceeded from
the common wild Indian fowl (Gallus
bankiva). In regard to ducks and rabbits,
the breeds of which differ considerably from
each other in structure, I do not doubt that
they have all descended from the common
wild duck and rabbit.
The doctrine of the origin of our several
domestic races from several aboriginal
stocks has been carried to an absurd
extreme by some authors. They believe
that every race which breeds true, let the
distinctive characters be ever so slight, has
had its wild prototype. At this rate there
must have existed at least a score of species
of wild cattle, as many sheep, and several
goats in Europe alone, and several even
within Great Britain. One author believes
that there formerly existed in Great Britain
eleven wild species of sheep peculiar to it.
When we bear in mind that Britain has
now hardly one peculiar mammal, and
France but few distinct from those of
Germany, and conversely, and so with
Hungary, Spain, etc., but that each of these
kingdoms possesses several peculiar breeds
of cattle, sheep, etc., we must admit that
many domestic breeds have originated in
Europe ; for whence could they have been
�i6
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
derived, as these several countries do not
possess a number of peculiar species as
distinct parent-stocks ? So it is in India.
Even in the case of the domestic dogs
of the whole world, which I fully admit
have probably descended from several wild
species, I cannot doubt that there has been
an immense amount of inherited variation.
Who can believe that animals closely
resembling the Italian greyhound, the
bloodhound, the bull-dog, or Blenheim
spaniel, etc.—so unlike all wild Canidae—
ever existed freely in a state of nature?
It has often been loosely said that all our
races of dogs have been produced by the
crossing of a few aboriginal species; but
by crossing we can only get forms in some
degree intermediate between their parents ;
and, if we account for our several domestic
races by this process, we must admit the
former existence of the most extreme
forms, as the Italian greyhound, blood
hound, bull-dog, etc., in the wild state.
Moreover, the possibility of making distinct
races by crossing has been greatly exagge
rated. There can be no doubt that a
race may be modified by occasional crosses,
if aided by the careful selection of those
individual mongrels which present any
desired character ; but that a race could
be obtained nearly intermediate between
two extremely different races or species,
I can hardly believe. Sir J. Sebright
expressly experimentised for this object,
and failed. The offspring from the first
cross between two pure breeds is tolerably
and sometimes (as I have found with
pigeons) extremely uniform, and everything
seems' simple enough ; but when these
mongrels are crossed one with another for
several generations, hardly two of them
will be alike, and then the extreme diffi
culty, or rather utter hopelessness, of the
task becomes apparent. Certainly a breed
intermediate between two very distinct
breeds could not be got without extreme
care and long-continued selection ; nor can
I find a single case on record of a per
manent race having been thus formed.
On the Breeds of the Domestic Pigeon.—
Believing that it is always best to study
some special group, I have, after delibera
tion, taken up domestic pigeons. I have
kept every breed which I could purchase
or obtain, and have been most kindly
favoured with skins from several quarters
of the world, more especially by the Hon.
W. Elliot from India, and by the Hon. C.
Murray from Persia. Many treatises in
different languages have been published
on pigeons, and some of them are very
important, as being of considerable anti
quity. I have associated with several
eminent fanciers, and have been permitted
to join two of the London Pigeon Clubs.
The diversity of the breeds is something
astonishing. Compare the English carrier
and the short-faced tumbler, and see the
wonderful difference in their beaks, entailing
corresponding differences in their skulls.
The carrier, more especially the male bird,
is also remarkable from the wonderful
development of the carunculated skin
about the head, and this is accompanied
by greatly elongated eyelids, very large
external orifices to the nostrils, and a wide
gape of mouth. The short-faced tumbler
has a beak in outline almost like that of a
finch ; and the common tumbler has the
singular inherited habit of flying at a great
height in a compact flock, and tumbling in
the air head over heels. The runt is a bird
of great size, with long, massive beak and
large feet; some of the sub-breeds of runts
have very long necks, others very long
wings and tails, others singularlMj short
tails. The barb is allied to the carrier,,
but, instead of a very long beak, has a very
short and very broad one. The pouter
has a much elongated body, wings, and
legs ; and its enormously developed crop,
which it glories in inflating, may well
excite astonishment and even laughter.
The turbit has a very short and conical
beak, with a line of reversed feathers down
the breast; and it has the habit of con
tinually expanding slightly the upper part
of the oesophagus. The Jacobin has the
feathers so much reversed along the back
of the neck that they form a hood, and
it has, proportionally to its size, much
elongated wing and tail feathers. The
trumpeter and laugher, as their names,
express, utter a very different coo from the
other breeds. The fantail has thirty or
even forty tail feathers, instead of twelve
or fourteen, the normal number in all
members of the great pigeon family ; and
these feathers are kept expanded, and are
carried so erect that in good birds the
head and tail touch ; the oil-gland is quite
aborted. Several other less distinct breeds
might be specified.
In the skeletons of the several breeds
the development of the bones of the face
in length and breadth and curvature differs
enormously. The shape, as well as the
breadth and length of the ramus of the
lower jaw, varies in a highly remarkable
manner. The number of the caudal and
�VARIATION UNDER DOMESTICATION
sacral vertebrae vary ; as does the number
of the ribs, together with their relative
breadth and the presence of processes.
The size and shape of the apertures in
the sternum are highly variable ; so is the
degree of divergence and relative size of
the two arms of the furcula. The propor
tional width of the gape of mouth, the
proportional length of the eyelids, of the
orifice of the nostrils, of the tongue (not
always in strict correlation with the length
of beak), the size of the crop and of the
upper part of the oesophagus ; the develop
ment and abortion of the oil-gland; the
number of the primary wing and caudal
feathers ; the relative length of wing and
tail to each other and to the body; the
relative length of leg and of the feet ; the
number of scutellae on the toes, the develop
ment of skin between the toes, are all
points of structure which are variable. The
period at which the perfect plumage is
acquired varies, as does the state of the
down with which the nestling birds are
clothed when hatched. The shape and
size of the eggs vary. The manner of
flight differs remarkably ; as does in some
breeds the voice and disposition. Lastly,
in certain breeds, the males and females
have come to differ to a slight degree from
each other.
Altogether at least a score of pigeons
might be chosen which, if shown to an
ornithologist, and he were told that they
were wild birds, would certainly, I think,
be ranked by him as well-defined species.
Moreover, I do not believe that any ornitho
logist would place the English carrier,
the short-faced tumbler, the runt, the barb,
pouter, and fantail in the same genus ;
more especially as in each of these breeds
several truly-inherited sub-breeds, or species
as he might have called them, could be
shown him.
Great as the differences are between the
breeds of pigeons, I am fully convinced
that the common opinion of naturalists is
correct—namely, that all have descended
from the rock-pigeon (Columba livia),
including under this term several geo
graphical races or sub-species, which differ
1 from each other in the most trifling respects.
As several of the reasons which have led
me to this belief are in some degree appli
cable in other cases, I will here briefly
give them. If the several breeds are not
varieties, and have not proceeded from the
rock-pigeon, they must have descended
from at least seven or eight aboriginal
stocks ; for it is impossible to make the
17
present domestic breeds by the crossing of
any lesser number: how, for instance,
could a pouter be produced by crossing
two breeds unless one of the parent-stocks
possessed the characteristic enormous crop?
The supposed aboriginal stocks must all
have been rock-pigeons—that is, not breed
ing or willingly perching on trees. But
besides C. livia, with its geographical sub
species, only two or three other species of
rock-pigeons are known ; and these have
not any of the characters of the domestic
breeds. Hence the supposed aboriginal
stocks must either still exist in the countries
where they were originally domesticated,
and yet be unknown to ornithologists
(and this, considering their size, habits,
and remarkable characters, seems very
improbable), or they must have become
extinct in the wild state. But birds breeding
on precipices, and good fliers, are unlikely
to be exterminated; and the common rock
pigeon, which has the same habits with the
domestic breeds, has not been exterminated
even on several of the smaller British islets,
or on the shores of the Mediterranean.
Hence the supposed extermination of so
many species having similar habits with
the rock-pigeon seems to me a very rash
assumption. Moreover, the several abovenamed domesticated breeds have been
transported to all parts of the world, and,
therefore, some of them must have been
carried back again into their native country ;
but not one has ever become wild or feral,
though the dovecot-pigeon, which is the
rock-pigeon in a very slightly altered state,
has become feral in several places. Again,
all recent experience shows that it is most
difficult to get any wild animal to breed
freely under domestication; yet, on the
hypothesis of the multiple origin of our
pigeons, it must be assumed that at least
seven or eight species were so thoroughly
domesticated in ancient times by half
civilised man as to be quite prolific under
confinement.
An argument, as it seems to me, of great
weight, and applicable in several other
cases, is that the above-specified breeds,
though agreeing generally in constitution,
habits, voice, colouring, and in most parts
of their structure, with the wild rock-pigeon,
yet are certainly highly abnormal in other
parts of their structure : we may look in
vain throughout the whole great family of
Columbidse for a beak like that of the
English carrier, or that of the short-faced
tumbler, or barb ; for reversed feathers like
those of the Jacobin ; for a crop like that
c
■
�18
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
of the pouter; for tail-feathers like those
of the fantail. Hence it must be assumed
not only that half-civilised man succeeded
in thoroughly domesticating several species,
but that he intentionally or by chance
picked out extraordinarilyabnormal species;
and, further, that these very species have
since all become extinct or unknown. So
many strange contingencies seem to me
improbable in the highest degree.
Some facts in regard to the colouring of
pigeons well deserve consideration. The
rock-pigeon is of a slaty-blue, and has a
white rump (the Indian sub-species, C.
intermedia of Strickland, having it bluish);
the tail has a terminal dark bar, with the
bases of the outer feathers externally
edged with white; the wings have two
black bars; some semi-domestic breeds
and some apparently truly wild breeds
have, besides the two black bars, the wings
chequered with black. These several
marks do not occur together in any other
species of the whole family. Now, in
every one of the domestic breeds, taking
thoroughly well-bred birds, all the above
marks, even to the white edging of the
outer tail-feathers, sometimes concur per
fectly developed. Moreover, when two
birds belonging to two distinct breeds are
crossed, neither of which is blue or has any
of the above-specified marks, the mongrel
offspring are very apt suddenly to acquire
these characters; for instance I crossed
some uniformly white fantails with some
uniformly black barbs, and they produced
mottled brown and black birds ; these I
again crossed together, and one grandchild
of the pure white fantail and pure black
barb was of as beautiful a blue colour, with
the white rump, double black wing-bar,
and barred and white-edged tail-feathers,
as any wild rock-pigeon ! We can under
stand these facts, on the well-known prin
ciple of reversion to ancestral characters,
if all the domestic breeds have descended
from the rock-pigeon. But if we deny this,
we must make one of the two following
highly improbable suppositions. Either,
firstly, that all the several imagined
aboriginal stocks were coloured and
marked like the rock-pigeon, althoug'h no
other existing species is thus coloured and
marked, so that in each separate breed
there might be a tendency to revert to the
very same colours and markings. Or,
secondly, that each breed, even the purest,
has within a dozen or, at most, within a
score of generations, been crossed by the
rock-pigeon : I say within a dozen or |
twenty generations, for we know of no fact
countenancing the belief that the child ever
reverts to some one ancestor, removed by
a greater number of generations. In a
breed which has been crossed only once
with some distinct breed, the tendency to
reversion to any character derived from
such cross will naturally become less and
less, as in each succeeding generation there
will be less of the foreign blood ; but when
there has been no cross with a distinct
breed, and there is a tendency in both
parents to revert to a character which has
been lost during some former generation,
this tendency, for all that we can see to
the contrary, may be transmitted un
diminished for an indefinite number of
generations. These two distinct cases are
often confounded in treatises on inheritance.
Lastly, the hybrids or mongrels from
between all the domestic breeds of pigeons
are perfectly fertile. I can state this from
my own observations, purposely made, on
the most distinct breeds. Now, it is diffi
cult, perhaps impossible, to bring forward
one case of the hybrid offspring of two
animals clearly distinct being themslves
perfectly fertile. Some authors believe that
long-continued domestication eliminates
this strong tendency to sterility : from the
history of the dog I think there is some
probability in this hypothesis, if applied to
species closely related together, though it
is unsupported by a single experiment.
But to extend the hypothecs so far as to
suppose that species, aboriginally as distinct
as carriers, tumblers, pouters, and fantails
now are, should yield offspring perfectly
fertile, inter se, seems to me rash in the
extreme.
From these several reasons—namely, the
improbability of man having formerly got
seven or eight supposed species of pigeons
to breed freely under domestication ; these
supposed species being quite unknown in
a wild state, and their becoming nowhere
feral; these species having very abnormal
characters in certain respects, as compared
with all other Columbidse, though so like
in most other respects to the rock-pigeon ;
the blue colour and various marks occa
sionally appearing in all the breeds, both
when kept pure and when crossed ; the
mongrel offspring being perfectly fertile—
from these several reasons, taken together,
I can feel no doubt that all our domestic
breeds have descended from the Columba
livia with its geographical sub-species.
In favour of this view, I may add, firstly,
that C. livia, or the rock-pigeon, has been
�VARIATION UNDER DOMESTICATION
19
knowing well how true they bred, I felt
found capable of domestication in Europe
fully as much difficulty in believing that
and in India ; and that it agrees in habits
they could have descended from a common
and in a great number of points of structure
parent as any naturalist could in coming
with all the domestic breeds. Secondly,
to a similar conclusion in regard to the
although an English carrier or short-faced
many species of finches, or other large
tumbler differs immensely in certain cha
groups of birds, in nature. One circum
racters from the rock-pigeon, yet by com
stance has struck me much—namely, that
paring the several sub-breeds of these
all the breeders of the various domestic
varieties, more especially those brought
animals and the cultivators of plants with
from distant countries, we can make an
whom I have ever conversed, or whose
almost perfect series between the extremes
treatises I have read, are firmly convinced
of structure. Thirdly, those characters
that the several breeds to which each has
which are mainly distinctive of each breed—
attended are descended from so many
for instance, the wattle and length of beak
aboriginally distinct species. Ask, as I
of the carrier, the shortness of that of the
have asked, a celebrated raiser of Here
tumbler, and the number of tail-feathers in
ford cattle whether his, cattle might not
the fantail—are in each breed eminently
have descended from long-horns, and he will
variable; and the explanation of this fact
will be obvious when we come to treat of laugh you to scorn. I have never met a
pigeon, or poultry, or duck, or rabbit
selection. Fourthly, pigeons have been
fancier who was not fully convinced that
watched, and tended with the utmost care,
each main breed was descended from .a
and loved by many people. They have
been domesticated for thousands of years
distinct species. Van Mons, in his treatise
in several quarters of the world; the
on pears and apples, shows how utterly he
earliest known record of pigeons is in the
disbelieves that the several sorts, for
fifth Egyptian dynasty, about 3000 B.C., as
instance a Ribston-pippin or Codlin-apple,
was pointed out to me by Professor Lepsius;
could ever have proceeded from the seeds
of the same tree. Innumerable other
but Mr. Birch informs me that pigeons are
given in a bill of fare in the previous
examples could be given. The explanation,
dynasty. In the time of the Romans, as
I think, is simple : from long-continued
we hear from Pliny, immense prices were
study they are strongly impressed with the
given for pigeons ; “ nay, they are come to
differences between the several races ; and
this pass, that they can reckon up their
though they well know .that each race varies
pedigree and race.” Pigeons were much
slightly, for they win their prizes by
valued by Afefe&ikKhan in India, about the
selecting such slight differences, yet they
year 1600 ; never less than 20,000 pigeons
ignore all general arguments, and refuse to
were taken with the court. “The monarchs
sum up in their minds slight differences
of Iran and Turan sent him some very
accumulated during many successive gene
rare birds”; and, continues the courtly
rations. May not those naturalists who,
historian, “ His Majesty by crossing the
knowing far less of the laws of inheritance
breeds, which method was never practised
than does the breeder, and knowing no
before, has improved them astonishingly.”
more than he does of the intermediate links
About this same period the Dutch were as
in the long lines of descent, yet admit that
eager about pigeons as were the old
many of our domestic races have descended
Romans. The paramount importance of
from the same parents—may they not
these considerations in explaining the
learn a lesson of caution when they
immense amount of variation which pigeons
deride the idea of species in a state of
have undergone will be obvious when we
nature being lineal descendants of other
treat of selection. We shall then, also,
species ?
see how it is that the breeds so often have
Selection.—Let us now briefly consider
a somewhat monstrous character. It is
the steps by which domestic races have
also a most favourable circumstance for
been produced, either from one or from
the production of distinct breeds that male
several allied species. Some little effect
and female pigeons can be easily mated
may, perhaps, be attributed to the direct
for life ; and thus different breeds can be
action of the external conditions of life,
kept together in the same aviary.
and some little to habit ; but he would be
I have discussed the probable origin of a bold man who would account by such
domestic pigeons at some, yet quite insuffi
agencies for the differences of a dray- and
cient, length ; because when I first kept
race-horse, a greyhound and bloodhound,
.pigeons and watched the several kinds,
a carrier and tumbler pigeon. One of the
�20
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
most remarkable features in our domesti
cated races is that we see in them adapta
tion, not indeed to the animal’s or plant’s
own good, but to man’s use or fancy.
Some variations useful to him have probably
arisen suddenly, or by one step; many
botanists, for instance, believe that the
fuller’s teasel, with its hooks, which cannot
be rivalled by any mechanical contrivance,
is only a variety of the wild Dipsacus;
and this amount of change may have sud
denly arisen in a seedling.
So it has
probably been with the turnspit dog ; and
this is known to have been the case with
the ancon sheep. But when we compare
the dray-horse and race-horse, the drome
dary and camel, the various breeds of sheep
fitted either for cultivated land or mountain
pasture, with the wool of one breed good
for one purpose, and that of another breed
for another purpose ; when we compare the
many breeds of dogs, each good for man in
very different ways ; when we compare the
game-cock, so pertinacious in battle, with
other breeds so little quarrelsome, with
“everlasting layers” which never desire to
sit, and with the bantam so small and
elegant; when we compare the host of
agricultural, culinary, orchard, and flowergarden races of plants, most useful to man
at different seasons and for different
purposes, or so beautiful in his eyes, we
must, I think, look further than to mere
variability. We cannot suppose that all the
breeds were suddenly produced as perfect
and as useful as we now see them; indeed,
in several cases, we know that this has not
been their history. The key is man’s
power of accumulative selection : nature
gives successive variations ; man adds
them up in certain directions useful to him.
In this sense he may be said to make for
himself useful breeds.
The great power of this principle of
selection is not hypothetical. It is certain
that several of our eminent breeders have,
even within a single, lifetime, modified to a
large extent some breeds of cattle and
sheep. In order fully to realise what they
have done, it is almost necessary to read
several of the many treatises devoted to
this subject, and to inspect the animals.
Breeders habitually speak of an animal’s
organisation as something quite plastic,
which they can model almost as they
please. If I had space, I could quote
numerous passages to this effect from highly
competent authorities. Youatt, who was
probably better acquainted with the works
of agriculturists than almost any other in
dividual, and who was himself a very good
judge of an animal, speaks of the principle
of selection as “that which enables the
agriculturist, not only to modify the char
acter of his flock, but to change it altogether.
It is the magician’s wand, by means of
which he may summon into life whatever
form and mould he pleases.” Lord Somer
ville, speaking of what breeders have done
for sheep, says : “It would seem as if
they had chalked out upon a wall a form
perfect in itself, and then had given it
existence.” That most skilful breeder, Sir
John Sebright, used to say, with respect to
pigeons, that “ he would produce any given
feather in three years, but it would take
him six years to obtain head and beak.”
In Saxony the importance of the principle
of selection in regard to merino sheep is so
fully recognised that men follow it as a
trade : the sheep are placed on a table and
are studied, like a picture by a connoisseur;
this is done three times at intervals of
months, and the sheep are each time
marked and classed, so that the very best
may ultimately be selected for breeding.
What English breeders have actually
effected is proved by the enormous prices
given for animals with a good pedigree ;
and these have now been exported to
almost every quarter of the world. The
improvement is by no means generally due
to crossing different breeds; all the best
breeders are strongly opposed to this
practice, except sometimes among closely
allied sub-breeds. And when a cross has
been made, the closest selection is far more
indispensable even than in ordinary cases.
If selection consisted merely in separating
some very distinct variety, and breedingfrom it, the principle would be so obvious as
hardly to be worth notice ; but its impor
tance consists in the great effect produced
by the accumulation in one direction, during
successive generations, of differences abso
lutely inappreciable by an uneducated eye
—differences which I for one have vainly
attempted to appreciate. Not one man in
a thousand has accuracy of eye and judg
ment sufficient to become an eminent
breeder. If gifted with these qualities, and
he studies his subject for years, and devoteshis lifetime to it with indomitable perse
verance, he will succeed, and may make
great improvements ; if he wants any of
these qualities, he will assuredly fail. Few
would readily believe in the natural
capacity and years of practice requisite to
become even a skilful pigeon-fancier.
The same principles are followed by
�VARIATION UNDER DOMESTICATION
horticulturists ; but the variations are here
often more abrupt. No one supposes that
out choicest productions have been pro
duced by a single variation from the
aboriginal stock. We have proofs that
this is not so in some cases, in which exact
records have been kept; thus, to give a
very trifling instance, the steadily-increas
ing size of the common gooseberry may be
quoted. We see an astonishing improve
ment in many florists’ flowers, when the
flowers of the present day are compared
with drawings made only twenty or thirty
years ago. When a race of plants is once
pretty well established, the seed-raisers do
not pick out the best plants, but merely go
over their seed-beds, and pull up the
“ rogues,” as they call the plants that
deviate from the proper standard. With
animals this kind of selection is, in fact,
also followed; for hardly anyone is so
careless as to allow his worst animals to
breed.
In regard to plants, there is another
means of observing the accumulated effects
of selection—namely, by comparing the
diversity of flowers in the different varieties
of the same species in the flower-garden ;
the diversity of leaves, pods, or tubers, or
whatever part is valued, in the kitchen
garden, in comparison with the flowers of
the same varieties ; and the diversity of
fruit of the same species in the orchard, in
comparison with the leaves and flowers of
the same set of varieties. See how different
the leaves of the cabbage are, and how
extremely alike the flowers ; how unlike
the flowers of the heartsease are, and how
alike the leaves ; how much the fruit of the
different kinds of gooseberries differ in size,
colour, shape, and hairiness, and yet the
flowers present very slight differences. It
is not that the varieties which differ largely
in some one point do not differ at all in
other points ; this is hardly ever, perhaps
never, the case. The laws of correlation
of growth, the importance of which should
never be overlooked, will ensure some
differences; but, as a general rule, I cannot
doubt that the continued selection of slight
variations, either in the leaves, the flowers,
or the fruit, will produce races differing
from each other chiefly in these characters.
It may be objected that the principle of
selection has been reduced to methodical
practice for scarcely more than threequarters of a century; it has certainly
been more attended to of late years, and
many treatises have been published on the
subject; and the result has been, in a
21
corresponding degree, rapid and important.
But it is very far from true that the prin
ciple is a modern discovery. I could give
several references to the full acknowledg
ment of the importance of the principle in
works of high antiquity. In rude and
barbarous periods of English history choice
animals were often imported, and laws
were passed to prevent their exportation :
the destruction of horses under a certain
size was ordered, and this maybe compared
to the “ rogumg ” of plants by nurserymen.
The principle of selection I find distinctly
given in an ancient Chinese encyclopaedia.
Explicit rules are laid down by some of the
Roman classical writers. From passages
in Genesis, it is clear that the colour of
domestic animals was at that early period
attended to. Savages now sometimes cross
their dogs with wild canine animals, to
improve the breed, and they formerly did
so, as is attested by passages in Pliny.
The savages in South Africa match their
draught cattle by colour, as do some of the
Esquimaux their teams of dogs. Living
stone shows how much good domestic
breeds are valued by the negroes of the
interior of Africa who have not associated
with Europeans. Some of these facts do
not show actual selection, but they show
that the breeding of domestic animals was
carefully attended to in ancient times, and
is now attended to by the lowest savages.
It would, indeed, have been a strange fact
had attention not been paid to breeding,
for the inheritance of good and bad
qualities is so obvious.
At the present time eminent breeders
try by methodical selection, with a distinct
object in view, to make a new strain or
sub-breed superior to anything existing in
the country. But, for our purpose, a kind
of Selection, which may be called Uncon
scious, and which results from everyone
trying to possess and breed from the best
individual animals, is more important.
Thus, a man who intends keeping pointers
naturally tries to get as good dogs as he
can, and afterwards breeds from his own
best dogs, but he has no wish or expecta
tion of permanently altering the breed.
Nevertheless, I cannot doubt that this pro
cess, continued during centuries, would
improve and modify any breed, in the same
way as Bakewell, Collins, etc., by this very
same process, only carried on more metho
dically, did greatly modify, even during
their own lifetimes, the forms and qualities
of their cattle. Slow and insensible changes
of this kind could never be recognised
�ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
unless actual measurements or careful
drawings of the breeds in question had
been made long ago, which might serve
for comparison. In some cases, however,
unchanged, or but little changed individuals
of the same breed may be found in less
civilised districts, where the breed has
been less improved. There is reason to
believe that King Charles’s spaniel has
been unconsciously modified to a large
extent since the time of that monarch.
Some highly competent authorities are
convinced that the setter is directly derived
from the spaniel, and has probably been
slowly altered from it. It is known that
the English pointer has been greatly
changed within the last century, and in
this case the change has, it is believed,
been chiefly effected by crosses with the
fox-hound; but what concerns us is that
the change has been effected unconsciously
and gradually, and yet so effectually, that,
though the old Spanish pointer certainly
came from Spain, Mr. Borrow has not
seen, as I am informed by him, any native
dog in Spain like our pointer.
By a similar process of selection, and by
careful training, the whole body of English
race-horses have come to surpass in fleetness
and size the parent Arab stock, so that the
latter, by the regulations for the Goodwood
Races, are favoured in the weights they
carry. Lord Spencer and others have
shown how the cattle of England have
increased in weight and in early maturity
compared with the stock formerly kept in
this country. By comparing the accounts
given in old pigeon treatises of carriers
and tumblers with these breeds as now
existing in Britain, India, and Persia, we
can, I think, clearly trace the stages
through which they have insensibly passed,
and come to differ so greatly from the
rock-pigeon.
Youatt gives an excellent illustration of
the effects of a course of selection, which
may be considered as unconsciously fol
lowed, in so far that the breeders could
never have expected or even have wished
to have produced the result which ensued
—namely, the production of two distinct
strains. The two flocks of Leicester sheep
kept by Mr. Buckley and Mr. Burgess, as
Mr. Youatt remarks, “have been purely
bred from the original stock of Mr.
Bakewell for upwards of fifty years. There
is not a suspicion existing in the mind of
any one at all acquainted with the subject
that the owner of either of them has
deviated in any one instance from the pure
blood of Mr. Bakewell’s flock, and yet the
difference between the sheep possessed by
these two gentlemen is so great that they
have the appearance of being quite different
varieties.”
If there exist savages so barbarous as
never to think of the inherited character of
the offspring of their domestic animals,
yet any one animal particularly useful to
them, for any special purpose, would be'
carefully preserved during famines and
other accidents, to which savages are so
liable, and such choice animals would thus
generally leave more offspring than- the
inferior ones ; so that in this case there
would be a kind of unconscious selection
going on. We see the value set on animals
even by the barbarians of Tierra del Fuego,
by their killing and devouring their old
women, in times of dearth, as of less value
than their dogs.
In plants the same gradual process of
improvement, through the occasional pre
servation of the best individuals, whether
or not sufficiently distinct to be ranked at
their first appearance as distinct varieties,
and whether or not two or more species or
races have become blended together by
crossing, may plainly be recognised in the
increased size and beauty which we now
see in the varieties of the heartsease, rose,
pelargonium, dahlia, and other plants,
when compared with the older varieties or
with their parent-stocks. No one would ever
expect to get a first-rate heartsease or dahlia
from the seed of a wild plant. No one
would expect to raise a first-rate melting
pear from the seed of the wild pear, though
he might succeed from a poor seedling
growing wild if it had come from a garden
stock. The pear, though cultivated in
classical times, appears, from Pliny’s
description, to have been a fruit of very
inferior quality. I have seen great surprise
expressed in horticultural works at the
wonderful skill of gardeners in having
produced such splendid results from such
poor materials; but the art, I cannot
doubt, has been simple, and, as far as the
final result is concerned, has been followed
almost unconsciously. It has consisted in
always cultivating the best known variety,
sowing its seeds, and, when a slightly
better variety has chanced to appear,
selecting it, and so onwards. But . the
gardeners of the classical period, who culti
vated the best pear they could procure,
never thought what splendid fruit we should
eat; though we owe our excellent fruit, in
some small degree, to their having naturally
�VARIATION UNDER DOMESTICATION
chosen and preserved the best varieties
they could anywhere find.
A large amount of change in our culti
vated plants, thus slowly and unconsciously
accumulated, explains, as I believe, the
well-known fact that in a vast number of
cases we cannot recognise, and therefore
do not know, the wild parent-stocks of the
plants which have been longest cultivated
in our flower and kitchen gardens. If it
has taken centuries or thousands of years
to improve or modify most of our plants up
to their present standard of usefulness to
man, we cah understand how it is that
neither Australia, the Cape of Good Hope,
nor any other region inhabited by quite
uncivilised man, has afforded us a single
plant worth culture. It is not that these
countries, so rich in species, do not by a
strange chance possess the aboriginal
stocks of any useful plants, but that the
native plants have not been improved by
Continued selection up to a standard of
perfection comparable with that given to
the plants in countries anciently civilised.
In regard to the domestic animals kept
by uncivilised man, it should not be over
looked that they almost always have to
struggle for their own food, at least during
certain seasons. And in two countries, very
differently circumstanced, individuals of
the same species, having slightly different
constitutions or structure, would often
succeed better in the one country than in
the other; and thus by a process of
“natural selection,” as will hereafter be
more fully explained, two sub-breeds might
be formed. This, perhaps, partly explains
what has been remarked by some authors—namely, that the varieties kept by savages
have more of the character of species than
the varieties kept in civilised countries.
On the view here given of the allimportant part which selection by man has
played, it becomes at once obvious how it
is that our domestic races show adaptation
in their structure or in their habits to man’s
wants or fancies. We can, I think, further
understand the frequently abnormal char
acter of our domestic races, and likewise
their differences being so great in external
characters and relatively so slight in in
ternal parts or organs. Man can hardly
select, or only with much difficulty, any
deviation of structure excepting such as is
externally visible ; and indeed he rarely
cares for what is internal. He can never
act by selection, excepting on variations
which are first given to him in some slight
degree by nature. No man would ever try
23
to make a fantail till he saw a pigeon with
a tail developed in some slight degree in
an unusual manner, or a pouter till he saw
a pigeon with a crop of somewhat unusual
size ; and the more abnormal or unusual
any character was when it first appeared,
the more likely it would be to catch his
attention. But to use such an expression as
trying to make a fantail, is, I have no
doubt, in most cases, utterly incorrect. The
man who first selected a pigeon with a
slightly larger tail never dreamed what the
descendants of that pigeon would become
through long-continued, partly unconscious
and partly methodical selection. Perhaps
the parent bird of all fantails had only
fourteen tail-feathers somewhat expanded,
like the present Java fantail, or like indi
viduals of other and distinct breeds, in
which as many as seventeen tail-feathers
have been counted. Perhaps the first
pouter-pigeon did not inflate its crop much
more than the turbit now does the upper
part of its oesophagus—a habit which is
disregarded by all fanciers, as it is not one
of the points of the breed.
Nor let it be thought that some great
deviation of structure would be necessary
to catch the fancier’s eye : he perceives
extremely small differences, and it is in
human nature to value any novelty, how
ever slight, in one’s own possession. Nor
must the value which would formerly be set
on any slight differences in the individuals
of the same species be judged of by the
value which would now be set on them,
after several breeds have once fairly been
established. Many slight differences might,
and indeed do now, arise among pigeons,
which are rejected as faults or deviations
from the standard of perfection of each
breed. The common goose has not given
rise to any marked varieties ; hence the
Thoulouse and the common breed, which
differ only in colour, that most fleeting of
characters, have lately been exhibited as
distinct at our poultry shows.
I think these views further explain what
has sometimes been noticed—namely, that
we know nothing about the origin or
history of any of our domestic breeds.
But, in fact, a breed, like a dialect of a
language, can hardly be said to have had
a definite origin. A man preserves and
breeds from an individual with some slight
deviation of structure, or takes more care
than usual in matching his best animals
and thus improves them, and the improved
individuals slowly spread in the immediate
neighbourhood. But as yet they will hardly
�24
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
have a distinct name, and, from being only
slightly valued, their history will be dis
regarded. When further improved by the
same slow and gradual process, they will
spread more widely, and will get recognised
as something distinct’and valuable, and
will then probably first receive a provincial
name. In semi-civilised countries, with
little free communication, the spreading
and knowledge of any new sub-breed will
be a slow process. As soon as the points
of value of the new sub-breed are once
fully acknowledged the principle, as I have
called, it, of unconscious selection will
always tend, perhaps more at one period
than at another, as the breed rises or falls
in fashion—perhaps more in one district
than in another, according to the state of
civilisation of the inhabitants—slowly to
add to the characteristic features of the
breed, whatever they may be. But the
chance will be infinitely small of any record
having been preserved of such slow, varying,
and insensible changes.
. 1 must now say a few words on the
circumstances, favourable or the reverse, to
man’s power of selection. A high degree
of variability is obviously favourable, as
freely giving the materials for selection
to work on ; not that mere individual
differences are not amply sufficient, with
extreme care, to allow of the accumula
tion of a large amount of modification
in almost any desired direction. But as
variations manifestly useful or pleasing to
man appear only occasionally, the chance
of their appearance will be much increased
by a large number of individuals being
kept; and hence this comes to be of the
highest importance to success. On this
principle Marshall has remarked, with
respect to the sheep of parts of Yorkshire,
that “as they generally belong to poor
people, and are mostly in small lots, they
never can be improved.” On the other
hand, nurserymen, from raising large stocks
of the same plants, are generally far more
successful than amateurs in getting new
and valuable varieties. The keeping of a
large number of individuals of a species
in any country requires that the species
should be placed under favourable condi
tions of life, so as to breed freely in that
country. When the individuals of any
species are scanty, all the individuals, what
ever their quality may be, will generally be
allowed to breed, and this will effectually
prevent selection. But probably the most
important point of all is, that the animal
or plant should be so highly useful to '
man, or so much valued by him, that the
closest attention should be paid to even
the slightest deviation in the qualities or
structure of each individual. Unless such
attention be paid, nothing can be effected.
I have seen it gravely remarked that it
was most fortunate that the strawberry
began to vary just when gardeners began
to attend closely to this plant. No doubt
the strawberry had always varied since it
was cultivated, but the slight varieties had
been neglected. As soon, however, as
gardeners picked out individual plants with
slightly larger, earlier, or better fruit, and
raised seedlings from them, and again
picked out the best seedlings and bred
from them, then there appeared (aided by
some crossing with distinct species) those
many admirable varieties of the strawberry
which have been raised during the last
thirty or forty years.
In the case of animals with separate sexes,
facility in preventing crosses is an important
element of success in the formation of
new7 races, at least in a country which is
already stocked with other races. In this
respect enclosure of the land plays a part.
Wandering savages or the inhabitants of
open plains rarely possess more than one
breed of the same species. Pigeons can
be mated for life, and this is a great con
venience to the fancier, for thus many races
may be kept true, though mingled in the
same aviary ; and this circumstance must
have largely favoured the improvement and
formation of new breeds. Pigeons, I may
add, can be propagated in great numbers
and at a very quick rate, and inferior birds
may be freely rejected, as when killed they
serve for food. On the other hand, cats,
from their nocturnal rambling habits,
cannot be matched, and, although so much
valued by women and children, we hardly
ever see a distinct breed kept up ; such
breeds as we do sometimes see are almost
always imported from some other country,
often from islands. Although I do not
doubt that some domestic animals vary
less than others, yet the rarity or absence
of distinct breeds of the cat, the donkey,
peacock, goose, etc., may be attributed
in main part to selection not having been
brought into play : in cats, from the diffi
culty in pairing them ; in donkeys, from
only a few being kept by poor people, and
little attention paid to their breeding ;
in peacocks, from not being very easily
reared and a large stock not kept ; in
geese, from being valuable only for two
purposes, food and feathers, and more
�VARIATION UNDER NATURE
especially from no pleasure having been
felt in the display of distinct breeds.
To sum up on the origin of our Domestic
Races of animals and plants. I believe
that the conditions of life, from their action
on the reproductive system, are so far of
the highest importance as causing varia\ bility. I do not believe that variability is
an inherent and necessary contingency,
under all circumstances, with all organic
beings, as some authors have thought.
The effects of variability are modified by
various degrees of inheritance and of
reversion. Variability is governed by many
unknown laws, more especially by that of
correlation of growth. Something may be
attributed to the direct action of the con
ditions of life. Something must be attri
buted to use and disuse. The final result
is thus rendered infinitely complex. In
some cases I do not doubt that the inter
crossing of species, aboriginally distinct,
has played an important part in the origin
of our domestic productions. When in
25
any country several domestic breeds have
once been established, their occasional
inter-crossing, with the aid of selection, has,
no doubt, largely aided in the formation of
new sub-breeds ; but the importance of the
crossing of varieties has, I believe, been
greatly exaggerated, both in regard to
animals and to those plants which are
propagated by seed. In plants which are
temporarily propagated by cuttings, buds,
etc., the importance of the crossing both
of distinct species and of varieties is
immense; for the cultivator here quite
disregards the extreme variability both of
hybrids and mongrels, and the frequent
sterility of hybrids ; but the cases of plants
not propagated by seed are of little impor
tance to us, for their endurance is only
temporary. Over all these causes of
Change I am convinced that the accumula
tive action of Selection, whether applied
methodically and more quickly, or uncon
sciously and more slowly, but more
efficiently, is by far the predominant Power.
Chapter II.
VARIATION UNDER NATURE
\ ariability — Individual differences -— Doubtful
species—Wide ranging, much diffused, and
common species vary most—Species of the
larger genera in any country vary more than
the species of the smaller genera—Many of the
species of the larger genera resemble varieties
in being very closely, but unequally, related to
each other, and in having restricted ranges.
Before applying the principles arrived at
in the last chapter to organic beings in a
state of nature, we must briefly discuss
whether these latter are subject to any
variation.
To treat this subject at all
properly, a long catalogue of dry facts
should be given ; but these I shall reserve
for my future work. Nor shall I here discuss
the various definitions which have been
given - of the term species.
No one
definition has as yet satisfied all naturalists;
yet every naturalist knows vaguely what
he means when he speaks of a species.
Generally the term includes the unknown
element of a distinct act of creation. The
term “ variety ” is almost equally difficult
to define ; but here community of descent
is almost universally implied, though it can
rarely be proved. We have also what are
called monstrosities; but they graduate
into varieties. By a monstrosity I presume
is meant some considerable deviation of
structure in one part, either injurious to or
not useful to the species, and not generally
propagated. Some authors use the term
“variation” in a technical sense, as imply
ing a modification directly due to the
physical conditions of life; and “varia
tions” in this sense are supposed not to
be inherited ; but who can say that the
dwarfed condition of shells in the brackish
waters of the Baltic, or dwarfed plants on
Alpine summits, or the thicker fur of an
animal from far northwards, would not in
some cases be inherited for at least some
few generations ? and in this case I presume
that the form would be called a variety.
�26
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
vidual differences which seems to me
Again, we have many slight differences
extremely perplexing: I refer to those
which may be called individual differences,
genera which have sometimes been called
such as are known frequently to appear in
“ protean ” or “ polymorphic,” in which the
the offspring from the same parents, or
species present an inordinate amount of
which may be presumed to have thus
variation ; and hardly twq naturalists can
arisen, from being frequently observed _ in
agree which forms to rank as species and
the individuals of the same species in
which as varieties. We may instance
habiting the same confined locality. No
Rubus, Rosa, and Hieracium among plants,
one supposes that all the individuals of the
several genera of insects, and several
same species are cast in the very same
genera of Brachiopod shells. In most
mould. These individual differences are
polymorphic genera some of the species
highly important for us, as they afford
have fixed and definite characters. Genera
materials for natural selection to accumu
which are polymorphic in one country
late, in the ‘same manner as man can
seem to be, with some few exceptions,
accumulate in any given direction indi
polymorphic in other countries, and like
vidual differences in his domesticated
wise, judging from Brachiopod shells, at
productions. These individual differences
former periods of time. These facts seem
generally affect what naturalists consider
to be very perplexing, for they seem to
unimportant parts ; but I could show by a
show that this kind of variability is inde
long catalogue of facts that parts which
pendent of the conditions of life. I am
must be called important, whether viewed
inclined to suspect that we see in these
under a physiological or classificatory point
polymorphic genera variations in points of
of view, sometimes vary in the individuals
structure which are of no service or dis
of the same species. I am convinced that
service to the species, and which conse
the most experienced naturalist would be
quently have not been seized on and
surprised at the number of the cases of
rendered definite by natural selection, as
variability, even in important parts of
hereafter will be explained.
structure, which he could collect on good
Those forms which possess in some con
authority, as I have collected, during a
siderable degree the character of species,
course of years. It should be remembered
but which are so closely similar to some
that systematists are far from pleased at
other forms, or are so closely linked to
finding variability in important characters,
them by intermediate gradations that
and that there are not many men who will
naturalists do not like to rank them as
laboriously examine internal and important
distinct species, are in several respects the
organs, and compare them in many speci
most important for us. We have every
mens of the same species. I should never
reason to believe that many of these
have expected that the branching of the main
doubtful and closely-allied forms have per
nerves close to the great central ganglion
manently retained their characters in their
of an insect would have been variable in
own country for a long time—for as long,
the same species ; I should have expected
as far as we know, as have good and true
that changes of this nature could have been
species. Practically, when a naturalist
effected only by slow degrees ; yet quite
can unite two forms together by others
recently Mr. Lubbock has shown a degree of
having intermediate characters, he treats
variability in these main nerves in Coccus,
the one as a variety of the other, ranking
which may almost be compared to the
the most common, but sometimes the one
irregular branching of the stem of a tree.
first described, as the species and the
This philosophical naturalist, I may add,
has also quite recently shown that the j other as the variety. But cases of great
difficulty, which I will not here enumerate,
muscles in the larvae of certain insects are
sometimes occur in deciding whether or
very far from uniform. Authors sometimes
not to rank one form as a variety of another,
argue in a circle when they state that
even when they are closely connected by
important organs never vary ; for these
intermediate links ; nor will the commonlysame authors practically rank that character
assumed hybrid nature of the intermediate
as important (as some few naturalists have
links always remove the difficulty. In very
honestly confessed) which does not vary;
many cases, however, one form is ranked
and, under this point of view, no instance
as a variety of another, not because the
of an important part varying will ever be
intermediate links have actually been found,
found ; but under any other point of view
but because analogy leads the observer to
many instances assuredly can be given.
suppose either that they do now somewhere
There is one point connected with indi
�VARIATION UNDER NATURE
exist, or may formerly have existed ; and
here a wide door for the entry of doubt and
conjecture is opened.
Hence, in determining whether a form
should be ranked as a species or a variety,
the opinion of naturalists having sound
judgment and wide experience seems the
only guide to follow. We must, however,
in many cases decide by a majority of
naturalists, for few well-marked and wellknown varieties can be named which have
not been ranked as species by at least
some competent judges.
That varieties of this doubtful nature
are far from uncommon cannot be dis
puted. Compare the several floras of Great
Britain, of France, or of the United States,
drawn up by different botanists, and see
what a surprising number of forms have
been ranked by one botanist as good
species and by another as mere varieties.
Mr. H. C. Watson, to whom I lie under
deep obligation for assistance of all
kinds, has marked for me ,182 British
plants, which are generally considered as
varieties, but which have all been ranked
by botanists as species ; and in making
this list he has omitted many trifling
varieties, but which nevertheless have been
ranked by some botanists as species, and
he has entirely omitted several highly
polymorphic genera. Under genera, in
cluding the most polymorphic forms, Mr.
Babington gives 251 species, whereas Mr.
Bentham gives only 112—a difference of
139 doubtful forms 1 Among animals which
unite for each birth, and which are highly
locomotive, doubtful forms, ranked by one
zoologist as a species and by another as a
variety, can rarely be found within the
same country, but are common in separated
areas. How many of those birds and
insects in North America and Europe
which differ very slightly from each other
have been ranked by one eminent naturalist
as undoubted species, and by another as
varieties, or, as they are often called, as
geographical races ! Many years ago, when
comparing, and seeing others compare, the
birds from the separate islands of the
Galapagos Archipelago, both one with
another and with those from the American
mainland, I was much struck how entirely
vague and arbitrary is the distinction
between species and varieties. On the
islets of the little Madeira group there
are many insects which are characterised
as varieties in Mr. Wollaston’s admirable
work, but which it cannot be doubted would
be ranked as distinct species by many
entomologists. Even Ireland has a few
animals, nowgenerally regarded as varieties,
but which have been ranked as species by
some zoologists. Several most experienced
ornithologists consider our British red
grouse as only a strongly-marked race of
a Norwegian species, whereas the greater
number rank it as an undoubted species
peculiar to Great Britain. A wide distance
between the homes of two doubtful forms
leads many naturalists to rank both as
distinct species ; but what distance, it has
been well asked, willsuffice ? If that between
America and Europe is ample, will that
between the Continent and the Azores, or
Madeira, or the Canaries, or Ireland, be
sufficient? It must be admitted that many
forms considered by highly-competent
judges as varieties have so perfectly the
character of species that they are ranked
by other highly-competent judges as good
and true species. But to discuss whether
they are rightly called species or varieties,
before any definition of these terms has
been generally accepted, is vainly to beat
the air.
Many of the cases of strongly-marked
varieties or doubtful species well deserve
consideration ; for several interesting lines
of argument, from geographical distribu
tion, analogical variation, hybridism, etc.,
have been brought to bear on the attempt
to determine their rank. I will here give
only a single instance—the well-known one
of the primrose and cowslip, or Primula
vulgaris and veris. These plants differ
considerably in appearance ; they have a
different flavour, and emit a different odour;
they flower at slightly different periods ;
they grow in somewhat different stations ;
they ascend mountains to different heights ;
they have different geographical ranges ;
and, lastly, according to very numerous
experiments made during several years by
that most careful observer Gartner, they
can be crossed only with much difficulty.
We could hardly wish for better evidence
of the two forms being specifically distinct.
On the other hand, they are united by many
intermediate links, and it is very doubtful
whether these links are hybrids ; and there
is, as it seems to me, an overwhelming
amount of experimental evidence showing
that they descend from common parents,
and consequently must be ranked as
varieties.
Close investigation, in most cases, will
bring naturalists to an agreement how to
rank doubtful forms. Yet it must be con
fessed that it is in the best-known countries
�28
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
that we find the greatest number of forms
of doubtful value. I have been struck with
the fact that, if any animal or plant in a
state of nature be highly useful to man, or
from any cause closely attract his attention,
varieties of it will almost universally be
found recorded. These varieties, moreover,
will be often ranked by some authors as
species. Look at the common oak, how
closely it has been studied ; yet a German
author makes more than a dozen species
out of forms which are very generally con
sidered as varieties ; and in this country the
highest botanical authorities and practical
men can be quoted to show that the sessile
and pedunculated oaks are either good and
distinct species or mere varieties.
When a young naturalist commences the
study of a group of organisms quite
unknown to him, he is at first much per
plexed to determine what differences to
consider as specific and what as varieties ;
for he knows nothing of the amount and
kind of variation to which the group is
subject; and this shows, at least, how very
generally there is some variation. But if
he confine his attention to one class within
one country, he will soon make up his mind
how to rank most of the doubtful forms.
His general tendency will be to make many
species, for he will become impressed, just
like the pigeon or poultry fancier before
alluded to, with the amount of difference in
the forms which he is continually studying ;
and he has little general knowledge of
analogical variation in other groups and in
other countries by which to correct his first
impressions. As he extends the range of
his observations, he will meet with more
cases of difficulty ; for he will encounter a
greater number of closely-allied forms.
But if his observations be widely extended,
he will in the end generally be enabled to
make up his own mind which to call
varieties and which species ; but he will
succeed in this at the expense of admitting
much variation—and the truth of this ad
mission will often be disputed by other
naturalists. When, moreover, he comes to
study allied forms brought from countries
not now continuous, in which case he can
hardly hope to find the intermediate links
between his doubtful forms, he will have to
trust almost entirely to analogy, and his
difficulties rise to a climax.
Certainly no clear line of demarcation
has as yet been drawn between species and
sub-species—that is, the forms which in the
opinion of some naturalists come very near
to, but do not quite arrive at, the rank of
species ; or, again, between sub-species and
well-marked varieties, or between lesser
varieties and individual differences. These
differences blend into each other in an
insensible series ; and a series impresses
the mind with the idea of an actual
passage.
Hence I look at individual differences,
though of small interest to the systematist,
as of high importance for us, as being the
first step towards such slight varieties as
are barely thought worth recording in
works on natural history. And I look at
varieties which are in any degree more
distinct and permanent, as steps leading to
more strongly marked and more permanent
varieties ; and at these latter as leading to
sub-species, and to species. The passage
from one stage of difference to another and
higher stage may be, in some cases, due
merely to the long-continued action of
different physical conditions in two different
regions ; but I have not much faith in this
view ; and I attribute the passage of a
variety, from a state in which it differs very
slightly from its parent to one in which
it differs more, to the action of natural
selection in accumulating (as will here
after be more fully explained) differences
of structure in certain definite directions.
Hence I believe a well-marked variety may
be called an incipient species ; but whether
this belief be justifiable must be judged of
by the general weight of the several facts
and views given throughout this work.
It need not be supposed that all varieties
or incipient species necessarily attain the
rank of species. They may while in this
incipient state become extinct, or they may
endure as varieties for very long periods,
as has been shown to be the case by Mr.
Wollaston with the varieties of certain
fossil land-shells in Madeira. If a variety
were to flourish so as to exceed in numbers
the parent species, it would then rank as
the species, and the species as the variety;
or it might come to supplant and ex
terminate the parent species; or both
might co-exist, and both rank as indepen
dent species. But we shall hereafter have
to return to this subject.
From these remarks it will be seen that
I look at the term species as one arbitrarily
given for the sake of convenience to a set
of individuals closely resembling each
other, and that it does not essentially differ
from the term variety, which is given -to
less distinct and more fluctuating forms.
The term variety, again, in comparison
with mere individual differences, is also
�VARIATION UNDER NATURE
applied arbitrarily, and for mere con
venience’ sake.
Guided by theoretical considerations, I
thought that some interesting results might
be obtained in regard to the nature and
relations of the species which vary most,
by tabulating all the varieties in several
well-worked floras. At first this seemed a
simple task; but Mr. H. C. Watson, to
whom I am much indebted for valuable
advice and assistance on this subject, soon
convinced me that there were many diffi
culties, as did subsequently Dr. Hooker,
even in stronger terms. I shall reserve for
my future work the discussion of these
difficulties, and the tables themselves of
the proportional numbers of the varying
species. Dr. Hooker permits me to add
that, after having carefully read my manu
script and examined the tables, he thinks
that the following statements are fairly well
established. The whole subject, however,
treated as it necessarily here is with much
brevity, is rather perplexing, and allusions
cannot be avoided to the “ struggle for
existence,” “divergence of character,” and
other questions, hereaftei- to be discussed.
Alph. de Candolle and others have shown
that plants which have very wide ranges
generally present varieties ; and this might
have been expected, as they become exposed
to diverse physical conditions, and as they
come into competition (which, as we shall
hereafter see, is a far more important
circumstance) with different sets of organic
beings. But my tables further show that,
in any limited country, the species which
are most common—that is, abound most in
individuals, and the species which are most
widely diffused within their own country
(and this is a different consideration from
wide range, and to a certain extent from
commonness)—often give rise to varieties
sufficiently well marked to have been
recorded in botanical works. Hence it is
the most flourishing, or, as they may be
called, the dominant species—those which
range widely over the world, are the most
diffused in their own country, and are the
most . numerous in individuals—which
oftenest produce well-marked varieties, or,
as I consider them, incipient species. And
this, perhaps, might have been anticipated ;
for, as varieties, in order to become in any
degree permanent, necessarily have to
struggle with the other inhabitants of the
country, the species which are already
dominant will be the most likely to yield
offspring, which, though in some slight
degree modified, still inherit those advan
29
tages that enabled their parents to become
dominant over their compatriots.
If the plants inhabiting a country and
described in any Flora be divided into two
equal masses, all those in the larger genera
being placed on one side, and all those in
the smaller genera on the other side, a
somewhat larger number of the very
common and much diffused or dominant
species will be fouud on the side of the
larger genera. This, again, might have
been anticipated; for the mere fact of
many species of the same genus inhabiting
any country shows that there is something
in the organic or inorganic conditions of
that country favourable to the genus ; and,
consequently, we might have expected to
have found in the larger genera, or those
including many species, a large proportional
number of dominant species. ’ But so many
causes tend to obscure this result that I am
surprised that my tables show even a small
majority on the side of the larger genera.
I will here allude to only two causes of
obscurity. Fresh-water and salt-loving
plants have generally very wide ranges
and are much diffused, but this seems to
be connected with the nature of the stations
inhabited by them, and has little or no
relation to the size of the genera to which
the species belong. Again, plants low in
the scale of organisation are generally
much more widely diffused than plants
higher in the scale ; and here again there
is no close relation to the size of the genera.
The cause of lowly-organised plants ranging
widely will be discussed in our chapter on
geographical distribution.
From looking at species as only stronglymarked and well-defined varieties, I was
led to anticipate that the species of the
larger ger.era in each country would oftener
present varieties than the species of the
smaller genera ; for wherever many closelyrelated species (z.<?., species of the same
genus) have been formed, many varieties
or incipient species ought, as a general
rule, to be now forming. Where many
large trees grow we expect to find saplings.
Where many species of a genus have been
formed through variation, circumstances
have been favourable for variation ; and
hence we might expect that the circum
stances would generally be still favourable
to variation. On the other hand, if we
look at each species as a special act of
creation, there is no apparent reason why
more varieties should occur in a group
having many species than in one having
few.
�3°
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
To test the truth of this anticipation I
have arranged the plants of twelve countries,
and the coleopterous insects of two districts,
into two nearly equal masses, the species
of the larger genera on one side, and those
of the smaller genera on the other side,
and it has invariably proved to be the case
that a larger proportion of the species on
the side of the larger genera present
varieties than on the side of the smaller
genera. Moreover, the species of the
large genera which present any varieties
invariably present a larger average number
of varieties than do the species of the small
genera. Both these results follow when
another division is made, and when all the
smallest genera, with from only one to four.
species, are absolutely excluded from the
tables. These facts are of plain significa
tion on the view that species are only
strongly-marked and permanent varieties ;
for wherever many species of the same
genus have been formed, or where, if we
may use the expression, the manufactory
of species has been active, we ought gene
rally to find the manufactory still in action,
more especially as we have every reason
to believe the process of manufacturing
new species to be a slow one. And this
certainly is the case, if varieties be looked
at as incipient species; for my tables
clearly show as a general rule that, wherever
many species of a genus have been formed,
the species of that genus present a number
of varieties, that is of incipient species
beyond the average. It is not that all
large genera are now varying much, and
are thus increasing in the number of their
species, or that no small genera are now
varying and increasing ; for if this had
been so, it would have been fatal to my
theory ; inasmuch as geology plainly tells
us that small genera have in the lapse of
time often increased greatly in size; and
that large genera have often come to
their maxima, declined, and disappeared.
All that we want to show is, that where
many species of a genus have been formed,
on an average many are still forming ; and
this holds good.
There are other relations between the
species of large genera and their recorded
varieties which deserve notice. We have
seen that there is no infallible criterion by
which to distinguish species and wellmarked varieties ; and in those cases in
which intermediate links have not been
found between doubtful forms naturalists
are compelled to come to a determination
by the amount of difference between them,
judging by analogy whether or not the
amount suffices to raise one or both to the
rank of species. Hence the amount of
difference is one very important criterion
in settling whether two forms should be
ranked as species or varieties. Now Fries
has remarked in regard to plants, and
Westwood in regard to insects, that in
large genera the amount of difference
between the species is often exceedingly
small. I have endeavoured to test this
numerically by averages, and, as far as my
imperfect results go, they confirm the view.
I have also consulted some sagacious and
experienced observers, and, after delibera
tion, they concur in this view. In this
respect, therefore, the species of the larger
genera resemble varieties, more than do the
species of the smaller genera. Or the case
may be put in another way, and it may be
said that in the larger genera, in which a
number of varieties or incipient species
greater than the average are now manu
facturing, many of the species already
manufactured still to a certain extent
resemble varieties, for they differ from each
other by a less than usual amount of
difference.
Moreover, the species of the large genera
are related to each other, in the same
manner as the varieties of any one species
are related to each other. No naturalist
pretends that all the species of a genus are
equally distinct from each other ; they may
generally be divided into sub-genera, or
sections, or lesser groups. As-Fries has
well remarked, little groups of species are
generally clustered like satellites around
certain other species. And what are varie
ties but groups of forms, unequally related
to each other, and clustered round certain
forms—that is, round their parent-species ?
Undoubtedly there is one most important
point of difference between varieties and
species — namely, that the amount of
difference between varieties, when com
pared with each other or with their parent
species, is much less than that between the
species of the same genus. But when we
come to discuss the principle, as I call it, of
Divergence of Character, we shall see how
this may be explained, and how the lesser
differences between varieties will tend to
increase into the greater differences between
species.
There is one other point which seems to
me worth notice. Varieties generally have
much restricted ranges : this statement is
indeed scarcely more than a truism, for if
a variety were found to have a wider range
�VARIATION UNDER NATURE
than that of its supposed parent-species
their denominations ought to be reversed.
But there is also reason to believe that
those species which are very closely allied
to other species, and in so far resemble
varieties, often have much-restricted ranges.
For instance, Mr. H. C. Watson has marked
for me in the well-sifted London Catalogue
of plants (4th edition) 63 plants which are
therein ranked as species, but which he
considers as so closely allied to other
species as to be of doubtful value : these
63 reputed species range on an average
over 6.9 of the provinces into which Mr.
Watson has divided Great Britain. Now,
in this same catalogue, 53 acknowledged
varieties are recorded, and these range
over 7.7 provinces ; whereas, the species to
which these varieties belong range over 14.3
provinces.
So that the acknowledged
varieties have very nearly the same
restricted average range as have those very
closely allied forms marked for me by Mr.
Watson as doubtful species, but which are
almost universally ranked by British
botanists as good and true species.
Finally, then, varieties have the same
general characters as species, for they can
not be distinguished from species—except,
firstly, by the discovery of intermediate
linking forms ; and the occurrence of such
links cannot affect the actual characters of
the forms which they connect; and except,
secondly, by a certain amount of difference,
for two forms, if differing very little, are
generally ranked as varieties, notwith
3i
standing that intermediate linking forms
have not been discovered; but the amount
of difference considered necessary to give
to two forms the rank of species is quite
indefinite. In genera having more than
the average number of species in any
country, the species of these genera have
more than the average number of varieties.
In large genera the species are apt to
be closely but unequally allied together,
forming little clusters round certain species.
Species very closely allied to other species
apparently have restricted ranges. In all
these several respects the species of large
genera present a strong analogy with
varieties. And we can clearly understand
these analogies, if species have once existed
as varieties, and have thus originated;
whereas these analogies are utterly in
explicable if each species has been inde
pendently created.
We have also seen that it is the most
flourishing or dominant species of the
larger genera which on an average vary
most; and varieties, as we shall hereafter
see, tend to become converted into new
and distinct species. The larger genera
thus tend to become larger; and throughout
nature the forms of life which are now
dominant tend to become still more
dominant by leaving many modified and
dominant descendants.
But, by steps
hereafter to be explained, the larger genera
also tend to break up into smaller genera.
And thus the forms of life throughout the
universe become divided into groups sub
ordinate to groups.
Chapter III.
STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE
Bears on natural selection—The term used in a
wide sense—Geometrical powers of increase—
Rapid increase of naturalised animals and
plants—Nature of the checks to increase—
Competition universal—Effects of climate—
Protection from the number of individuals—
Complex relations of all animals and plants
throughout nature—Struggle for life most
severe between individuals and varieties of
the same species ; often severe between species
of the same genus—The relation of organism
to organism the most important of all rela
tions.
Before entering on the subject of this
chapter I must make a few preliminary
remarks, to show how the struggle for
existence bears on Natural Selection. It
has been seen in the last chapter that
�32
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
among organic beings in a state of nature
there is some individual variability; indeed,
I am not aware that this has ever been
disputed. It is immaterial for us whether
a multitude of doubtful forms be called
species or sub-species or varieties ; what
rank, for instance, the two or three hundred
doubtful forms of British plants are entitled
to hold, if the existence of any well-marked
varieties be admitted. But the mere exist
ence of individual variability and of some
few well-marked varieties, though necessary
as the foundation for the work, helps us
but little in understanding how species
arise in nature. How have all those
exquisite adaptations of one part of the
organisation to another part, and to the
conditions of life, and of one distinct
organic being to another being, been per
fected? We see these beautiful co-adaptations most plainly in the woodpecker and
mistletoe ; and only a little less plainly in
the humblest parasite which clings to the
hairs of a quadruped or feathers of a bird ;
in the structure of the beetle which dives
through the water; in the plumed seed
which is wafted by the gentlest breeze ; in
short, we see beautiful adaptations every
where and in every part of the organic
world.
#
Again, it may be asked, how is it that
varieties, which I have called incipient
species, become ultimately converted into
good and distinct species, which in most
cases obviously differ from each other far
more than do the varieties of the same
species ? How do those groups of species,
which constitute what are called distinct
genera, and which differ from each other
more than do the species of the same
genus, arise ? All these results, as we shall
more fully see in the next chapter, follow
from the struggle for life. Owing' to this
struggle for life, any variation, however
slight, a.ndfrom whatever cause proceeding,
if it be in any degree profitable to an indi
vidual of any species, in its infinitely
complex relations to other organic beings
and to external nature, will tend to the
preservation of that individual, and will
generally be inherited by its offspring.
The offspring, also, will thus have a better
chance of surviving, for, of the many indi
viduals of any species which are periodically
born, but a small number can survive. I
have called this principle, by which each
slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by
the term of Natural Selection, in order to
mark its relation to man’s power of selec
tion. We have seen that man by selection
can certainly produce great results, and can
adapt organic beings to his own uses,
through the accumulation of slight but
useful variations, given to him by the hand
of Nature. But Natural Selection, as we
shall hereafter see, is a power incessantly
ready for action, and is as immeasurably
superior to man’s feeble efforts as the
works of Nature are to those of Art.
We will now discuss in a little more
detail the struggle for existence. In my
future work this subject shall be treated, as
it well deserves, at much greater length.
The elder de Candolle and Lyell have
largely and philosophically shown that all
organic beings are exposed to severe com
petition. In regard to plants, no one has
treated this subject with more spirit and
ability than W. Herbert, Dean of Man
chester, evidently the result of his great
horticultural knowledge. Nothing is easier
than to admit in words the truth of the
universal struggle for life, or more difficult
—at least, I have found it so—than con
stantly to bear this conclusion in mind.
Yet, unless it be thoroughly engrained in
the mind, I am convinced that the whole
economy of nature, with every fact on
distribution, rarity, abundance, extinction,
and variation, will be dimly seen or quite
misunderstood. We behold the face of
Nature bright with gladness ; we often see
superabundance of food ; we do not see, or
we forget, that the birds which are idly
singing round us mostly live on insects or
seeds, and are thus constantly destroying
life; or we forget how largely these
songsters, or their eggs, or their nestlings,
are destroyed by birds and beasts of prey ;
we do not always bear in mind that, though
food may be now superabundant, it is not
so at all seasons of each recurring year.
I should premise that I use the term
Struggle for Existence in a large and meta
phorical sense, including dependence of
one being on another, and including (which
is more important) not only the life of the
individual, but success in leaving progeny.
Two canine animals in a time of dearth
may be truly said to struggle with each
other which shall get food and live. But a
plant on the edge of a desert is said to
struggle for life against the drought, though
more properly it should be said to be de
pendent on the moisture. A plant which
annually produces a thousand seeds, of
which on an average only one comes to
maturity, may be more truly said to struggle
with the plants of the same and other kinds
which already clothe the ground. The
�STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE
33
mistletoe is dependent on the apple and a
minimum rate of natural increase : it will
few other trees, but can only in a far-fetched
be under the mark to assume that it breeds
sense be said to struggle with these trees,
when thirty years old, and goes on breeding
for, if too many of these parasites grow on
till ninety years old, bringing forth three
the same tree, it will languish and die.
pair of young in this interval: if this be
But several seedling mistletoes, growing
so, at the end of the fifth century there
close together on the same branch, may
would be alive fifteen million elephants,
more truly be said to struggle with each
descended from the first pair.
other. As the mistletoe is disseminated by
But we have better evidence on this
birds, its existence depends on birds ; and
subject than mere theoretical calculations
it may metaphorically be said to struggle
—namely, the numerous recorded cases of
with other fruit-bearing plants, in order to
the astonishingly rapid increase of various
tempt birds to devour and thus disseminate
animals in a state of nature, when circum
its seeds rather than those of other
stances have been favourable to them
plants. In these several senses, which
during two or three following seasons.
pass into each other, I use for convenience’
Still more striking is the evidence from
sake the general term of struggle for exist
our domestic animals of many kinds which
ence.
have run wild in several parts of the world :
A strugglefor existence inevitably follows
if the statements of the rate of increase of
from the high rate at which all organic
slow-breeding cattle and horses in South
beings tend to increase. Every being
America, and latterly in Australia, had not
which during its natural lifetime produces
been well authenticated, they would have
several eggs or seeds must suffer destruc
been incredible. So it is with plants:
tion during some period of its life, and
cases could be given of introduced plants
during some season or occasional year ;
which have become common throughout
otherwise, on the principle of geometrical __ whole islands in a period of less than ten
increase, its numbers would quickly become
years. Several of the plants, such as the
so inordinately great that no country could
cardoon and a tall thistle, now most
support the product. Hence, as more indi
numerous over the wide plains of La Plata,
viduals are produced than can possibly
clothing square leagues of surface almost
survive, there must in every case be a
to the exclusion of all other plants, have
struggle for existence, either one individual
been introduced from Europe ; and there
with another of the same species, or with
are plants which now range in India, as I
the individuals of distinct species, or with
hear from Dr. Falconer, from Cape Comorin
the physical conditions of life. It is the
to the Himalaya, which have been imported
doctrine of Malthus applied with manifold
from America since its discovery. In such
force to the whole animal and vegetable
cases, and endless instances could be given,
kingdoms ; for in this case there can be
no one supposes that the fertility of these
no artificial increase of food and no pru
animals or plants has been suddenly and
dential restraint from marriage. Although
temporarily-increased in any sensible degree.
some species may be now increasing, more
The obvious explanation is that the con
or less rapidly, in numbers, all cannot do
ditions of life have been very favourable,
so, for the world would not hold them.
and that there has consequently been less
There is no exception to the rule that
destruction of the old and young, and that
every organic being naturally increases at
nearly all the young have been enabled to
so high a rate that, if not destroyed, the
breed. In such cases the geometrical ratio
earth would soon be covered by the progeny
of increase, the result of which never fails
of a single pair. Even slow-breeding man
to be surprising, simply explains the extra
has doubled in twenty-five years ; and at
ordinarily rapid increase and wide diffusion
this rate, in a few thousand years, there
of naturalised productions in their new
would literally not be standing room for
homes.
his progeny. Linnaeus has calculated that
In a state of nature almost every'- plant
if an annual plant produced only two seeds
produces seed, and among animals there
and there is no plant so unproductive as
are very few which do not annually pair.
this—and their seedlings next year pro
Hence we may confidently assert that all
duced two, and so on, then in twenty years
plants and animals are tending to increase
there would be a million plants. The
at a geometrical ratio, that all would most
elephant is reckoned the slowest breeder
rapidly stock every station in which they
of all known animals, and I have taken
could anyhow exist, and that the geometrical
some pains to estimate its probable
tendency to increase must be checked by
D
•
�34
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
destruction at some period of life. Our
number of the species will almost instan
familiarity with the larger domestic animals
taneously increase to any amount.
tends, I think, to mislead us : we see no
The causes which check the natural ten
great destruction falling on them, and
dency of each species to increase in number
we forget that thousands are annually
are most obscure. Look at the most
slaughtered for food, and that in a state
vigorous species : by as much as it swarms
of nature an equal number would have
in numbers, by so much will its tendency
somehow to be disposed of.
to increase be still further increased. We
The only difference between organisms
know not exactly what the checks are in
which annually produce eggs or seeds by
even one single instance. Nor will this
the thousand and those which produce
surprise anyone who reflects how ignorant
extremely few is, that the slow breeders
we are on "this head, even in regard to
would require a few more years to people,
mankind, so incomparably better known
under favourable conditions, a w-hole dis
than any other animal. This subject has
trict, let it be ever so large. The condor
been ably treated by several authors, and
lays a couple of eggs and the ostrich a
I shall, in my future work, discuss some of
score, and yet in the same country the
the checks at considerable length, more
condor may be the more numerous of the
especially in regard to the feral animals of
two : the Fulmar petrel lays but one egg,
South America. Here I will make only
yet it is believed to be the most numerous
a few remarks, just to recall to the reader’s
bird in the world. One fly deposits hundreds
mind some of the chief points. Eggs or
of eggs, and another, like the hippobosca,
very young animals seem generally to suffer
a single one ; but this difference does not
most; but this is not invariably the case.
With plants there is a vast destruction of
determine how many individuals of the two
seeds; but, from some observations which
species can be supported in a district. A
large number of eggs is of some importance . I have made, I believe that it is the seed
to those species which"depend on a rapidly
lings which suffer most from germinating
in ground already thickly stocked with
fluctuating amount of food, for it allows
other plants. Seedlings, also, are destroyed
them rapidly to increase in number. But
in vast numbers by various enemies ; for
the real importance of a large number of
eggs or seeds is to make up for much
instance, on a piece of ground three feet
long and two wide, dug and cleared, and
destruction at some period of Life; and this
where there could be no choking from other
period in the great majority of cases is an
plants, I marked all the seedlings of our
early one. If an animal can in any way
native weeds as they came up, and out of
protect its own eggs or young, a small
the 357 no less than 295 were destroyed,
number may be produced, and yet the
chiefly by slugs and insects. If turf which
average stock be fully kept up; but if many
has long been mown—and the case would
eggs or young are destroyed, many must
be the same with turf closely browsed by
be produced, or the species will become
quadrupeds—be let to grow, the more
extinct. It wrould suffice to-keep up the
vigorous plants gradually kill the less
full number of a tree, which lived on an
vigorous, though fully grown, plants ; thus
average for a thousand years, if a single
out of twenty species growing on a little
seed were produced once in a thousand
plot of turf (three feet by four) nine species
years, supposing that this seed were never
perished from the other species being
destroyed, and could be ensured to ger
allowed to grow up freely.
minate in a fitting place. So that in all
The amount of food for each species of
cases the average number of any animal
course gives the extreme limit to which
or plant depends only indirectly on the
each can increase ; but very frequently it is
number of its eggs or seeds.
not the obtaining food, but the serving as
In looking at Nature, it is most necessary
prey to other animals, which determines
to keep the foregoing considerations always
the average numbers of a species. Thus
in mind—never to forget that every single
there seems to be little doubt that the stock
organic being around us may be said to
of partridges, grouse, and hares on any
be striving to the utmost to increase in
large estate depends chiefly on the destruc
numbers ; that each lives by a struggle at
tion of vermin. If not one head of game
some period of its life ; that heavy destruc
were shot during the next twenty years in
tion inevitably falls-either on the young or
England, and, at the same time, if no
old during each generation or at recurrent
vermin were destroyed, there would, in all
intervals. Lighten any check, mitigate
probability, be less game than at present,
the destruction ever so little, and the
�STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE
although hundreds of thousands of game
animals are now annually killed. On the
other hand, in some cases, as with the
elephant and rhinoceros, none are destroyed
by beasts of prey : even the tiger in India
most rarely dares to attack a young elephant
protected by its dam.
Climate plays an important part in deter
mining the average numbers of a species,
and periodical seasons of extreme cold or
drought I believe to be the most effective
of all checks. I estimated that the winter
of 1854-55 destroyed four-fifths of the birds
in my own grounds ; and this is a tremen
dous destruction, when we remember that
ten per cent, is an extraordinarily severe
mortality from epidemics with man. The
action of climate seems at first sight to be
quite independent of the struggle for exis
tence ; but, in so far as climate chiefly acts
in reducing food, it brings on the most
severe struggle between the individuals,
whether of the same or of distinct species,
which subsist on the same kind of food.
Even when climate, for instance extreme
cold, acts directly, it will be the least
vigorous, or those which have got least food
through the advancing winter, which will
suffer most. When we travel from south
to north, or from a damp region to a dry,
we invariably see some species gradually
getting rarer and rarer, and finally disap
pearing ; and the change of climate being
conspicuous, we are tempted to attribute
the whole effect to its direct action. But
this is a false view : we forget that each
species, even where it most abounds, is
constantly suffering enormous destruction
at some period of its life, from enemies or
from competitors for the same place and
food ; and if these enemies or competitors
be in the least degree favoured by any
slight change of climate, they will increase
in numbers, and, as each area is already
fully stocked with inhabitants, the other
species will decrease.
When we travel
southward and see a species decreasing in
numbers, we may feel sure that the cause
lies quite as much in other species being
favoured as in this one being hurt. So it
is when we travel northward, but in a some
what lesser degree, for the number of
species of all kinds, and therefore of com
petitors, decreases northwards ; hence in
going northward, or in ascending a moun
tain, we far oftener meet with stunted
forms, due to the directly injurious action
of climate, than we do in proceeding south
wards or in descending a mountain. When
we reach the Arctic regions,or snow-capped
35
summits, or absolute deserts, the struggle for
life is almost exclusively with the elements.
That climate acts in main part indirectly
by favouring other species we may clearly
see in the prodigious number of plants in
our gardens which can perfectly well endure
our climate, but which never become
naturalised, for they cannot compete with
our native plants nor resist destruction by
our native animals.
When a species, owing to highly favour
able circumstances, increases inordinately
in numbers in a small tract, epidemics—at
least, this seems generally to occur with
our game animals—often ensue ; arid here
we have a limiting check independent of
the struggle for life. But even some of
these so-called epidemics appear'to be due
to parasitic worms, which have frbrn some
cause, possibly in part through facility of
diffusion among the crowded animals,
been di sproportionably favoured : and here
comes in a sort of struggle between the
parasite and its prey.
On the other hand, in many cases a.
large stock of individuals of the same
species, relatively to the numbers of its .
enemies, is absolutely necessary for its pre
servation. Thus we can easily raise plenty
of corn and rape-seed, etc., in dur fields,,
because the seeds are in great excess
compared with the number of birds which
feed on them ; nor can the birds,- though
having a superabundance of food at thisone season, increase in number propor-'
tionally to the supply of seed, as their
numbers are checked during winder; but
anyone who has tried knbws how trouble
some it is to get seed from a few wheat or
other such plants in a garden : I have in
this case lost every single seed. This
view of the necessity of a large stock of
the same species for its preservation
explains, I believe, some singular facts in
nature, such as that of very rare plants
being sometimes extremely abundant in
the few spots where they do occur; and
that of some social plarits being social, that
is, abounding in individuals, even on the
extreme confines of their range. For in
such cases we may believe that a plant
could exist only where the conditions of its
life were so favourable that many could .
exist together, and thus save the species
from utter destruction. I should add that
the good effects of frequent intercrossing,
and the ill effects of close interbreeding,
probably come into play in some of these
cases ; but on this intricate subject I will
not here enlarge.
■
■ ■- .
�36
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
Many cases are on record showing how
complex and unexpected are the checks
and relations between organic beings which
have to struggle together in the same
country. I will give only a single instance,
which, though a simple one, has interested
me. In Staffordshire, on the estate of a
relation, where I had ample means of inves
tigation, there was a large and extremely
barren heath, which had never been touched
by the hand of man ; but several hundred
acres of exactly the same nature had been
enclosed twenty-five years previously and
planted with Scotch fir. The change in
the native vegetation of the planted part of
the heath was most remarkable, more than
is generally seen in passing from one quite
different soil to another : not only the pro
portional numbers of the heath-plants were
wholly changed, but twelve species of plants
■ (not counting grasses and carices) flourished
in the plantations, which could not be found
on the heath. The effect on the insects
must have been still greater, for six insec
tivorous birds were very common in the
plantations, which were not to be seen on
the heath ; and the heath was frequented
by two or three distinct insectivorous birds.
Here we see how potent has been the
effect of the introduction of a single tree,
nothing whatever else having been done,
with the exception that the land had been
enclosed, so that cattle could not enter.
But how important an element enclosure
is I plainly saw near Farnham, in Surrey.
Here there are extensive heaths, with a
few clumps of old Scotch firs on the distant
hill-tops : within the last ten years large
spaces have been enclosed, and self-sown
firs are now springing up in multitudes,
so close together that all cannot live.
When I ascertained that these young trees
had not been sown or planted, I was so
much surprised at their numbers that I
went to several points of view, whence I
could examine hundreds of acres of the
unenclosed heath, and literally I could not
see a single Scotch fir, except the old
planted clumps. But, on looking closely
between the stems of the heath, I found a
multitude of seedlings and little trees, which
had been perpetually browsed down by the
cattle. In one square yard, at a point
some hundred yards distant from one of
the old clumps, I counted thirty-two little
trees ; and one of them, with twenty-six
rings of growth, had during many years
tried to raise its head above the stems of
the heath, and had failed. No wonder
that, as soon as the land was enclosed, it
became thickly clothed with vigorously
growing young firs. Yet the heath was so
extremely barren and so extensive that no
one would ever have imagined that cattle
would have so t closely and effectually
searched it for food.
Here we see that cattle absolutely deter
mine the existence of the Scotch fir ; but
in several parts of the world insects deter
mine the existence of cattle. Perhaps
Paraguay offers the most curious instance
of this ; for here neither cattle nor horses
nor dogs have ever run wild, though they
swarm southward and northward in a feral
state ; and Azara and Rengger have shown
that this is caused by the greater number
in Paraguay of a certain fly, which lays its
eggs in the navels of these animals when
first born. The increase of these flies,
numerous as they are, must be habitually
checked by some means, probably by birds.
Hence, if certain insectivorous birds (whose
numbers are probably regulated by hawks
or beasts of prey) were to increase in
Paraguay, the flies would decrease—then
cattle and horses would become feral, and
this would certainly greatly alter (as, indeed,
I have observed in parts of South America)
the vegetation : this again would largely
affect the insects ; and this, as we just
have seen in Staffordshire, the insectivorous
birds, and so onwards in ever-increasing
circles of complexity. We began this series
by insectivorous birds, and we have ended
with them. Not that in nature the rela
tions can ever be as simple as this. Battle
within battle must ever be recurring with
varying success ; and yet in the long-run
the forces are so nicely balanced that the
face of nature remains uniform for long
periods of time, though assuredly the
merest trifle would often give the victory
to one organic being over another. Never
theless, so profound is our ignorance, and
so high our presumption, that we marvel
when we hear of the extinction of an organic
being ; and as we do not see the cause, we
invoke cataclysms to desolate the world, or
invent laws on the duration of the forms of
life !
I am tempted to give one more instance
showing how plants and animals, most
remote in the scale of nature, are bound
together by a web of complex relations.
I shall hereafter have occasion to show
that the exotic Lobelia fulgens, in this part
of England, is never visited by insects,
and, consequently, from its peculiar struc
ture, never can set a seed. Many of our
orchidaceous plants absolutely require the
�STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE
visits of moths to remove their pollen
masses, and thus to fertilise them. I have
also reason to believe that humble-bees
are indispensable to the fertilisation of the
heartsease (Viola tricolor), for other bees
do not visit this flower. From experiments
which I have lately tried, I have found that
the visits of bees are necessary for the
fertilisation of some kinds of clover; but
humble-bees alone visit the red clover
(Trifolium pratense), as other bees cannot
reach the nectar. Hence I have very little
doubt that, if the whole genus of humblebees became extinct or very rare in
England, the heartsease and red clover
would become very rare, or wholly dis
appear. The number of humble-bees in
any district depends in a great degree on
the number of field-mice, which destroy
their combs and nests ; and Mr. H. New
man, who has long attended to the habits
of humble-bees, believes that “ more than
two-thirds of them are thus destroyed all
over England.” Now the number of mice
is largely dependent, as everyone knows,
on the number of cats ; and Mr. Newman
says: “Near villages and small towns I
have found the nests of humble-bees more
numerous than elsewhere, which I attribute
to the number of cats that destroy the
mice.” Hence it is quite credible that the
presence of a feline animal m large
numbers in a district might determine,
through the intervention first of mice and
then of bees, the frequency of certain
flowers in that district!
In the case of every species, many
different checks, acting at different periods
of .life, and during different seasons or
years, probably come into play ; some one
check or some few being generally the
most potent, but all concur in determining
the average number or even the existence
of the species. In some cases it can be
shown that widely-different checks act on
the same species in different districts.
When we look at the plants and bushes
clothing an entangled bank, we are tempted
to attribute their proportional numbers and
kinds to what we call chance. But how
false a view is this ! Every one has heard
that, when an American forest is cut down,
a very different vegetation springs up ; but
it has been observed that ancient Indian
ruins in the Southern United States, which
must formerly have been cleared of trees,
now display the same beautiful diversity
and proportion of kinds as in the sur
rounding virgin forests. What a struggle
between the several kinds of trees must here
37
have gone on during long centuries, each
annually scattering its seeds by the
thousand ; what war between insect and
insect—between insects, snails, and other
animals with birds and beasts of prey—all
striving to increase and all feeding on each
other or on the trees or theiP seeds and
seedlings, or on the other plants which
first clothed the ground and thus checked
the growth of the trees ! Throw up a
handful of feathers, and all must fall to the
ground according to definite laws; but how
simple is this problem compared to the
action and reaction of the innumerable
plants and animals which have determined,
in the course of centuries, the proportional
numbers and kinds of trees now growing on
the old Indian ruins!
The dependency of one organic being on
another, as of a parasite on its prey, lies
generally between beings remote in the
scale of nature. This is often the case with
those which may strictly be said to struggle
with each other for existence, as in the case
of locusts and grass-feeding quadrupeds.
But the struggle almost invariably will be
most severe between the individuals of the
same species, for they frequent the same
districts, require the same food, and are ex
posed to the same dangers. In the case of
varieties of the same species, the struggle
will generally be almost equally severe, and
we sometimes see the contest soon decided :
for instance, if several varieties of wheat
be sown together, and the mixed seed be
resown, some of the varieties which best
suit the soil or climate, or are naturally the
most fertile, will beat the others and so
yield more seed, and will consequently in a.
few years quite supplant the other varieties.
To keep up a mixed stock of even such
extremely close varieties as the variously
coloured sweet-peas, they must be each
year harvested separately, and the seed
then mixed in due proportion, otherwise the
weaker kinds will steadily decrease in
numbers and disappear. So again with the
varieties of sheep : it has been asserted
that certain mountain-varieties will starve
out other mountain-varieties, so that they
cannot be kept together. The same result
has followed from keeping together different
varieties of the medicinal leech. It may
even be doubted whether the varieties of any
one of our domestic plants or animals have
so exactly the same strength, habits, and
constitution, that the original proportions of
a mixed stock could be kept up for half-adozen generations, if they were allowed to
struggle together, like beings in a state of
�38
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
nature, and if the seed or young were not
annually sorted.
As species of the same genus have usually,
though by no means invariably, some
similarity in habits and constitution, and
always in structure, the struggle will
generally
more severe between species
■of the same genus, when they come into
competition with each other, than between
.species of distinct genera. We see this in
the recent extension over parts of the
United States of one species of swallow
having caused the decrease of another
species. The recent increase of the missel
thrush in parts of Scotland has caused the
decrease of the song-thrush. How fre
quently we hear of one species of rat taking
the place of another species under the most
different climates 1 In Russia the small
Asiatic cockroach has everywhere driven
before it its great congener. One species
:of charlock will supplant another, and so in
■ other .cases. We can dimly see why the
competition should be most severe between
allied forms, which fill nearly the same
place in the economy of nature; but
probably in no one case could we pre
cisely say why one species has been
victorious over another in the great battle
of life. :
A corollary of the highest importance
may be deduced from the foregoing
remarks—namely, that the structure of
every organic being is related, in the most
essential yet often hidden manner, to that
of all other organic beings with which it
comes, into competition for food or resi
dence, or from which it has to escape, or
on which it preys. This is obvious in the
structure of the teeth and talons of the
tiger ; and in that of the legs and claws of
the parasite which clings to the hair on the
tiger’s body. But in the beautifully plumed
seed of the dandelion, and in the flattened
and fringed legs of the water-beetle, the
relation seems at first confined to the
elements of air and water. Yet the advan
tage of plumed seeds no doubt stands in
the closest relation to the land being
already thickly clothed by other plants ;
so that the seeds may be widely distributed
and fall on unoccupied ground. In the
water-beetle, the structure of its legs, so
well adapted for diving, allows it to com
pete with other aquatic insects, to hunt for
its own prey, and to escape serving as prey
to other animals.
The store of nutriment laid up within the
seeds of many plants seems at first sight to
have no sort of relation to other plants.
But from the strong growth of young plants
produced from such seeds (as peas and
beans), when sown in the midst of long
grass, I suspect that the chief use of the
nutriment in the seed is to favour the
growth of the young seedling while
struggling with other plants ■ growing'
vigorously all around.
Look at a plant in the midst of its range ;
why does it not double or quadruple its
numbers ? We know that it can perfectly
well withstand a little more heat or cold,
dampness or dryness, for elsewhere it ranges
into slightly hotter or colder, damper or
drier, districts. In this case we can clearly
see that, if we wished in imagination to
give the plant the power of increasing in
number, we should have to give it some
advantage over its competitors, or over the
animals which preyed on it. On the con
fines of its geographical range, a change of
constitution with respect to climate would
clearly be an advantage to our plant; but
we have reason to believe that only a few
plants or animals range so far that they
are destroyed by the rigour of the climate
alone. Not until we reach the extreme
confines of life, in the Arctic regions or
on the borders of an utter desert, will com
petition cease. The land maybe extremely
cold or dry, yet there will be competition
between some few species, or between the
individuals of the same species, for the
warmest or dampest spots.
Hence, also, we can see that when a
plant or animal is placed in a new country
among new competitors, though the climate
may be exactly the same as in its former
home, yet the conditions of its life will
generally be changed in an essential
manner. If we wished to increase its
average numbers in its new home, we
should have to modify it in a different way
to what we should have done in its native
country ; for we should have to give it
some advantage over a different set of com
petitors or enemies.
It is good thus to try in our imagination
to give any form some advantage over
another. Probably in no single instance
should we know what to do so as to
succeed. It will convince us of our
ignorance on the mutual relations of all
organic beings ; a conviction as necessary
as it seems to be difficult to acquire. All
that we can do is to keep steadily in mind
that each organic being is striving to
increase at a geometrical ratio; that each
at some period of its life, during some
season of the year, during each generation
�NATURAL SELECTION
or at intervals, has to struggle for life and
to suffer great destruction. When we reflect
on this struggle, we may console ourselves
with the full belief that the war of nature
"*<
1
»
■
39
is not incessant, that no fear is felt, that
death is generally prompt, and that the
vigorous, the healthy, and the happy survive
and multiply.
Chapter IV.
NATURAL SELECTION
Natural Selection—its power compared with
man’s selection—its power on characters of
trifling importance—its power at all ages and
on both sexes—Sexual Selection—On the
-> generality of intercrosses between individuals
of the same species—Circumstances favour- •
able and unfavourable to Natural Selection,
namely, intercrossing, isolation, number of
individuals—Slow action—Extinction caused
by Natural Selection—Divergence of Char
acter, related to the diversity of inhabitants of
any small area, and to naturalisation—Action
of Natural Selection, through Divergence of
Character and Extinction, on the descendants
from a common parent—Explains the Group: ing of all organic beings.
HOW will the struggle for existence, dis
cussed too briefly in the last chapter, act
in regard to variation ? Can the principle
of selection, which we have seen is so
potent in the hands of man, apply in
nature? I think we shall see that it can
act most effectually. Let it be borne
in mind in what an endless number of.
strange peculiarities our domestic produc
tions, and, in a lesser degree, those under
nature, vary; and how strong the hereditary
tendency is. Under domestication, it may
be truly said that the whole organisation
becomes in some degree plastic. Let it
be borne in mind how infinitely complex
and close-fitting are the mutual relations
of all organic beings to each other and to
their physical conditions of life. Can it,
then, be thought improbable, seeing that
variations useful to man have undoubtedly
occurred, that other variations useful in
some way to each being in the great and
complex battle of life should sometimes
occur in the course of thousands of genera
tions ? If such do occur, can we doubt
(remembering that many more individuals
are born than can possibly survive) that
individuals having any advantage, however,
slight, over others would have the best
chance of surviving and of procreating
their kind. On the other hand, we may
feel sure that any variation in the least
degree injurious would be rigidly destroyed.
This preservation of favourable variations
and the rejection of injurious variations I
call Natural Selection. Variations neither
useful nor injurious would not be affected
by natural selection, and would be left a
fluctuating element, as perhaps we see in
the species called polymorphic.
We shall best understand the probable
course of natural selection by taking the
case of a country undergoing some physical
change, for instance, of climate. The pro
portional numbers of its inhabitants would
almost immediately undergo a change,
and some species might become extinct.
We may conclude, from what we have
seen of the intimate and complex manner
in which the inhabitants of each country
are bound together, that any change in the
numerical proportions of some of the
inhabitants, independently of the change
of climate itself, would seriously affect
many of the others. If the country were
open on its borders, new forms would
certainly immigrate, and this, also would
seriously disturb the relations of some of the
former inhabitants. Let it be remembered
how powerful the influence of a single intro
duced tree or mammal has been shown
to be. But in the case of an island, or
of a country partly surrounded by barriers,
into which new and better adapted forms
could not freely enter, we should then have
places in the economy of nature which
would assuredly be better filled up, if some
of the original inhabitants were in some
manner modified ; for, had the area been
open to immigration, these same places
would have been seized on by intruders.
In such case every slight modification
�4°
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
which in the course of ages chanced to
arise, and which in any way favoured the
individuals of any of the species by better
adapting them to their altered conditions,
would tend to be preserved ; and natural
selection would thus have free scope for the
work of improvement.
We have reason to believe, as stated in
the first chapter, that a change in the con
ditions of life, by specially acting on the
reproductive system, causes or increases
variability; and in the foregoing case the
conditions of life are supposed to have
undergone a change, and this would
manifestly be favourable to natural selec
tion by giving a better chance of profitable
variations occurring ; and, unless profitable
variations do occur, natural selection can
do nothing. Not that, as I believe, any
extreme amount of variability is necessary ;
as man can certainly produce great results
by adding up in any given direction mere
individual differences, so could Nature, but
far more easily, from having incomparably
longer time at her disposal. Nor do I
believe that any great physical change, as
of climate, or any unusual degree of
isolation to check immigration, is actually
necessary to produce new and unoccupied
places for natural selection to fill up by
modifying and improving some of the
varying inhabitants.
For, as all the
inhabitants of each country are struggling
together with nicely-balanced forces, ex
tremely slight modifications in the structure
or habits of one inhabitant would often give
it an advantage over others; and still
further modifications of the same kind
would often still further increase the
advantage. No country can be named in
which all the native inhabitants are now so
perfectly adapted to each other, and to the
physical conditions under which they live,
that none of them could anyhow be
improved ; for in all countries the natives
have been so far conquered by naturalised
productions that they have allowed
foreigners to take firm possession of the
land. And, as foreigners have thus every
where beaten some of the natives, we may
safely conclude that the natives might have
been modified with advantage, so as to have
better resisted such intruders.
As man can produce, and certainly has
produced, a great result by his methodical
and unconscious means of selection, what
may not nature effect ? Man can act only
on external and visible characters : Nature
cares nothing for appearances, except in so
far as they may be useful to any being.
She can act on every internal organ, on
every shade of constitutional difference, on
the whole machinery of life. Man selects
only for his own good ; Nature only for
that of the being which she tends. Every
selected character is fully exercised by her;
and the being is placed under well-suited
conditions of life. Man keeps the natives
of many climates in the same country ; he
seldom exercises each selected character in
some peculiar and fitting manner ; he feeds
a long and a short beaked pigeon on the
same food ; he does not exercise a longbacked or long-legged quadruped in any
peculiar manner; he exposes sheep with
long and short wool to the same climate.
He does not allow the most vigorous males
to struggle for the females. He does not .
rigidly destroy all inferior animals, but
protects during each varying season, as far
as lies in his power, all his productions.
He often begins his selection by some halfmonstrous form ; or at least by some modi
fication prominent enough to catch his eye,
or to be plainly useful to him. Under
Nature, the slightest difference of structure
or constitution may well turn the nicelybalanced scale in the struggle for life, and
so be preserved. How fleeting are the
■ wishes and efforts of man ! how short his
time ! and consequently how poor will his
products be, compared with those accumu
lated by Nature during whole geological
periods. Can we wonder, then, that
Nature’s productions should be far “truer ”
in character than man’s productions ; that
they should be infinitely better adapted to
the most complex conditions of life, and
should plainly bear the stamp of far higher
workmanship ?
It may metaphorically be said that
natural selection is daily and hourly
scrutinising, throughout the world, every
variation, even the slightest ; rejecting that
which is bad, preserving and adding up all
that is good; silently and insensibly
working, whenever and wherever oppor
tunity offers, at the improvement of each
organic being in relation to its organic and
inorganic conditions of life. We see
nothing of these slow changes in progress
until the hand of time has marked the
long lapse of ages, and then so imperfect
is our view into long past geological ages
that we only see that the forms of life are
now different from what they formerly
were.
Although natural selection can act only
through and for the good of each being,
yet characters and structures, which we
�NATURAL SELECTION
are apt to consider as of very trifling
importance, may thus be acted on. When
we see leaf-eating insects green, and bark
feeders mottled-grey, the alpine ptarmigan
white in winter, the red-grouse the colour
of heather, and the black-grouse that of
peaty earth, we must believe that these
tints are of service to these birds and
insects in preserving them from danger.
Grouse, if not destroyed at some period of
their lives, would increase in countless
numbers ; they are known to suffer largely
from birds of prey ; and hawks are guided
by eyesight to their prey—so much so, that
on parts of the Continent persons are
warned not to keep white pigeons, as being
the most liable to destruction. Hence I
can see- no reason to doubt that natural
selection might be most effective in giving
the proper colour to each kind of grouse,
and in keeping that colour, when once
acquired, true and constant. Nor ought
we to think that the occasional destruction
of an animal of any particular colour would
produce little effect: we should remember
how essential it is in a flock of white sheep
to destroy every lamb with the faintest
trace of black. In plants the down on the
fruit and the colour of the flesh are con
sidered by botanists as characters of the
most trifling importance ; yet we hear from
an excellent horticulturist, Downing, that
in the United States smooth-skinned fruits
suffer far more from a beetle, a curculio,
than those with down ; that purple plums
suffer far more from a certain disease than
yellow plums; whereas another disease
attacks yellow-fleshed peaches far more
than those with other coloured flesh. If,
with all the aids of art, these slight differ
ences make a great difference in cultivating
the several varieties, assuredly in a state
of nature, where the trees would have to
struggle with other trees and with a host
of enemies, such differences would effec
tually settle which variety, whether a smooth
or downy, a yellow or purple-fleshed fruit,
should succeed.
In looking at many small points of
difference between species, which, as far
as our ignorance permits us to judge, seem
quite unimportant, we must not forget that
climate, food, etc., probably produce some
slight and direct effect. It is, however, far
more necessary to bear in mind that there
are many unknown laws of correlation of
growth, which, when one part of the organi
sation is modified through variation, and
the modifications are accumulated by
natural selection for the good of the being,
4i
will cause other modifications, often of the
most unexpected nature.
As we see that those variations which
under domestication appear at any parti
cular period of life, tend to reappear in the
offspring at the same period—for instance,
in the seeds of the many varieties of our
culinary and agricultural plants; in the
caterpillar and cocoon stages of the varieties
of the silkworm ; in the eggs of poultry,
and in the colour of the down of their
chickens ; in the horns of our sheep and
cattle when nearly adult—so, in a state of
nature, natural selection will be enabled to
act on and modify organic beings at any
age by the accumulation of variations
profitable at that age, and by their inheri
tance at a corresponding age. If it profit
a plant to have its seeds more and more
widely disseminated by the wind, I can see
no greater difficulty in this being effected
through natural selection than in the
cotton-planter increasing and improving
by selection the down in the pods on his
cotton-trees. Natural selection may modify
and adapt the larva of an insect to a score
of contingencies wholly different from
those which concern the mature insect.
These modifications will no doubt affect,
through the laws of correlation, the struc
ture of the adult; and probably in the case
of those insects which live only for a few
hours, and which never feed, a large part
of their structure is merely the correlated
result of successive changes in the structure
of their larvae. So, conversely, modifica
tions in the adult will probably often affect
the structure of the larva ; but in all cases
natural selection will ensure that modifica
tions consequent on other modifications at
a different period of life shall not be in the
least degree injurious ; for, if they became
so, they would cause the extinction of the
species.
Natural selection will modify the structure
of the young in relation to the parent, and
of the parent in relation to the young. In
social animals it will adapt the structure
of each individual for the benefit of the
community ; if each in consequence profits
by the selected change. What natural
selection cannot do is to modify the struc
ture of one species without giving it any
advantage for the good of another species;
and, though statements to this effect may
be found in works of natural history, I
cannot find one case which will bear inves
tigation. A structure used only once in an
animal’s whole life, if of high importance
to it, might be modified to any extent by
�42
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
natural selection ; for instance, the great
jaws possessed by certain insects, used
exclusively for opening the cocoon—or the
hard tip to the beak of nestling birds, used
for breaking the egg. It has been asserted
that of the best short-beaked tumbler
pigeons more perish in the egg than are
able to get out of it; so that fanciers assist
in the act of hatching. Now, if nature had
to make the beak of a full-grown pigeon
very short for the bird’s own advantage,
the process of modification would be very
slow, and there would be simultaneously
the most rigorous selection of the young
birds within the egg which had the most
powerful and hardest beaks, for all with
weak beaks would inevitably perish ; or
more delicate and more easily broken
shells might be selected, the thickness of
the shell being known to vary like every
other structure.
Sexual Selection.—Inasmuch as pecu
liarities often appear under domestication
in one sex and become hereditarily attached
to that sex, the same fact probably occurs
under nature, and, if so, natural selection
will be able to modify one sex in its func
tional relations to the other sex, or in
relation to wholly different habits of life in
the two sexes, as is sometimes the case
with insects. And this leads me to say a
few words on what I call Sexual Selection.
This depends, not on a struggle for exis
tence, but on a struggle between the males
for possession of the females ; the result is
not death to the unsuccessful competitor,
but few or no offspring. Sexual selection
is, therefore, less rigorous than natural
selection. Generally, the most vigorous
males, those which are best fitted for their
places in nature, will leave most progeny.
But in many cases victory depends not on
general vigour, but on having special
weapons confined to the male sex. A
hornless stag or spurless cock would have
a poor chance of leaving offspring. Sexual
selection, by always allowing the victor
to breed, might surely give indomitable
courage, length to the spur, and strength
to the wing to strike in the spurred leg, as
well as the brutal Cock-fighter, who knows
well that he can improve his breed by care
ful selection of the best cocks. How low
in the scale of nature the law of battle
descends I know not; male alligators have
been described as fighting, bellowing, and
whirling round, like Indians, in a war
dance, for the possession of the females ;
male salmons have been seen fighting all
day long; male stag-beetles often bear
wounds from the huge mandibles of other
males. The war is, perhaps, severest
between the males of polygamous animals,
and these seem oftenest provided with
special weapons. The males of carnivorous
animals are already well armed ; though
to them and to others special means of
defence may be given through means of
sexual selection, as the mane to the lion,
the shoulder-pad to the boar, and the
hooked jaw to the male salmon ; for the
shield may be as important for victory as
the sword or spear.
Among birds the contest is often of a
more peaceful character. All those who
have attended to the subject believe that
there is the severest rivalry between the
males of many species to attract by singing
the females. The rock-thrush of Guiana,
birds of paradise, and some others, congre
gate ; and successive males display their
gorgeous plumage and perform strange
antics before the females, which, standing
by as spectators, at last choose the most
attractive partner. Those who have closely
attended to birds in confinement well know
that they often take individual preferences
and dislikes : thus Sir R. Heron has
described how one pied peacock was
eminently attractive to all his hen birds.
It may appear childish to attribute any
effect to such apparently weak means : I
cannot here enter on the details necessary
to support thjs view ; but if man can in a
short time give elegant carriage and beauty
to his bantams, according to his standard
of beauty, I can see no good reason to
doubt that female birds, by selecting, during
thousands of generations, the most melo
dious or beautiful males, according to their
standard of beauty, might produce a
marked effect. I strongly suspect that
some well-known laws, with respect to the
plumage of male and female birds, in com
parison with the plumage of the young,
can be explained on the view of plumage
having been chiefly modified by sexual
selection, acting when the birds have come
to the breeding age or during the breeding
season ; the modifications thus produced
being inherited at corresponding ages or
seasons, either by the males alone or by
the males and females ; but I have not
space here to enter on this subject.
Thus it is, as I believe, that when the
males and females of any animal have
the same general habits of life, but differ
in structure, colour, or- ornament, such
differences have been mainly caused by
�NATURAL SELECTION
sexual selection; that is, individual males
have had, in successive generations, some
slight advantage over other males, in their
weapons, means of defence, or charms ; and
have transmitted these advantages to their
male offspring. Yet I would not wish to
attribute all such sexual differences to this
agency ; for we see peculiarities arising and
becoming attached to the male sex in our
domestic animals (as the wattle in male
carriers, horn-like protuberances in the
cocks of certain fowls, etc.), which we
cannot believe to be either useful to the
males in battle or attractive to the females.
We see analogous cases under nature—for
. instance, the tuft of hair on the breast of
the turkey-cock, which can hardly be either
useful or ornamental to this bird ; indeed,
had the tuft appeared under domestication,
it would have been called a monstrosity.
Illustrations of the Action of Natural
Selection.—In order to make it clear how,
as I believe, natural selection acts, I must
beg permission to give one or two
imaginary illustrations. Let us take the
case of a wolf, which preys on various
animals, securing some by craft, some by
strength, and some by fleetness ; and let
us suppose that the fleetest prey—a deer
for instance, had from any change in the
country increased in numbers, or that other
prey had decreased in numbers,' during
that season of the year when the wolf is
hardest pressed for food. I canmnder such
circumstances see no reason to doubt that
the swiftest and slimmest wolves would
have the best chance of surviving, and so
be preserved or selected—provided always
that they retained strength to master their
prey at this or at some other period of the
year, when they might be compelled to
prey on other animals. I can see no more
reason to doubt this than that man can
improve the fleetness of his greyhounds by
careful and methodical selection, or by that
unconscious selection which results from
each man trying to keep the best dogs
without any thought of modifying the
breed.
Even without any change in the pro
portional numbers of the animals on which
our wolf preyed, a cub might be born with
an innate tendency to pursue certain kinds
of prey. Nor can this be thought very
improbable ; for we often observe great
differences in the natural tendencies of our
domestic animals ; one cat, for instance,
taking to catch rats, another mice ; one
cat, according to Mr. St. John, bringing
43
home winged game, another hares ofl
rabbits, and another hunting on marshy
ground and almost nightly catching wood
cocks or snipes. The tendency to catch rats
rather than1 mice is known to be inherited.
Now, if any slight innate change of habit
or of structure benefited an individual wolf,
it would have the best chance of surviving
and of leaving offspring. Some of its
young would probably inherit the same
habits or structure, and by the repetition
of this process a new variety might be
formed which would either supplant or
co-exist with the parent form of wolf. Or,
again, the wolves inhabiting a mountainous
district, and those frequenting the lowlands,
would naturally be forced to hunt different
prey ; and from the continued preservation
of the individuals best fitted for the two
sites two varieties might slowly be formed.
These varieties would cross and blend
where they met ; but to this subject of
intercrossing we shall soon have to return.
I may add that, according to Mr. Pierce,
there are two varieties of the wolf inhabiting
the Catskill Mountains in the United
States—one with a light greyhound-like
form, which pursues deer, and the other
more bulky, with shorter legs, which more
frequently attacks the shepherd’s flocks.
Let us now take a more complex case.
Certain plants excrete a sweet juice, appa
rently for the sake of eliminating something
injurious from their sap : this is effected
by glands at the base of the stipules in
some Leguminoste, and at the back of the
leaf of the common laurel. This juice,
though small in quantity, is greedily sought
by insects. Let us now suppose a little
sweet juice or nectar to be excreted by the
inner bases of the petals of a flower. In
this case insects in seeking the nectar
would get dusted with pollen, and would
certainly often transport the pollen from
one flower to the stigma of another flower.
The flowers of two distinct individuals of
the same species would thus get crossed ;
and the act of crossing, we have good
reason to believe (as will hereafter be more
fully alluded to), would produce very
vigorous seedlings, which consequently
would have the best chance of flourishing
and surviving. Some of these seedlings
would probably inherit the nectar-excreting
power. Those individual flowers which
had the largest glands dr nectaries, and
which excreted most nectar, would be
oftenest visited by insects, and would be
oftenest crossed ; and so in the long run
would gain the upper hand. Those flowers,
�44
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
also, which had their stamens and pistils
placed, in relation to the size and habits of
the particular insects which visited them,
so as to favour in any degree the transportal
of their pollen from flower to flower, would
likewise be favoured or selected. We
might have taken the case of insects visiting i
flowers for the sake of collecting pollen
instead of nectar ; and as pollen is formed
for the sole object of fertilisation, its destruc
tion appears a simple loss to the plant ;
yet if a little pollen were carried, at first
occasionally and then habitually, by the
pollen-devouring insects from flower to
flower, and a cross thus effected, although
nine-tenths of the pollen were destroyed,
it might still be a great gain to the plant;
.and those individuals which produced more
.and more pollen, and had larger and larger j|
.anthers, would be selected.
When our plant, by this process of the
-•continued preservation or natural selection
of more and more attractive flowers, had
been rendered highly attractive to insects,
they would, unintentionally on their part,
regularly carry pollen from flower to flower;
and that they can most effectually do this
I could easily show by many striking
.instances. I will give only one—-not as a
very striking case, but as likewise illus
trating one step in the separation of the
sexes of plants, presently to be alluded to.
Some holly-trees bear only male flowers,
which have four stamens producing a rather
small quantity of pollen, and a rudimentary
pistil; other holly-trees bear only female
flowers ; these have a full-sized pistil, and
four stamens with shrivelled anthers, in
which not a grain of pollen can be detected.
Having found a female tree exactly sixty
yards from a male tree, I put the stigmas
■of twenty flowers, taken from different
branches, under the microscope, and on
all, without exception, there were pollen
grains, and on some a profusion of pollen.
As the wind had set for several days from
the female to the male tree, the pollen
could not thus have been carried. The
weather had been cold and boisterous, and,
therefore, not favourable to bees ; neverthe
less, every female flower which I examined
had been effectually fertilised by the bees,
accidentally dusted with pollen, having
flown from tree to tree in search of nectar.
But to return to our imaginary case : as
soon as the plant had been rendered so
highly attractive to insects that pollen was
regularly carried from flower to flower,
another process might commence. No,
naturalist doubts the advantage of what
has been called the “ physiological division
of labour”; hence we may believe that it
would be advantageous to a plant to pro
duce stamens alone in one flower or on one
whole plant, and pistils alone in another
flower or on another plant. In plants under
culture and placed under new conditions of
life, sometimes the male organs and some
times the female organs become more or
less impotent: now, if we suppose this to
occur in ever so slight a degree under
nature, then, as pollen is already carried
regularly from flower to flower, and as a
more complete separation of the sexes of
our plant would be advantageous on the
principle of the division of labour, indi
viduals with this tendency more and more
increased would be continually favoured or
selected, until at last a complete separation
of the sexes would be effected.
Let us now turn to the nectar-feeding
insects in our imaginary case: we may
suppose the plant of which we have been
slowly increasing the nectar by continued
selection to be a common plant, and that
certain insects depended in main parton its
nectar for food. I could give many facts,
showing how anxious bees are to save
time ; for instance, their habit of cutting
holes and sucking the nectar at the bases
of certain flowers, which they can, with a
very little more trouble, enter by the
mouth. Bearing such facts in mind, I can
see no reason to doubt that an accidental
deviation in the size and form of the body,
or in the'curvature and length of the
proboscis, etc., far too slight to be appre
ciated by us, might profit a bee or other
insect, so that an individual so characterised
would be able to obtain its food more
quickly, and so have a better chance
of living and leaving descendants. Its
descendants would probably inherit a
tendency to a similar slight deviation of
structure. The tubes of the corollas of
the common red and incarnate clovers
(Trifolium pratense and incarnatum) do
not on a hasty glance appear to differ in
length ; yet the hive-bee can easily suck
the nectar out of the incarnate clover, but
not out of the common red clover, which
is visited by humble-bees alone ; so that
whole fields of the red clover offer in vain
an abundant supply of precious nectar to
the hive-bee. Thus it might be a great
advantage to the hive-bee to have a slightly
longer or differently constructed proboscis.
On the other hand, I have found by experi| ment that the fertility of clover depends on
i bees visiting and moving parts of the
�NATURAL SELECTION
corolla, so as to push the pollen on to the
stigmatic surface. Henc£, again, if humblebees were to become rare in any country,
it might be a great advantage to the red
clover to have a shorter or more deeply
divided tube to its corol^so that the hive
bee could visit its flowers. Thus I can
understand how a flower and a bee might
slowly become, either simultaneously or
one after the other, modified and adapted
in the most perfect manner to each other,
by the continued preservation of individuals
presenting mutual and slightly favourable
deviations of structure.
I am well aware that this doctrine of
natural selection, exemplified in the above
imaginary instances, is open to the same
objections which were at first urged against
Sir Charles Lyell’s noble views on “ the
modern changes of the earth, as illustrative
of geology”; but we now seldom hear the
action, for instance, of the coast-waves,
called a trifling and insignificant cause,
when applied to the excavation of gigantic
valleys or to the formation of the longest
lines of inland cliffs. Natural selection can
act only by the preservation and accumula
tion of infinitesimally small inherited modi
fications, each profitable to the preserved
being ; and as modern geology has almost
banished such views as the excavation of
a great valley by a single diluvial wave, so
will natural selection, if it be a true
principle, banish the belief of the continued
creation of new organic beings, or of any
great and sudden modification in their
structure.
On the Intercrossing of Individuals.—I
must here introduce a short digression. In
the case of animals and plants with
separated sexes, it is of course obvious that
two individuals must always (with the
exception of the curious and not wellunderstood cases of parthenogenesis) unite
for each birth ; but in the case of hermaph
rodites this is far from obvious. Neverthe
less, I am strongly inclined to believe that
with all hermaphrodites two individuals,
either occasionally or habitually, concur for
the reproduction of their kind. This view
was first suggested by Andrew Knight.
We shall presently see its importance ; but
I must here treat the subject with extreme
brevity, though I have the materials pre
pared for an ample discussion. All verte
brate animals, all insects, and some other
large groups of animals, pair for each birth.
Modern research has much diminished the
number of supposed hermaphrodites, and
45
of real hermaphrodites a large number pair;
that is, two individuals regularly unite for
reproduction, which is all that concerns us.
But still there are many hermaphrodite
animals which certainly do not habitually
pair, and a vast majority of plants arc
hermaphrodites. What reason, it may be
asked, is there for supposing in these cases
that two individuals ever concur in repro
duction ? As it is impossible here to enter
on details, I must trust to some general
considerations alone.
In the first place, I have collected so
large a body of facts, showing, in ac
cordance with the almost universal belief of
breeders, that with animals and plants a
cross between different varieties, or between
individuals of the same variety but of
another strain, gives vigour and fertility to
the offspring ; and, on the other hand, that
close interbreeding diminishes vigour and
fertility ; that these facts alone incline me
to believe that it is a general law of nature
(utterly ignorant though we be of the
meaning of the law) that no organic being
self-fertilises itself for an eternity of gene
rations ; but that a cross with another indi
vidual is occasionally—perhaps at very long
intervals—indispensable.
On the belief that this is a law of nature,
we can, I think, understand several large
classes of facts, such as the following,
which on any other view are inexplicable.
Every hybridiser knows how unfavourable
exposure to wet is to the fertilisation of a
flower, yet what a multitude of flowershave
their anthers and stigmas fully exposed to
the weather ! But if an occasional cross be
indispensable, the fullest freedom for the
entrance of pollen from another individual
will explain this state of exposure, more
especially as the plant’s own anthers and
pistil generally stand so close together that
self-fertilisation seems almost inevitable.
Many flowers, on the other hand, have
their organs of fructification closely en
closed, as in the great papilionaceous or
pea-family ; but in several, perhaps in all,
such flowers there is a very curious adapta
tion between the structure of the flower and
the manner in which bees suck the nectar;
for, in doing this, they either push the
flower’s own pollen on the stigma or bring
pollen from another flower. So necessary
are the visits of bees to papilionaceous
flowers that I have found, by experiments
published elsewhere, that their fertility is
greatly diminished if these visits be pre
vented. Now, it is scarcely possible that
bees should fly from flower to flower, and
�46
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
not carry pollen from one to the other, to
the pollen and stig’matic surface of the
the great good, as I believe, of the plant.
same flower, thqygh placed so close
Bees will act like a camel-hair pencil, and
together, as if for tne very purpose of self
it is quite sufficient just to touch the anthers
fertilisation, should in so many cases be
of one flower and then the stigma of another
mutually useless to each other 1 How
with the same brush to ensure fertilisation;
simply are thes^-ffacts explained on the
but it must not be supposed that bees
view of an occasional cross with a distinct
would thus produce a multitude of hybrids
individual being advantageous or indis
between distinct species; for if you bring
pensable !
on the same brush a plant’s own pollen and
If several varieties of the cabbage, radish,
pollen from another species, the former
ortion, and of some other plants, be allowed
will . have such a prepotent effect that it
to seed near each other, a large majority,
will invariably and completely destroy, as
as I have found, of the seedlings thus
has been shown by Gartner, any influence
raised will turn out mongrels : for instance,
from the foreign pollen.
I raised 233 seedling cabbages from some
When the stamens of a flower suddenly
plants of different varieties growing near
spring towards the pistil, or slowly move
each other, and of these only 78 were true
one after the other towards it, the con
to their kind, and some even of these were
trivance seems adapted solely to ensure
not perfectly true. Yet the pistil of each
self-fertilisation; and no doubt it is useful
cabbage-flower is surrounded not only by
for this end ; but the agency of insects is
its own six stamens, but by those of the
often required to cause the stamens to
many other flowers on the same plant.
spring forward, as Kblreuter has shown to I How, then, comes it that such a vast
be the case with the barberry; and in this I number of the seedlings are mongrelised?
very genus, which seems to have a special
I suspect that it must arise from the pollen
contrivance for self-fertilisation, it is well
of a distinct variety having a prepotent
known that, if closely-allied forms or
effect over a. flower’s own pollen, and that
varieties are planted near each other, it is
this is part of the general law of good being
hardly possible to raise pure seedlings, so
derived from the intercrossing of distinct
largely do they naturally cross. In many
individuals of the same species. When
other cases, far from there being any aids
distinct species are crossed, the case is
for self-fertilisation, there are special con
directly the reverse, for a plant’s own pollen
trivances, as I could show from the writings
is always prepotent over foreign pollen ;
of C. C. Sprengel and from my own obser
but to this subject we shall return in a
vations, which effectuallyprevent the stigma
future chapter.
. receiving pollen from its own flower: for
In the case of a gigantic tree covered
instance, in Lobelia fulgens there is a
with innumerable flowers, it may be objected
really beautiful and elaborate contrivance
that pollen could seldom be carried from
by which every one of the infinitely
tree to tree, and at most only from flower
numerous pollen-granules are swept out of
to flower on the same tree, and that flowers
the conjoined anthers of each flower before
on the same tree can ,be considered as
distinct individuals only in a limited sense.
the stigma of that individual flower is ready
: to receive them ; and as this flower is never
I believe this objection to be valid, but that
nature has largely provided against it by
visited, at least in my garden, by insects,
-it never sets a seed, though, by placing
giving to trees a strong tendency to bear
• pollen from one flower on the stigma of flowers with separated .sexes. When the
sexes are separated, although the male and
another, I raised plenty of seedlings ; and
female flowers may be produced on the
. while another species of Lobelia growing
same tree, we can see that pollen must be
close by, which is visited by bees, seeds
regularly carried from flower to flower ;
freely. In very many other cases, though
and this will give a better chance of pollen
there be no special mechanical contrivance
being occasionally carried from tree to
to prevent the stigma of a flower receiving
tree. That trees belonging to all Orders
its own pollen, yet, as C. C. Sprengel has
have their sexes more often separated than
shown, and as I can confirm, either the
other plants, I find to be the case in this
anthers burst before the stigma is ready for
country; and at my request Dr. Hooker
fertilisation or the stigma is ready before
the pollen of that flower is ready, so that
tabulated the trees of New Zealand, and
Dr. Asa Gray those of. the United States,
-these plants have in fact separated sexes,
and the result was as I anticipated. On
:and njust habitually be crossed. How
the other hand, Dr. Hooker has recently
. strange are these facts ! How strange that
�NATURAL SELECTION
informed me that hl^inds that the rule
does not hold in Australia ; and I have
made these few remarks on the sexes of
trees simply to call attention to the subject.
Turning for a very brief space to animals:
on the land there are ^^hermaphrodites,
as land-mollusca and . earth-worms ; but
these all pair. As yet I have not found a
single case of a terrestrial animal which
fertilises itself. W& can understand this
remarkable fact, which offers so strong a
contrast with terrestrial plants, on the view
of an occasional cross being indispensable,
by considering the medium in which terres
trial animals live, and the nature of the
fertilising element; for we know of no
means, analogous to the action of insects
and of the wind in the case of plants,, by
which an occasional cross could be effected
with terrestrial animals without the con
currence of two individuals. Of aquatic
animals, there are many self-fertilising
hermaphrodites ; but here currents in the
water offer an obvious means for an occa
sional cross. And, as in the case of flowers,
I have as yet failed, after consultation with
one of the highest authorities—namely,
Professor Huxley—to discover a single case
of an hermaphodrite animal with the organs
of reproduction so perfectly enclosed within
the body that access from without and the
occasional influence of a distinct individual
can be shown to be physically impossible.
Cirripedes long appeared to me to present
a case of very great difficulty under this
point of view ; but I have been enabled, by
a fortunate chance, elsewhere to prove that
two individuals, though both are self
fertilising hermaphrodites, do sometimes
cross.
It must have struck most naturalists as
a strange anomaly that in the case of both
animals and plants species of the same
family, and even of the same genus, though
agreeing closely with each other in almost
their whole organisation, yet are not rarely
some of them hermaphrodites and some
of them unisexual. But if, in fact, all
hermaphrodites do occasionally intercross
with other individuals, the difference
between hermaphrodites and unisexual
species, as far as function is concerned,
becomes very small.
From these several considerations, and
from the many special facts which I have
collected, but which I am not here able to
give, I am strongly inclined to suspect that
both in the vegetable and animal kingdoms
an occasional intercross with a distinct
individual is a law of nature. I am well
47
aware that there are, on this view, many
cases of difficulty, some of which I am
trying to investigate. Finally, then, we
may conclude that in many organic beings
a cross between -two individuals^ is an
obvious necessity for each birth ; in many
others it occurs perhaps only at long
intervals ; but in none, as I suspect, can
self-fertilisation go on for perpetuity.'
Circumstances Favourable to Natural
Selection—This, is an extremely intricate
subject. A large amount of inheritable
and diversified variability is favourable, but
I believe mere individual differences suffice
for the work. A large number of indi
viduals, by giving a better chance for the
appearance within any given period of
profitable variations, will compensate for a
lesser amount of variability in each indi
vidual, and is, I believe, an extremely
important element of success. Though
Nature grants vast periods of time for the
work of natural selection, she does not
grant an indefinite period ; for as all
organic beings are striving, it may be said,
to seize on each place in the economy of
nature, if any one species does not become
modified and improved in a corresponding
degree with its competitors, it will soon be
exterminated.
In man’s methodical selection, a breeder
selects for some definite object, and free
intercrossing will wholly stop his work.
But when many men, without intending to
alter the breed, have a nearly common
standard of perfection, and all try to get
and breed from the best animals, much
improvement and modification surely but
slowly follow from this unconscious process
of selection, notwithstanding a large amount
of crossing with inferior animals. Thus it
will be in nature ; for within a confined
area, with some place in its polity not so
perfectly occupied as might be, natural
selection will always tend to preserve all
the individuals varying in the right direc
tion, though in different degrees, so as
better to fill up the unoccupied place. But
if the area be large, its several districts will
almost certainly present different conditions
of life ; and then, if natural selection be
modifying and improving a species in the
several districts, there will be intercrossing
with the other individuals of the same
species on the confines of each. And in
this case the effects of intercrossing can
hardly be counterbalanced by natural
selection always tending to modify all the
individuals in each district in exactly the
�48
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
same manner to the conditions of each ;
only through the principle of inheritance,
for in a continuous area the physical con
and through natural selection destroying
ditions at least will generally graduate
any which depart from the proper type ;
away insensibly from one district to another.
but if their conditions of life change, and
The intercrossing will most affect those
they undergo modification, uniformity of
animals which unite for each birth, which
character can be^riven to their modified
wander much, and which do not breed at a
offspring solely by natural selection pre
very quick rate. Hence in animals of this
serving the same favourable variations.
nature—for instance, in birds—varieties will
Isolation, also, is an important element
generally be confined to separated countries;
in the process of natural selection. Ina
and this I believe to be the case. In her
confined or isolated area, if not very large,
maphrodite organisms which cross only
the organic and inorganic conditions of
occasionally, and likewise in animals which
life will generally be in a great degree
unite for each birth, but which wander
uniform; so that natural selection will tend
little, and which can increase at a very
to modify all the individuals of a varying
rapid rate, a new and improved variety
species throughout the area in the same
might be quickly formed on any one spot,
manner in relation to the same conditions.
and might there maintain itself in a body,
Intercrosses, also, with the individuals of
so that whatever intercrossing took place
the same species which otherwise would
would be chiefly between the individuals of
have inhabited the surrounding and differ
the same new variety. A local variety,
ently circumstanced districts will be pre
when once thus formed, might subsequently
vented. But isolation probably acts more
slowly spread to other districts. On the
efficiently in checking the immigration of
above principle, nurserymen always prefer
better adapted organisms, after any physical
getting seed from a large body of plants of
change, such as of climate or elevation of
the same variety, as the chance of interthe land, etc.; and thus new places in the
crossingwith othervarieties is thus lessened.
natural economy of the country are left
Even in the case of slow-breeding ani
open for the old inhabitants to struggle for,
mals, which unite for each birth, we must
and become adapted to, through modifica
not overrate the effects of intercrossing in i tions in their structure and constitution.
retarding natural selection ; for I can bring
Lastly, isolation, by checking immigration,
a considerable catalogue of facts showing
and consequently competition, will give
that within the same area varieties of the
time for any new variety to be slowly
same animal can long remain distinct, from
improved; and this may sometimes be of
haunting different stations, from breeding
importance in the production of new species.
at slightly different seasons, or from varie
If, however, an isolated area be very small,
ties of the same kind preferring to pair
either from being surrounded by barriers
together.
or from having very peculiar physical con
ditions, the total number of the individuals
Intercrossing plays a very important
supported on it will necessarily be very
part in nature in keeping the individuals of
the same species, or of the same variety,
small ; and fewness of individuals will
greatly retard the production of new species
true and uniform in character. It will
through natural selection by decreasing
obviously thus act far more efficiently with
those animals which unite for each birth ;
the chance of the appearance of favourable
variations.
but I have already attempted to show that
If we turn to nature to test the truth of
we have reason to believe that occasional
these remarks, and look at any small
intercrosses take place with all animals
isolated area, such as an oceanic island,
and with all plants. Even if these take
although the total number of the species
place only at long intervals, I am convinced
inhabiting it will be found to be small, as
that the young thus produced will gain so
we shall see in our chapter on Geographical
much in vigour and fertility over the off
Distribution ; yet of these species a very
spring from long-continued self-fertilisation,
large proportion are endemic—that is,
that they will have a better chance of sur
have been produced there, and nowhere
viving and propagating their kind ; and
else. Hence an oceanic island at first
thus, in the long run, the influence of
sight seems to have been highly favourable
intercrosses, even at rare intervals, will be
for the production of new species. But we
great. If there exist organic beings which
never intercross, uniformity of character
may thus greatly deceive ourselves, for to
ascertain whether a small isolated area, or
can be retained among them, as long as
a large open area like a continent, has been
their conditions of life remain the same,
�NATURAL SELECTION
most favourable for .the production of neworganic forms, we ought to make the com
parison within equal times; and this we
are incapable of doing.
Although I do not doubt that isolation is
of considerable importance in the produc
tion of new species, on the whole I am
inclined to believe that largeness of area is
of more importanoe, more especially in the
production of species which will prove
capable of enduring for a long period and
of spreading widely. Throughout a great
and open area not only will there be a
better chance of favourable variations
arising from the large number of individuals
of the same species there supported, but
the conditions of life are infinitely complex
from the large number of already existing
species ; and if some of these many species
become modified and improved, others will
have to be improved in a corresponding
degree, or they will be exterminated. Each
new form also, as soon as it has been
much improved, will be able to spread over
the open and continuous area, and will thus
come into competition with many others.
Hence more new places will be formed,
and the competition to fill them will be
more severe, on a large than on a small
and isolated area. Moreover, great areas,
though now continuous owing to oscilla
tions of level, will often have recently
existed in a broken condition, so that the
good effects of isolation will generally, tp a
certain extent, have concurred. Finally, I
conclude that, although small isolated areas
probably have been in some respects highly
favourable for the production of new species,
yet that the course of modification will
generally have been more rapid on large
areas ; and, what is more important, that
the new forms produced on large areas,
which already have been victorious over
many competitors, will be those that will
spread most widely, will give rise to most
new varieties and species, and will thus
play an important part in the changing
history of the organic world.
We can, perhaps, on these views, under
stand some facts which will be again
alluded to in our chapter on Geographical
Distribution ; for instance, that the pro
ductions of the smaller continent of
Australia have formerly yielded, and
apparently are now yielding, before those
of the larger Europaso-Asiatic area. Thus,
also, it is that continental productions have
everywhere become so largely naturalised
on islands. On a small island the race
for life will have been less severe, and
49
there will h ave been less modification
and less extermination. Hence, perhaps,
it comes that the flora of Madeira, according
to Oswald Heer, resembles the extinct
tertiary flora of Europe. All fresh-water
basins, taken together, make a small area
compared with that of the sea or of the
land ; and, consequently, the competition
between fresh-water productions will have
been less severe than elsewhere ; new
forms will have been more slowly formed,
and old forms more slowly exterminated.
And it is in fresh water that we find seven
genera of Ganoid fishes, remnants of a
once preponderant order; and in fresh
water we find some of the most anomalous
forms now known in the world, as the
Ornithorhynchus and Lepidosiren, which,
like fossils, connect to a certain extent
orders now widely separated in the natural
scale. These anomalous forms may almost
be called living fossils ; they have endured
to the present day from having inhabited
a confined area, and from having thus been
exposed to less severe competition.
To sum up the circumstances favourable
and unfavourable to natural selection, as
far as the extreme intricacy of the subject
permits. I conclude, looking to the future,
that for terrestrial productions a large con
tinental area, which will probably undergo
many oscillations of level, and which conse
quently will exist for long periods in a
broken condition, is the most favourable
for the production of many new forms of
life likely to endure tong and to spread
widely. For the area first existed as a
continent, and the inhabitants, at this
period numerous in individuals and kinds,
will have been subjected to very severe
competition. When converted by sub
sidence into large separate islands, there
will still exist many individuals of the same
species on each island : intercrossing on
the confines of the range of each species
will thus be checked : after physical
changes of any kind immigration will be
prevented, so that new places in the polity
of each island will have to be filled up by
modifications of the old inhabitants ; and
time will be allowed for the varieties in
each to become well modified and perfected.
When, by renewed elevation, the islands
shqjl be reconverted into a continental
area, there will again be severe competition:
the most favoured or improved varieties
will be enabled to spread ; there will be
much extinction of the less improved forms,
and the relative proportional numbers of
the various inhabitants of the renewed
E
�5o
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
continent will again be changed; and
again there will be a fair field for natural
selection to improve still further the inhabi
tants, and thus produce new species.
That natural selection will always act
with extreme slowness I fully admit. Its
action depends on there being places in
the polity of nature which can be better
occupied by some of the inhabitants of the
country undergoing modification of some
kind. • The existence of such places will
often depend on physical changes,-which
are generally very slow, and on the immi
gration of better-adapted forms having
been checked. But the action of natural
selection will probably still oftener depend
on some of the inhabitants becoming slowly
modified, the mutual relations of many
of the other inhabitants being thus dis
turbed. Nothing can be effected unless
favourable variations occur, and variation
itself is apparently always a very slow
process. The process will often be greatly
retarded by free intercrossing. Many will
exclaim that these several causes are amply
sufficient wholly to stop the action of natural
selection. I do not believe so. On the
other hand, I do believe that natural selec
tion always acts very slowly, often only at
long intervals of time, and generally on
only a very few of the inhabitants of the
same region at the same time. I further
believe that this very slow, intermittent
action of natural selection accords perfectly
well with what, geology tells us of the rate
and manner a’t which the inhabitants of
this world have changed.
Slow though the process of selection may
be, if feeble man can do much by his powers
of artificial selection, I can see no limit to
the amount of change, to the beauty and
infinite complexity of the co-adaptations
between all organic beings, one with another
and with their physical conditions of life,
which may be effected in the long course
of time by nature’s power of selection.
Extinction.—This subject will be more
fully discussed in. our chapter on Geology ;
but it must be here alluded to from being
intimately connected with natural selection.
Natural selection acts solely through the
preservation of variations in some way
advantageous, which consequently endure.
But as, from the high geometrical ratio of
increase of all organic beings, each area is
already fully stocked with inhabitants, it
follows that, as each selected and favoured
form increases in number, so will the less
favoured forms decrease and become rare.
Rarity, as geology tells us, is'the precursor
to extinction. We can also see that any
form represented by few individuals will,
during fluctuations in the seasons or in the
number of its enemies, rui^ a good chance
of utter extinction. But we may go further
than this ; for as new forms are continually
and slowly being produced, unless we believe
that the number of specific forms goes on
perpetually and almost indefinitely increas
ing, numbers inevitably must become extinct.
That the number of specific forms has not
indefinitely increased geology shows us
plainly ; and, indeed, we can see reason
why they should not have thus increased,
for the number of places in the polity of
nature is not indefinitely great—not that
we have any means of knowing that any
one region has as yet got its maximum of
species. Probably no region is as yet fully
stocked, for at the Cape of Good Hope,
where more species of plants are crowded
together than in any other quarter of the
world, some foreign plants have become
naturalised, without causing, as far as we
know, the extinction of any natives.
Furthermore, the species which are most
numerous in individuals will have the best
chance of producing within any given period
favourable variations. We have evidence
of this in the facts given in the second
chapter, showing that it is the common
species which afford the greatest number
of recorded varieties, or incipient species.
Hence, rare species will, be less quickly
modified or improved within any given
period, and they will consequently be beaten
in the race for life by the modified descen
dants of the commoner species.
From these several considerations I think
it inevitably follows that, as new species in
the course of time are formed through
natural selection, others will become rarer
and rarer, and finally extinct. The forms
which stand in closest competition with
those undergoing modification and improve
ment will naturally suffer most. And we
have seen in the chapter on the Struggle
for Existence that it is the most closelyallied forms—varieties of the same species,
and species of the same genus or of related
genera—which, from haying nearly the
same structure, constitution, and habits,
generally come into the severest competi
tion with each other. Consequently, each
new variety or species, during the progress
of its formation, will generally press hardest
on its nearest kindred, and tend to exter
minate them. We see the same process
of extermination among our domesticated
�NATURAL SELECTION
productions, through the selection of im
proved forms by man. Many curious in
stances could be given showing how quickly
new breeds of cattle, sheep, and other ani
mals, and varies of flowers, take the place
of older and inferior kinds. In Yorkshire it'
is historically known that the ancient black
cattle were displaced by the long-horns,
and that these “were swept away by the
short-horns” (I quote the words of an
agricultural writer) “ as if by some murder
ous pestilence.”
Divergence of Character.—'The principle
which I have designated by this term is of
high importance on my theory, and explains,
as I believe, several important facts. In
the first place, varieties, even stronglymarked ones, though having somewhat of
the character of species—as is shown by the
hopeless doubts in many cases how to rank
them—yet certainly differ from each other
far less than do good and distinct species.
Nevertheless, according to my view, varieties
are species in the process of formation, or
are, as I have called them, incipient species.
How, then, does the lesser difference
between varieties become augmented’into
the greater difference between species ?
That this does habitually happen we must
infer from most of the innumerable species
throughout nature presenting well-marked
differences; whereas varieties, the supposed
prototypes and parents of future well-marked
species, present slight and ill-defined dif
ferences. Mere chance, as we may call it,
might cause one variety to differ in some
character from its parents, and the offspring
of this variety again to differ from its parent
in the very same character and in a greater
degree; but this alone would never account
for so habitual and large an amount of dif
ference as that between varieties of the same
species and species of the same genus.
As has always been my practice, let us
. seek light on this head from our domestic
productions. We shall-here find some
thing analogous. A fancier is struck ’ by
a pigeon having a slightly shorter beak ;
another fancier is struck by a pigeon
having a rather longer beak; and on the
acknowledged principle that “ fanciers do
not and will not admire a medium standard,
but like extremes,” they both go on (as
has actually occurred with tumbler-pigeons)
choosing and breeding from birds with
longer and longer beaks, or with shorter
and shorter beaks. Again, we may suppose
that at-an early period one man preferred
swifter horses ; another stronger and more
5i
bulky horses. The ea£ly differences would
be very slight; in the course of time, from
the continued selection of swifter horses by
some breeders, and of stronger ones by
others, the differences would become
greater, and would be noted as forming
two sub-breeds; finally, after the lapse of
centuries, the sub-breeds would become
converted into two well-established and
distinct breeds. As the differences slowly
become greater, the inferior animals with
intermediate characters, being neither very
swift nor very strong, will have been
neglected, and will have tended to dis
appear. Here, then, we see in man’s pro
ductions the action of what may be called
the principle of divergence, causing differ
ences, at first barely appreciable, steadily
to increase, and the breeds to diverge in
character both from each other and from
their common parent.
But how, it may be asked, can any analo
gous principle apply in nature ? I believe
it can and does apply most efficiently, from
the simple circumstance that the more
diversified the descendants from any one
species become in structure, constitution,
and habits, by so much will they be better
enabled to seize on many and widely diver
sified places in the polity of nature, and so
be enabled to increase in numbers.
We can clearly see this in the case of
animals with simple habits. Take the case
of a carnivorous quadruped, of which the
number that can be supported in any
country has long ago arrived at its full
average. If its natural powers of increase
be allowed to act, it can succeed in increas
ing (the country not undergoing any change
in its conditions) only by its varying descen
dants seizing on places at present occupied
by other animals : some of them, for instance,
being enabled to feed on new kinds of prey,
either dead or alive ; some inhabiting new
stations, climbing trees, frequenting water,
and some perhaps becoming less car
nivorous. The more diversified in habits
and structure the descendants of our car
nivorous animal became, the more places
they would be enabled to occupy. What
applies to one animal will apply throughout
all time to all animals—that is, if they
vary—for otherwise natural selection can
do nothing. So it will be with plants. It
has been experimentally proved that if a
plot of ground be sown with one species
of grass, and a similar plot be sown with
several distinct genera of grasses, a greater
number of plants and a greater weight of
dry herbage can thus be raised. The same
�52
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
has been found to hold good when first one
variety and then several mixed varieties of
wheat have been sown on equal spaces of
ground. Hence, if any one species of grass
were to go on varying, and those varieties
were continually selected which differed
from each other in at all the same manner
as distinct species and genera of grasses
differ from each other, a greater number of
individual plants of this species of grass,
including its modified descendants, would
succeed in living on the same piece of
ground. And we well know that each
species and each variety of grass is annually
sowing almost countless seeds, and thus,
as it may be said, is striving its utmost to
increase its numbers. Consequently, I
cannot doubt that in the course of many
thousands of generations the most distinct
varieties of any one species of grass would
always have the best chance of succeeding
and of increasing in numbers, and thus of
supplanting the less distinct varieties ; and
varieties, when rendered very distinct from
each other, take the rank of. species.
The truth of the principle, that the greatest
amount of life can be supported by great
diversification of structure, is seen under
many natural circumstances. In an ex
tremely small area, especially if freely open
to immigration, and where the contest
between individual and individual must be
severe, we always find great diversity in its
inhabitants. For instance, I found that a
piece of turf, three feet by four in size, which
had been exposed for many years to exactly
the same conditions, supported twenty
species of plants, and these belonged to
eighteen genera and to eight orders, which
shows how much these plants differed from
each other. So it is with the plants and
insects on small and uniform islets ; and so
in small ponds of fresh water. Farmers
find that they can raise most food by a
rotation of plants belonging to the most
different orders : nature follows what may
be called a simultaneous rotation. Most
of the animals and plants which live close
round any small piece of ground could live
on it (supposing it not to be in any way
peculiar in its nature), and may be said to
be striving to the utmost to live there ;
but it is seen that, where they come into
the closest competition with each other,
the advantages of diversification of struc
ture, with the accompanying differences of
habit and constitution, determine that the
inhabitants, which thus jostle each other
most closely, shall, as a general rule, belong
to what we call different genera and orders.
The same principle is seen in the natural
isation of plants through man’s agency in
foreign lands. It might have been expected
that the plants which have succeeded in
becoming naturalised in any land would
generally have been closely allied to the
indigenes ; for these are commonly looked
at as specially created and adapted for
their own country. It might, also, perhaps
have been expected that naturalised plants
would have belonged to a few groups more
especially adapted to certain stations in
their new homes. But the case is very
different; and Alph. de Candolle has well
remarked, in his great and admirable work,
that floras gain by naturalisation, propor
tionally with the number of the native
genera and species, far more in new genera
than in new species. To give a single
instance : in the last edition of Dr. Asa
Gray’s Manual of the Flora of the Northern
United States 260 naturalised plants are
enumerated, and these belong to 162 genera.
We thus see that these naturalised plants
are of a highly diversified nature. They
differ, moreover, to a large extent from the
indigenes, for out of the 162 genera no less
than 100 genera are not there indigenous,
and thus a large proportional addition is
made to the genera of these States.
By considering the nature of the plants
or animals which have struggled success
fully with the indigenes of any country,
and have there become naturalised, we
may gain some crude idea in what manner
some of the natives would have to be
modified in order to gain an advantage
over the other natives; and we may, at
least, safely infer that diversification of
structure, amounting to new generic differ
ences, would be profitable to them.
The advantage of diversification in the
inhabitants of the same region is, in fact,
the same as that of the physiological
division of labour in the organs of the
same individual body—a subject so well
elucidated by Milne Edwards. No physio
logist doubts that a stomach adapted to
digest vegetable matter alone, or flesh
alone, draws most nutriment from these
substances. So, in the general economy of
any land, the more widely and perfectly
the animals and plants are diversified for
different habits of life, so will a greater
number of individuals be capable of there
supporting themselves. A set of animals,
with their organisation but little diversified,
could hardly compete with a set more per
fectly diversified in structure. It may be
doubted,for instance, whether the Australian
�NATURAL SELECTION
marsupials, which are divided into groups
differing but little from each other, and
feebly representing, as Mr. Waterhouse
and others have remarked, our carnivorous,
ruminant, and rodent mammals, could suc
cessfully compete with these well-proiiounced orders. In the Australian mammals
we see the process of diversification in an
early and incomplete stage of development.
After the foregoing discussion, which
ought to have been much amplified, we
may, I think, assume that the modified
descendants of anyone species will succeed
by so much the better as they become
more diversified in structure, and are thus
enabled to encroach on places occupied by
other beings. Now let us see how this
principle of benefit being derived from
divergence of character, combined with
the principles of natural selection and of
extinction, will tend to act.
The accompanying diagram1 will aid us
in understanding this rather perplexing
subject. Let A to L represent the species
of a genus large in its own country ; these
species are supposed to resemble each
other in unequal degrees, as is so generally
the case in nature, and as is represented in
the diagram by the letters standing at
unequal distances. I have said a large
genus, because we have seen in the second
chapter that on an average more of the
species of large genera vary than of small
genera ; and the varying species of the
large genera present a greater number of
varieties. We have also seen that the
species, which are the commonest and
the most widely-diffused, vary more than
rare species with restricted ranges. Let
(A) be a common, widely-diffused, and
varying species, belonging to a genus large
in its own country. The little fan of
diverging dotted lines of unequal lengths
proceeding from (A) may represent its
varying offspring. The variations are sup
posed to be extremely slight, but of the
most diversified nature ; they are not
supposed all to appear simultaneously,
but often after long intervals of time ; nor
are they all supposed to endure for equal
periods. Only those variations which are
in some way profitable will be preserved or
naturally selected. And here the importance
of the principle of benefit being derived
from divergence of character comes in;
for this will generally lead to the most
different or divergent variations (repre
sented by the outei' dotted lines) being
1 See diagram at the commencement of volume.
53
preserved and accumulated by natural
selection. When a dotted line reaches
one of the horizontal lines, and is there
marked by a small numbered letter, a
sufficient amount of variation is supposed
to have been accumulated to have formed
a fairly well-marked variety, such as would
be thought worthy of record in a systematic
work.
The intervals between the horizontal
lines in the diagram may represent each a
thousand generations ; but it would have
been better if each had represented ten
thousand generations. After a thousand
generations, species (A) is supposed to have
produced two fairly well-marked varieties—
namely, a1 and zzz1. These two varieties
will generally continue to be exposed to the
same conditions which made their parents
variable, and the tendency to variability is
in itself hereditary; consequently they will
tend to vary, and generally to vary in nearly
the same manner as their parents varied.
Moreover, these two varieties, being only
slightly modified forms, will tend to inherit
those advantages which made their parent
(A) more numerous than most of the other
inhabitants of the same country ; they will
likewise partake of those more general
advantages which made the genus to which
the parent-species belonged a large genus
in its own country. And these circumstances
we know to be favourable to the production
of new varieties.
If, then, these two varieties be variable,
the most divergent of' their variations will
generally be preserved during the next
thousand generations. And after this inter
val variety a1 is supposed in the diagram
to have produced variety zz2, which will,
owing to the principle of divergence, differ
more from (A) than did variety a1. Variety
wz1 is supposed to have produced two varie
ties—namely, m2 and V, differing from each
other, and more considerably from their
common parent (A). We may continue the
process by similar steps for any length of
time; some of the varieties, after each
thousand generations, producing only a
single variety, but in a more and more
modified condition, some producing two or
three varieties, and some failing to produce
any. Thus the varieties or modified des
cendants, proceeding from the common
parent (A), will generally go on increasing in
number and diverging in character. In the
diagram the process is represented up to
the ten-thousandth generation, and under
a condensed and simplified form up to the
fourteen-thousandth generation.
�54
,
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
But I must here remark that I do not
suppose that the process ever goes on so
regularly as is represented in the diagram,
though in itself made somewhat irregular.
I am far from thinking that the most diver
gent varieties will invariably prevail and
multiply : a medium form may often long
endure, and may or may not produce more
than one modified descendant; for natural
selection will always act according to the
nature of the places which are either un
occupied or not perfectly occupied by other
beings ; and this will depend on infinitely
complex relations. But, as a general rule,
the more diversified in structure the descen
dants from any one species can be rendered,
the more places they will be enabled to seize
on, and the more their modified progeny
will be increased. In our diagram the line
of succession is broken at regular intervals
by small numbered letters marking the
successive forms which have become suffi
ciently distinct to be recorded as varieties.
But these breaks are imaginary, and might
have been inserted anywhere, after intervals
long enough to have allowed the accumula
tion of a considerable amount of divergent
variation.
As all the modified descendants from a
common and widely-diffused species, be
longing to a large genus, will tend to partake
of the same advantages which made their
parent successful in life, they will generally
go on multiplying in number as well as
diverging in character : this is represented
in the diagram by the several divergent
branches proceeding from (A). The modi
fied offspring from the later and more highly
improved branches in the lines of descent
will, it is probable, often take the place of,
and so destroy, the earlier and less improved
branches : this is represented in the diagram
by some of the lower branches not reaching
to the upper horizontal lines. In some cases
I do not doubt that the process of modifica
tion will be confined to a single line of
descent, and the number of the descendants
will not be increased ; although the amount
of divergent modification may have been
increased in the successive generations.
This case would be represented in the
diagram if all the lines proceeding from
(A) were removed, excepting that from aT
to <zra. In the same way, for instance, the
English race-horse and English pointer
have apparently both gone on slowly diverg
ing in character from their original stocks,
without either having given off any fresh
branches or races.
After ten thousand generations, species
(A) is supposed to have produced three
forms, a10,/10, and ot10, which, from having
diverged in charactei' during the successive
generations, will have come to differ largely,
but perhaps unequally, from each other
and from their common parent. If we
suppose the amount of change between
each horizontal line in our diagram to be
excessively small, these three forms may
still be only well-marked varieties; or they
may have arrived at the doubtful category
of sub-species ; but we have only to suppose
the steps, in the process of modification to
be more numerous or greater in amount, to
convert these three forms into well-defined
species : thus the diagram illustrates the
steps by which the small differences dis
tinguishing varieties are increased into the
larger differences distinguishing species.
By continuing the same process for a
greater number of generations (as shown in
the diagram in a condensed and simplified
manner) we get eight species, marked by
the letters between aP and z/z14, all des
cended from (A). Thus, as I believe,
species are multiplied and genera are
formed.
In a large genus it is probable that more
than one species would vary. In the dia
gram I have assumed that a second species
(I) has produced, by analogous steps, after
ten thousand generations, either two wellmarked varieties (w10 and 2'10) or two species,
according to the amount of change supposed
to be represented between the horizontal
lines. After fourteen thousand generations,
six new species, marked by the letters nP to
.s'14, are supposed to have been produced.
In each genus the species, which are
already extremely different in character,
will generally tend to produce the greatest
number of modified descendants; for these
will have the best chance of filling new
and widely different places in the polity of
nature : hence in the diagram I have chosen
the extreme species (A), and the nearly
extreme species (I), as those which have
largely varied, and have given rise to new
varieties and species. The other nine
species (marked by* capital letters) of our
original genus may for a long period con
tinue to transmit unaltered descendants ;
and this is shown in the diagram by the
dotted lines not prolonged far upwards
from want of space.
But during the process of modification,
represented in the diagram, another of our
principles, namely that of extinction, will
have played an important part. As in
each fully-stocked country natural selection
�NATURAL SELECTION
necessarily acts by the selected form having
some advantage in the struggle for life
over other forms, there will be a constant
tendency in the improved descendants of
any one species to supplant and exterminate
in each stage of descent their predecessors
and their original parent. For it should
be remembered that the competition will
generally be most severe between those
forms which are most nearly related to each
other in habits, constitution, and structure.
Hence all the intermediate forms between
the earlier and later states, that is between
the less and more improved state of a
species, as well as the original parent
species itself, will generally tend to become
extinct. So it probably will be with many
whole collateral lines of descent, which will
be conquered by later and improved lines
of descent. If, however, the modified off
spring of a species get into some distinct
country, or become quickly adapted to
some quite new station, in which child and
parent do not come into competition, both
may continue to exist.
If, then, our diagram be assumed to
represent a considerable amount of modifi
cation, species (A) and all the earlier
varieties will have become extinct, having
been replaced by eight new species (k?14 to
zzz14); and (I) will have been replaced by
six (w14 to .s’14) new species.
But we may go further than this. The
original species of our genus were supposed
to resemble each other in unequal degrees,
as is so generally the case in nature ; species
(A) being more nearly related to B, C, and
D than to the other species; and species
(I) more to G, H, K, L, than to the others.
These two species (A) and (I) were also
supposed to be very common and widely
diffused species, so that they must originally
have had some advantage over most of the
other species of the genus. Their modified
descendants, fourteen in number at the
fourteen-thousandth generation, will pro
bably have inherited some of the same
advantages : they have also been modified
and improved in a diversified manner at
each stage of descent so as to have become
adapted to many related places in the
natural economy of their country. It seems,
therefore, to me extremely probable that
they will have taken the places of, and thus
exterminated, not only their parents (A)
and (I), but likewise some of the original
species which were most nearly related to
their parents. Hence very few of the
original species will have transmitted
offspring to the fourteen-thousandth genera
55
tion. We may suppose that only one (F)
of the two species which were least closely
related to the other nine original species
has transmitted descendants to this late
stage of descent.
The new species in our diagram des
cended from the original eleven species
will now be fifteen in number. Owing to
the divergent tendency of natural selection,
the extreme amount of difference in charac
ter between species zz14 and 2-14 will be much
greater than that between the most different
of the original eleven species. The new
species, moreover, will be allied to each
other in a widely different manner. Of the
eight descendants from (A) the three
marked zz14, y14, /I4, will be nearly related
from having recently branched off from
a10; Z>14 and/'4, from having diverged at an
earlier period from a5, will be in some
degree distinct from the three first-named
species ; and, lastly, c>14, F4, and m14 will be
nearly related one to the other, but, from
having diverged at the first commencement
of the process of modification, will be widely
different from the other five species, and
may constitute a sub-genus, or even a
distinct genus.
The six descendants from (I) will form
two sub-genera, or even genera. But as
the original species (I) differed largely from
(A), standing nearly at the extreme points
of the original genus, the six descendants
from (I) will, owing to inheritance alone,
differ considerably from the eight descen
dants from (A) ; the two groups, moreover,
are supposed to have gone on diverging
in different directions. The intermediate
species, also (and this is a very important
consideration), which connected the original
species (A) and (I), have all become, except
ing (F), extinct, and have left no descendants.
Hence the six new species descended from
(I), and the eight descended from (A), will
have to be ranked as very distinct genera,
or even as distinct sub-families.
Thus it is, as I believe, that two or more
genera are produced by descent with
modification, from two or more species of
the same genus. And the two or more
parent-species are supposed to have des
cended from some one species of an earlier
genus. In our diagram this is indicated
by the broken lines beneath the capital
letters converging in sub-branches down
wards towards a single point ; this point
representing a single species, the supposed
single parent of our several new sub-genera
and genera.
It is worth while to reflect for a moment
�56
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
on the character of the new species F14,
which is supposed not to have diverged
much in character, but to have retained
the form of (F) either unaltered or altered
only in a slight degree. In this case, its
affinities to the other fourteen new species
will be of a curious and circuitous nature.
Having descended from a form which
stood between the two parent-species (A)
and (I), now supposed to be extinct and
unknown, it will be in some degree inter
mediate in character between the two
groups descended from these species. But
as these two groups have gone on diverging
in character from the type of their parents,
the new species (f14) will not be directly
intermediate between them, but rather
between types of the two groups ; and
every naturalist will be able to bring some
such case before his mind.
In the diagram each horizontal line has
hitherto been supposed to represent a
thousand generations, but each may repre
sent a million or hundred million genera
tions, and likewise a section of the succes
sive strata of the earth’s crust, including
extinct remains. We shall, when we come
to our chapter on Geology, have to refer
again to this subject, and I think we shall
then see that the diagram throws light on
the affinities of extinct beings, which,
though generally belonging to the same
orders, or families, or genera, with those
now living, yet are often, in some degree,
intermediate in character between existing
groups ; and we can understand this fact,
for the extinct species lived at very ancient
epochs when the branching lines of descent
had diverged less.
I see no reason to limit the process of
modification, as now explained, to the
formation of genera alone. If, in our
diagram, we suppose the amount of change
represented by each successive group of
diverging dotted lines to be very great, the
forms marked a14 to/I4, those marked <J14 and
/I4, and those marked <914 to z«14, will form
three very distinct genera. We shall also
have two very distinct genera descended
from (I); and as these latter two genera,
both from continued divergence of character
and from inheritance from a different parent,
will differ widely from the three genera
descended from (A), the two little groups
of genera will form two distinct families,
or even orders, according to the amount
of divergent modification supposed to be
represented in the diagram. And the two
new families, or orders, will have descended
from two species of the original genus ;
and these two species are supposed to have
descended from one species of a still more
ancient and unknown genus.
We have seen that in each country it is the
species of the larger genera which oftenest
present varieties or incipient species. This,
indeed, might have been expected ; for,
as natural selection acts through one
form having some advantage over other
forms in the struggle for existence, it
will chiefly act on those which already
have some advantage ; and the largeness
of any group shows that its species have
inherited from a common ancestor some
advantage in common. Hence, the struggle
for the production of new and modified
descendants will mainly lie between the
larger groups, which are all trying to
increase in number. One large group will
slowly conquer another large group, reduce
its numbers, and thus lessen its chance of
further variation and improvement. Within
the same large group the later and more
highly perfected sub-groups, from branching
out and seizing on many new places in the
polity of nature, will constantly tend to
supplant and destroy the earlier and less
improved sub-groups. Small and broken
groups and sub-groups will finally disappear.
Lool^jng to the future, we can predict that
the groups of organic beings which are
now large and triumphant, and which are
least broken up—that is, which as yet have
suffered least extinction—will for a long
period continue to increase. But which
groups will ultimately prevail no man can
predict; for we well know that many groups,
formerly most extensively developed, have
now become extinct. Looking still more
remotely to the future, we may predict that,
owing to the continued and steady increase
of the larger groups, a multitude of smaller
groups will become utterly extinct, and
leave no modified descendants ; and, con
sequently, that of the species living at one
period, extremely few will transmit descen
dants to a remote futurity. I shall have to
return to this subject in the chapter on
Classification, but I may add that on this
view of extremely few of the more ancient
species having transmitted descendants,
and on the view of all the descendants of
the same species making a class, we can
understand how it is that there exist but
very few classes in each main division
of the animal and vegetable kingdoms.
Although extremely few of the most ancient
species may now have living and modified
descendants, yet at the most remote geo
logical period the earth may have been as
�NATURAL SELECTION
well peopled with many species of many
genera, families, orders, and classes as at
the present day.
Summary of Chapter.— If, during the long
course of ages and under varying condi
tions of life, organic beings vary at all in
the several parts of their organisation, and
I think this cannot be disputed ; if there
be, owing to the high geometrical ratio of
increase of each species, a severe struggle
for life at some age, season, or year, and
this certainly cannot be disputed; then,
considering the infinite complexity of the
relations of all organic beings to each other
and to their conditions of existence, causing
an infinite diversity in structure, constitu
tion, and habits, to be advantageous to
them, I think it would be a most extra
ordinary fact if no variation ever had
occurred useful to each being’s own welfare,
in the same manner as so many variations
have occurred useful to man. But if varia
tions useful to any organic being do occur,
assuredly individuals thus characterised will
have the best chance of being preserved in
the struggle for life; and from the strong
principle of inheritance they will tend to
produce offspring similarly characterised.
This principle of preservation I have called,
for the sake of brevity, Natural Selection ;
and it leads to the improvement of each
creature in relation to its organic and in
organic conditions of life.
Natural selection, on the principle of
qualities being inherited at corresponding
ages, can modify the egg, seed, or young,
as easily as the adult. Among many animals
sexual selection will give its aid to ordinary
selection, by assuring to the most vigorous
and best adapted males the greatest number
of offspring. Sexual selection will also give
characters useful to the males alone in their
struggles with other males.
Whether natural selection has really thus
acted in nature, in modifying and adapting
the various forms of life to their several
conditions and stations, must be judged of
by the general tenor and balance of
evidence given in the following chapters.
But we already see how it entails extinction ;
and how largely extinction has acted in the
world’s history geology plainly declares.
Natural selection also leads to divergence
of character ; for more living beings can
be supported on the same area the more
they diverge in structure, habits, and con
stitution, of which we see proof by looking
to the inhabitants of any small spot or to
naturalised productions. Therefore, during
57
the modification of the descendants of any
one species, and during the incessant
struggle of all species to increase in num
bers, the more diversified these descendants
become, the better will be their chance of
succeeding in the battle for life. Thus the
small differences distinguishing varieties of
the same species steadily tend to increase
till they come to equal the greater differ
ences between species of the same genus,
or even of distinct genera.
We have seen that it is the common, the
widely-diffused, and widely-ranging species
belonging to the larger genera which
vary most ; and these tend to transmit to
their modified offspring that superiority
which now makes them dominant in their
own countries. Natural selection, as has
just been remarked, leads to divergence of
character and to much extinction of the
less improved and intermediate forms of
life. On these principles, I believe, the
nature of the affinities of all organic beings
may be explained. It is a truly, wonderful
fact—the wonder of which we are apt to
overlook from familiarity—that all animals
and all plants throughout all time and space
should be related to each other in group
subordinate to group in the manner which
we everywhere behold—namely, varieties
of the same species most closely related
together, species of the same genus less
closely and unequally related together,
forming sections and sub-genera, species of
distinct genera much less closely related,
and genera related in different degrees,
forming sub-families, families, orders, sub
classes, and classes. The several subor
dinate groups in any class cannot be ranked
in a single file, but seem rather to be
clustered round points, and these round
other points, and so on in almost endless
cycles. On the view that each species has
been independently created, I can see no
explanation of this great fact in the classi
fication of all organic beings ; but, to the
best of my judgment, it is explained through
inheritance and the complex action of
natural selection, entailing extinction and
divergence of character, as we have seen
illustrated in the diagram.
The affinities of all the beings of the
same class have sometimes been repre
sented by a great tree. I believe this simile
largely speaks the truth. The green and
budding twigs may represent existing
species ; and those produced during each
former year may represent the long succes
sion of extinct species. At each period of
growth all the growing twigs have tried to
�58
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
branch out on all sides, and to overtop and
kill the surrounding twigs and branches,
in the same manner as species and groups
of species have tried to overmaster other
species in the great battle for life. The
limbs divided into great branches, and
these into lesser and lesser branches, were
themselves once, when the tree was small,
budding twigs ; and this connection of the
former and present buds by ramifying
branches may well represent the classifica
tion of all extinct and living species in
groups subordinate to groups. Of the
many twigs which flourished when the tree
was a mere bush only two: or three, now
grown into great branches, yet survive and
bear all the other branches ; so with the
species which lived during long-past geolo
gical periods, very few now have living and
modified descendants. From the first
growth of the tree, many a limb and branch
has decayed and dropped off; and these
lost branches of various sizes may repre
sent those whole orders, families, and
genera which have now no living represen
tatives, and which are known to us only
from having been found in a fossil state.
As we here and there see a thin straggling
branch springing from a fork low down in
a tree, and which by some chance has been
favoured and is still alive on its summit, so
we occasionally see an animal like the
Ornithorhynchus or Lepidosiren, which in
some small degree connects by its affinities
two large branches of life, and which has
apparently been saved from fatal competi
tion by having inhabited a protected
station. As buds give rise by growth to
fresh buds, and these, if vigorous, branch
out and overtop on all sides many a feebler
branch, so by generation I believe it has
been with the great Tree of Life, which
fills with its dead and broken branches the
crust of the earth, and covers the surface
with its ever branching and beautiful rami
fications.
Chapter V.
LAWS OF VARIATION
Effects of external conditions—Use and disuse,
combined with natural selection ; organs of
flight and of vision—Acclimatisation—Correla
tion of growth—Compensation and economy
of growth—False correlations—Multiple, rudi
mentary, and lowly organised structure variable
—Parts developed in an unusual manner are
highly variable : specific characters more
variable than generic: secondary sexual cha
racters variable—Species of the same genus
vary in an analogous manner—Reversions to
long-lost characters—Summary.
I have hitherto sometimes spoken as if
the variations—-so common and multiform
in organic beings under domestication, and
in a lesser degree in those in a state of
nature—had been due to chance. This, of
course, is a wholly incorrect expression,
but it serves to acknowledge plainly our
ignorance of the cause of each particular
variation. Some authors believe it to be
as much the function of the reproductive
system to produce individual differences,
or very slight deviations of structure, as to
make the child like its parents. But the
much greater variability, as well as the
greater frequency of monstrosities under
domestication or cultivation than under
nature, leads me to believe that deviations
of structure are in some way due to the
nature of the conditions of life to which the
parents and their more remote ancestors
have been exposed during several genera
tions. I have remarked in the first chapter
—but a long catalogue of facts which
cannot be here given would be necessary
to show the truth of the remark—that the
reproductive system is eminently susceptible
to changes in the conditions of life; and
to this system being functionally disturbed
in the parents I chiefly attribute the varying
or plastic condition of the offspring. The
male and female sexual elements seem to
be affected before that union takes place
which is to form a new being. In the case
of “ sporting ” plants, the bud, which in its
earliest condition does not apparently differ
essentially from an ovule, is alone affected.
�LAWS OF VARIATION
But why, because the reproductive system
is disturbed, this or that part should vary
more or less we are profoundly ignorant.
Nevertheless, we can here and there dimly
catch a faint ray of light, and we may feel
sure that there must be some cause for
each deviation of structure, however slight.
How much direct effect difference of
climate, food, etc., produces on any being
is extremely doubtful. My impression is
that the effect is extremely small in the
case of animals, but perhaps rather more
in that of plants. We may, at least, safely
conclude that such influences cannot have
produced the many striking and complex
co-adaptations of structure between one
organic being and another which we see
everywhere throughout nature. Some little
influence may be attributed to climate, food,
etc. : thus, E. Forbes speaks confidently
that shells,at their southern limit, and when
living in shallow water, are more brightly
coloured than those of the same species
further north or from greater depths. Gould
believes that birds of the same species are
more brightly coloured under a clear atmos
phere than when living on islands or near
the coast. So with insects, Wollaston is
convinced that residence near the sea
affects their colours. Moquin-Tandon gives
a list of plants, which, when growing near
the sea-shore, have their leaves in some
degree fleshy, though not elsewhere fleshy.
Several other such cases could be given.
The fact of varieties of one species, when
they range into the zone of habitation of
other species, often acquiring in a very
slight degree some of the characters of
such species, accords with our view that
species of all kinds are only well-marked
and permanent varieties. Thus the species
of shells which are confined to tropical
and shallow seas are generally brightercoloured than those confined to cold and
deeper seas. The birds which are confined
to continents are, according to Mr. Gould,
brighter-coloured than those of islands.
The insect-species confined to sea-coasts,
as every collector knows, are often brassy
or lurid. Plants which live exclusively on
the sea-side are very apt to have fleshy
leaves. He who believes in the creation of
each species will have to say that this
shell, for instance, was created with bright
colours for a warm sea ; but that this other
shell became bright-coloured by variation
when it ranged into warmer or shallower
waters.
When a variation is of the slightest use.
to a being, we cannot tell how much of it
59
to attribute to the accumulative action of
natural selection, and how much to the
conditions of life. Thus, it is well known
to furriers that animals of the same species
have thicker and better fur the more
severe the climate is under which they have
lived ; but who can tell how much of this
difference may be due to the warmest-clad
individuals having been favoured and
preserved during many generations, and
how much to the direct action of the
severe climate ? for it would appear that
climate has some direct action on the
hair of our domestic quadrupeds.
Instances could be given of the same
variety being produced under conditions of
life as different as can well be conceived ;
and, on the other hand, of different varieties
being produced from the same species
under the- same conditions. Such facts
show how indirectly the conditions of life
act.
Again, innumerable instances are
known to every naturalist of species
keeping true, or not varying at all, although
living under the most opposite climates.
Such considerations as these incline me to
lay very little weight on the direct action
of the conditions of life. Indirectly, as
already remarked, they seem to play an
important part in affecting the reproductive
system, and in thus inducing variability ;
and natural selection will then accumulate
all profitable variations, however slight,
until they become plainly developed and
appreciable by us.
Effects of Use and Disuse.—From the
facts alluded to in the first chapter, I think
there can be little doubt that use in our
domestic animals strengthens and enlarges
certain parts, and disuse diminishes them ;
and that such modifications are inherited.
Under free nature we can have no
standard of comparison by which to judge
of the effects of long-continued use or
disuse, for we know not the parent forms ;
but many animals have structures which
can be explained by the effects of disuse.
As Professor Owen has remarked, there is
no greater anomaly in nature than, a bird
that cannot fly; yet there are several in
this state. The logger-headed duck of
South America can only flap along the
surface of the water, and has its wings in
nearly the same condition as the domestic
Aylesbury duck. As the larger ground
feeding birds seldom take flight except to
escape danger, I believe that the nearly
wingless condition of several birds which
now inhabit . or have lately inhabited
�6o
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
several oceanic islands, tenanted by no
beast of prey, has been caused by disuse.
The ostrich, indeed, inhabits continents
and is exposed to danger from which it
cannot escape by flight, but by kicking it
can defend itself from enemies, as well as
any of the smaller quadrupeds. We may
imagine that the early progenitor of the
ostrich had habits like those of a bustard,
and that, as natural selection increased in
successive generations the size and weight
of its body, its legs were used more and its
wings less, until they became incapable of
flight.
Kirby has remarked (and I have observed
the same fact) that the anterior tarsi, or
feet, of many male dung-feeding beetles
are very often broken off; he examined
seventeen specimens in his own collection,
and not one had even a relic left. In the
Onites apelies the tarsi are so habitually
lost that the insect has been described as
not having them. In some other genera
they are present, but in a rudimentary con
dition. In the Ateuchus or sacred beetle
of the Egyptians they are totally deficient.
There is not sufficient evidence to induce
me to believe that mutilations are ever in
herited ; and I should prefer explaining the
entire absence of the anterior tarsi in
Ateuchus, and their rudimentary condition
in some other genera, by the long-continued
effects of disuse in their progenitors ; for,
as the tarsi are almost always lost in many
dung-feeding beetles, they must be lost
early in life, and therefore cannot be much
used by these insects.
In some cases we might easily put down
to disuse modifications of structure which
are wholly, or mainly, due to natural selec
tion. Mr. Wollaston has discovered the
remarkable fact that 200 beetles out of the
550 species inhabiting Madeira are so far
deficient in wings that they cannot fly; and
that of the twenty-nine endemic genera
no less than.twenty-three genera have all
their species in this condition ! Several
facts—namely, that beetles in many parts of
the world are frequently blown to sea and
perish ; that the beetles in Madeira, as
observed by Mr. Wollaston, lie much con
cealed, until the wind lulls and the sun
shines; that the proportion of wingless
beetles is larger on the exposed Desertas
than in Madeira itself; and especially the
extraordinary fact, so strongly insisted on
by Mr. Wollaston, of the almost entire
absence of certain large groups of beetles,
elsewhere excessively numerous, and which
groups have habits of life almost necessi
tating frequent flight : these several con
siderations have made me believe that the
wingless condition of so many Madeira
beetles is mainly due to the action of
natural selection, but combined probably
with disuse. For during thousands of suc
cessive generations each individual beetle
which flew least, either from its wings
having been ever so little less perfectly
developed or from indolent habit, will have
had the best chance of surviving from not
being blown out to sea ; and, on the other
hand, those beetles which most readily took
to flight would oftenest have been blown
to sea, and thus have been destroyed.
The insects in Madeira which are not
ground-feeders, and which, as the flower
feeding coleoptera and lepidoptera, must ■
habitually use their wings to gain their sub
sistence, have, as Mr. Wollaston suspects,
their wings not at all reduc d, but even
enlarged. This is quite compatible with
the action of natural selection. For, when
a new insect first arrived on the island, the
tendency of natural selection to enlarge or
to reduce the wings would depend on
whether a greater number of individuals
were saved by successfully battling with the
winds, or by giving up the attempt and
rarely or never flying. As with mariners
shipwrecked near a coast, it would have
been better for the good swimmers if they
had been able to swim still further, whereas
it would have been better for the bad
swimmers if they had not been able to
swim at all, and had stuck to the wreck.
The eyes of moles and of some burrow
ing rodents are rudimentary in size, and in
some cases are quite covered up by skin
and fur. This state of the eyes is probably
due to gradual reduction from disuse, but
aided perhaps by natural selection. In
South America a burrowing rodent, the
tuco-tuco, or Ctenomys, is even more sub
terranean in its habits than the mole ; and
I was assured by a Spaniard who had often
caught them that they were frequently
blind ; one which I kept alive was certainly
in this condition, the cause, as appeared on
dissection, having been inflammation of
the nictitating membrane. As frequent in
flammation of the eyes must be injurious
to any animal, and as eyes are certainly not
indispensable to animals with subterranean
habits, a reduction in their size, with the
adhesion of the eye-lids and growth of fur
over them, might in such case be an advan*
tage; and, if so, natural selection would con
stantly aid the effects of disuse.
It is well known that several animals,
�LAWS OF VARIATION
belonging to the most different classes,
which inhabit the caves of Styria and of
Kentucky are blind. In some of the crabs
the foot-stalk for the eye remains, though
the eye is gone ; the stand for the telescope
is there, though the telescope with its
glasses has been lost. As it is difficult to
imagine that eyes, though useless, could be
in any way injurious to animals living in
darkness, I attribute their loss wholly to
disuse. In one of the blind animals—
namely, the cave-rat—the eyes are of
immense size ; and Professor Silliman
thought that it regained, after living some
days in the light, some slight power of
vision. In the same manner as in Madeira
the wings of some of the insects have been
enlarged, and the wings of others have
been reduced by natural selection aided by
use and disuse, so in the case of the cave
rat natural selection seems to have
struggled with the loss of light and to have
increased the size of the eyes ; whereas with
all the other inhabitants of the caves
disuse by itself seems to have done its
work.
It is difficult to imagine conditions of
life more similar than deep limestone
caverns under a nearly similar climate ;
so that, on the common view of the blind
animals having been separately created for
the American and European caverns, close
similarity in their organisation and affini
ties might have been expected ; but, as
Schiodte and others have remarked, this is
not the case, and the cave-insects of the
two continents are not more closely allied
than might have been anticipated from the
general resemblance of the other inhabi
tants of North America and Europe. On
my view, we must suppose that American
animals, having ordinary powers of vision,
slowly migrated by successive generations
from the outer world into the deeper and
deeper recesses of the Kentucky caves, as
did European animals into the caves of
Europe. We have some evidence of this
gradation of habit; for, as Schiodte remarks,
“animals not far remote from ordinary
forms prepare the transition from light to
darkness. Next follow those that are con
structed for twilight ; and, last of all, those
destined for total darkness.” By the time
that an animal had reached, after number
less generations, the deepest recesses,
disuse will on this view have more or less
perfectly obliterated its eyes, and natural
selection will often have effected other
changes, such as an increase in the length
of the antennae or palpi, as a compensa
61
tion for blindness. Notwithstanding such
modifications, we might expect still to see
in the cave-animals of America affinities to
the other inhabitants of that continent, and
in those of Europe to the inhabitants of
the European continent. And this is the
case with some of the American cave
animals, as I hear from Professor Dana ;
and some of the European cave-insects are
very closely allied to those of the surround
ing country. It would be most difficult to
give any rational explanation of the
affinities of the blind cave-animals to the
other inhabitants of the two continents on
the ordinary view of their independent
creation. That several of the inhabitants
of the caves of the Old and the New
Worlds should be closely related we
might expect from the well-known relation
ship of most of their other productions.
Far from feeling any surprise that some of
the cave-animals should be very anomalous,
as Agassiz has remarked in regard to the
blind fish, the Amblyopsis, and as is the
case with the blind Proteus with reference
to the reptiles of Europe, I am only
surprised that more wrecks of ancient life
have not been preserved, owing to the less
severe competition to which the inhabitants
of these dark abodes will probably have
been exposed.
Acclimatisation.—Habit is hereditary
with plants, as in the period of flowering,
in the amount of rain requisite for seeds to
germinate, in the time of sleep, etc.; and
this leads me to say a few words on
acclimatisation. As it is extremely common
for species of the same genus to inhabit
very hot and very cold countries, and as I
believe that all the species of the same
genus have descended from a single .
parent, if this view be correct, acclimati
sation must be readily effected during longcontinued descent. It is notorious that
each species is adapted to the climate of
its own home : species from an arctic, or
even from a temperate, region cannot
endure a tropical climate, or conversely.
So, again, many succulent plants cannot
endure a damp climate. But the degree
of adaptation of species to the climates
under which they live is often overrated.
We may infer this from our frequent in
ability to predict whether or not an im
ported plant will endure our climate, and
from the number of plants and animals
brought from warmer countries which here
enjoy good health. We have reason to
believe that species in a state of nature are
�62
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
limited in their ranges by the competition
of other organic beings quite as much as,
or more than, by adaptation to particular
climates. But whether or not the adapta
tion be generally very close, we have
evidence, in the case of some few plants,
of their becoming, to a certain extent,
naturally habituated to different tempera
tures, or becoming acclimatised : thus the
pines and rhododendrons, raised from seed
collected by Dr. Hooker from trees growing
at different heights on the Himalaya, were
found in this country to possess different
constitutional powers of resisting cold.
Mr. Thwaites informs me that he has
observed similar facts in Ceylon, and analo
gous observations have been made by
Mr. H. C. Watson on European species of
plants brought from the Azores to England.
In regard to animals, several authentic
cases could be given of species within
historical times having largely extended
their range from warmer to cooler latitudes,
and conversely ; but we do not positively
know that these animals were strictly
adapted to their native climate, but in all
ordinary cases we assume such to be the
case; nor do we know that they have
subsequently become acclimatised to their
new homes.
As I believe that our domestic animals
were originally chosen by uncivilised men
because they were useful and bred readily
under confinement, and not because they
were subsequently found capable of farextended transportation, I think the com
mon and extraordinary capacity in our
domestic animals of not only withstanding
the most different climates, but of being
perfectly fertile (a far severer test) under
them, may be used as an argument that a
large proportion of other animals, now in a
state of nature, could easily be brought to
bear widely different climates. We must
not, however, push the foregoing argument
too far, on account of the probable origin of
some of our domestic animals from several
wild stocks: the blood, for instance, of a
tropical and arctic wolf or wild dog may
perhaps be mingled in our domestic breeds.
The rat and mouse cannot be considered
as domestic animals, but they have been
transported by man to many parts of the
world, and now have a far wider range
than any other rodent, living free under
the cold climate of Faroe in the north and
of the Falklands in the south, and on many
islands in the torrid zones. Hence I am in
clined to look at adaptation to any special
climate as a quality readily grafted on an
innate wide flexibility of constitution, which
is common to most animals. On this view,
the capacity of enduring the most different
climates by man himself and by his domes
tic animals, and such facts as that former
species of the elephant and rhinoceros
were capable of enduring a glacial climate,
whereas the living species are now all
tropical or sub-tropical in * their habits,
ought not to be looked at as anomalies,
but merely as examples of a very common
flexibility of constitution, brought, under
peculiar circumstances, into play.
How much of the acclimatisation of
species to any peculiar climate is due to
mere habit, and how much to the natural
selection of varieties having different in
nate constitutions, and how much to both
means combined, is a very obscure ques
tion. That habit or custom has some
influence I must believe, both from analogy,
and from the incessant advice giyen in
agricultural works, even in the ancient En
cyclopaedias of China, to be very cautious in
transposing animals from one district to
another; for it is* not likely that man
should have succeeded in selecting so
many breeds and sub-breeds with consti-'
I tutions specially fitted for their own
j districts : the result must, I think, be due
i to habit. On the other hand, I can see no
reason to doubt that natural selection will
continually tend to preserve those indi
viduals which are born with constituI, tions best adapted to their native countries.
In treatises on many kinds of cultivated
plants, certain varieties are said to with
stand certain climates better than others :
this is very strikingly shown in works on
.fruit trees published in the United States,
in which certain varieties are habitually
recommended for the northern and others
for the southern States ; and, as most of
these varieties are of recent origin, they
cannot owe their constitutional differences
to habit. The case of the Jerusalem
artichoke, which is never propagated by
seed, and of which consequently new
varieties have not been produced, has even
been advanced—for it is now as tender as
ever it was—as proving that acclimatisa
tion cannot be effected ! The case, also of
the kidney-bean has been often cited for a
similar purpose, and with much greater
weight; but until some one will sow,
during a score of generations, his kidney
beans so early that a very large proportion
are destroyed by frost, and then collect
seed from the few survivors, with care to
prevent accidental crosses, and then again
�LAWS OF VARIATION
get seed from these seedlings, with the
same precautions, the experiment cannot
be said to have been even tried. Nor let
it be supposed that no differences in the
constitution of seedling kidney-beans ever
appear, for an account has been published
how much more hardy some seedlings
appeared to be than others.
On the whole, I think we may conclude
that habit, use, and disuse have, in some
cases, played a considerable part in the
modification of the constitution, and of the
structure of various organs ; but that the
effects of use and disuse have often been
largely combined with, and sometimes
overmastered by, the natural selection of
innate variations.
Correlation of Growth.—I mean by this
expression that the whole organisation is
so tied together during its growth and
development that when slight variations
in any one part occur, and are accumulated
through natural selection, other parts
become modified. This is a very impor
tant subject, most imperfectly understood.
The most obvious case is that modifications
accumulated solely for the good of the
young or larva will, it may safely be con
cluded, affect the structure of the adult;
in the same manner as any malconformation affecting the early embryo seriously
affects the whole organisation of the adult.
The several parts of the body which are
homologous, and which, at an early
embryonic period, are alike, seem liable to
vary in an allied manner : we see this in
the right and left sides of the body
varying in the same manner; in the front
and hind legs, and even in the jaws and
limbs, varying together, for the lower jaw
is believed to be homologous with the
limbs. These tendencies, I do not doubt,
may be mastered more or less completely
by natural selection : thus a family of stags
once existed with an antler only on one
side ; and if this had been of any great use
to the breed, it might probably have been
rendered permanent by natural selection.
Homologous parts, as has been remarked
by some authors, tend to cohere ; this is
often seen in monstrous plants; and
nothing is more common than the union of
homologous parts in normal structures, as
the union of the petals of the corolla into
a tube. Hard parts seem to affect the
form of adjoining soft parts ; it is believed
by some authors that the diversity in the
shape of the pelvis in birds causes the
remarkable diversity in the shape of their
kidneys. Others believe that the shape of
the pelvis in the human mother influences
by pressure the shape of the head of the
child. In snakes, according to Schlegel,
the shape of the body and the manner of
swallowing determine the position of
several of the most important viscera.
The nature of the bond of correlation is
very frequently quite obscure. M. Is.
Geoffroy St. Hilaire has forcibly remarked
that certain malconformations very fre
quently, and that others rarely, coexist,
without our being able to assign any
reason. What can be more singular than
the relation between blue eyes and deafness
in cats, and the tortoise-shell colour with
the female sex ; the feathered feet and
skin between the outer toes in pigeons, and
the presence of more or less down on the
young birds when first hatched, with the
future colour of their plumage ; or, again,
the relation between the hair and teeth in
the naked Turkish dog, though here pro
bably homology comes into play ? With
respect to this latter case of correlation, I
think it can hardly be accidental, that if we
pick out the two orders of mammalia which
are most abnormal in their dermal covering,
viz. Cetacea (whales) apd Edentata (armadilloes, scaly ant-eaters, etc.), that these are
likewise the most abnormal in their teeth.
I know of no case better adapted to show
the importance of the laws of correlation
in modifying important structures, inde
pendently of utility and, therefore, of natural
selection, than that of the difference be* tween the outer and inner flowers in some
Compositous and Umbelliferous plants.
Every one knows the difference in the ray
and central florets of, for instance, the
daisy; and this difference is often accom
panied with the abortion of parts of the
flower. But in some Compositous plants
the seeds also differ in shape and sculpture;
and even the ovary itself, with its accessory
parts, differs, as has been described by
Cassini. These differences have been at
tributed by some authors to pressure, and
the shape of the seeds in the ray-florets in
some Compositae countenances this idea;
but in the case of the corolla of the Umbelliferse it is by no means, as Dr. Hooker
informs me, in species with the densest
heads that the inner and outer flowers most
frequently differ.
It might have been
thought that the development of the ray
petals by drawing nourishment from certain
other parts of the flower had caused their
abortion ; but in some Compositae there is
I a difference in the seeds of the outer and
�64
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
inner florets without any difference in the
corolla. Possibly, these several differences
may be connected with some difference in
the flow of nutriment towards the central
and external flowers ; we know, at least,
that in irregular flowers those nearest to
the axis are oftenest subject to peloria, and
become regular. I may add, as an instance
of this and of a striking case of correlation,
that I have recently observed in some
garden pelargoniums that the central
flower of the truss often loses the patches
of darker colour in the two upper petals ;
and that when this occurs the adherent
nectary is quite aborted ; when the colour
is absent from only one of the two upper
petals, the nectary is only much shortened.With respect to the difference in the
corolla of the central and exterior flowers of
a head or umbel, I do not feel at all sure
that C. C. Sprengel’s idea, that the ray
florets serve to attract insects whose agency
is highly advantageous in the fertilisation
of plants of these two orders, is so far
fetched as it may at first appear ; and if it
be advantageous, natural selection might
have come into play. But in regard to the
differences both in the internal and external
structure of the seeds which are not always
correlated with any differences in the flowers,
it seems impossible that they can be in any
way advantageous to, the plant ; yet in the
Umbellifeme these differences are of such
apparent importance—the seeds being in
some cases, according to Tausch, orthospermous in the exterior flowers and ccelospermous in the central flowers—that the
elder De Candolle founded his main divi
sions of the order on analogous differences.
Hence we see that modifications of struc
ture, viewed by systematists as of high
value, may be wholly due to unknown laws
of correlated growth, and without being, as
far as we can see, of the slightest service
to the species.
We may often falsely attribute to cor
relation of growth structures which are
common to whole groups of species, and
which in truth are simplydue to inheritance ;
for an ancient progenitor may have ac
quired through natural selection some
one modification in structure, and, after
thousands of generations, some other and
independent modification ; and these two
modifications, having been transmitted to a
whole group of descendants with diverse
habits, would naturally be thought to be
correlated in some necessary manner. So,
again, I do not doubt that some apparent
correlations, occurring throughout whole
orders, are entirely due to the manner
alone in which natural selection can act.
For instance, Alph. De Candolle has
remarked that winged seeds are never
found in fruits which do not open : I shall
explain the rule by the fact that seeds
could not gradually become winged
through natural selection, except in fruits
which opened ; so that the individual
plants producing seeds which were a
little better fitted to be wafted further
might get an advantage over those
producing seed less fitted for dispersal ;
and this process could not possibly go on
in fruit which did not open.
The elder Geoffroy and Goethe pro
pounded, at about the same period, their
law of compensation or balancement of
growth ; or, as Goethe expressed it, “ in
order to spend on one side, nature is
forced to economise on the other side.” I
think this holds true to a certain extent
with our domestic productions : if nourish
mentflows to one part or organ in excess, it
rarely flows, at least in excess, to another
part ; thus it is difficult to get a cow to
give much milk and to fatten readily. The
same varieties of the cabbage do not yield
abundant and nutritious foliage and a
copious supply of oil-bearing seeds. When
the seeds in our fruits become atrophied,
the fruit itself gains largely in size and
quality. In our poultry a large tuft of
feathers on the head is generally accom
panied by a diminished comb, and a large
beard by diminished wattles. With species
in a state of nature it can hardly be
maintained that the law is of universal
application ; but many good observers,
more especially botanists, believe in its
truth. I will not, however, here give any
instances, for I see hardly any way of
distinguishing between the effects, on the
one hand, of a part being largely developed
through aatural selection and another and
adjoining part being reduced by this same
process or by disuse, and, on the other
hand, the actual withdrawal of nutriment
from one part owing to the excess of growth
in another and adjoining part.
I suspect, also, that some of the cases of
compensation which have been advanced,
and likewise some other facts, may be
merged under a more general principle—
namely, that natural selection is continu
ally trying to economise in every part of
the organisation. If under changed condi
tions of life a structure before useful
becomes less useful, any diminution, how
ever slight, in its development, will be
�LA WS OF VARIA TION
seized on by natural selection, for it will
profit the individual not to have its nutri
ment wasted in building up a useless
structure. I can thus only understand a
fact with which I was much struck when
examining cirripedes, and of which many
other instances could be given—namely,
that when a cirripede is parasitic within
another, and is thus protected, it loses more
or less completely its own shell or carapace.
This is the case with the male Ibla, and in
a truly extraordinary manner with the
Proteolepas ; for the carapace in all other
cirripedes consists of the three highlyimportant anterior segments of the head
enormously developed and furnished with
great nerves and muscles ; but in the
parasitic and
protected
Proteolepas
the whole anterior part of the head is
reduced to the merest rudiment attached
to the basis of the prehensile antennae.
Now, the saving of a large and complex
structure, when rendered superfluous by
the parasitic habits of the Proteolepas,
though effected by slow steps, would be a
decided advantage to each successive
individual of the species; for in the
struggle for life to which every animal is
exposed each individual Proteolepas would
have a better chance of supporting itself,
by less nutriment being wasted in develop
ing a structure now become useless.
Thus, as I believe, natural selection will
always succeed in the long run in reducing
and saving every part of the organisation,
as soon as it is rendered superfluous,
without by any means causing some other
part to be largely developed in a corre
sponding degree. And, conversely, that
natural selection may perfectly well suc
ceed in largely developing any organ,
without requiring as a necessary com
pensation the reduction of some adjoining
part.
It seems to be a rule, as remarked by
Is. Geoffroy St. Hilaire, both in varieties
and in species, that when any part or
organ is repeated many times in the struc
ture of the same individual (as the vertebrae
in snakes and the stamens in polyandrous
flowers) the number is variable ; whereas
the number of the same part or organ,
when it occurs in lesser numbers, is con
stant. The same author and some botanists
have further remarked that multiple parts
are also very liable to variation in structure.
Inasmuch as this “vegetative repetition,”
to use Professor Owen’s expression, seems
to be a sign of low organisation, the fore
going remark seems connected with the
65
very general opinion of naturalists, that
beings low in the scale of nature are more
variable than those which are higher. I
presume that lowness in this case means
that the several parts of the organisation
have been but little specialised for par
ticular functions ; and as long as the same
part has to perform diversified work, we
can perhaps see why it should remain
variable—that is, why natural selection
should have preserved or rejected each
little deviation of form less carefully than
when the part has to serve for one special
purpose alone—in the same way that a
knife which has to cut all sorts of things
may be almost any shape ; while a tool
for some particular object had better be of
some particular shape. Natural selection,
it should never be forgotten, can act on
each part of each being solely through
and for its advantage.
Rudimentary parts, it has been stated
by some authors, and I believe with truth,
are apt to be highly variable. We shall
have to recur to the general subject of
rudimentary and aborted organs ; and I
will here only add that their variability
seems to be owing to their uselessness,
and therefore to natural selection having
no power to check deviations in their
structure. Thus rudimentary parts are left
to the free play of the various laws of
growth, to the effects of long-continued
disuse, and to the tendency to reversion.
A part developed in any species in an
extraordinary degree or manner, in com
parison with the same part in allied species,
tends to be highly variable.—Several years
ago I was much struck with a .remark,
nearly to the above effect, published by
Mr. Waterhouse. I infer also from an
observation made by Professor Owen, with
respect to the length of the arms of the
ourang-outang, that he has come to a
nearly similar conclusion. It is hopeless
to attempt to convince any one of the
truth of this proposition without giving
the long array of facts which I have
collected, and which cannot possibly be
here introduced.
I can only state my
conviction that it is a rule of high gene
rality. I am aware of several causes of
error, but I hope that I have made due
allowance for them. It should be under
stood that the rule by no means applies to
any part, however unusually developed,
unless it be unusually developed in com
parison with the same part in closely-allied
species. Thus, the bat’s wing is a most
�66
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
abnormal structure in the class mammalia;
but the rule would not here apply, because
there is a whole group of bats having
wings ; it would apply only if some one
species of bat had its wings developed
in some remarkable manner in comparison
with the other species of the same genus.
The rule applies very strongly in the case
of secondary sexual characters, when dis
played in any unusual manner.
The
term, secondary sexual characters, used by
Hunter, applies to characters which are
attached to one sex, but are not directly
connected with the act of reproduction.
The rule applies to males and females ;
but as females more rarely offer remarkable
secondary sexual characters, it applies
more rarely to them. The rule being so
plainly applicable in the case of secondary
sexual characters may be due to the great
variability of these characters, whether or
not displayed in any unusual manner—ot
which fact I think there can be little doubt.
But that our rule is not confined to
secondary sexual characters is clearly
shown in the case of hermaphrodite
cirripedes ; and I may here add that I
particularly attended to Mr. Waterhouse’s
remark, while investigating this Order,
and I am fully convinced that the rule
almost invariably holds good with
cirripedes. I shall, in my future work,
give a list of the more remarkable cases ; I
will here only briefly give one, as it illus
trates the rule in its largest application.
The opercular valves of sessile cirripedes
(rock barnacles) are, in every sense of the
word, very important structures, and they
differ extremely little even in different
genera; but in the several species of one
genus, Pyrgoma, these valves present a
marvellous amount of diversification, the
homologous valves in the different species
being sometimes wholly unlike in shape ;
and the amount of variation in the indi
viduals of several of the species is so great
that it is no exaggeration to state that the
varieties differ more from each other in the
characters of these important valves than
do other species of distinct genera.
As birds within the sam.e country vary
in a remarkably small degree, I have
particularly attended to them, and the rule
seems to me certainly to hold good in this
class. I cannot make out that it applies to
plants, and this would seriously have
shaken my belief in its truth, had not the
great variability in plants made it par
ticularly difficult to compare their relative
degrees of variability.
When we see any part or organ
developed in a remarkable degree or
manner in any species, the fair presump
tion is that it is of high importance to that
species ; nevertheless, the part in this case
is eminently liable to variation. Why
should this be so ? On the view that each
species has been independently created,
with all its parts as we now see them, I can
see no explanation. But on the view that
groups of species have descended from
other species, and have been modified
through natural selection, I think we can
obtain some light. In our domestic
animals, if any part, or the whole animal,
be neglected, and no selection be applied,
that part (for instance, the comb in the
Dorking fowl) or the whole breed will
cease to have a nearly uniform character.
The breed will then be said to have
degenerated. In rudimentary organs, and
in those which have been but little
specialised for any particular purpose, and
perhaps in polymorphic groups, we see a
nearly parallel natural case ; for in such
cases natural selection either has not or
cannot come into full play, and thus the
organisation is left in a fluctuating con
dition. But what here more especially
concerns us is that in our domestic
animals those points, which at the present
time are undergoing rapid change by
continued selection, are also eminently
liable to variation. Look at the breeds of
the pigeon ; see what a prodigious amount
of difference there is in the beak of the
different tumblers, in the beak and wattle
of the different carriers, in the carriage and
tail of our fantails, etc., these being the
points now mainly attended to by English
fanciers.
Even in the sub-breeds, as
in the short-faced tumbler, it is notoriously
difficult to breed them nearly to perfection,
and frequently individuals are born which
depart widely from the standard. There
may be truly said to be a constant struggle
going on between, on the one hand, the
tendency to reversion to a less modified
state, as well as an innate tendency to
further variability of all kinds ; and, on the
other hand, the power of steady selection
to keep the breed true. In the long run
selection gains the day, and we do not
expect to fail so far as to breed a bird as
coarse as a common tumbler from a good
short-faced strain. But as long as selec
tion is rapidly going on there may always
be expected to be much variability in the
structure undergoing modification.
It
further deserves notice that these variable
�LAWS OF VARIATION
characters, produced by man’s selection,
sometimes become attached, from causes
quite unknown to us, more to one sex than
to the other, generally to the male sex, as
with the wattle of carriers and the enlarged
crop of pouters.
Now let us turn to nature. When a part
has been developed in an extraordinary
manner in any one species, compared with
the other species of the same genus, we
may conclude that this part has undergone
an extraordinary amount of modification
since the period when the species branched
off from the common progenitor of the
genus. This period will seldom be remote
in any extreme degree, as species very
rarely endure for more than one geological
period.
An extraordinary amount of
modification impliesan unusually large and
long-continued amount of variability, which
has continually been accumulated by
natural selection for the benefit of the
species. But as the variability of the
extraordinarily-developed part or organ
has been so great and long-continued
within a period not excessively remote, we
might, as a general rule, expect still to find
more variability in such parts than in
other parts of the organisation which have
remained for a much longer period nearly
constant. And this, I am convinced, is
the case.
That the struggle between
natural selection on the one hand, and the
tendency to reversion and variability on
the other hand, will, in the course of time,
cease, and that the most abnormally
developed organs may be made constant,
I can see no reason to doubt. Hence
when an organ, however abnormal it may
be, has been transmitted in approximately
the same condition to many modified
descendants, as in the case of the wing of
the bat, it must have existed, according to
my theory, for an immense period in
nearly the same state ; and thus it comes
to be no more variable than any other
structure. It is only in those cases in
which the modification has been com
paratively recent and extraordinarily great
that we ought to find the generative
variability, as it may be called, still present
in a high degree. For in this case the
variability will seldom as yet have been
fixed by the continued selection of the
individuals varying in the required manner
and degree, and by the continued rejection
of those tending to revert to a former and
less modified condition.
The principle included in these remarks
may be extended. .It is notorious that
67
specific characters are more variable than
generic. To explain by a simple example
what is meant. If some species in a large
genus of plants had blue flowers and some
had red, the colour would be only a specific
character, and no one would be surprised
at one of the blue species varying into red,
or conversely; but if all the species had
blue flowers, the colour would become a
generic character, and its variation would
be a more unusual circumstance. I have
chosen this example because an explana
tion is not in this case applicable, which
most naturalists would advance—namely,
that specific characters are more variable
than generic, because they are taken from
parts of less physiological importance than
those commonly used for classing genera.
I believe this explanation is partly, yet
only indirectly, true ; I shall, however,
have to return to this subject in our chapter
on Classification. It would be almost
superfluous to adduce evidence in support
of the above statement, that specific
characters are more variable than generic ;
but I have repeatedly noticed in works on
natural history that when an author has
remarked with surprise that some impor
tant organ or part which is generally
very constant throughout large groups of
species has differed considerably in
closely-allied species, that it has also
been variable in the individuals of some of
the species. And this fact shows that a
character’ which is generally of generic
value, when it sinks in value and becomes
only of specific value, often becomes
variable, though its physiological impor
tance may remain the same. Something
of the same kind applies to monstrosities:
at least Is. Geoffroy St. Hilaire seems to
entertain no doubt that the more an
organ normally differs -in the different
species of the same group, the more
subject it is to individual anomalies.
On the ordinary view of each species
having been independently created, why
should that part of the structure which
differs from the same part in other inde
pendently-created species of the same
genus be more variable than those parts,
which are closely alike in the several
species ? I do not see that any explanation
can be given. But on the view of species
being only strongly marked • and fixed
varieties, we might surely expect to find
them still often continuing to vary in those
parts of their structure which have varied
within a moderately recent period, and
which have thus come to differ. Or to
�68
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
state the case in another manner: The ' readily have succeeded in giving to the
species of the same group a greater
points in which all the species of a genus
amount of difference in their sexual char
resemble each other, and in which they
differ from the species of some other genus, j acters than in other parts of their structure.
It is a remarkable fact that the secondary
are called generic characters ; and these
characters in common I attribute to in sexual differences between the two sexes of
the same species are generally displayed in
heritance from a common progenitor, for it
can rarely have happened that natural | the very same parts of the organisation in
which the different species of the same
selection will have modified several species,
genus differ from each other. Of this fact
fitted to more or less widely-different
I will give in illustration two instances, the
habits, in exactly the same manner; and
first which happen to stand on my list; and
as these so-called generic characters have
as the differences in these cases are of
been inherited from a remote period—since
a very unusual nature, the relation can
that period when the species first branched
hardly be accidental. The same number
•off from their common progenitor—and
of joints in the tarsi is a character generally
subsequently have not varied or come to
common to very large groups of beetles,
differ in any degree, or only in a slight
but in the Engidae, as West wood has
degree, it is not probable that they should
remarked, the number varies greatly ; and
vary at the present day. On the other hand,
the number likewise differs in the two
the points in which species differ from
sexes of the same species. Again in fossorial
other species of the same genus are called
hymenoptera, the manner of neuration of
specific characters; and as these specific
the wings is a character of the highest
characters have varied and come to differ
within the period of the branching-off importance, because common to large
groups; but in certain genera the neuration
of the species from a common progenitor,
differs in the different species, and likewise
it is probable that they should still often be
in the two sexes of the same species.
in some degree variable—at least more
variable than those parts of the organi This relation has a clear meaning on my
view of the subject: I look at all the species
sation which have for a very long period
of the same genus as having as certainly
remained constant.
descended from the same progenitor as
In connection with the present subject, I
will make only two other remarks. I think have the two sexes of any one of the
species. Consequently, whatever part of
it will be admitted, without my entering on
the structure of the common progenitor, or
details, that secondary sexual characters
of its early descendants, became variable ;
are very variable; I think it also will
variations of this part would, it is highly
be admitted that species of the same group
probable, be taken advantage of by natural
differ from each other more widely in
and sexual selection, in order to fit the
their secondary sexual characters than in
several species to their several places in
other parts of their organisation. Compare,
the economy of nature, and likewise to fit
for instance, the amount of difference
the two sexes of the same species to each
between the males of galinaceous birds, in
other, or to fit the males and females to
which secondary sexual characters are
strongly displayed, with the amount of different habits of life, or the males to
struggle with other males for the possession
difference between their females ; and the
of the females.
truth of this proposition will be granted.
Finally, then, I conclude that the greater
The cause of the original variability of
variability of specific characters, or those
secondary sexual characters is not mani
which distinguish species from species,
fest; but we can see why these characters
should not have been rendered as constant than of generic characters, or those which
and uniform as other parts of the organi the species possess in common—that the
frequent extreme variability of any part
sation, for secondary sexual characters
which is developed in a species in an
have been accumulated by sexual selection,
extraordinary manner in comparison with
which is less rigid in its action than
the same part in its congeners ; and the
ordinary selection, as it does not entail
slight degree of variability in a part, how
death, but only gives fewer offspring to
ever extraordinarily it may be developed,
the less favoured males. Whatever the
if it be common to a whole group of
cause may be of the variability of secondary
species; that the great variability of
sexual characters, as they are highly
secondary sexual characters, and the great
variable, sexual selection will have had
amount of difference in these same
a wide scope for action, and may thus
�LA IVS OF VARIA TION
characters between closely-allied species ;
that secondary sexual and ordinary specific
differences are generally displayed in the
same parts of the organisation—are all
principles closely connected together. All
being mainly due to the species of the
same group having descended from a
common progenitor, from whom they have
inherited much in common—to parts
which have recently and largely varied
being more likely still to go on varying
than parts which have long been inherited
and have not varied—to natural selection
having more or less completely, according
to the lapse of time, overmastered the
tendency to reversion and to further
variability—to sexual selection being less
rigid than ordinary selection—and to
variations in the same parts having been
accumulated by natural and sexual selec
tion, and having been thus adapted for
secondary sexual and for ordinary specific
purposes.
Distinct species present analogous varia
tions ; and a variety of one species often
assumes some of the characters of an allied
species, or reverts to some of the characters
of an early progenitor.—These proposi
tions will be most readily understood by
looking to our domestic races. The most
distinct breeds of pigeons, in countries
most widely apart, present sub-varieties
with reversed feathers on the head and
feathers on the feet—characters not
possessed by the aboriginal rock-pigeon ;
these, then, are analogous variations in two
or more distinct races. The frequent
presence of fourteen or even sixteen tail
feathers in the pouter may be considered
as a variation representing the normal
structure of another race, the fantail. I
presume that no one will doubt that all
such analogous variations are due to the
several races of the pigeon having inherited
from a common parent the same constitutution and tendency to variation, when
acted on by similar unknown influences.
In the vegetable kingdom we have a case
of analogous variation, in the enlarged
stems, or roots as commonly called, of the
Swedish turnip and Ruta baga, plants
which several botanists rank as varieties
produced by cultivation from a common
parent : if this be not so, the case will then
be one of analogous variation in two
so-called distinct species ; and to these a
third may be added—namely, the common
turnip. According to the ordinary view of
each species having been independently
created, we should have to attribute this
similarity in the enlarged stems of these
three plants, not to the ver a causa of com
munity of descent, and a consequent ten
dency to vary in a like manner, but to three
separate yet closely related acts of creation.
With pigeons, however, we have
another case—namely, the occasional
appearance in all the breeds, of slaty-blue
birds with two black bars on the wings, a
white rump, a bar at the end of the tail,
with the outer feathers externally edged
near their bases with white. As all these
marks are characteristic of the parent
rock-pigeon, I presume that no one will
doubt that this is a case of reversion, and
not of a new yet analogous variation
appearing in the several breeds. We may,
I think, confidently come to this conclusion,
because, as we have seen, these coloured
marks are eminently liable to appear in
the crossed offspring of two distinct and
differently coloured breeds; and in this case
there is nothing in the external conditions
of life to cause the reappearance of the
slaty-blue, with the several marks, beyond
the influence of the mere act of crossing on
the laws of inheritance.
No doubt it is a very surprising fact
that characters should reappear after having
been lost for many, perhaps for hundreds
of generations. But when a breed has
been crossed only once by some other
breeds, the offspring occasionally show a
tendency to revert in character to the
foreign breed for many generations—some
say, for a dozen or even a score of
generations. After twelve generations the
proportion of blood, to use a common
expression, of any one ancestor is only
i in 2048 ; and yet, as we see, it isgenerally believed that a tendency to re
version is retained by this very small
proportion of foreign blood. In a breed
which has not been crossed, but in which «
both parents have lost some character
which their progenitor possessed, the
tendency, whether strong or weak, to
reproduce the lost character might be, as
was formerly remarked, for all that we can
see to the contrary, transmitted for almost
any number of generations.
When a
character which has been lost in a breed
reappears after a great number of genera
tions, the most probable hypothesis is,
not that the offspring suddenly takes after
an ancestor some hundred generations
distant, but that in each successive genera
tion there has been a tendency to repro
duce the character in question, which at
�7o
r»
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
last, under unknown favourable conditions,
what are new but analogous variations,
gains an ascendancy.
For instance, it
yet we ought, on my theory, sometimes to
is probable that in each generation of the
find the varying offspring of a species
barb-pigeon, which produces most rarely
assuming characters (either from reversion
-a blue and black-barred bird, there has
or from analogous variation) which already
been a tendency in each generation in the
occur in some other members of the same
plumage to assume this colour. This view
group. And this undoubtedly is the case
is hypothetical, but could be supported
in nature.
by some facts ; and I can see no more
A considerable part of the difficulty in
abstract improbability in a tendency to
recognising a variable species in our
produce any character being inherited for
systematic works is due to its varieties
an endless number of generations than in
mocking, as it were, some of the
quite useless or rudimentary organs being,
other species of the same genus. A con
as we all know them to be, thus inherited.
siderable catalogue, also, could be given of
Indeed, we may sometimes observe a mere
forms intermediate between two other
tendency to produce a rudiment inherited ;
forms, which themselves must be doubt
for instance, in the common snap-dragon
fully ranked as either varieties or species ;
(Antirrhinum) a rudiment of a fifth stamen
and this shows, unless all these forms be
so often appears that this plant must have
considered as independently created
an inherited tendency to produce it.
species, that the one in varying has
As all the species of the same genus are
assumed some of the characters of the
supposed, on my theory, to have descended
other, so as to produce the intermediate
from a common parent, it might be ex
form. But the best evidence is afforded by
pected that they would occasionally vary
parts or organs of an important and
in an analogous manner ; so that a variety
uniform nature occasionally varying so as
of one species would resemble in some
to acquire, in some degree, the character
of its characters another species; this
of the same part or organ in an allied
other species being on my view only a
species. I have collected a long list of
well-marked and permanent variety. But
such cases ; but here, as before, I lie under
characters thus gained would probably be
a great disadvantage in not being able to
• of an unimportant nature, for the presence
give them. I can only repeat that such
of all important characters will be governed
cases certainly do occur, and seem to me
by natural selection, in accordance with
very remarkable.
the diverse habits of the species, and will
I will, however, give one curious and
not be left to the mutual action of the
complex case, not indeed as affecting any
conditions of life and of a similar inherited ; important character, but from occurring in
constitution. It might further be expected i several species of the same genus, partly
that the species of the same genus would
under domestication and partly under
occasionally exhibit reversions to lost an
nature. It is a case apparently of rever
cestral characters. As", however, we never
sion. The ass not rarely has very distinct
know the exact character of the common
transverse bars on its legs, like those on
ancestor of a group, we could not dis
the legs of the zebra : it has been asserted
tinguish these two cases : if, for instance,
that these are plainest in the foal, and, from
we did not know that the rock-pigeon was
inquiries which I have made, I believe
not feather-footed or turn-crowned, we
this to be true. It has also been asserted
could not have told whether these char
that the stripe on each shoulder is some
acters in our domestic breeds were revertimes double.
The shoulder-stripe is
-sions or only analogous variations ; but
certainly very variable in length and out
we might have inferred that the blueness
line. A white ass, but not an albino, has
was a case of reversion, from the number
been described without either spinal or
of the markings, which are correlated with
shoulder stripe ; and these stripes are
the blue tint, and which it does not appear
sometimes very obscure, or actually quite
probable would all appear together from
lost, in dark-coloured asses. The koulan
simple variation.
More especially we
of Pallas is said to have been seen with a
might have inferred this, from the blue
double shoulder-stripe. The hemionus has
colour and marks so often appearing when
no shoulder-stripe ; but traces of it, as
distinct breeds of diverse colours are crossed.
stated by Mr. Blyth and others, occasion
Hence, though under nature it must gene
ally appear : and I have been informed by
rally be left doubtful what cases are rever
Colonel Poole that the foals of this species
sions to an anciently existing character, and
are generally striped on the legs, and
�LAWS OF VARIATION
faintly on the shoulder. The quagga,
though so plainly barred like a zebra over
the body, is without bars on the legs ; but
Dr. Gray has figured one specimen with
very distinct zebra-like bars on the hocks.
With respect to the horse, I have col
lected cases in England of the spinal stripe
in horses of the most distinct breeds, and
of all colours ; transverse bars on the legs
are not rare in duns, mouse-duns, and in
one instance in a chestnut : a faint
shoulder-stripe may sometimes be seen in
duns, and I have seen a trace in a bay
horse. My son made a careful examina
tion and sketch for me of a dun Belgian
cart-horse with a double stripe on each
shoulder and with leg-stripes ; and a man
whom I can implicitly trust has examined
for me a small dun Welch pony with three
short parallel stripes on each shoulder.
In the north-west part of India the
Kattywar breed of horses is so generally
striped that, as I hear from Colonel Poole,
who examined the breed for the Indian
Government, a horse without stripes is not
considered as purely-bred. The spine is
always striped; the legs are generally
barred ; and the shoulder-stripe, which is
sometimes double and sometimes treble, is
common ; the side of the face, moreover,
is sometimes striped.' The stripes are
plainest in the foal ; and sometimes quite
disappear in old horses. Colonel Poole
has seen both gray and bay Kattywar
horses striped when first foaled. I have,
also, reason to suspect, from information
given me by Mr. W. W. Edwards, that
with the English race-horse the spinal
stripe is much commoner in the foal than
in the full-grown animal. Without here
entering on further details, I may state
that I have collected cases of leg and
shoulder stripes in horses of very different
breeds, in various countries from Britain
to Eastern China; and from Norway in
the north to the Malay Archipelago in the
south. In all parts of the world these
stripes occur far oftenest in duns and
mouse-duns ; by the term dun a large
range of colour is included, from one
between brown and black to a close ap
proach to cream-colour.
I am aware that Colonel Hamilton
Smith, who has written on this subject,
believes that the several breeds of the
horse have descended from several abo
riginal species—one of which, the dun,
was striped ; and that the above-described
appearances are all due to ancient crosses
with the dun stock. But I am not at all
7i
satisfied with this theory, and should be
loth to apply it to breeds so distinct as the
heavy Belgian cart-horse, Welsh ponies,
cobs, the lanky Kattywar race, etc., in
habiting the most distant parts of the
world.
Now let us turn to the effects of crossing
the several species of the horse-genus.
Rollin asserts that the common mule from
the ass and horse is particularly apt to
have bars on its legs : according to Mr.
Gosse, in certain parts of the United States
about nine out of ten mules have striped
legs. I once saw a mule with its legs so
much striped that anyone would at first
have thought that it must have been the
product of a zebra; and Mr. W. C. Martin,
in his excellent treatise on the horse, has
given a figure of a similar mule. In four
coloured drawings, which I have seen, of
hybrids between the ass and zebra, the
legs were much more plainly barred than
the rest of the body ; and in one of them
there was a double shoulder-stripe. In
Lord Morton’s famous hybrid from a
chestnut mare and male quagga, the
hybrid, and even the pure offspring sub
sequently produced from the mare by a
black Arabian sire, were much more
plainly barred across the legs than is even
the pure quagga.
Lastly, and this is
another most remarkable case, a hybrid
has been figured by Dr. Gray (and he
informs me that he knows of a second
case) from the ass- and the hemionus;
and this hybrid, though the ass seldom
has stripes on his legs and the hemionus
has none, and has not even a shoulder
stripe, nevertheless had all four legs barred,
and had three short shoulder-stripes like
those on the dun Welsh pony, and even
had some zebra-like stripes on the sides
of its face. With respect to this last fact
I was so convinced that not even a stripe
of colour appears from what would com
monly be called an accident that I was
led, solely from the occurrence of the face
stripes on this hybrid from the ass and
hemionus, to ask Colonel Poole whether
such face-stripes 'ever occur in the emi
nently striped Kattywar breed of horses,
and was, as we have seen, answered in the
affirmative.
What now are we to say to these several
facts? We see several very distinct species
of the horse-genus becoming, by simple
variation, striped on the legs like a zebra,
or striped on the shoulders like an ass.
In the horse we see this tendency strong
whenever a dun tint appears—a tint which
�7.2
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
approaches to that of the general colouring
of the other species of the genus. The
appearance of the stripes is not accom
panied by any change of form or by any
other new character. We see this tendency
to become striped most strongly displayed
in hybrids from between several of the
most distinct species. Now observe the
case of the several breeds of pigeons :
they are descended from a pigeon (in
cluding two or three sub-species or geo
graphical races) of a bluish colour, with
certain bars and other marks ; and when
any breed assumes by simple variation
a bluish tint, these bars and other marks
invariably reappear, but without any other
change of form or character. When the
oldest and truest breeds of various colours
are crossed, we see a strong tendency for
the blue tint and bars and marks to re
appear in the mongrels. I have stated
that the most probable hypothesis to
account for the reappearance of very
ancient characters is—that there is a
tendency in the young of each successive
generation to produce the long-lost char
acter, and that this tendency, from unknown
causes, sometimes prevails. And we have
just seen that in several species of the
horse-genus the stripes are either plainer or
appear more commonly in the young than
in the old. Call the breeds of pigeons,
some of which have bred true for centuries,
species; and how exactly parallel is the case
with that of the species of the horse-genus'
For myself, I venture confidently to look
back thousands on thousands of generations,
and I see an animal striped like a zebra,
but perhaps otherwise very differently con
structed, the common parent of our domestic
horse, whether or not it be descended from
one or more wild stocks, of the ass, the
hemionus, quagga, and zebra.
He who believes that each equine species
was independently created will, I presume,
assert that each species has been created,
with a tendencyato vary, both under nature
and under domestication, in this particular
manner, so as often to become striped like
other species of the genus ; and that each
has been created with a strong tendency,
when crossed with species inhabiting dis
tant quarters of the world, to produce
hybrids resembling in their stripes, not
their own parents, but other species of the
genus. To admit this view is, as it seems
to me, to reject a real for an unreal, or at
least for an unknown, cause. It makes the
works of God a mere mockery and decep
tion ; I would almost as soon believe, with
the old and ignorant cosmogonists, that
fossil shells had never lived, but had been
created in stone so as to mock the shells
now living on the sea-shore.
Summary.—Our ignorance of the laws of
variation is profound. Not in one case out
of a hundred can we pretend to assign any
reason why this or that part differs, more or
less, from the same part in the parents.
Bnt whenever we have the means of insti
tuting a comparison the same laws appear
to have acted in producing the lesser dif
ferences between varieties of the same
species, and the greater differences between
species of the same genus. The external
conditions of life, as climate and food, etc.,
seem to have induced some slight modifica
tions. Habit in producing constitutional
differences, and use in strengthening and
disuse in weakening and diminishing organs,
seem to have been more potent in their
effects. Homologous parts tend to vary in
the same way, and homologous parts tend
to cohere. Modifications in hard parts and
in external parts sometimes affect softer and
internal parts. When one part is largely
developed, perhaps it tends to draw
nourishment from the adjoining parts ;
and every part of the structure which can
be saved without detriment to the indi
vidual will be saved. Changes of structure
at an early age will generally affect parts
subsequently developed; and there are very
many other correlations of growth, the
nature of which we are utterly unable to
understand. Multiple parts are variable in
number and in structure, perhaps arising
from such parts not having been closely
specialised to any particular function, so
that their modifications have not been
closely checked by natural selection. It is
probably from this same cause that organic
beings low in the scale of nature are more
variable than those which have their whole
organisation more specialised, and are
higher in the scale. Rudimentary organs,
from being useless, will be disregarded by
natural selection, and hence probably are
variable. Specific characters—that is, the
characters which have come to differ since
the several species of the same genus
branched off from a common parent—are
more variable than generic characters, or
those which have long been inherited, and
have not differed within this same period.
In these remarks we have referred to
special parts or organs being still variable,
because they have recently varied and
thus come to differ ; but we have also seen
�DIFFICULTIES OF THE THEORY
in the second chapter that the same
principle applies to the whole individual ;
for in a district where many species of any
genus are found—that is, where there has
been much former variation and differen
tiation, or where the manufactory of new
specific forms has been actively at work—•
there, on an average, we now find most
varieties or incipient species. Secondary
sexual characters are highly variable, and
such characters differ much in the species
of the same group. Variability in the
same parts of the organisation has gener
ally been taken advantage of in giving
secondary sexual differences to the sexes
of the same species, and specific differences
to the several species of the same genus.
Any part or organ developed to an extra
ordinary size or in an extraordinary
manner, in comparison with the same part
or organ in the allied species, must have
gone through an extraordinary amount of
modification since the genus arose; and
thus we can understand why it should
often still be variable in a much higher
degree than other parts ; for variation is
a long-continued and slow process, and
natural selection will in such cases not as
yet have had time to overcome the
tendency to further variability and to
reversion to a less modified state. But
73
when a species with any extraordinarilydeveloped organ has become the parent of
many modified descendants—which on my
view must be a very slow process, requiring
a long lapse of time—in this case natural
selection may readily have succeeded in
giving a fixed character to the organ, in
however extraordinary a manner it may be
developed. Species inheriting nearly the
same constitution from a common parent
and exposed to similar influences will
naturally tend to present analogous varia
tions, and these same species may oc
casionally revert to some of the characters
of their ancient progenitors. Although
new and important modifications may not
arise from reversion and analogous varia
tion, such modifications will add to the
beautiful and harmonious diversity of
nature.
Whatever the cause may be of each
slight difference in the offspring from their
parents—and a cause for each must exist
—it is the steady accumulation, through
natural selection, of such differences,
when beneficial to the individual, that
gives rise to all the more important
modifications of structure, by which the
innumerable beings on the face of this
earth are enabled to struggle with each
other, and the best adapted to survive.
Chapter VI.
DIFFICULTIES OF THE THEORY
Difficulties of the theory of descent with modi
fication—Transitions—Absence or rarity of
transitional varieties—Transitions in habits of
life—Diversified habits in the same species—
Species with habits widely different from those
of their allies—Organs of extreme perfection—
Means of transition—Cases of difficulty—Natura non facit saltum—Organs of small
importance—Organs not in all cases absolutely
perfect-—The law of Unity of Type and of the
Conditions of Existence embraced by the
theory of Natural Selection.
Long before having arrived at this part of
my work a crowd of difficulties will have
occurred to the reader. Some of them are
so grave that to this day I can never reflect
on them without being staggered ; but, to
the best of my judgment, the greater
number are only apparent, and those that
are real are not, I think, fatal to my
theory.
These difficulties and objections may be
classed under the following heads :—
Firstly, why, if species have descended
from other species by insensibly fine
gradations, do we not everywhere see in
numerable transitional forms ? Why is
not all nature in confusion, instead of the
species being, as we see them, well
defined ?
Secondly, is it possible that an animal
having, for instance, the structure and
�74
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
habits of a bat, could have been formed by
the modification of some animal with
wholly different habits ? Can we believe
that natural selection could produce, on
the one hand, organs of trifling importance,
such as the tail of a giraffe, which serves
as a fly-flapper, and, on the other hand,
organs of such wonderful structure as the
eye, of which we hardly as yet fully under
stand the inimitable perfection ?
Thirdly, can instincts be acquired and
modified through natural selection ? What
shall we say to so marvellous an instinct as
that which leads the bee to make cells,
which has practically anticipated the dis
coveries of profound mathematicians.
Fourthly, how can we account for species,
when crossed, being sterile and producing
sterile offspring, whereas, when varieties
are crossed, their fertility is unimpaired ?
The two first heads shall be here dis
cussed—Instinct and Hybridism in sepa
rate chapters.
On the absence or rarity of transitional
varieties.—Ns, natural selection acts solely
by the preservation of profitable modifi
cations, each new form will tend in a fullystocked country to take the place of, and
finally to exterminate, its own less improved
parent or other less favoured forms with
which it comes into competition. Thus,
extinction and natural selection will, as we
have seen, go hand-in-hand. Hence, if
we look at each species as descended from
some other unknown form, both the parent
and all the transitional varieties will gene
rally have been exterminated by the very
process of formation and perfection of the
new form.
But, as by this theory innumerable
transitional forms must have existed, why
do we not find them embedded in countless
numbers in the crust of the earth ? It will
be much more convenient to discuss the
question in th® chapter on the Imperfection
of the Geological Record; and I will here
only state that I believe the answer mainly
lies in the record being incomparably less
perfect than is generally supposed ; the
imperfection of the record being chiefly
due to organic beings not inhabiting pro
found depths of the sea, and to their
remains being embedded and preserved
to a future age only in masses of sediment
sufficiently thick and extensive to with
stand an enormous amount of future
degradation; and such' fossiliferous masses
can be accumulated only where much
sediment is deposited on the shallow bed
of the sea while it slowly subsides. These
contingencies will occur only rarely, and
after enormously long intervals. While
the bed of the sea is stationary or is rising,
or w7hen very little sediment is being
deposited, there will be blanks in our
geological history. The crust of the earth
is a vast museum; but the natural col
lections have been made only at intervals
of time immensely remote.
But it may be urged that, when several
closely-allied species inhabit the same
territory, we surely ought to find at the
present time many transitional forms. Let
us take a simple case : in travelling from
north to south over a continent we gene
rally meet at successive intervals with
closely-allied or representative species,
evidently filling nearly the same place
in the natural economy of the land.
These representative species often meet
and interlock; and, as the one becomes
rarer and rarer, the other becomes more
and more frequent, till the one replaces
the other.
But if we compare these
species where they intermingle, they are
generally as absolutely distinct from each
other in every detail of structure as are
specimens taken from the metropolis in
habited by each. By my theory these
allied species have descended from a
common parent; and during the process
of modification each has become adapted
to the conditions of life of its own region,
and has supplanted and exterminated its
original parent and all the transitional
varieties between its past and present
states. Hence we ought not to expect
at the present time to meet with numerous
transitional varieties in each region, though
they must have existed there, and may be
embedded there in a fossil condition. But
in the intermediate region, having inter
mediate conditions of life, why do wre
not now find closely-linking intermediate
varieties ? This difficulty for a long time
quite confounded me. But I think it can
be in a large part explained.
In the first place, we should be extremely
cautious in inferring, because an area is
now continuous, that it has been continuous
during a long period. Geology would lead
us to believe that almost every continent
has been broken up into islands even
during the later tertiary periods; and in such
islands distinct species might have been
separately formed without the possibility of
intermediate varieties existing in the inter
mediate zones.. By changes in the form of
the land and of climate, marine areas now
�DIFFICULTIES OF THE THEORY
continuous must often have existed within
recent times in a far less continuous and
uniform condition than at present. But I
will pass over this way of escaping from
the difficulty; for I believe that many per
fectly defined species have been formed on
strictly continuous areas, though I do not
doubt that the formerly broken condition
of areas now continuous has played an
important part in the formation of new
species, more especially with freely-crossing
and wandering animals.
In looking at species as they are now
distributed over a wide area, we generally
find them tolerably numerous over a large
territory, then becoming somewhat abruptly
rarer and rarer on the confines, and finally
disappearing. Hence the neutral territory
between two representative species is
generally narrow in comparison with the
territory proper to each. We see the same
fact in ascending mountains, and sometimes
it is quite remarkable how abruptly, as
Alph. De Candolle has observed, a common
alpine species disappears. The same fact
has been noticed by E. Forbes in sounding
the depths of the sea with the dredge. To
those who look at climate and the physical
conditions of life as the all - important
elements of distribution, these facts ought
to cause surprise, as climate and height or
depth graduate away insensibly. But when
we bear in mind that almost every species,
even in its metropolis, would increase
immensely in numbers were it not- for
other competing species ; that nearly all
either prey on or serve as prey for others ;
in short, that each organic being is either
directly or indirectly related in the most
important manner to other organic beings,
we must see that the range of the inhabi
tants of any country by no' means exclu
sively depends on insensibly changing
physical conditions, but in large part on
the presence of other species, on which it
depends, or by which it is destroyed, or with
which it comes into competition; and as
these species are already defined objects
(however they may have become so), not
blending one into another by insensible
gradations, the range of any one species,
, ■ depending as it does on the range of others,
will tend to be sharply defined. Moreover,
each species on the confines of its range,
where it exists in lessened numbers, will,
during fluctuations in the number of its
enemies or of its prey, or in the seasons, be
extremely liable to utter extermination;
and thus its geographical ra*ige will come
to be still more sharply defined.
75
If I am right in believing that allied or
representative species, when inhabiting a
continuous area, are generally so distributed
that each has a wide range, with a com
paratively narrow neutral territory between
them, in which they become rather suddenly
rarer and rarer—then, as varieties do not
essentially differ from species, the same
rule will probably apply to both; and if we
in imagination adapt a varying species to a
very large area, we shall have to adapt two
varieties to two large areas, and a third
variety to a narrow intermediate zone. The
intermediate variety, consequently, will exist
in lesser numbers from inhabiting a narrow
and lesser area ; and practically, as far as
I can make out, this rule holds good with
varieties in a state of nature. I have met
with striking instances of the rule in the
case of varieties intermediate between wellmarked varieties in the genus Balanus.
And it would appear from information
given me by Mr. Watson, Dr. Asa Gray,
and Mr. Wollaston, that generally, when
varieties intermediate between two other
forms occur, they are much rarer numeri
cally than the forms which they connect.
Now, if we may trust these facts and
inferences, and therefore conclude that
varieties linking two other varieties together
have generally existed in lesser numbers
than the forms which they connect, then, I
think, we can understand why intermediate
varieties should not endure for very long
periods—why as a general rule they should
be exterminated and disappear sooner
than the forms which they originally linked
together.
For any form existing in lesser numbers
would, as already remarked, run a greater
chance of being exterminated than one
existing in large numbers ; and in this
particular case the intermediate form
would be eminently liable to the inroads of
closely-allied forms existing on both sides
of it. But a far more important con
sideration, as I believe, is that, during the
process of further modification by which
two varieties are supposed, on my theory,
to be converted and perfected into two
distinct species, the two which exist in
larger numbers from inhabiting larger
areas will have a great advantage over the
intermediate variety which exists in smaller
numbers in a narrow and intermediate
zone. For forms existing in larger numbers
will always have a .better chance within
any given period of presenting further
favourable variations for natural selection
to seize on than will the rarer forms which
�76
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
exist in lesser numbers. Hence the more
common forms in the race for life will tend
to beat and supplant the less common
forms, for these will be more slowly
modified and improved. It is the same
principle which, as I believe, accounts for
the common species in each country as
shown in the second chapter, presenting
on an average a greater number of wellmarked varieties than do the rarer species.
I may illustrate what I mean by supposing
three varieties of sheep to be kept, one
adapted to an extensive mountainous
region ; a second to a comparatively
narrow, hilly tract ; and a third to wide
plains at the base ; and that the in
habitants are all trying with equal steadi
ness and skill to improve their stocks by
selection ; the chances in this case will be
strongly in favour of the great holders on
the mountains or on the plains improving
their breeds more quickly than the small
holders on the intermediate narrow, hilly
.tract, and consequently the improved
mountain or plain breed will soon take the
place of the less improved hill breed; and
thus the two breeds, which originally
-existed in greater numbers, will come into
close contact with each other without the
interposition of the supplanted, interme
diate hill variety.
To sum up, I believe that species come
to be tolerably well-defined objects, and do
not at any one period present an in
extricable chaos of varying and interme
diate links: firstly, because;new varieties are
very slowly formed, for variation is a very
slow process, and natural selection can do
nothing until favourable variations chance
to occur, and until a place in the natural
polity of the country can be better filled by
some modification of some one or more of
its inhabitants. And such new places will
depend on slow changes of climate, or on
the occasional immigration of new in
habitants, and, probably, in a still more
important degree, on some of the old
inhabitants becoming slowly modified,
with the new forms thus produced and the
old ones acting and re-acting on each
other. So that, in any one region and at
any time, we ought only to see a few
species presenting slight modifications of
structure in some degree permanent, and
this assuredly we do see.
Secondly, areas now continuous must
often have existed within the recent period
in isolated portions, in which many forms,
more especially among the classes which
unite for each birth and wander much, may
have separately been rendered sufficiently
distinct to rank as representative species.
In this case, intermediate varieties between
the several representative species and
their common parent must formerly have
existed in each broken portion of the
land; but these links will have been
supplanted and exterminated during the
process of natural selection, so that they
will no longer exist in a living state.
Thirdly, when two or more varieties
have been formed in different portions
of a strictly continuous area, intermediate
varieties will, it is probable, at first
have been formed in the intermediate
zones, but they will generally have had
a short duration. For these intermediate
varieties will, from reasons already as
signed (namely, from what we know of
the actual distribution of closely-allied or
representative species, and likewise of
acknowledged varieties), exist in the inter
mediate zones- in lesser numbers than the
varieties which they tend to connect. From
this cause alone the intermediate varieties
will be liable to accidental extermination;
and during the process of further modi
fication through natural selection they will
almost certainly be beaten and supplanted
by the forms which they connect; for these,
from existing in greater numbers, will, in the
aggregate, present more variation, and thus
be further improved through natural selec
tion and gain further advantages.
Lastly, looking not to any one time, but to
all times, if my theory be true, numberless
intermediate varieties, linking most closely
all the species of the same group together,
must assuredly have existed; but the very
process of natural selection constantly
tends, as has been so often remarked,
to exterminate the parent-forms and the
intermediate links. Consequently, evidence
of their former existence could be found
only among fossil remains, which are pre
served, as we shall in a future chapter
attempt to show, in an extremely imperfect
and intermittent record.
On the origin and transitions of organic
beings with peculiar habits and structure.
■—It has been asked by the opponents of
such views as I hold how, for instance,
a land carnivorous animal could have been
converted into one with aquatic habits;
for how could the animal in its transitional
state have subsisted? It would be easy to
show that within the same group carni
vorous animals exist having every inter
mediate grade between truly aquatic and
�DIFFICULTIES OF THE THEORY
strictly terrestrial habits; and, as each
exists by a struggle for life, it is clear that
each is well adapted in its habits to its
place in nature.
Look at the Mustela
vison of North America, which has webbed
feet, and which resembles an otter in its
fur, short legs, and form of tail: during
summer this animal dives for and preys
on fish, but during the long winter it leaves
the frozen waters, and preys, like other
pole-cats, on mice and land animals. If
a different case had been taken, and it had
been asked how an insectivorous quadruped
could possibly have been converted into
a flying bat, the question would have been
far more difficult, and I could have given
no answer. Yet I think such difficulties
have very little weight.
Here, as on other occasions, I lie under
a heavy disadvantage, for, out of the many
striking cases which I have collected, I
can give only one or two instances of
transitional habits and structures in closelyallied species of the same genus, and of
diversified habits, either constant or occa
sional, in the same species. And it seems
to me that nothing less than a long list of
such cases is sufficient to lessen the diffi
culty in any particular case like that of the
bat.
Look at the family of squirrels. Here we
have the finest gradation from animals
with their tails only slightly flattened, and
from others, as Sir J. Richardson has re
marked, with the posterior parts of their
bodies rather w7ide and with the skin
on their flanks rather full, to the so-called
flying squirrels ; and flying squirrels have
their limbs, and even the base of the tail,
united by a broad expanse of skin, which
serves as a parachute, and allows them
to glide through the air, to an astonishing
distance, from tree to tree. We cannot
doubt that each structure is of use to each
kind of squirrel in its own country by
enabling it to escape birds or beasts of
prey, or to collect food more quickly, or,
as there is reason to believe, by lessening
the danger from occasional falls. But it
does not follow from this fact that the
structure of each squirrel is the best that it
is possible to conceive under all natural
conditions. Let the climate and vegetation
change, let other competing rodents or
new beasts of prey immigrate, or old
ones become modified, and all analogy
would lead us to believe that some at least
of the squirrels would decrease in numbers,
or become exterminated, unless they also
became modified and improved in structure
77
in a corresponding manner. Therefore, I
can see no difficulty, more especially under
changing conditions of life, in the con
tinued preservation of individuals with
fuller and fuller flank-membranes, each
modification being useful, each being pro
pagated, until, by the accumulated effects
of this process of natural selection, a
perfect so-called flying squirrel was pro
duced.
Now, look at the Galeopithecus, or flying
lemur, which formerly was falsely ranked
among bats.
It has an extremely wide
flank-membrane, stretching from the
corners of the jaw to the tail, and including
the limbs and the elongated fingers: the
flank-membrane is also furnished with an
extensor muscle. Although no graduated
links of structure, fitted for gliding throughthe air, now connect the Galeopithecus
with the other Lemurid;:e, yet I see no
difficulty in supposing that such linksformerly existed, and that each had been
formed by the same steps as in the case of
the less perfectly gliding squirrels; and
that each grade of structure was useful to
its possessor. Nor can I see any insuper
able difficulty in further believing it.
possible that the membrane-connected
fingers and fore-arm of the Galeopithecus.
might be greatly lengthened by natural
selection, and this, as far as the organs of
flight are concerned, would convert it into
a bat.
In bats which have the wing
membrane extended from the top of the
shoulder to the tail, including the hind
legs, we perhaps see traces of an ap
paratus originally constructed for gliding
through the air rather than for flight.
If about a dozen genera of birds had
become extinct or were unknown, who
would have ventured to have surmised
that birds might have existed which used
their wings solely as flappers, like the
logger-headed duck(Micropterus of Eyton);
as fins in the water and front legs on
the land, like the penguin; as sails, like
the ostrich; and functionally for no purpose,
like the Apteryx? Yet the structure of
each of these birds is good for it under the
conditions of life to which it is exposed,
for each has to live by a struggle; but it
is not necessarily the best possible under
all possible conditions. It must not be
inferred from these remarks that any of
the grades of wing-structure here alluded
to, which perhaps may all have resulted
from disuse, indicate the natural steps by
which birds have acquired their perfect
power of flight; but they serve at least to
�78
(9/V 7775 ORIGIN OF SPECIES
show what diversified means of transition | probably often change almost simul
are possible.
taneously. Of cases of changed habits
Seeing that a few members of such
it will suffice merely to allude to that of
water-breathing classes as the Crustacea
the many British insects which now feed
and Mollusca are adapted to live on the
on exotic plants or exclusively on artificial
land ; and seeing that we have flying birds
substances. Of diversified habits innu
and mammals, flyings insects of the most
merable instances could be given: I have
diversified types, and formerly had flying
often watched a tyrant fly-catcher (Sauroreptiles, it is conceivable that flying-fish,
phagus sulphuratus) in South America
which now glide far through the air,
hovering over one spot and then pro
slightly rising and turning by the aid of
ceeding to another like a kestrel, and at
their fluttering fins, might have been
other times standing stationary on the
modified into perfectly winged animals.
margin of water and then dashing like
If this had been effected, who would have
a kingfisher at a fish. In our own country
ever imagined that in an early transitional
the larger titmouse (Parus major) may be
state they had been inhabitants of the open
seen climbing branches almost like a
ocean, and had used their incipient organs
creeper; it often, like a shrike, kills small
of flight exclusively, as far as we know, to
birds by blows on the head ; and I have
escape being devoured by other fish ?
many times seen and heard it hammering
When we see any structure highly per
the seeds of the yew on a branch, and thus
fected for any particular habit as the wings
breaking them like a nuthatch. In North
of a bird for flight, we should bear in mind
America the black bear was seen by
that animals displaying early transitional
Hearne swimming for hours with widely
grades of the structure will seldom continue
open mouth, thus catching, almost like
to exist to the present day, for they will
a whale, insects in the water.
have been supplanted by the very process
As we sometimes see individuals of a
of perfection through natural selection.
species following habits widely different
Furthermore, we may conclude that
from those of their own species and of the
transitional grades between structures
other species of the same genus, we might
fitted for very different habits of life will
expect, on my theory, that such individuals
rarely have been developed at an early
would occasionally have given rise to new
period in great numbers and under many
species, having anomalous habits, and with
subordinate forms. Thus, to return to our
their structure either slightly or con
imaginary illustration of the flying-fish, it
siderably modified from that of their
does not seem probable that fishes capable
proper type. And such instances do occur
of true flight would have been developed
in nature. Can a more striking instance
under many subordinate forms, for taking
of adaptation be given than that of a
prey of many kinds in many ways, on the
woodpecker for climbing trees, and for
land and in the water, until their organs of
seizing insects in the chinks of the bark ?
flight had come to a high stage of perfec
Yet in North America there are wood
tion, so as to have given them a decided
peckers which feed largely on fruit, and
advantage over other animals in the battle
others with elongated wings which chase
of life. Hence the chance of discovering
insects on the wing; and on the plains of
species with transitional grades of structure
La Plata, where not a tree grows, there
in a fossil condition will always be less,
is a woodpecker which, in every essential
from their having existed in lesser numbers
part of its organisation, even in its colouring,
than in the case of species with fullyin the harsh tone of its voice and unduladeveloped structures.
tory flight, told me plainly of its close blood
I will now give two or three instances of
relationship to our common species; yet it is
diversified and of changed habits in the
a woodpecker which never climbs a tree 1
individuals of the same species. When
Petrels are the most aerial and oceanic
either case occurs, it would be easy for
of birds, yet in the quiet Sounds of Tierra
natural selection to fit the animal, by some
del Fuego the Puffinuria berardi, in its
modification of its structure, for its changed
general habits, in its astonishing power
habits, or exclusively for one of its several
of diving, its manner of swimming, and
different habits. But it is difficult to tell,
of flying when unwillingly it takes flight,
and immaterial for us, whether habits
would be mistaken by anyone for an auk
generally change first and structure after
or grebe; nevertheless, it is essentially a
wards ; or whether slight modifications of
petrel, but with many parts of its organi
structure lead to changed habits ; both
sation profoundly modified. On the other
�DIFFICULTIES OF THE THEORY
79
hand, the acutest observer, by examining
be diving thrushes and petrels with the
the dead body of the water-ouzel, would
habits of auks.
never have suspected its sub-aquatic habits;
‘ yet this anomalous member of the strictly
Organs of extreme perfection and com
terrestrial thrush family wholly subsists by plication.—To suppose that the eye, with all
diving—grasping the stones with its feet
its inimitable contrivances for adjusting
and using its wings under water.
the focus to different distances, for admit
He who believes that each being has
ting different amounts of light, and for the
been created as we now see it must occa
correction of spherical and chromatic
sionally have felt surprise when he has
aberration, could have been formed by
met with an animal having habits and
natural selection, seems, I freely confess,
structure not at all in agreement. What
absurd in the highest possible degree.
can be plainer than that the webbed feet
Yet reason tells me that if numerous
of ducks and geese are formed for swim
gradations from a perfect and complex eye
ming ? Yet there are upland geese with
to one very imperfect and simple, each
webbed feet which rarely or never go near
grade being useful to its possessor, can be
the water; and no one except Audubon
shown to exist ; if, further, the eye does
has seen the frigate-bird, which has all its
vary ever so slightly and the variations be
four toes webbed, alight on the surface of
inherited, which is certainly the case, and
the sea. On the other hand, grebes and
if any variation or modification in the
coots are eminently aquatic, although their
organ be ever useful to an animal under
toes are only bordered by membrane.
changing conditions of life, then the
What seems plainer than that the long
difficulty of believing that a perfect and
toes of grallatores are formed for walking
complex eye could be formed by natural
over swamps and floating plants ; yet the
selection, though insuperable by our imagi
water-hen is nearly as aquatic as the coot,
nation, can hardly be considered real.
and the landrail nearly as terrestrial as the
How a nerve comes to be sensitive to
quail or partridge. In such cases, and
light hardly concerns us more than how
many others could be given, habits have _ life itself first originated; but I may
changed without a corresponding change ’ remark that several facts make me suspect
of structure. The webbed feet of the
that any sensitive nerve may be rendered
upland goose may be said to have become
sensitive to light, and likewise to those
rudimentary in function, though not in
coarser vibrations of the air which produce
structure. In the frigate-bird the deeplysound.
scooped membrane between the toes shows
In looking for the gradations by which
that structure has begun to change.
an organ in any species has been perfected,
He who believes in separate and in
we ought to look exclusively to its lineal
numerable acts of creation will say that in
ancestors ; but this is scarcely ever pos
these cases it has pleased the Creator to
sible, and we are forced in each case to
cause a being of one type to take the place
look to species of the same group—that is,
of one of another type ; but this seems to
to the collateral descendants from the
me only re-stating the fact in dignified
same original parent-form—in order to see
language. He who believes in the struggle
what gradations are possible, and for the
for existence and in the principle of natural
chance of some gradations having been
selection will acknowledge that every
transmitted from the earlier stages of
organic being is constantly endeavouring
descent in an unaltered or little altered
to increase in numbers ; and that if any
condition. Among existing Vertebrata we
one being vary ever so little either in
find but a small amount of gradation in the
habits or structure, and thus gain an
structure of the eye, and from fossil species
advantage over some other inhabitant of we can learn nothing on this head. In
the country, it will seize on the place of
this great class we should probably have
that inhabitant, however different it may be
to descend far beneath the lowest known
from its own place. Hence it will cause
fossiliferous stratum to discover the earlier
him no surprise that there should be geese
stages by which the eye has been perfected.
and frigate-birds with webbed feet, living
In the Articulata we can commence a
on the dry land or most rarely alighting on
series with an optic nerve merely coated
the water ; that there should be long-toed
with pigment, and without any other
corncrakes living in meadows instead of in
mechanism ; and from this low stage
swamps; that there should be woodpeckers
numerous gradations of structure, branch
where not a tree grows ; that there should
ing off in two fundamentally different lines,
�So
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
can be shown to exist, until we reach a
moderately high stage of perfection. In
certain crustaceans, for instance, there is a
double cornea, the inner one divided into
facets, within each of which there is a lens
shaped swelling. In other crustaceans the
transparent cones which are coated by
pigment, and which properly act only by
excluding lateral pencils of light, are con
vex at their upper ends, and must act by
convergence; and at their lower ends there
seems to be an imperfect vitreous sub
stance. With these facts, here far too
briefly and imperfectly given, which show
that there is much graduated diversity in
the eyes of living crustaceans, and bearing
in mind how small the number of living
animals is in proportion to those which i
have become extinct, I can see no very
great difficulty (not more than in the case
of many other structures) in believing that
natural selection has converted the simple
apparatus of an optic nerve, merely coated
with pigment and invested by transparent
membrane, into an optical instrument as
perfect as is possessed by any member
of the great Articulate class.
He who will go thus far, if he find on
finishing this treatise that large bodies
of facts, otherwise inexplicable, can be
explained by the theory of descent, ought
not to hesitate to go further, and to admit
that a structure even as perfect as the eye
of an eagle might be formed by natural
selection, although in this case he does
not know any of the transitional grades.
His reason ought to conquer his imagina
tion ; though I have felt the difficulty far
too keenly to be surprised at any degree of
hesitation in extending the principle of i
natural selection to such startling lengths.
It is scarcely possible to avoid comparing
the eye to a telescope. We know that this
instrument has been perfected by the longcontinued efforts of the highest human
intellects; and we naturally infer that the
eye has been formed by a somewhat analo
gous process. But may not this inference
be presumptuous ? Have we any right to
assume that the Creator works by intel
lectual powers like those of man ? If we
must compare the eye to an optical instru
ment, we ought in imagination to take
a thick layer of transparent tissue, with i
a nerve sensitive to light beneath, and then
suppose every part of this layer to be con
tinually changing slowly in density, so as
to separate into layers of different densities
and thicknesses, placed at different dis
tances from each other, and with the sur
faces of each layer slowly changing in
form. Further, we must suppose that
there is a power always intently watching
each slight accidental alteration in the
transparent layers, and carefully selecting
each alteration which, under varied cir
cumstances, may in any way, or in any
degree, tend to produce a distincter image.
We must suppose each new state of the
instrument to be multiplied by the million,
and each to be preserved till a better be
produced, and then the old ones to be
destroyed. In living bodies variation will
cause the slight alterations, generation will
multiply them almost infinitely, and natural
selection will pick out with unerring skill
each improvement. Let this process go
on for millions on millions of years, and
during each year on millions of individuals
of many kinds, and may we not believe
that a living optical instrument might thus
be formed as superior to one of glass as
the works of the Creator are to those of
man ?
If it could be demonstrated that any
complex organ existed which coyld not
possibly have been formed by numerous,
successive, slight modifications, my theory
would absolutely break down. But I can
find out no such case. No doubt, many
organs exist of which we do not know the
transitional grades, more especially if we
look to much isolated species, round which,
according to my theory, there has been
much extinction. Or again, if we look
to an organ common to all the members
of a large class, for in this latter case
the organ must have been first formed
at an extremely remote period, since which
all the many members of the class have
been developed; and, in order to discover
the early transitional grades through which
the organ has passed, we should have
to look to very ancient ancestral forms,
long since become extinct.
We should be extremely cautious in
concluding that an organ -could not have
been formed by transitional gradations
of some kind. Numerous cases could be
given among the lower animals of the
same organ performing at the same time
wholly distinct functions ; thus the alimen
tary canal respires, digests, and excretes
in the larva of the dragon-fly and in the
fish Cobites. In the Hydra the animal
may be turned inside out, and the exterior
surfa.ee will then digest and the stomach
respire. In such cases natural selection
might easily specialise, if any advantage
were thus gained, a part or organ, which
�81
DIFFICULTIES OF THE THEORY
branchiae might have bpen gradually
had performed two functions, for one
worked in by natural selection for some
function alone, and thus wholly change its
quite distinct purpose—in the same manner
nature by insensible steps. Two distinct
as, on the view entertained by some
organs sometimes perform simultaneously
naturalists that the branchiae and dorsal
the same function in the same individual.
scales of Annelids are homologous with
To give one instance, there are fish with
the wings and wing-covers of insects, it is
gills or branchiae that breathe the air
probable that organs which at. a very
dissolved in the water at the same time
ancient period served for respiration have
that they breathe free air in their swim
been actually converted into organs of
bladders, this latter organ having a ductus
flight.
pneumaticus for its supply, and being
In considering transitions of organs, it is
divided by highly vascular partitions. _ In
so important to bear in mind the proba
these cases one of the two organs might
bility of conversion from one function to
with ease be modified and perfected so as
another that I will give one more instance.
to perform all the work by itself, being
Pedunculated cirripedes have two minute
aided, during the process of modification,
folds of skin called by me the ovigerous
by the other organ; and then this other
frena, which serve, through the means of a
organ might be modified for some other
sticky secretion, to retain the eggs until
and quite distinct purpose, or be quite
they are hatched within the sack. These
obliterated.
cirripedes have no branchiae, the whole
The illustration of the swimbladder in
surface of the body and sack, including
fishes is a good one, because it shows us
the small frena, serving for respiration.
clearly the highly important fact that an
The Balanidae or sessile cirripedes, on the
organ originally constructed for one
other hand, have no ovigerous frena, the
purpose, namely flotation, may be con
eggs lying loose at the bottom of the sack
verted into one for a wholly different
in the well-enclosed shell ; but they have
purpose, namely respiration. The swim
large folded branchiae. Now, I think no
bladder has also been worked in as an
one will dispute that the ovigerous frena
accessory to the auditory organs of certain
in the one family are strictly homologous
fish, or, for I do not know which view is
with the branchiae of the other family ;
now generally held, a part of the auditory
indeed, they graduate into each other.
apparatus has been worked in as a com
Therefore, I do not doubt that little folds
plement to the swimbladder. All physio
of skin, which originally served as ovige
logists admit that the swimbladder is
rous frena, but which, likewise, very slightly
homologous or “ ideally similar ” in posi
aided the act of respiration, have been
tion and structure with the lungs of the
gradually converted by natural selection
higher vertebrate animals; hence there
into branchiae, simply through an increase
seems to me to be no great difficulty in
in their size and the obliteration of their
believing that natural selection has actually
adhesive glands. If all pedunculated cirri
converted a swimbladder into a lung or
pedes had become extinct, and they have
organ used exclusively for respiration.
already suffered far more extinction than
I can, indeed, hardly doubt that all
have sessile cirripedes, who would ever have
vertebrate animals having true lungs have
imagined that the branchiae in this latter
descended by ordinary generation from an
family had originally existed as organs for
ancient prototype of which we know
preventing the ova from being washed out
nothing, furnished with a floating appa
of the sack ?
ratus or swimbladder. We can thus, as
Although we must be extremely cautious
I infer from Professor Owen’s interesting
in concluding that any organ could not
; description of these parts, understand the
possibly have been produced by successive
strange fact that every particle of food and
transitional gradations, yet, undoubtedly,
drink which we swallow has to pass over
grave cases of difficulty occur, some of
. the orifice of the trachea, with some risk of
which will be discussed in my future work.
falling into the lungs, notwithstanding the
One of the gravest is that of neuter
beautiful contrivance by which the glottis
insects, which are often very differently
is closed. In the higher Vertebrata the
constructed from either the males or fertile
branchiae have wholly disappeared—the
females; but this case will be treated of in
slits on the sides of the neck and the loop
the next chapter. The electric organs of
like course of the arteries still marking in
fishes offer another case of special difficulty;
the embryo their former position. But it
it is impossible to conceive by what steps
is conceivable that the now utterly lost
G
�82
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
these wondrous organs have been pro
duced ; but, as Owen and others have
remarked, their intimate structure closely
resembles that of common muscle; and as
it has lately been shown that Rays have an
organ closely analogous to the electric
apparatus, and yet do not, as Matteucei
asserts, discharge any electricity, we must
own that we are far too ignorant to argue
that no transition of any kind is possible.
The electric organs offer another and
even more serious difficulty, for they occur
in only about a dozen fishes, of which
several are widely remote in their affinities.
Generally, when the same organ appears
in several members of the same class,
especially if in members having very dif
ferent habits of life, we may attribute its
presence to inheritance from a common
ancestor, and its absence in some of the
members to its loss through disuse or
natural selection. But, if the electric organs
had been inherited from one ancient
progenitor thus provided, we might have
expected that all electric fishes would
have been specially related to each other.
Nor does geology at all lead to the belief
that formerly most fishes had electric
organs, which most of their modified des
cendants have lost.
The presence of
luminous organs in a few insects, belonging
to different families and orders, offers a
parallel case of difficulty. Other cases
could be given: for instance, in plants
i the very curious contrivance of a mass
of pollen-grains, borne on a foot-stalk with
a sticky gland at the end, is the same
in Orchis and Asclepias—genera almost
as remote as possible among flowering
plants. In all these cases of two very
distinct species furnished with apparently
the same anomalous organ it should be
observed that, although the general ap
pearance and function of the organ may
be the same, yet some fundamental dif
ference can generally be detected. I am
inclined to believe that, in nearly the same
way as two men have sometimes indepen
dently hit on the very same invention, so
natural selection, working for the good
of each being and taking advantage of
analogous variations, has sometimes modi
fied in very nearly the same manner two
parts in two organic beings, which beings
owe but little of their structure in common
to inheritance from the same ancestor.
Although, in many cases, it is most diffi
cult to conjecture by what transitions
organs could have arrived at their present
states yet, considering that the proportion of
living and known forms to the extinct and un
known is very small, I have been astonished
how rarely an organ can be named towards
which no transitional grade is known to lead.
The truth of this remark is indeed shown by
that old, but somewhat exaggerated, canon
in natural history of “ Natura non facit
saltum.” We meet with this admission in
the writings of almost every experienced
naturalist; or, as Milne Edwards has well
expressed it, Nature is prodigal in variety,
but niggard in innovation. Why, on the
theory of Creation, should this be so?
Why should all the parts and organs of
many independent beings, each supposed
to have been separately created for its
proper place in nature, be so commonly
linked together by graduated steps ? Why
should not nature have taken a leap from
structure to structure? On the theory of
natural selection, we can clearly understand
why she should not; for natural selection
can act only by taking advantage of slight
successive variations ; she can never take
a leap, but must advance by the shortest
and slowest steps.
Organs of little apparent importance.—
As natural selection acts by life and death,
by the preservation of individuals with
any favourable variation, and by the
destruction of those with any unfavourable
deviation of structure, I have sometimes
felt much difficulty in understanding the
origin of simple parts of which the impor
tance does not seem sufficient to cause the
preservation of successively varying indi
viduals. I have sometimes felt as much
difficulty, though of a very different kind,
on this head, as in the case of an organ as
perfect and complex as the eye.
In the first place, we are much too
ignorant in regard to the whole economy
of any one organic being to say what
slight modifications would be of importance
or not. In a former chapter I have given
instances of most trifling characters, such
as the down on fruit and the colour of its
flesh, which, from determining the attacks
of insects or from being correlated with
constitutional differences, might assuredly
be acted on by natural selection. The tail
of the giraffe looks like an artificially con
structed fly-flapper; and it seems at first
incredible that this could have been
adapted for its present purpose by succes
sive slight modifications, each better and
better, for so trifling an object as driving
away flies ; yet we should pause before
being too positive even in this case, for we
�DIFFICULTIES OF THE THEORY
know that the distribution and existence of
cattle and other animals in South America
absolutely depends on their power of
resisting the attacks of insects ; so that
individuals which could by any means
defend themselves from these small enemies
would be able to range into new pastures,
and thus gain a great advantage. It is not
that the larger quadrupeds are actually
destroyed (except in some rare cases) by
flies, but they are incessantly harassed and
their strength reduced, so that they are
more subject to disease, or not so well
enabled in a coming dearth to search for
food, or to escape from beasts of prey.
Organs now of trifling importance have
probably in some cases been of high
importance to an early progenitor, and,
after having been slowly perfected at a
former period, have been transmitted in
nearly the same state, although now
become of very slight use; and any
actually injurious deviations in their struc
ture will always have been checked by
natural selection. Seeing how important
an organ of locomotion the tail is in most
aquatic animals, its general presence and
use for many purposes in so many land
animals, which in their lungs or modified
swimbladders betray their aquatic origin,
may perhaps be thus accounted for. A
well-developed tail having been formed in
an aquatic animal, it might subsequently
come to be worked in for all sorts of pur
poses, as a fly-flapper, an organ of pre
hension, or as an aid in turning, as with
the dog, though the aid must be slight, for
the hare, with hardly any tail, can double
quickly enough.
In the second place, we may sometimes
attribute importance to characters which
are really of very little importance, and
which have originated from quite secondary
causes, independently of natural selection.
We should remember that climate, food,
etc., probably have some little direct influ
ence on the organisation ; that characters
reappear from the law of reversion ; that
correlation of growth will have had a most
important influence in modifying various
structures ; and, finally, that sexual selec
tion will often have largely modified the
external characters of animals having a
will, to give one male an advantage in
fighting with another or in charming the
females. Moreover, when a modification
of structure has primarily arisen from the
above or other unknown causes, it may at
first have been of no advantage to the
species, but may subsequently have been
83
taken advantage of by the descendants of
the species under new conditions of life
and with newly-acquired habits.
To give a few instances to illustrate
these latter remarks. If green wood
peckers alone had existed, and we did not
know that there were many black arid
pied kinds, I dare say that we should have
thought that the green colour was a beauti
ful adaptation to hide this tree-frequenting
bird from its enemie§; and, consequently,
that it was a character of importance, and
might have been acquired through natural
selection. As it is, I have no doubt that
the colour is due to some quite distinct
cause, probably to sexual selection. A
trailing bamboo in the Malay archipelago
climbs the loftiest trees by the aid of
exquisitely constructed hooks clustered
around the ends of the branches, and this
contrivance, no doubt, is of the highest
service to the plant; but, as we see nearly
similar hooks on many trees which are not
climbers, the hooks on the bamboo may
have arisen from unknown laws of growth,
and have been subsequently taken advan
tage of by the plant undergoing further
modification and becoming a climber.
The naked skin on the head of a vulture is
generally looked at as a direct adapta
tion for wallowing in putridity; and so it
may be, or it may possibly be due to the
direct action of putrid matter; but we
should be very cautious in drawing any
such inference, when we see that the skin
on the head of t-he clean-feeding male
turkey is likewise naked. The sutures in
the skulls of young mammals have been
advanced as a beautiful adaptation for
aiding -parturition, and no doubt they
facilitate, or may be indispensable for this
act; but as sutures occur in the skulls of
young birds and reptiles, which have only
to escape from a broken egg, we may
infer that this structure has arisen from
the laws of growth, and has been taken
advantage of in the parturition of the
higher animals.
We - are profoundly ignorant of the
causes producing slight and unimportant
variations, and we are immediately made
conscious of this by reflecting on the
differences in the breeds of our domesti
cated animals in different countries, more
especially in the less civilised countries
where there has been but little artificial
selection. Careful observers are convinced
that a damp climate affects the growth of
the hair, and that with the hair the horns
are correlated. Mountain breeds always
�84
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
differ from lowland breeds, and a moun
tainous country would probably affect the
hind limbs from exercising them more, and
possibly even the form of the pelvis; and
then by the law of homologous variation
the front limbs, and even the head, would
probably be affected. The shape also of
the pelvis might affect by pressure the
shape of the head of the young in the
womb. The laborious breathing necessary
in high regions would, we have some
reason to believe, increase the size of the
chest, and again correlation would come
into play. Animals kept by savages in
different countries often have to struggle
for their own subsistence, and would be
exposed to a certain extent to natural
selection, and individuals with slightly
different constitutions would succeed best
under different climates ; and there is
reason to believe that constitution and
colour are correlated. A good observer
also states that in cattle susceptibility to
the attacks of flies is correlated with
colour, as is the liability to be poisoned by
certain plants; so that colour would be thus
subjected to the action of natural selection.
But we are far too ignorant to specu
late on the relative importance of the
several known and unknown laws of varia
tion ; and I have here alluded to them
only to show that, if we are unable to
account for the characteristic differences
of our domestic breeds, which nevertheless
we generally admit to have arisen through
ordinary generation, we ought not to lay
too much stress on our ignorance of the
precise cause of the slight analogous dif
ferences between species. I might have
adduced for this same purpose the differ
ences between the races of man, which
are so strongly marked. I may add that
some little light can apparently be thrown
on the origin of these differences, chiefly
through sexual selection of a particular
kind; but without here entering on copious
details my reasoning would appear frivolous.
The foregoing remarks lead me to say a
few words on the protest lately made by
some naturalists against the utilitarian
doctrine that every detail of structure has
been produced for the good of its pos
sessor.
They believe that very many
structures have been created for beauty
in the eyes of man, or for mere variety.
This doctrine, if true, would be absolutely
fatal to my theory. Yet I fully admit that
many structures are of no direct use to
their possessors. Physical conditions pro
bably have had some little effect on struc
ture, quite independently of any good thus
gained. Correlation of growth has no
doubt played a most important part, and
a useful modification of one part will often
have entailed on other parts diversified
changes of no direct use. So, again, cha
racters which formerly were useful, or which
formerly had arisen from correlation of
growth, or from other unknown cause, may
reappear from the law of reversion, though
now of no direct use. The effects of sexual
selection, when displayed in beauty to
charm the females, can be called useful
only in rather a forced sense. But by far
the most important consideration is that
the chief part of the organisation of every
being is simply due to inheritance; and
consequently, though each being assuredly
is well fitted for its place in nature, many
structures now have no direct relation to
the habits of life of each species. Thus
we can hardly believe that the webbed feet
of the upland goose or of the frigate-bird
are of special use to these birds; we
cannot believe that the small bones in the
arm of the monkey, in the fore-leg of the
horse, in the wing of the bat, and in the
flipper of the seal, are of special use to
these animals. We may safely attribute
these structures to inheritance. But to the
progenitor of the upland goose and of the
frigate-bird webbed feet no doubt were
as useful as they now are to the most
aquatic of existing birds.
So we may
believe that the progenitor of the seal had
not a flipper, but a foot with five toes fitted
for walking or grasping; and we may fur
ther venture to believe that the several
bones in the limbs of the monkey, horse,
and bat, which have been inherited from a
common progenitor, were formerly of more
special use to that progenitor, or its pro
genitors, than they now are to these
animals having such widely diversified
habits. Therefore, we may infer that these
several bones might have been acquired
through natural selection, subjected for
merly, as now, to the several laws of in
heritance, reversion, correlation of growth,
etc. Hence every detail of structure in
every living creature (making some little
allowance for the direct action of physical
conditions) may be viewed, either as havingbeen of special use to some ancestral form,
or as being now of special use to the
descendants of this form—either directly,
or indirectly through the complex laws of
growth.
Natural selection cannot possibly pro
duce any modification in any one species
�DIFFICULTIES OF THE THEORY
exclusively for the good of another species ;
though throughout nature one species in
cessantly takes advantage of, and profits
by, the structure of another. But natural
selection can and does often produce struc
tures for the direct injury of other species,
as we see in the fang of the adder, and in
the ovipositor of the ichneumon, by which
its eggs are deposited in the living bodies
of other insects. If it could be proved
that any part of the structure of any one
species had been formed for the exclusive
good of another species, it would anni
hilate my theory, for such could not have
been produced through natural selection.
Although many statements may be found
in works on natural history to this effect, I
cannot find even one which seems to me of
any weight. It is admitted that the rattle
snake has a poison-fang for its own defence
and for the destruction of its prey ; but
some authors suppose that at the same time
this snake is furnished with a rattle for its
own injury—namely, to warn its prey to
escape. I would almost as soon believe
that the cat curls the end of its tail when
preparing to spring in order to warn the
doomed mouse. But I have not space here
to enter on this and other such cases.
Natural selection will never produce in
a being anything injurious to itself, for
natural selection acts solely by and for the
good of each. No organ will be formed,
as Paley has remarked, for the purpose of
causing pain or for doing an injury to its
possessor. If a fair balance be struck
between the good and evil caused by each
part, each will be found on the whole
advantageous. After the lapse of time,
under changing conditions of life, if any
part comes to be injurious, it will be modi
fied ; or if it be not so, the being will
become extinct, as myriads have become
extinct.
Natural selection tends only to make
each organic being as perfect as, or slightly
more perfect than, the other inhabitants of
the same country with which it has to
struggle for existence. And we see that
this is the degree of perfection attained
under nature. The endemic productions
of New Zealand, for instance, are perfect
one compared with another; but they are
now rapidly yielding before the advancing
legions of plants and animals introduced
from Europe. Natural selection will not
produce absolute perfection; nor do we
always meet, as far as we can judge, with
this high standard under nature. The
correction for the aberration of light is
85
said, on high authority, not to be perfect
even in that most perfect organ, the eye.
If our reason leads us to admire with
enthusiasm a multitude of inimitable con
trivances in nature, this same reason tells
us, though we may easily err on both sides,
that some other contrivances are less
perfect. Can we consider the sting of the
wasp or of the bee as perfect, which, when
used against many attacking animals,
cannot be withdrawn, owing to the back
ward serratures, and so inevitably causes
the death of the insect by tearing out its
viscera ?
If we look at the sting of the bee, as
having originally existed in a remote pro
genitor as a boring and serrated instru
ment, like that in so many members of
the same great order, and which has been
modified, but not perfected for its present
purpose, with the poison originally adapted
to cause galls subsequently intensified, we
can perhaps understand how it is that the
use of the sting should so often cause the
insect’s own death ; for if, on the whole,
the power of stinging be useful to the
community, it will fulfil all the require
ments of natural selection, though it may
cause the death of some few members. If
we admire the truly wonderful power of
scent by which the males of many insects
find their females, can we admire the pro
duction for this single purpose of thousands
of drones, which are utterly useless to the
community for any other end, and which
are ultimately slaughtered by their indus
trious and sterile sisters? It may be
difficult, but we ought to admire the
savage instinctive hatred of the queen
bee, which urges her instantly to destroy
the young queens, her daughters, as soon
as born, or to perish herself in the combat;
for undoubtedly this is for the good of the
community; and maternal love or maternal
hatred, though the latter fortunately is
most rare, is all the same to the inexorable
principle of natural selection. If we admire
the several ingenious contrivances by
which the flowers of the orchids and of
many other plants are fertilised through
insect agency, can we consider as equally
perfect the elaboration by our fir-trees of
dense clouds of pollen, in order that a few
granules may be wafted by a chance'breeze
on to the ovules ?
Summary of Chapter.—We have in this
chapter discussed some of the difficulties
and objections which may be urged against
my theory. Many of them are very serious;
�86
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
but I think that in the discussion light has
been thrown on several facts which on the
theory of independent acts of creation are
utterly obscure. We have seen that species
at any one period are not indefinitely
variable, and are not linked together by
a multitude of intermediate gradations,
partly because the process of natural selec
tion will always be very slow, and will act,
at any one time, only on a very few forms ;
and partly because the very process of
natural selection almost implies the con
tinual supplanting and extinction of pre
ceding and intermediate gradations.
Closely-allied species, now living on a
continuous area, must often have been
formed when the area was not continuous,
and when the conditions of life did not
insensibly graduate away from one part to
another. When two varieties are formed
in two districts of a continuous area, an
intermediate variety will often be formed,
fitted for an intermediate zone ; but, from
reasons assigned, the intermediate variety
will usually exist in lesser numbers than
the two forms which it connects ; conse
quently, the two latter, during the course
of further modification, from existing in
greater numbers, will have a great advan
tage over the less numerous intermediate
variety, and will thus generally succeed in
supplanting and exterminating it.
We have seen in this chapter how
cautious we should be in concluding that
the most different habits of life could not
graduate into each other; that a bat, for
instance, could not have been formed by
natural selection from an animal which at
first could only glide through the air.
We have seen that a species may, under
new conditions of life, change its habits, or
have diversified habits, with some habits
very unlike those of its nearest congeners.
Hence we can understand, bearing in mind
that each organic being is trying to live
wherever it can. live, how it has arisen that
there are upland geese with webbed feet,
ground woodpeckers, diving thrushes, and
petrels with the habits of auks.
Although the belief, that an organ so
perfect as the eye could have been formed
by natural selection, is more than enough
to stagger anyone, yet in the case of any
organ, if we know of a long series of gra
dations in complexity, each good for its
possessor, then, under changing conditions
of life, there is no logical impossibility in
the acquirement of any conceivable degree
of perfection through natural selection.
In the cases in which we know of no inter-
♦
mediate or transitional states we should
be very cautious in concluding that none
could have existed, for the*homologies of
many organs and their intermediate states
show that wonderful metamorphoses in
function are at least possible. For in
stance, a swim-bladder has apparently
been converted into an air-breathing lung.
The same organ having performed simul
taneously very different functions, and then
having been specialised for one function;
and two very distinct organs having per
formed at the same time the same func
tion, the one having been perfected while
aided by the other, must often have largely
facilitated transitions.
We are far too ignorant, in almost every
case, to be enabled to assert that any part
or organ is so unimportant for the welfare
of a species that modifications in its
structure could not have been slowly accu
mulated by means of natural selection.
But we may confidently believe that many
modifications, wholly due to the laws of
growth, and at first in no way advan
tageous to a species, have been subse
quently taken advantage of by the still
further modified descendants of this species.
We may, also, believe that a part formerly
of high importance has often been retained
(as the tail of an aquatic animal by its
terrestrial descendants), though it has
become of such small importance that it
could not, in its present state, have been
acquired by natural selection—a poweiwhich acts solely by the preservation of
profitable variations in the struggle for life.
Natural selection will produce nothing
in one species for the exclusive good or
injury of another; though it may well
produce parts, organs, and excretions
highly useful or even indispensable, or
highly injurious to another species, but in
all cases at the same time useful to the
owner. Natural selection in each wellstocked country must act chiefly through
the competition of the inhabitants one with
another, and consequently will produce
perfection, or strength in the battle for life,
only according to the standard of that
country. Hence the inhabitants of one
country, generally the smaller one, will
often yield, as we see they do yield, to
the inhabitants of another and generally
larger country. For in the larger country7
there will have existed more individuals
and more diversified forms, and the com
petition will have been severer, and thus
the standard of perfection will have been
rendered higher. Natural selection will
�INSTINCT
not necessarily produce absolute perfec
tion ; nor, as far as we can judge by our
limited faculties, can absolute perfection
be everywhere found.
On the theory of natural selection we
can clearly understand the full meaning
of that old canon in natural history,
“ Natura non facit saltum.” This canon,
if we look only to the present inhabitants
of the world, is not strictly correct; but
if we include all those of past times, it
must by my theory be strictly true.
It is generally acknowledged that all
organic beings have been formed on two
great laws—Unity of Type, and the Con
ditions of Existence. By unity of type
is meant that fundamental agreement in
structure which we see in organic beings
of the same class, and which is quite in
87
dependent of their habits of life. On my
theory, unity of type is explained by unity
of descent. The expression of conditions
of existence, so often insisted on by the
illustrious Cuvier, is fully embraced by the
principle of natural selection. For natural
selection acts by either now adapting the
varying parts of eac-h being to its organic
and inorganic conditions of life, or by
having adapted them during long-past
periods of time; the adaptations being
aided in some cases by use and disuse,
being slightly affected by the direct action
of the external conditions of life, and being
in all cases subjected to the several laws of
growth. Hence, in fact, the law of the
Conditions of Existence is the higher law.
as it includes, through the inheritance of
former adaptations, that of Unity of Type.
Chapter VII.
INSTINCT
Instincts comparable with habits, but different I one understands what is meant when it is
in their origin—Instincts graduated—Aphides
said that instinct impels the cuckoo to
and ants—-Instincts variable—Domestic in
migrate and to lay her eggs in other birds’
stincts, their origin—Natural instincts of the
nests. An action, which we ourselves
cuckoo, ostrich, and parasitic bees—Slave
should require experience to enable us to
making ants—Hive-bee, its cell-making in
perform, when performed by an animal,
stinct—Difficulties on the theory of the Natural
more especially by a very young one,
Selection of instincts—Neuter or sterile in
without any experience, and when per
sects—S ummary.
The subject of instinct might have been
worked into the previous chapters; but I
have thought that it would be more con
venient to treat the subject separately, especiallyas so wonderful an instinct as that of
the hive-bee making its cells will probably
have occurred to many readers as a diffi
cultysufficient to overthrow my whole theory.
I must premise that I have nothing to do
with the origin of the primary mental
powers, any more than I have with that of
life itself. We are concerned only with the
diversities of instinct and of the other
mental qualities of animals within the
same class.
I will not attempt any definition of
instinct. It would be easy to show that
several distinct mental actions are com
monly embraced by this term; but every
formed by many individuals in the same
way, without their knowing for what pur
pose it is performed, is usually said to be
instinctive. But I could show that none
of these characters of instinct are universal.
A little dose, as Pierre Huber expresses it,
of judgment or reason often comes into
play even in animals very low in the scale
of nature.
Frederick Cuvier and several of the older
metaphysicians have compared instinct
with habit. This comparison gives, I think,
a remarkably accurate notion of the frame
of mind under which an instinctive action
is performed, but not of its origin. How
unconsciously many habitual actions are
performed, indeed, not rarely in direct
opposition to our conscious will, yet they
may be modified by the will or reason.
Habits easily become associated with
'
•
�88
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
other habits, and with certain periods
of time and states of the body. When
once acquired, they often remain constant
throughout life. Several other points of
resemblance between instincts and habits
could be pointed out. As in repeating a
well-known song, so in instincts, one action
follows another by a sort of rhythm; if a
person be interrupted in a song, or in
repeating anything by rote, he is generally
forced to go back to recover the habitual
train of thought: so P. Huber found it
was with a caterpillar, which makes a
very complicated hammock; for if he
took a caterpillar which had completed
its hammock up to, say, the sixth stage of
construction, and put it into a hammock
completed up only to the third stage, the
caterpillar simply re-performed the fourth,
fifth, and sixth stages of construction. If,
however, a caterpillar were taken out of a
hammock made up, for instance, to the
third stage, and were put into one finished
up to the sixth stage, so that much of its
work was already done for it, far from
feeling the benefit of this, it was much
embarrassed, and, in order to complete its
hammock, seemed forced to start from the
third stage, where it had left off, and thus
tried to complete the already finished work.
If we suppose any habitual action to
become inherited—and I think it can be
shown that this does sometimes happen—
then the resemblance between what origi
nally was a habit and an instinct becomes
so close as not to be distinguished. If
Mozart, instead of playing the pianoforte
at three years old with wonderfully little
practice, had played a tune with no practice
at all, he might truly be said to have done
so instinctively. But it would be the most
serious error to suppose that the greater
number of instincts have been acquired by
habit in one generation, and then trans
mitted by inheritance to succeeding genera
tions. It can be clearly shown that the
most wonderful instincts with which we are
acquainted—namely, those of the hive-bee
and of many ants, could not possibly have
been thus acquired.
It will be universally admitted that
instincts are as important as corporeal
structure for the welfare of each species,
under its present conditions of life. Under
changed conditions of life, it is, at least,
possible that slight modifications of instinct
might be profitable to a species ; and if it
can be shown that instincts do vary ever
so little, then I can see no difficulty in
natural selection preserving and continually
accumulating variations of instinct to any
extent that may be profitable. It is thus,
as I believe, that all the most complex
and wonderful instincts have originated.
As modifications of corporeal structure
arise from, and are increased by, use or
habit, and are diminished or lost by disuse,
so I do not doubt it has been with instincts.
But I believe that the effects of habit are
of quite subordinate importance to the
effects of the natural selection of what may
be called accidental variations of instincts
—that is, of variations produced by the
same unknown causes which produce slight
deviations of bodily structure.
No complex instinct can possibly be
produced through natural selection, except
by the slow and gradual accumulation of
numerous, slight, yet profitable, variations.
Hence, as in the case of corporeal struc
tures, we ought to find in nature, not the
actual transitional gradations by which
each complex instinct has been acquired—for these could be found only in the lineal
ancestors of each species—but we ought
to find in the collateral lines of descent
some evidence of such gradations ; or we
ought at least t-o be- able to show that
gradations of some kind are possible ; and
this we certainly can do. I have been
surprised to find, making allowance for the
instincts of animals having been but little
observed except in Europe and North
America, and for no instinct being known
among extinct species, how very generally
gradations, leading to the most complex
instincts, can be discovered. Changes of
instinct may sometimes be facilitated by
the same species having different instincts
at different periods of life or at different
seasons of the year, or when placed under
different circumstances, etc.; in which case
either one or the other instinct might be
preserved by natural selection. And such
instances of diversity of instinct in the same
species can be shown to occur in nature.
Again, as in the case of corporeal struc
ture, and conformably with my theory, the
instinct of each species is good for itself,
but has never, as far as we can judge, been
produced for the exclusive good of others.
One of the strongest instances of an animal
apparently performing an action for the
sole good of another, with* which I am
acquainted, is that of aphides voluntarily
yielding their sweet excretion to ants: that
they do so voluntarily the following facts
show. I removed all the ants from a
group of about a dozen aphides on a dock
plant, and prevented their attendance
�INSTINCT
during several hours. After this interval,
I felt sure that the aphides would want to
excrete. I watched them for some time
through a lens, but not one excreted ; I
then tickled and stroked them with a hair
in the same manner, as well as I could, as
the ants do with their antennae ; but not
one excreted. Afterwards I allowed an
ant to visit them, and it immediately
seemed, by its eager way of running about,
to be well aware what a rich flock it had
discovered; it then began to play with its
antennae on the abdomen first of one aphis
and then of another; and each aphis, as
soon as it felt the antennae, immediately
lifted up its abdomen and excreted a limpid
drop of sweet juice, which was eagerly
devoured by the ant. Even the quite young
aphides behaved in this manner, showing
that the action was instinctive, and not the
result of experience. But as the excretion
is extremely viscid, it is probably a con
venience to the aphides to have it removed;
and therefore probably the aphides do not
instinctively excrete for the sole good of the
ants. Although I do not believe that any
animal in the world performs an action for
the exclusive good of another of a distinct
species, yet each species tries to take
advantage of the instinct of others, as each
takes advantage of the weaker bodily
structure of others. So again, in some
few cases, certain instincts cannot be con
sidered as absolutely perfect; but, as
details on this and other such points are
not indispensable, they may be here passed
over.
As some degree of variation in instincts
under a state of nature, and the inheritance
of such variations, are indispensable for
the action of natural selection, as many in
stances as possible ought to be here given;
but want of space prevents me. I can only
assert that instincts certainly do vary—for
instance, the migratory instinct, both in
extent and direction, and in its total loss.
So it is with the nests of birds, which vary
partly in dependence on the situations
chosen, and on the nature and temperature
of the country inhabited, but often from
causes wholly unknown to us : Audubon
has given several remarkable cases of
differences in the nests of the same species
in the northern and southern United
States. Fear of any particular enemy is
certainly an instinctive quality, as may be
seen in nestling birds, though it is strength
ened by experience, and by the sight of
fear of the same enemy in other animals.
But fear of man is slowly acquired, as I
89
have elsewhere shown, by various animals
inhabiting desert islands; and we may see
an instance of this, even in England, in the
greater wildness of all our large birds than
of our small birds, for the large birds have
been most persecuted by man. We may
safely attribute the greater wildness of our
large birds to this cause, for in uninhabited
islands large birds are not more fearful
than small; and the magpie, so wary in
England, is tame in Norway, as is the
hooded crow in Egypt.
. That the general disposition of indi
viduals of the same species, born in a
state of nature, is extremely diversified
can be shown by a multitude of facts.
Several cases, also, could be given of
occasional and strange habits in certain
species, which might, if advantageous to
the species, give rise, through natural selec
tion, to quite new instincts.
But I am
well aware that these general statements,
without facts given in detail, can produce
but a feeble effect on the reader’s mind. I
can only repeat my assurance, that I do not
speak without good evidence.
The possibility, or even probability, of
inherited variations of instinct in a state of
nature will be strengthened by briefly con
sidering a few cases under domestication.
We shall thus also be enabled to see
the respective parts which habit and the
selection of so-called accidental variations
have played in modifying the mental
qualities of our domestic animals.
A
number of curious and authentic instances
could be given of the inheritance of all
shades of disposition and tastes, and like
wise of the oddest tricks, associated with
certain frames of mind or periods of time.
But let us look to the familiar case of the
several breeds of dogs : it cannot be
doubted that young pointers (I have my
self seen a striking instance) will some
times point and even back other dogs the
very first time that they are taken out;
retrieving is certainly in some degree in
herited by retrievers ; and a tendency to
run round, instead of at, a flock of sheep
by shepherd-dogs. I cannot see that these
actions, performed without experience by
the young, and in nearly the same manner
by each individual, performed with eager
delight by each breed, and without the end
being known—for the young pointer can
no more know that he points to aid his
master than the white butterfly knows why
she lays her eggs on the leaf of the cabbage
—I cannot see that these actions differ
essentially from true instincts. If we were
�go
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
to see one kind of wolf, when young and
without any training, as soon as it scented
its prey, stand motionless like a statue, and
then slowly crawl forward with a peculiar
gait; and another kind of wolf rushing
round, instead of at, a herd of deer, and
driving them to a distant point, we should
assuredly call these actions instinctive.
Domestic instincts, as they may be called,
are certainly far less fixed or invariable
than natural instincts ; but they have been
acted on by far less rigorous selection, and
have been transmitted for an incomparably
shorter period under less fixed conditions
of life.
How strongly these domestic instincts,
habits, and dispositions are inherited, and
. how curiously they become mingled, is well
shown when different breeds of dogs are
crossed. Thus it is known that a cross
with a bull-dog has affected for many
generations the courage and obstinacy of
greyhounds; and a cross with a greyhound
has given to a whole family of shepherd
dogs a tendency to hunt hares. These
domestic instincts, when thus tested by
crossing, resemble natural instincts, which
in a like manner become curiously blended
together, and for a long period exhibit
traces of the instincts of either parent:
for example, Le Roy describes a dog,
whose great-grandfather was a wolf,
and this dog showed a trace of its wild
parentage only in one way, by not coming
in a straight line to his master when called.
Domestic instincts are sometimes spoken
of as actions which have become inherited
solely from long-continued and compulsory
habit; but this, I think, is not true. No
one would ever have thought of teaching,
or probably could have taught, the tumbler
pigeon to tumble—an action which, as I
have witnessed, is performed by young
birds that have never seen a pigeon
tumble. We may believe that some one
pigeon showed a slight tendency to this
strange habit, and that the long-continued
selection of the best individuals in succes
sive generations made tumblers what they
now are; and near Glasgow there are
house-tumblers, as I hear from Mr. Brent,
which cannot fly eighteen inches high
without going head over heels. It may
be doubted whether anyone would have
thought of training a dog to point had not
some one dog naturally shown a tendency
in this line ; and this is known occasionally
to happen, as I once saw in a pure terrier :
the act of pointing is probably, as many
have thought, only the exaggerated pause
of an animal preparing to spring on its
prey. When the first tendency to point
was once displayed, methodical selection
and the inherited effects of compulsory
training in each successive generation
would soon complete the work; and
unconscious selection is still at work, as
each man tries to procure, without intending
to improve the breed, dogs which will stand
and hunt best. On the other hand, habit
alone in some cases has sufficed; no
animal is more difficult to tame than the
young of the wild rabbit ; scarcely any
animal is tamer than the young of the
tame rabbit; but I do not suppose that
domestic rabbits have ever been selected
for tameness ; and I presume that we must
attribute the whole of the inherited change
from extreme wildness to extreme tame
ness simply to habit and long-continued
close confinement.
Natural instincts are lost under domesti
cation : a remarkable instance of this is
seen in those breeds of fowls which very
rarely or never become “ broody ’’—that is,
never wish to sit on their eggs. Familiarity
alone prevents our seeing how universally
and largely the minds of our domestic
animals have been modified by domestica
tion. It is scarcely possible to doubt that
the love of man has become instinctive in
the dog. All wolves, foxes, jackals, and
species of the cat genus, when kept tame,
are most eager to attack poultry, sheep,
and pigs; and this tendency has been
found incurable in dogs which have been
brought home as puppies from countries
such as Tierra del Fuego and Australia,
where the savages do not keep these
domestic animals. How rarely, on the
other hand, do our civilised dogs, even
when quite young, require to be taught not
to attack poultry, sheep, and pigs 1 No
doubt they occasionally do make an attack,
and are then beaten ; and if not cured,
they are destroyed ; so that habit, with
some degree of selection, has probably
concurred in civilising by inheritance our
dogs. On the other hand, young chickens
have lost, wholly by habit, that fear of the
dog and cat, which no doubt was origi
nally instinctive in them, in the same way
as it is- so plainly instinctive in young
pheasants, though reared under a hen. It
is not that chickens have lost all fear, but
fear only of dogs and cats, for, if the hen
gives the danger-chuckle, they will run
(more especially young turkeys) from under
her, and conceal themselves in the sur
rounding grass or thickets ; and this is
�INSTINCT
evidently done for the instinctive purpose
of allowing, as we see in wild ground
birds, their mother to fly away. But this
instinct retained by our chickens has
become useless under domestication, for
the mother-hen has almost lost by disuse
the power of flight.
Hence, we may conclude that domestic
instincts have been acquired and natural
instincts have been lost partly by habit,
and partly by man selecting and accu
mulating, during successive generations,
peculiar mental habits and actions, which
at first appeared from what we must in our
ignorance call an accident. In some cases
compulsory habit alone has sufficed to
produce such inherited mental changes ;
in other cases compulsory habit has done
nothing, and all has been the result of
selection, pursued both methodically and
unconsciously; but in most cases, pro
bably, habit and selection have acted
together.
We shall, perhaps, best understand how
instincts in a state of nature have become
modified by selection by considering a few
cases. I will select only three out of the
several which I shall have to discuss in my
future work—namely, the instinct which
leads the cuckoo to lay her eggs in other
birds’ nests; the slave-making instinct of
certain ants ; and the comb-makrng power
of the hive-bee : these two latter instincts
have generally, and most justly, been
ranked by naturalists as the most wonderful
of all known instincts.
It is now commonly admitted that the
more immediate and final cause of the
cuckoo’s instinct is that she lays her eggs,
not daily, but at intervals of two or three
days ; so that, if she were to make her own
nest and sit on her own eggs, those first
laid would have to be left for some time
unincubated, or there would be eggs and
young birds of different ages in the same
nest. If this were the case, the process of
laying and hatching might be incon
veniently long, more especially as she has
to migrate at a very early period; and the
first hatched young would probably have
to be fed by the male alone. But the
American cuckoo is in this predicament ;
for she makes her own nest and has eggs
and young successively hatched, all at the
same time. It has been asserted that the
American cuckoo occasionally lays her eggs
in other birds’ nests ; but I hear on the
high authority of Dr. Brewer that this is a
mistake. Nevertheless, I could give several
instances of various birds which have been
9i
known occasionally to lay their eggs in
other birds’ nests. Now let us suppose
that the ancient progenitor of our European
cuckoo had the habits of the American
cuckoo, but that occasionally she laid an
egg in another bird’s nest. If the old bird
profited by this occasional habit, or if the
young were made more vigorous by advan
tage having been taken of the mistaken
maternal instinct of another bird than by
their own mother’s care, encumbered as
she can hardly fail to be by having eggs
and young of different ages at the same
time, then the old birds or the fostered .
young would gain an advantage. And
analogy would lead me to believe that the
young thus reared would be apt to follow
by inheritance the occasional and aberrant
habit of their mother, and in their turn
would be apt to lay their eggs in other
birds’ nests, and thus be successful in rear
ing their young. By a continued process
of this nature I believe that the strange
instinct of our cuckoo could be, and has
been, generated. I may add that, accord
ing to Dr. Gray and to some other observers,
the European cuckoo has not utterly lost
all maternal love and care for her own off
spring.
The occasional habit of birds laying their
eggs in other birds’ nests, either of the
same or of a distinct species, is not very
uncommon with the Gallinacese ; and this
perhaps explains the origin of a singular
instinct in the allied group of ostriches.
For several hen ostriches, at least in the
case of the American species, unite and lay
first a few eggs in one nest and then in
another ; and these are hatched by the
males. This instinct may probably be
accounted for by the fact of the hens laying
a large number of eggs, but, as in the case
of the cuckoo, at intervals of two or three
days.
This instinct, however, of the
American ostrich has not as yet been per
fected ; for a surprising number of eggs lie
strewed over the plains, so that in one
day’s hunting I picked up no less than
twenty lost and wasted eggs.
Many bees are parasitic, and always lay
their eggs in the nests of bees of other
kinds. This case is more remarkable than
that of the cuckoo ; for these bees have
not only their instincts but their structure
modified in accordance with their parasitic
habits ; for they do not possess the pollen
collecting apparatus which would be neces
sary if they, had to store food for their
own young. Some, species, likewise, of
Sphegidse (wasp-like insects) are parasitic
�92
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
on other species ; and M. Fabre has latelyshown good reason for believing that
although the Tachytes nigra generally
makes its own burrow and stores it with
paralysed prey for its own larvae to feed on,
yet that when this insect finds a burrow
already made and stored by another sphex,
it takes advantage of the prize, and becomes
for the occasion parasitic. In this case, as
with the supposed case of the cuckoo, I
can see no difficulty in natural selection
making an occasional habit permanent, if
of advantage to the species, and if the
insect whose nest and stored food are
thus feloniously appropriated be not thus
exterminated.
and Mr. Smith, I tried to approach the
subject in a sceptical frame of mind, as
anyone may well be excused for doubting
the truth of so extraordinary and odious
an instinct as that of making slaves.
Hence I will give the observations which
I have myself made, in some little detail.
I opened fourteen nests of F. sanguinea,
and found a few slaves in all. Males and
fertile females of the slave-species (F. fusca)
are found only in their own proper com
munities, and have never been observed in
the nests of F. sanguinea. The slaves are
black and not above half the size of their
red masters, so that the contrast in their
appearance is very great. When the nest
is slightly disturbed, the slaves occasionally
Slave-making instinct.—This remark
come out, and like their masters are much
able instinct was first discovered in the
agitated and defend the nest; when the
Formica (Polyerges) rufescens by Pierre
nest is much disturbed and the larvse and'
Huber, a better observer even than his
pupae are exposed, the slaves work ener
celebrated father. This ant is absolutely
getically with their masters in carrying
dependent on its slaves ; without their aid
them away to a place of safety. Hence it
the species would certainly become extinct
is clear that the slaves feel quite at home.
in a single year. The males and fertile
During the months of June and July, on
females do no work.
The workers or
three successive years, I have watched for
sterile females, though most energetic and
many hours several nests in Surrey and
courageous in capturing slaves, do no
Sussex, and never saw a slave either leave
other work. They are incapable of making
or enter a nest. As, during these months,
their own nests, or of feeding their own
the slaves are very few in number, I thought
larvae. When the old nest is found incon
that they might behave differently when
venient, and they have to migrate, it is the
more numerous ; but Mr. Smith informs
slaves which determine the migration, and
me that he has watched the nests at various
they actually carry their masters in their
hours during May, June, and August, both
jaws. So utterly helpless are the masters,
in Surrey and Hampshire, and has never
that when Huber shut up thirty of them
seen the slaves, though present in large
without a slave, but with plenty of the food
numbers in August, either leave or enter
which they like best and with their larvse
the nest. Hence he considers them as
and pupae to stimulate them to work, they
strictly household slaves. The masters, on
did nothing; they could not even feed
the other hand, may be constantly seen
themselves, and many perished of hunger.
bringing in materials for the nest, and food '
Huber then introduced a single slave (F.
of all kinds. During the present year,
fusca), and she instantly set to work, fed
however, in the month of July, I came
and saved the survivors; made some cells
across a community with an unusually
and tended the larvae, and put all to rights.
large stock of slaves, and I observed a few
What can be more extraordinary than these
slaves mingled with their masters leaving
well-ascertained facts? If we had not known
the nest, and marching along the same
of any other slave-making ant, it would
road to a tall Scotch fir-tree, twenty-five
have been hopeless to have speculated
yards distant, which they ascended to
how so wonderful an instinct could have
gether, probably in search of aphides or
been perfected.
cocci.
According to Huber, who had
Another species, Formica san guinea,
ample opportunities for observation, in
was likewise first discovered by P.‘Huber
Switzerland the slaves habitually work
to be a slave-making- ant. This species
with their masters in making the nest,
is found in the southern parts of England,
and they alone open and close the doors
and its habits have been attended to by
in the morning and evening; and, as
Mr. F. Smith, of the British Museum, to
Huber expressly states, their principal
whom I am much indebted for informa
office is to search for aphides. This dif
tion on this and other subjects. Although
ference in the usual habits of the masters
fully trusting to the statements of Huber
and slaves in the two countries probably
�INSTINCT
depends merely on the slaves being cap
tured in greater numbers in Switzerland
than in England.
One day I fortunately witnessed a migra
tion of F. sanguinea from one nest to
another, and it was a most interesting
spectacle to behold the masters carefully
carrying (instead of being carried by, as in
the case of F. rufescens) their slaves in their
jaws. Another day my attention was struck
by about a 'score of the slave-makers haunt
ing the same spot, and evidently not in
search of food; they approached and were
vigorously repulsed by an independent
community of the slave-species (F. fusca);
sometimes as many as three of these ants
clinging to the legs of the slave-making F.
sanguinea. The latter ruthlessly killed their
small opponents, and carried their dead
bodies as food to their nest, twenty-nine
yards distant; but they were prevented
from getting any pupae to rear as slaves. I
then dug up a small parcel of the pupae of
F. fusca from another nest, and put them
down on a bare spot near the place of
combat; they were eagerly seized, and
carried off by the tyrants, who perhaps
fancied that, after all, they had been vic
torious in their late combat.
At the same time I laid on the same
place a small parcel of the pupae of another
species, F. flava, with a few of these little
yellow ants still clinging to the fragments
of the nest. This species is sometimes,
though rarely, made into slaves, as has been
described by Mr. Smith.
Although so
small a species, it is very courageous, and
I have seen it ferociously attack other ants.
In one instance I found to my surprise an
independent community of F. flava under a
stone beneath a nest of the slave-making
F. sanguinea; and when I had accidentally
disturbed both nests, the little ants attacked
their big neighbours with surprising courage.
Now I was curious to ascertain whether F.
sanguinea could distinguish the pupae of F.
fusca, which they habitually make into
slaves, from those of the little and furious
F. flava, which they rarely capture, and it
was evident that they did at once distinguish
them ; for we have seen that they eagerly
and instantly seized the pupae of F. fusca,
whereas they were much terrified when they
came across the pupae, or even the earth
from the nest of F. flava, and quickly ran
away ; but in about a quarter of an hour,
shortly after all the little yellow ants had
crawled away, they took heart and carried
off the pupae.
One evening I visited another community
93
of F. sanguinea, and found a number of
these ants returning home and entering
their nests, carrying the dead bodies of F.
fusca (showing that it was not a migration)
and numerous pupae. I traced a long file of
ants burthened with booty, for about forty
yards, to a very thick clump of heath,
whence I saw the last individual of F. san
guinea emerge, carrying a pupa; but I was
not able to find the desolated nest in the
thick heath. The nest, however, must have
been close at hand, for two or three indi
viduals of F. fusca were rushing about in
the greatest agitation, and one was perched
motionless with its own pupa in its mouth
on the top of a spray of heath, an image of
despair over its ravaged home.
Such are the facts, though they did not
need confirmation by me, in regard to the
wonderful instinct of making slaves. Let
it be observed what a contrast the instinc
tive habits of F. sanguinea present with
those of the continental F. rufescens. The
latter does not build its own nest, does not
determine its own migrations, does not
collect food for itself or its young, and
cannot even feed itself: it is absolutely
dependent on its numerous slaves. Formica
sanguinea, on the other hand, possesses
much fewer slaves, and in the early part of
the summer extremely few: the masters
determine when and where a new nest shall
be formed, and when they migrate the
masters carry the slaves. Both in Switzer
land and England the slaves seem to have
the exclusive care of the larvae, and the
masters alone go on slave-making expe
ditions. In Switzerland the slaves and
masters work together, making and bringing
materials for the nest: both, but chiefly the
slaves, tend, and milk as it maybe called, their
aphides ; and thus both collect food for the
community. In England the masters alone
usually leave the nest to collect building
materials and food for themselves, their
slaves, and larvae. So that the masters in
this country receive much less service from
their slaves than they do in Switzerland.
By what steps the instinct of F. sanguinea
originated I will not pretend to conjecture.
But as ants, which are not slave-makers,
will, as I have seen, carry off pupae of
other species, if scattered near their nests,
it is possible that such pupae originally
stored as food might become developed ;
and the foreign ants thus unintentionally
reared would then follow their proper
instincts, and do what work they could.
If their presence proved useful to the
species which had seized them—if it were
�94
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
more advantageous to this species to ca-p. ture workers than to procreate them—the
habit of collecting pupse originally for food
might by natural selection be strengthened
and rendered permanent for the very
different purpose of raising slaves. When
the instinct was once acquired, if carried
out to a much less extent even than in our
British F. sanguinea, which, as we have
seen, is less aided by its slaves than
the same species in Switzerland, I can see
no difficulty in natural selection increasing
and modifying the instinct—always sup
posing each modification to be of use to
the species—until an ant was formed as
abjectly dependent on its slaves as is the
Formica rufescens.
Cell-making instinct of the Hive-Bee. —I
will not here enter on minute details on
this subject, but will merely give an outline
of the conclusions at which I have arrived.
He must be a dull man who can examine
the exquisite structure of a comb, so beau
tifully adapted to its end, without enthu
siastic admiration. We hear from mathe
maticians that bees have practically solved
a recondite p?oblem, and have made their
cells of the proper shape to hold the
greatest possible amount of honey, with
the least possible consumption of precious
wax in their construction. It has been
remarked that a skilful workman, with
fitting tools and measures, would find it
very difficult to make cells of wax of the
true form, though this is perfectly effected
by a crowd of bees working in a dark hive.
Grant whatever instincts you please, and it
seems at first quite inconceivable how they
can make all the necessary angles and
planes, or even perceive when they are
correctly made. But the difficulty is not
nearly so great as it at first appears :
all this beautiful work can be shown, I
think, to follow from a few very simple
instincts.
I was led to investigate this subject by
Mr. Waterhouse, who has shown that the
form of the cell stands in close relation to
the presence of adjoining cells ; and the
following view may, perhaps, be considered
only as a modification of his theory. Let
us look to the great principle of gradation,
and see whether Nature does not reveal to
us her method of work. At one end of a
short series we have humble-bees, which
use their old cocoons to hold honey, some
times adding to them short tubes of wax,
and likewise making separate and very
irregular rounded cells of wax. At the
other end of the series we have the cells
of the hive-bee, placed in a double layer:
each cell, as is well known, is an hexagonal
prism, with the basal edges of its six sides
bevelled so as to fit on to a pyramid, formed
of three rhombs. These rhombs have
certain angles, and the three which form
the pyramidal base of a single cell on one
side of the comb enter into the composi
tion of the bases of three adjoining cells
on the opposite side. In the series between
the extreme perfection of the cells of the
hive-bee and the simplicity of those of the
humble-bee we have the cells of the
Mexican Melipona domestica carefully
described and figured by Pierre Huber.
The Melipona itself is intermediate in
structure between the hive and humble
bee, but more nearly related to the latter :
it forms a nearly regular waxen comb of
cylindrical cells, in which the young are
hatched, and, in addition, some large cells
of wax for holding honey. These latter
cells are nearly spherical and of nearly
equal sizes, and are aggregated into an
irregular mass. But the important point
to notice is that these cells are always
made at that degree of nearness to each
other that they would have intersected or
broken into each other if the spheres had
been completed; but this is never per
mitted, the bees building perfectly flat
walls of wax between the spheres which
thus tend to intersect. Hence each cell
consists of an outer spherical portion and
of two, three, or more perfectly flat surfaces,
according as the cell adjoins two, three, or
more other cells. When one cell comes
into contact with three other cells, which,
from the spheres being nearly of the same
size, is very frequently and necessarily the
case, the three flat surfaces are united into
a pyramid; and this pyramid, as Huber
has remarked, is manifestly a gross imita
tion of the three-sided pyramidal bases of
the cell of the hive-bee. As in the cells of
the hive-bee, so here, the three plane sur
faces in any one cell necessarily enter into
'the construction of three adjoining cells.
It is obvious that the Melipona saves wax
by this manner of building ; for the flat
walls between the adjoining cells are not
double, but are of the' same thickness as
the outer spherical portions, and yet each
flat portion forms a part of two cells.
Reflecting on this case, it occurred to me
that if the Melipona had made its spheres
at some given distance from each other,
and had made them of equal sizes, and had
arranged them symmetrically in a double
�INSTINCT
layer, the resulting structure would pro
bably have been as perfect as the comb of
the hive-bee. Accordingly I wrote to Pro
fessor Miller, of Cambridge, and this
geometer has kindly read over the follow
ing statement, drawn up from his informa
tion, and tells me that it is strictly correct:—•
If a number of equal spheres be described
with their centres placed in two parallel
layers ; with the centre of each sphere at
the distance of radius x •$/ 2, or radius
x 1.41421 (or at some lesser distance), from
the centres of the six surrounding spheres
in the same layer; and at the same distance
from the centres of the adjoining spheres
in the other and parallel layer; then, if
planes of intersection between the several
spheres in both layers be formed, there will
result a double layer of hexagonal prisms
united together by pyramidal bases formed
of three rhombs ; and the rhombs and the
sides of the hexagonal prisms will have
every angle identically the same with the
best measurements which have been made
of the cells of the hive-bee.
Hence we may safely conclude that if
we could slightly modify the instincts
already possessed by the Melipona, and in
themselves not very wonderful, this bee
would make a structure as wonderfully
perfect as that of the hive-bee. We must
suppose the Melipona to make her cells
truly spherical, and of equal sizes ; and
this would not be very surprising, seeing
that she already does so to a certain extent,
and seeing what perfectly cylindrical
burrows in wood many insects can make,
apparently by turning round on a fixed
point. We must suppose the Melipona to
arrange her cells in level layers, as she
already does her cylindrical cells ; and we
must further suppose—and this is the
greatest difficulty—that she can somehow
judge accurately at what distance to stand
from her fellow-labourers when several are
making their spheres ; but she is already
so far enabled to judge of distance that she
always describes her spheres so as to inter
sect largely; and then she unites the points
of intersection by perfectly flat surfaces.
We have further to suppose—but this is no
difficulty—that after hexagonal prisms have
been formed by the intersection of adjoin
ing spheres in the same layer, she can
prolong the hexagon to any length requisite
to hold the stock of honey; in the same
way as the rude humble-bee adds cylinders
of wax to the circular mouths of her old
cocoons. By such modifications of instincts
in themselves not very wonderful—hardly
95
more wonderful than those which guide a
bird to make its nest—I believe that the
hive-bee has acquired, through natural
selection, her inimitable • architectural
powers.
But this theory can be tested by experi
ment. Following the example of Mr.
Tegetmeier, I separated two combs, and
put between them a long, thick, square
strip of wax : the bees instantly began to
excavate minute circular pits in it ; and as
they deepened these little pits, they made
them wider and wider, until they were con
verted into shallow basins, appearing to
the eye perfectly true or parts of a sphere,
and of about the diameter of a cell. It
was most interesting to me to observe that,
wherever several bees had begun to ex
cavate these basins near together, they had
begun their work at such a distance from
each other that by the time the basins had
acquired the above stated width (z>., about
the width of an ordinary cell), and were in
depth about one sixth of the diameter of
the sphere of which they formed a part,
the rims of the basins intersected or broke
into each other. As soon as this occurred,
the bees ceased to excavate,*and began to
build up flat walls of wax on the lines of
intersection between the basins, so that
each hexagonal prism was built upon the
scalloped edge of a smooth basin, instead
of on the straight edges of a three-sided
pyramid, as in the case of ordinary cells.
I then put into the hive, instead of a
thick, square piece of wax, a thin and
narrow, knife-edged ridge, coloured with
vermilion. The bees instantly began on
both sides to excavate little basins near
to each other, in the same way as before ;
but the ridge of wax was so thin that the
bottoms of the basins, if they had been
excavated to the same depth as in the
former experiment, would have broken into
each other from the opposite sides. The
bees, however, did not suffer this to happen,
and they stopped their excavations in due
time ; so that the basins, as soon as they
had been a little deepened, came to have
flat bottoms; and ' these flat bottoms,
formed by thin little plates of the ver
milion wax having been left ungnawed,
were situated, as far as the eye could
judge, exactly along the planes of imagi
nary intersection between the basins on
the opposite sides of the ridge of wax.
In parts only little bits, in other parts
large portions of a rhombic plate, had
been left between the opposed basins; but
the work, from the unnatural state of
�96
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
things, had not been neatly performed.
The bees must have worked at very nearly
the same rate on the opposite sides of the
ridge of vermilion wax, as they circularly
gnawed away and deepened the basins on
both sides, in order to have succeeded in
thus leaving flat plates between the basins,
by stopping work along the intermediate
planes or planes of intersection.
Considering how flexible thin wax is,
I do not see that there is any difficulty
in the bees, while at work on the two
sides of a strip of wax, perceiving when
they have gnawed the wax away to the
proper thinness, and then stopping their
work. In ordinary combs it has appeared
to me that the bees do not always succeed
in working at exactly the same rate from
the opposite sides; for I have noticed half
completed rhombs at the base of a justcommenced cell, which were slightly con
cave on one side, where I suppose that the
bees had excavated too quickly, and con
vex on the opposed side, where the bees
had worked less quickly. In one wellmarked instance I put the comb back into
the hive, and. allowed the bees to go on
working for a short time, and again ex
amined the cell •, and I found that the
rhombic plate had been completed, and
had become perfectly flat: it was absolutely
impossible, fr.om the extreme thinness of
the little rhombic plate, that they could
have effected this by gnawing away the
convex side ; and I suspect that the bees
in such cases stand in the opposed cells,
and push and bend the ductile and warm
wax (which, as I have tried, is easily done)
into its proper intermediate plane, and
thus flatten it.
From the experiment of the ridge of ver
milion wax, we can clearly see that, if the
bees were to build for themselves a thin
wall of wax, they could make their cells of
the proper shape, by standing at the proper
distance from each other, by excavating at
the same rate, and by endeavouring to
make equal spherical hollows, but never
allowing the spheres to break into each
other. Now, bees, as may be clearly seen
by examining the edge of a growing comb,
do make a rough, circumferential wall or
rim all round the comb ; and they gnaw
into this from the opposite sides, always
working circularly as they deepen each
cell. They do not make the whole threesided pyramidal base of any one cell at
the same time, but only the one rhombic
plate which stands on the extreme growing
margin, or the two plates, as the case may
be ; and they never complete the upper
edges of the rhombic plates until the
hexagonal walls are commenced. Some
of these statements differ from those made
by the justly celebrated elder Huber, but I
am convinced of their accuracy; and, if I
had space, I could show that they are con
formable with my theory.
Huber’s statement, that the very first cell
is excavated out of a little parallel-sided
wall of wax, is not, as far as I have seen,
strictly correct, the first commencement
having always been a little hood of wax;
but I will not here enter on these details.
We see how important a part excavation
plays in the construction of the cells ; but
it would be a great error to suppose that
the bees cannot build up a rough wall of
wax in the proper position—that is, along
the plane of intersection between two
adjoining spheres. I have several speci
mens showing clearly that they can do
this. Even in the rude circumferential
rim or wall of wax round a growing comb
flexures may sometimes be observed,
corresponding in position to the planes of
the rhombic basal plates of future cells.
But the rough wall of wax has in every
case to be finished off by being largely
gnawed away on both sides. The manner
in which the bees build is curious : they
always make the first rough wall from ten
to twenty times thicker than the excessively
thin finished wall of the cell, which will
ultimately be left. We shall understand
how they work by supposing masons first
to pile up a broad ridge of cement, and
then to begin cutting it away equally on
both sides near the ground till a smooth,
very thin wall is left in the middle ; the
masons always piling up the cut-away
cement, and adding fresh cement, on the
summit of the ridge. We shall thus have
a thin wall steadily growing upward, but
always crowned by a gigantic coping.
From all the cells, both those just com
menced and those completed, being thus
crowned by a strong coping of wax, the
bees can cluster and crawl over the comb
without injuring the delicate hexagonal
walls, vzhich are only about one fourhundredth of an inch in thickness, the
plates of the pyramidal basis being about
twice as thick. By this singular manner
of building strength is continually given
to the comb with the utmost ultimate
economy of wax.
It seems at first to add to the difficulty
of understanding how the cells are made
that a multitude of bees all work together;
�INSTINCT
one bee after working a short time at one
cell going to another, so that, as Huber
has stated, a score of individuals work
even at the commencement of the first
cell. I was able practically to show this
fact by covering the edges of the hexagonal
walls of a single cell, or the extreme margin
of the circumferential rim of a growing
comb, with an extremely thin layer of
melted vermilion wax ; and I invariably
found that the colour was most delicately
diffused by the bees—as delicately as a
painter could have done with his brush—
by atoms of the coloured wax having been
taken from the spot on which it had been
placed, and worked into the growing edges
of the cells all round. The work of con
struction seems to be a sort of balance
■ struck between many bees, all instinctively
standing at the same relative distance
from each other, all trying to sweep equal
spheres, and then building up, or leaving
ungnawed, the planes of intersection
between these spheres. It was really
curious to note in cases of difficulty, as
when two pieces of comb met at an angle,
how often the bees would pull down and
rebuild in different ways the same cell,
sometimes recurring to a shape which they
had at first rejected.
When bees have a place on which they
can stand in their proper positions for
working—for instance, on a slip of wood,
placed directly under the middle of a comb
growing downwards, so that the comb has
to be built over one face of the slip—in
this case the bees can lay the foundations
of one wall of a new hexagon, in its strictly
proper place, projecting beyond the other
completed cells. It suffices that the bees
should be enabled to stand at their proper
relative distances from each other and
from the walls of the last completed cells,
and then, by striking imaginary spheres,
they can build up a wall intermediate
between two adjoining spheres ; but, as far
as I have seen, they never gnaw away and
finish off the angles of a cell till a large
part both of that cell and of the adjoining
cells has been built. This capacity in bees
of laying down under certain circumstances
a rough wall in its proper place between
two just-commenced cells is important, as
it bears on a fact, which seems at first quite
subversiveof the foregoing theory—namely,
that the cells on the extreme margin of
wasp-combs are sometimes strictly hex
agonal ; but I have not space here to enter
on this subject. Nor does there seem to
me any great difficulty in a single insect
97
(as in the case of a queen wasp) making
hexagonal cells, if she work alternately on
the inside and outside of two or three cells
commenced at the same time, always
standing at the proper relative distance
from the parts of the cells just begun, sweep
ing spheres or cylinders, and building up
intermediate planes. It is even conceiv
able that an insect might, by fixing on a
point at which to commence a cell, and
then moving outside, first to one point, and
then to five other points, at the proper
relative distances from the central point
and from each other, strike the planes of
intersection, and so make an isolated
hexagon ; but I am not aware that any such
case has been observed; nor would any good
be derived from a single hexagon being
built, as in its construction more materials
would be required than for a cylinder.
As natural selection acts only by the
accumulation of slight modifications of
structure or instinct, each profitable to the
individual under its conditions of life, it
may reasonably be asked how a long and
graduated succession of modified architec
tural instincts, all tending towards the
present perfect plan of construction, could
have profited the progenitors of the hive
bee ? I think the answer is not difficult:
it is known that bees are often hard pressed
to get sufficient nectar; and I am informed
by Mr. Tegetmeier that it has been experi
mentally found that no less than from
twelve to fifteen pounds of dry sugar are
consumed by a hive of bees for the secre
tion of each pound of wax ; to that a pro
digious quantity of fluid nectar must be
collected and consumed by the bees in a
hive foi the secretion of the wax necessary
for the construction of their combs. More
over, many bees have to remain idle for
many days during the process of secretion.
A large store of honey is indispensable to
support a large stock of bees during the
winter; and the security of the hive is
known mainly to depend on a large number
of bees being supported. Hence the saving
of wax by largely saving honey must be a
most important element of success in any
family of bees. Of course, the success of
any species of bee may be dependent on
the number of its parasites or other
enemies, or on quite distinct causes, and so
be altogether independent of the quantity
of honey which the bees could collect.
But let us suppose that this latter circum
stance determined, as it probably often
does determine, the numbers of a humblebee which could exist in a country; and
�98
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
we cannot see how an instinct could pos
let us further suppose that the community
sibly have originated ; cases in which no
lived throughout the winter, and conse
quently required a store of honey : there
intermediate gradations are known to exist;
cases of instinct of apparently such trifling
can, in this case, be no doubt that it would
importance that they could hardly have
be ah advantage to our humble-bee if a
slight modification of her instinct led her to
been acted on by natural selection ; cases
make her waxen cells near together, so as
of instincts almost identically the same
in animals, so remote in the scale of nature
to intersect a little ; for a wall in common,
that we cannot account for their similarity
even to two adjoining cells, would save
by inheritance from a common parent, and
some little wax. Hence it would continu
must therefore believe that they have been
ally be more and more advantageous to our
acquired by independent acts of natural
humble-bee if she were to make her cells
selection. I will not here enter on these
more and more regular, nearer together,
several cases, but will confine myself to
and aggregated into a mass, like the cells
one special difficulty, which at first ap
of the Melipona; for in this case a large
peared to me insuperable, and actually
part of the bounding surface of each cell
fatal to my whole theory. I allude to the
would serve to bound other cells, and much
neuters or sterile females in insect-com
wax would be saved. Again, from the same
munities ; for these neuters often differ
cause, it would be advantageous to the
widely in instinct and in structure from
Melipona if she were to make her cells
both the males and fertile females, and
closer together, and more regular in every
yet, from being sterile, they cannot propa
way than at present; for then, as we have
gate their kind.
seen, the spherical surfaces would wholly
The subject well deserves to be discussed
disappear, and would all be replaced by
at great length, but I will here take only a
plane surfaces ; and the Melipona would
single case, that of working or sterile ants.
make a comb as perfect as that of the
How the workers have been rendered
hive-bee. Beyond this stage of perfection
sterile is a difficulty; but not much greater
in architecture natural selection could not
than that of any other striking modification
lead; for the comb of the hive-bee, as far
of structure ; for it can be shown that
as we can see, is absolutely perfect in
some insects' and other articulate animals
economising wax.
in a state of nature occasionally become
Thus, as I believe, the most wonderful
of all known instincts, that of the hive-bee, .sterile; and if such insects had been social,
and it had been profitable to the com
can be explained by natural selection
munity that a number should have been
having taken advantage of numerous,
annually born capable of work, but in
successive, slight modifications of simpler
capable of procreation, I can see no very
instincts : natural selection having by slow
great difficulty in this being effected by
degrees, more and more perfectly, led the
natural selection. But I must pass over
bees to sweep equal spheres at a given
this preliminary difficulty. The great diffi
distance from each other in a double layer,
culty lies in the working ants differing
and to build up and excavate the wax
widely from both the males and the fertile
along the planes of intersection.
The
females in structure, as in the shape of the
bees, of course, no more knowing that
thorax and in being destitute of wings and
they swept their spheres at one particular
sometimes of eyes, and in instinct As far
distance from each other than they know
as instinct alone is concerned, the pro
what are the several angles of the hexa
digious difference in this respect between
gonal prisms and of the basal rhombic
the workers and the perfect females would
plates. The motive power of the process
have been far better exemplified by
of natural selection having been economy
the hive-bee. If a working ant or other
of wax; that individual swarm which
neuter insect had been an animal in the
wasted least honey in the secretion of wax
ordinary state, I should have unhesitatingly
having succeeded best, and having trans
assumed that all its characters had been
mitted by inheritance its newly-acquired
slowly acquired through natural selection—
economical instinct to new swarms, which
namely, by an individual having been born
in their turn will have had the best chance
with some slight profitable modification of
of succeeding in the struggle for existence.
structure, this being inherited by its off
spring, which again varied and were again
No doubt many instincts of very diffi
selected, and so onwards. _ But with the
cult explanation could be opposed to the
working ant we have an insect differing
theory of natural selection—cases in which
�INSTINCT
greatly from its parents, yet absolutely
sterile ; so that it could never have trans
mitted successively acquired modifications
of structure or instinct to its progeny. It
may well be asked, How is it possible to
reconcile this case with the theory of
natural selection ?
First, let it be remembered that we have
innumerable instances, both in our domestic
productions and in those in a state of nature,
of all sorts of differences of structure which
have become correlated to certain ages,
and to either sex. We have differences
correlated not only to one sex, but to that
short period alone when the reproductive
system is active, as in the nuptial plumage
of many birds, and in the hooked jaws of
the male salmon. We have even slight
differences in the horns of different breeds
of cattle in relation to an artificially im
perfect state of the male sex ; for oxen of
certain breeds have longer horns than in
other breeds, in comparison with the horns
of the bulls or cows of these same breeds.
Hence I can see no real difficulty in any
character having become correlated with
the sterile condition of certain members of
insect-communities : the difficulty lies in
understanding how such correlated modi
fications of structure could have been slowly
accumulated by natural selection.
This difficulty, though appearing in
superable, is lessened, or, as I believe,
disappears, when it is remembered that
selection may be applied to the family, as
well as to the individual, and may thus gain
the desired end. Thus, a well-flavoured
vegetable is cooked, and the individual is
destroyed; but the horticulturist sows seeds
of the same stock, and confidently expects
to get nearly the same variety: breeders of
cattle wish the flesh and fat to be well
marbled together; the animal has been
slaughtered, but the breeder goes with con
fidence to the same family. I have such
faith in the powers of selection that I do
not doubt that a breed of cattle, always
yielding oxen with extraordinarily long
horns, could be slowly formed by care
fully watching which individual bulls and
cows, when matched, produced oxen with
the longest horns ; and yet no one ox
could ever have propagated its kind. Thus
I believe it has been with social insects : a
slight modification of structure, or instinct,
correlated with the sterile condition of
certain members of the community, has
been advantageous to the community: con
sequently the fertile males and females of
the same community flourished, and trans
99
mitted to their fertile offspring a tendency *
to produce sterile members having the same
modification. And I believe that this pro
cess has been repeated, until that prc^ligious
amount of difference between the fertile
and sterile females of the same species has
been produced, which we see in many
social insects.
But we have not as yet touched on the
climax of the difficulty—namely, the fact
that the neuters of several ants differ, not
only from the fertile females and males,
but from each other, sometimes to an
almost incredible degree, and are thus
divided into two or even three castes. The
castes, moreover, do not generally graduate
into each other, but are perfectly well
defined; being as distinct from each other
as are any two species of the same genus,
or rather as any two genera of the same
family. Thus in Eciton there are working
and soldier neuters, with jaws and instinctsextraordinarily different ; in Cryptocerus
the workers of one caste alone carry a
wonderful sort of shield on their heads, the
use of which is quite unknown ; in the
Mexican Myrmecocystus the workers of
one caste never leave the nest—they are
fed by the workers of another caste, an-d
they have an enormously developed
abdomen, which secretes a sort of honey,
supplying the place of that excreted by the
aphides, or the domestic cattle as they may
be called, which our European ants guard
or imprison.
It will indeed be thought that I have an.
overweening confidence in the principle of’
natural selection when I do not admit that
such wonderful and well-established factsat once annihilate my theory. I n the simpler
case of neuter insects all of one caste or of
the same kind, which have been rendered
by natural selection, as I believe to be quite
possible, different from the fertile males
and females—in this case we may safely
conclude from the analogy of ordinary
variations that each successive, slight,
profitable modification did not probably
at first appear in all the individual neuters
in the same nest, but in a few alone ; and
that by the long-continued selection of the
fertile parents which produced most neuters
with the profitable modification, all the
neuters ultimately came to have the desired
character. On this view we ought occa
sionally to find neuter-insects of the same
species, in the same nest, presenting grada
tions of structure ; and this we do find,
even often, considering how few neuter
insects out of Europe have been carefully
�IOO
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
examined. Mr. F. Smith has shown how
surprisingly the neuters of several British
ants differ from each other in size, and
sometimes in colour; and that the extreme
forms can sometimes be perfectly linked
together by individuals taken out of the
same nest: I have myself compared per
fect gradations of this kind.
It often
happens that the larger or the smaller
sized workers are the most numerous ; or
that both large and small are numerous,
with those of an intermediate size scanty
in numbers. Formica flava has larger and
smaller workers, with some of intermediate
size; and in this species, as Mr. F. Smith
has observed, the larger workers have
simple eyes (ocelli), which, though small,
can be plainly distinguished, whereas the
smaller workers have their ocelli rudi
mentary. Having carefully dissected seve
ral specimens of these workers, I can
affirm that the eyes are far more rudi
mentary in the smaller workers than can
be accounted for merely by their propor
tionally lesser size ; and- I fully believe,
though I dare not assert so positively, that
the workers of intermediate size have their
ocelli in an exactly intermediate condition.
So that we here have two bodies of sterile
workers in the same nest, differing not
only in size, but in their organs of vision,.
yet connected by some few members in an
intermediate condition. I may digress by
adding that, if the smaller workers had
been the most useful to the community,
and those males and females had been
continually selected, which produced more
and more of the smaller workers, until
all the workers had come to be in this
condition; we should then have had a
species of ant with neuters very nearly in
the same condition with those of Myrmica.
For the workers of Myrmica have not
even rudiments of ocelli, though the male
and female ants of this genus have welldeveloped ocelli.
I may give another case : so confidently
did I expect to find gradations in impor
tant points of structure between the dif
ferent castes of neuters in the same species
that I gladly availed myself of Mr. F.
Smith’s offer of numerous specimens from
the same nest of the driver ant (Anomma)
of West Africa. The reader will perhaps
best appreciate the amount of difference in
these workers by my giving not the actual
measurements, but a strictly accurate illus
tration : the difference was the same as if
we were to see a set of workmen building
a house of whom many were five feet four
inches high and many sixteen feet high ;
but we must suppose that the larger work
men had heads four instead of three times
as big as those of the smaller men, and
jaws nearly five times as big. The jaws,
moreover, of the working ants of the
several sizes differed wonderfully in shape,
and in the form and number of the teeth.
But the important fact for us is that,
though the workers can be grouped into
castes of different sizes, yet they graduate
insensibly into each other, as does the
widely-different structure of their jaws. I
speak confidently on this latter point, as
Mr. Lubbock made drawings for me with
the camera lucida of the jaws which I had
dissected from the workers of the several
sizes.
With these facts before me, I believe
that natural selection, by acting on the fertile
parents, could form a species which should
regularly produce neuters, either all of
large size with one form of jaw, or all
of small size with jaws having a widely
different structure ; or lastly, and this is
our climax of difficulty, one set of workers of
one size and structure, and simultaneously
another set of workers of a different size
and structure—a graduated series having
been first formed, as in the case of the
driver ant, and then the extreme forms,
from being the most useful to the com
munity, having been produced in greater
and greater numbers through the natural
selection of the parents which generated
them, until none with an intermediate
structure were produced.
Thus, as I believe, the wonderful fact of
two distinctly defined castes of sterile
workers existing in the same nest, both
widely different from each other and from
their parents, has originated. We can see
how useful their production may have been
to a social community of insects, on the
same principle that the division of labour
is useful to civilised man. As ants work
by inherited instincts and by inherited
organs or tools, and not by acquired know
ledge and manufactured instruments, a
perfect division of labour could be effected
with them only by the workers being sterile ;
for, had they been fertile, they would have
intercrossed, and their instincts and struc
ture would have become blended. And
nature has, as I believe, effected this admir
able division of labour in the communities
of ants by the means of natural selection.
But I am bound to confess that, with all
my faith in this principle, I should never
have anticipated that natural selection
�INSTINCT
could have been efficient in so high a
degree had not the case of these neuter
insects convinced me of the fact. I have,
therefore, discussed this case, at some little
but wholly insufficient length, in order to
show the power of natural selection, and
likewise because this is by far the most
serious special difficulty which my theory
has encountered. The case, also, is very
interesting, as it proves that with animals,
as with plants, any amount of modification
in structure can be effected by the accumu
lation of numerous, slight, and, as we must
call them, accidental variations, which are
in any manner profitable, without exercise
or habit having coming into play. For no
amount of exercise, or habit, or volition, in
the utterly sterile members of a community
could possibly affect the structure or
instincts of the fertile members, which
alone leave descendants. I am surprised
that no one has advanced this demonstra
tive case of neuter insects against the wellknown doctrine of Lamarck.
Summary.—I have endeavoured briefly
in this chapter to show that the mental
qualities of our domestic animals vary,
and that the variations are inherited. Still
more briefly I have attempted to show that
instincts vary slightly in a state of nature.
No one will dispute that instincts are of
the highest importance to each animal.
Therefore, 1 can see no difficulty, under
changing conditions of life, in natural
selection accumulating slight modifications
of instinct to any extent in any useful
direction. In some cases habit or use and
disuse have probably come into play. I
do not pretend that the facts given in this
chapter strengthen in any great degree my
theory ; but none of the cases of difficulty,
loi
to the best of my judgment, annihilate it.
On the other hand, the fact that instincts
are not always absolutely perfect, and are
liable to mistakes—that no instinct has
been produced for the exclusive good of
other animals, but that each animal takes
advantage of the instincts of others ; that
the canon in natural history, of “ Natura
non facit saltum,” is applicable to instincts
as well as to corporeal structure, and is.
plainly explicable on the foregoing views,
but is otherwise inexplicable—all tend tocorroborate the theory of natural selection.
This theory is, also, strengthened by
some few other facts in regard to instincts ;
as by that common case of closely-allied,
but certainly distinct^ species, when in
habiting distant parts of the world and
living under considerably different con
ditions of life, yet often retaining nearly
the same instincts. For instance, we can
understand, on the principle ofiinheritance,
how it is that the thrush of South America,
lines its nest with mud in the same peculiar
manner as does our British thrush ; how it
is that the male wrens (Troglodytes) of
North America build “ cock-nests ;; to roost
in, like the males of our distinct Kitty
wrens—a habit wholly unlike that of any
other known bird. Finally, it may not be
a logical deduction, but to my imagination
it is far more satisfactory to look at such
instincts as the young cuckoo ejecting its
foster-brothers—ants making slaves—the
larvae of ichneumonidae feeding within the
live bodies of caterpillars—not as specially
endowed or created instincts, but as small
consequences of one general law, leading
to the advancement of all organic beings—
namely, multiply, vary, let the strongest
live and the weakest die. •
�102
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
Chapter VIII.
HYBRIDISM
Distinction "between the sterility of first crosses
and of hybrids—Sterility various in degree,
not universal, affected by close inter-breeding,
removed by domestication—Laws governing
the sterility of hybrids—Sterility not a special
'■-endowment, but incidental on other differences
—-Causes of the sterility of first crosses and of
hybrids—Parallelism between the effects of
■ -changed conditions of life and crossing—
Fertility of varieties when crossed and of their
mongrel offspring not universal—Hybrids and
mongrels compared independently of their
fertility—Summary.
The view generally entertained by natu
ralists is that species, when intercrossed,
have been specially endowed with the
quality of sterility, in order to prevent the
confusion of all organic forms. This view
certainly seems at first probable, for species
within the same country could hardly have
kept distinct had they been capable of
crossing freely. The importance of the fact
that hybrids are very generally sterile has,
I think, been much underrated by some
late writers. On the theory of natural
selection the case is especially important,
inasmuch as the sterility of hybrids could
not possibly be of any advantage to them,
and therefore could not have been acquired
by the continued preservation of successive
profitable degrees of sterility. I hope, how
ever, to be able to show that sterility is not
a specially acquired or endowed quality,
but is incidental on other acquired differ
ences.
In treating this subjeot, two classes of
facts, to a large extent fundamentally
different, have generally been confounded
together; namely, the sterility of two species
when first crossed, and the sterility of the
hybrids produced from them.
Pure species have of course their organs
of reproduction in a perfect condition, yet
when intercrossed they produce either few
or no offspring. Hybrids, on the other
hand, have their reproductive organs func
tionally impotent, as may be clearly seen
in the state of the male element in both
plants and animals ; though the organs
themselves are perfect in structure, as far
as the microscope reveals. In the first case
the two sexual elements which go to form
the embryo are perfect; in the second case
they are either not at all developed, or are
imperfectly developed. This distinction is
important, when the cause of the sterility,
which is common to the two cases, has to
be considered. The distinction has pro
bably been slurred over, owing to the
sterility in both cases being looked on as a
special endowment, beyond the province of
our reasoning powers.
The fertility of varieties, that is of the
forms known or believed to have descended
from common parents, when intercrossed,
and likewise the fertility of their mongrel
offspring, is, on my theory, of equal im
portance with the sterility of species ; for
it seems to make a broad and clear distinc
tion between varieties and species.
First, for the sterility of species when
crossed and of their hybrid offspring. It is
impossible to study the several memoirs
and works of those two conscientious and
admirable observers, Kolreuterand Gartner,
who almost devoted their lives to this
subject, without being deeply impressed
with the high generality of some degree of
sterility. Kolreuter makes the rule uni
versal ; but then he cuts the knot, for in
ten cases in which he found two forms,
considered by most authors as distinct
species, quite fertile together, he unhesi
tatingly ranks them as varieties. Gartner,
also, makes the rule equally universal; and
he disputes the entire fertility of Kolreuter’s
ten cases. But in these and in many other
cases Gartner is obliged carefully to count
the seeds, in order to show that there is
any degree of sterility. He always com
pares the maximum number of seeds pro
duced by two species when crossed, and by
their hybrid offspring, with the average
number produced by both pure parent
species in a state of nature. But a serious
cause of error seems to me to be here intro
duced : a plant to be hybridised must be
castrated, and, what is often more impor
tant, must be secluded in order to prevent
pollen being brought to it by insects from
other plants. Nearly all the plants experimentised on by Gartner were potted,
�HYBRIDISM
and apparently were kept in a chamber in
his house. That these processes aie often
injurious to the fertility of a plant cannot
be doubted ; for Gartner gives in his table
about a score of cases of plants which he
castrated, and artificially fertilised with
their own pollen, and (excluding all cases
such as the Leguminosae, in which there is
an acknowledged difficulty in the manipula
tion) half of these twenty plants had their
fertility in some degree impaired. More
over, as Gartner during several years
repeatedly crossed the prirryose and cow
slip, which we have such good reason to
believe to be varieties, and only once or
twice succeeded in getting fertile seed ; as
he found the common red and blue pim
pernels (Anagallis arvensis and ccerulea),
which the best botanists rank as varieties,
absolutely sterile together; and as he came
to the same conclusion in several other
analogous cases, it seems to me that we
may well be permitted to doubt whether
many other species are really so sterile,
when intercrossed, as Gartner believes.
It is certain, on the one hand, that the
sterility of various species when crossed is
so different in degree, and graduates away
so insensibly, and, on the other hand, that
the fertility of pure species is so easily
affected by various circumstances, that for
all practical purposes it is most difficult to
say where perfect fertility ends and sterility
begins. I think no better evidence of this
can be required than that the two most
experienced observers who have ever lived
-—namely, Kblreuter and Gartner—should
have arrived at diametrically opposite con
clusions in regard to the very same species.
It is also most instructive to compare—
but I have not space here to enter on
details—the evidence advanced by our best
botanists on the question whether certain
doubtful forms should be ranked as species
or varieties with the evidence from fertility
adduced by different hybridisers, or by
the same author, from experiments made
during different years. It can thus be
shown that neither sterility nor fertility
affords any' clear distinction between
species and varieties; but that the evi
dence from this source graduates away,
and is doubtful in the same degree as
is the evidence derived from other con
stitutional and structural differences.
In regard to the sterility of hybrids in
successive generations; though Gartner
was enabled to rear some hybrids, care
fully guarding them from a cross with
either pure parents, for six or seven, and
103
in one case for ten generations, yet he
asserts positively that their fertility never
increased, but generally greatly decreased.
I do not doubt that this is usually the case,
and that the fertility often suddenly de
creases in the first few generations. Never
theless, I believe that in all these experi
ments the fertility has been diminished
by an independent cause—namely, from
close interbreeding. I have collected so
large a body of facts, showing that close
interbreeding lessens fertility, and, on the
other hand, that an occasional cross with a
distinct individual or variety increases fer
tility, that I cannot doubt the correctness
of this almost universal belief among
breeders. Hybrids are seldom raised by
experimentalists in great numbers ; and as
the parent-species, or other allied hybrids,
generally grow in the same garden, the
visits of insects must be carefully prevented
during the flowering season; hence hybrids
will generally be fertilised during each
generation by their own individual pollen ;
and I am convinced that this would be
injurious to their fertility, already lessened
by their hybrid origin. I am strengthened
in this conviction by a remarkable state
ment repeatedly made by Gartner—namely,
that, if even the less fertile hybrids be
artificially fertilised with hybrid pollen of
the same kind, their fertility, notwith
standing the frequent ill effects of mani
pulation, sometimes decidedly increases,
and goes on increasing. Now, in artificial
fertilisation pollen is as often taken by
chance (as I know from my own expe
rience) from the anthers of another flower
as from the anthers of the flower itself
which is to be fertilised ; so that a cross
between two flowers, though probably on
the same plant, would be thus effected.
Moreover, whenever complicated experi
ments are in progress, so careful an ob
server as Gartner would have castrated
his hybrids, and this would have insured
in each generation a cross with a
pollen from a distinct flower, either from
the same plant or from another plant of
the same hybrid nature. And thus the
strange fact of the increase of fertility
in the successive generations of artificially
fertilised hybrids may, I believe, be ac
counted for by close interbreeding having
been avoided.
Now let us turn to the results arrived at
by the third most experienced hybridiser
—namely, the Hon. and Rev. W. Herbert.
He is as emphatic in his conclusion that
some hybrids are perfectly fertile—as fertile
�104
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
as the pure parent-species—as are Kolplants in these experiments appeared per
reuter and Gartner that some degree of fectly healthy, and although both the ovules
sterility between distinct species is a uni
and pollen of the same flower were per
versal law of nature. He experimentised
fectly good with respect to other species,
on some of the very same species as did
yet, as they were functionally imperfect in
Gartner. The difference in their results
their mutual self-action, we must infer that
may, I think, be in part accounted for
the plants were in an unnatural state.
by Herbert’s great horticultural skill,
Nevertheless, these facts show on what
and by his having hothouses at his com
slight and mysterious causes the lesser or
mand. Of his many important statements
greater fertility of species when crossed,
I will here give only a single one as an
in comparison with the same species when
example—namely, that “ every ovule in a
self-fertilised, sometimes depends.
pod of Crinum capense fertilised by C.
The practical experiments of horticul
revolutum produced a plant, which (he
turists, though not made with scientific
says) I never saw to occur in a case of precision, deserve some notice.
It is
its natural fecundation.” So that we here
notorious in how complicated a manner
have perfect, or even more than commonly
the species of Pelargonium, Fuchsia, Cal
perfect, fertility in a first cross between
ceolaria, Petunia, Rhododendron, etc., have
two distinct species.
been crossed, yet many of these hybrids
This case of the Crinum leads me to
seed freely. For instance, Herbert asserts
refer to a most singular fact—namely, that
that a hybrid from Calceolaria integrifolia
there are individual plants of certain
and plantaginea, species most widely dis
species of Lobelia and of some other
similar in general habit, “reproduced itself
genera, which can be far more easily
as perfectly as if it had been a natural
fertilised by the pollen of another and
species from the mountains of Chile.” I
distinct species than by their own pollen ;
have taken some pains to ascertain the
and all the individuals of nearly all the
degree of fertility of some of the complex
species of Hippeastrum seem to be in this
crosses of Rhododendrons, and I am
predicament. For these plants have been
assured that many of them are perfectly
found to yield seed to the pollen of a
fertile. Mr. C. Noble, for instance, informs
distinct species, though quite sterile with
me that he raises stocks for grafting from
their own pollen, notwithstanding that their
a hybrid between Rhod. Ponticum and
own pollen was found to be perfectly good,
Catawbiense, and that this hybrid “seeds
as freely as it is possible to imagine.” Had
for it fertilised distinct species. So that
hybrids, when fairly treated, gone on
certain individual plants and all the indi
viduals of certain species can actually be I decreasing in fertility in each successive
generation, as Gartner believes to be the
hybridised much more readily than they
case, the fact would have been notorious
can be self-fertilised 1 For instance, a bulb
to nurserymen. Horticulturists raise large
of Hippeastrum aulicum produced four
beds of the same hybrids, and such alone
flowers; three were fertilised by Herbert
are fairly treated, for by insect agency the
with their own pollen, and the fourth was
several individuals of the same hybrid
subsequently fertilised by the pollen of a
variety are allowed to freely cross with
compound hybrid descended from three
each other, and the injurious influence
other and distinct species : the result was
of close interbreeding is thus prevented.
that “ the ovaries of the three first flowers
Anyone may readily convince himself of
soon ceased to grow, and after a few days
the efficiency of insect-agency by examining
perished entirely, whereas the pod impreg
the flowers of the more sterile kinds of
nated by the pollen of the hybrid made
hybrid rhododendrons, which produce no
vigorous growth and rapid progress to
pollen, for he will find on their stigmas
maturity, and bore good seed, which
plenty of pollen brought from other flowers.
vegetated freely.” In a letter to me, in
In regard to animals, much fewer experi
1839, Mr. Herbert told me that he had
ments have been carefully tried than with
then tried the experiment during five years,
plants. If our systematic arrangements
and he continued to try it during' several
can be trusted—that is, if the genera of
subsequent years, and always with the
animals are as distinct from each other as
same result. This result has also been
are the genera of plants—then we may
confirmed by other observers in the case
infer that animals more widely separated
of Hippeastrum with its sub-g-enera, and
in the scale of nature can be more easily
in the case of some other g-enera, as Lobelia,
crossed than in the case of plants ; but the
Passiflora, and Verbascum/ Although the
�HYBRIDISM
J05
crossed geese are kept in various parts of
hybrids themselves are, I think, more
the country ; and as they are kept for
sterile. I doubt whether any case of a
profit, where neither pure parent-species
perfectly fertile hybrid animal can be con
exists, they must certainly be highly fertile.
sidered as thoroughly well authenticated.
A doctrine which originated with Pallas
It should, however, be borne in mind that,
has been largely accepted by modern
owing to few animals breeding freely under
confinement, few experiments have been
naturalists—namely, that most of our
domestic animals have descended from two
fairly tried : for instance, the canary-bird
has been crossed with nine other finches,
or more wild species, since commingled by
intercrossing. On this view, the aboriginal
but, as not one of these nine species breeds
species must either at first have produced
freely in •confinement, we have no right to
expect that the first crosses between them I quite fertile hybrids, or the hybrids must
and the canary, or that their hybrids, should ! have become in subsequent generations
quite fertile under domestication. This
be perfectly fertile. Again, with respect to
latter alternative seems to me the most
the fertility in successive generations of the
more fertile hybrid animals, I hardly know
probable, and I am inclined to believe in
of an instance in which two families of the
its truth, although it rests on no direct
same hybrid have been raised at the same
evidence. I believe, for instance, that our
time from different parents, so as to avoid
dogs have descended from several wild
the ill effects of close interbreeding'. On
stocks ; yet, with perhaps the exception of
the contrary, brothers and sisters have
certain indigenous domestic dogs of South
usually been crossed in each successive
America, all are quite fertile together; and
generation, m opposition to the constantly
analogy makes me greatly doubt whether
repeated admonition of every breeder.
the several aboriginal species would at first
And in this case it is not at all surprising
have freely bred together and have pro
that the inherent sterility in the hybrids
duced quite fertile hybrids. So, again, there
should have gone on increasing. If we
is reason to believe that our European and
were to act thus, and pair brothers and
the humped Indian cattle are quite fertile
sisters in the case of any pure animal, which
together ; but, from facts communicated to
from any cause had the least tendency to
me by Mr. Blyth, I think they must be
sterility, the breed would assuredly be lost
considered as distinct species. On this
in a very few generations.
view of the origin of many of our domestic
Although I do not know of any thoroughly
animals, we must either give up the belief
well-authenticated cases of perfectly fertile
of the almost universal sterility of distinct
hybrid animals, I have some reason to
species of animals when crossed, or we
believe that the hybrids from Cervulus
must look at sterility, not as an indelible
vaginalis and Reevesii, and from Phasianus
characteristic, but as one capable of being
colchicus with P. torquatus and P. versi
removed by domestication.
color are perfectly fertile. There is no
Finally, looking to all the ascertained
doubt that these three pheasants—namely,
facts on the intercrossing of plants and
the common, the true ring-necked, and the
animals, it may be concluded that some
Japan — intercross, and are.- becomingdegree of sterility, both in first crosses and
blended together in the woods of several
in hybrids, is an extremely general result,
parts of England. The hybrids from the
but that it cannot, under our present state
common and Chinese geese (A. cygnoides),
of knowledge, be considered as absolutely
species, which are so different that
universal.
they are generally ranked in distinct
genera, have often bred in this country
Laws governing the Sterility of first
with either pure parent, and in one
Crosses and of Hybrids.—We will now
single instance they have bred inter se,
consider a little more in detail the circum
This was effected by Mr. Eyton, who
stances and rules governing the sterility of
raised two hybrids from the same parents,
first crosses and of hybrids. Our chief
but from different hatches ; and from
object will be to see whether or not the
these two birds he raised no less than
rules indicate that species have specially
eight hybrids (grandchildren of the pure
been endowed with this quality, in order to
geese) from one nest. In India, however,
prevent their crossing and blending to
these cross-bred geese must be far more
gether ifi utter confusion. The following
fertile, for I am assured by two eminently
rules and conclusions are chiefly drawn
capable judges—namely, Mr. Blyth and
up from Gartner’s admirable work on the
Captain Hutton—that whole flocks of these
hybridisation of plants.
I have taken
�io6
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
much pains to ascertain how far the rules
apply to animals; and, considering how
scanty our knowledge is in regard to
hybrid animals, I have been surprised to
find how generally the same rules apply to
both kingdoms.
It has been already remarked that the
degree of fertility, both of first crosses and
of hybrids, graduates from zero to perfect
fertility. It is surprising in how many
curious ways this gradation can be shown
to exist; but only the barest outline of the
facts can here be given. When pollen
from a plant of one family is placed on the
stigma of a plant of a distinct family, it exerts
no more influence than so much inorganic
dust. From this absolute zero of fertility
the pollen of different species of the same
genus, applied to the stigma of some one
species, yields a perfect gradation in the
number of seeds produced, up to nearly
complete, or even quite complete, fertility ;
and, as we have seen, in certain abnormal
cases, even to an excess of fertility beyond
, that which the plant’s own pollen will pro
duce. So in hybrids themselves there are
some which never have produced, and
probably never would produce, even with
the pollen of either pure parent, a single
fertile seed ; but in some of these cases a
first trace of fertility may be detected by
the pollen of one of the pure parent
species causing the flower of the hybrid to
wither earlier than it otherwise would have
done; and the early withering of the
flower is well known to be a sign of
incipient fertilisation. From this extreme
degree of sterility we have self-fertilised
hybrids producing a greater and greater
number of seeds up to perfect fertility.
Hybrids from two species which are
very difficult to cross, and which rarely
produce any offspring, are generally very
sterile; but the parallelism between the
difficulty of making a first cross and the
sterility of the hybrid thus produced—two
classes of facts which are generally con
founded together—is by no means strict.
There are many cases in which two pure
species can be united with unusual facility,
and produce numerous hybrid-offspring;
yet these hybrids are remarkably sterile.
On the other hand, there are species which
can be crossed very rarely, or with extreme
difficulty; but the hybrids, when at last
produced, are very fertile. Even within
the limits of the same genus—for instance,
in Dianthus—these two opposite cases
occur.
The fertility, both of first crosses and of
hybrids, is more easily affected by un
favourable conditions than is the fertility
of pure species. But the degree of fertility
is likewise innately variable ; for it is not
always the *sarne when the same two
species are crossed under the same circum
stances, but depends in part upon the con
stitution of the individuals which happen
to have been chosen for the experiment.
So it is with hybrids, for their degree of
fertility is often found to differ greatly in
the several individuals raised from seed
out of the same capsule and exposed to
exactly the same conditions.
By the term systematic affinity is meant
the resemblance between species in struc
ture and in constitution, more especially in
the structure of parts -which are of high
physiological importance, and which differ
little in the allied species. Now, the fertility
of first crosses between species, and of the
hybrids produced from them, is largely
governed by their systematic affinity. This
is clearly shown by hybrids never having
been raised between species ranked by
systematists in distinct families ; and, on
the other hand, by very closely-allied
species generally uniting with facility.
But the correspondence between syste
matic affinity and the facility of crossing
is by no means strict. A multitude of
cases could be given of very closely-allied
species which will not unite, or only with
extreme difficulty ; and, on the other hand,
of very distinct species which unite with
the utmost facility. In the same family
there may be a genus, as Dianthus, in
which very many species can most readily
be crossed; and another genus, as Silene,
in which the most persevering efforts have
failed to produce between extremely close
species a single hybrid. Even within the
limits of the same genus we meet with this
same difference ; for instance, the many
species of Nicotiana have been more largely
crossed than the species of almost any
other genus ; but Gartner found that N.
acuminata, which is not a particularly dis
tinct species, obstinately failed to fertilise,
or to be fertilised by, no less than eight
other species of Nicotiana. Very many
analogous facts could be given.
No one has been able to point out what
kind, or what amount, of difference in any
recognisable character is sufficient to pre
vent two species crossing. It can be shown
that plants most widely different in habit and
general appearance, and having strongly
marked differences in every part of the
flower, even in the pollen, in the fruit, and
�HYBRIDISM
in the cotyledons, can be crossed. Annual
and perennial plants, deciduous and ever
green trees, plants inhabiting different
stations and fitted for extremely different
climates, can often be crossed with ease.
By a reciprocal cross between two species
—-I mean the case, for instance, of a stallion
horse being first crossed with a female-ass,
and then a male-ass with a mare : these
two species may then be said to have been
reciprocally crossed. There is often the
widest possible difference in the facility of
making reciprocal crosses. Such cases are
highly important, for they prove that the
capacity in any two species to cross is
often completely independent of their
systematic affinity, or of any recognisable
difference in their whole organisation. On
the other hand, these cases clearly show
that the capacity for crossing is connected
with constitutional differences impercep
tible by us, and confined to the reproduc
tive system. This difference in the result
of reciprocal crosses between the same two
species was long ago observed by Kolreuter.
To give an instance : Mirabilis jalapa can
easily be fertilised by the pollen of M.
longiflora, and the hybrids thus produced
are sufficiently fertile ; but Kolreuter tried
more than two hundred times, during eight
following years, to fertilise reciprocally M.
longiflora with the pollen of M. jalapa,
and utterly failed. Several other equally
striking cases could be given. Thuret has
observed the same fact with certain sea
weeds or Fuci. Gartner, moreover, found
that this difference of facility in making
reciprocal crosses is extremely common in
a lesser degree. He has observed it even
between forms so closely related (as
Matthiola annua and glabra) that many
botanists rank them only as varieties. It
is also a remarkable fact that hybrids
raised from reciprocal crosses, though, of
course, compounded of the very same two
species, the one species having first been
used as the father and then as the mother,
generally differ in fertility in a small, and
occasionally in a high, degree.
Several other singular rules could be
given from Gartner: for instance, some
species have a remarkable power of crossing
with other species ; other species of the
same genus have a remarkable power of
impressing their likeness on their hybrid
offspring ; but these two powers do not at
all necessarily go together. There are
certain hybrids which, instead of having,
as is usual, an intermediate character
between their two parents, always closely
107
resemble one of them ; and such hybrids,
though externally so like one of their pure
parent-species, are with rare exceptions
extremely sterile. So again among hybrids,
which are usually intermediate in structure
between their parents, exceptional and
abnormal individuals sometimes are born,
which closely resemble one of their pure
parents; and these hybrids are almost
always utterly sterile, even when the otherhybrids raised from seed from the same
capsule have a considerable degree of
fertility. These facts show how completely
fertility in the hybrid is independent of
its external resemblance to either pure
parent.
Considering the several rules now given,
which govern the fertility of first crosses
and of hybrids, we see that when forms,„
which must be considered as good anddistinct species, are united, their fertility
graduates from zero to perfect fertility, or"
even to fertility under certain conditions in
excess. That their fertility, besides being
eminently susceptible to favourable and un
favourable conditions, is innately variable.
That it is by no means always the same in
degree in the first cross and in the hybrids
produced from this cross. That the fertility
of hybrids is not related to the degree in
which they resemble in external appearance
either parent. And, lastly, that the facility
of making a first cross between any twospecies is not always governed by their
systematic affinity or degree of resem
blance to each other. This latter state
ment is clearly proved by reciprocal,
crosses between the same two species, for,
according as the one species or the other
is used as the father or the mother, there
is generally some difference, and occa
sionally the widest possible difference, in
the facility of effecting an union. The
hybrids, moreover, produced from recip
rocal crosses often differ in fertility.
Now, do these complex and singular rules
indicate that species have been endowed
with sterility simply to prevent their be
coming confounded in nature ? I think
not. For why should the sterility be so
extremely different in degree, when various
species are crossed, all of which we must
suppose it would be equally important to
keep from blending together ? Why should
the degree of sterility be innately variable
in the individuals of the same species ?
Why should some species cross with
facility, and yet produce very sterile
hybrids; and other species cross with
extreme difficulty, and yet produce fairly
�ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
fertile hybrids? Why should there often
be so great a difference in the result of a
reciprocal cross between the same two
species? Why, it may even be asked, has
the production of hybrids been permitted ?
To grant to species the special power of
producing hybrids, and then to stop their
further propagation by different degrees of
sterility, not strictly related to the facility
of the first union between their parents,
seems to be a strange arrangement
The foregoing rules and facts, on th’e
other hand, appear to me clearly to indi
cate that the sterility both of first crosses
and of hybrids is simply incidental or
dependent on unknown differences, chiefly
in the reproductive systems, of the species
which are crossed. The differences being
•of so peculiar and limited a nature that,
in reciprocal crosses between two species,
the male sexual element of the one will
•often freely act on the female sexual ele
ment of the other, but not in a reversed
direction. It will be advisable to explain a
little more fully by an example what I mean
by sterility being incidental on other differences, and not a specially endowed
quality. As the capacity of one plant to
be grafted or budded on another is so
entirely unimportant for its welfare in a
state of nature, I presume that no one will
suppose that this capacity is a specially
endowed quality, but will admit that it is
incidental on differences in the laws of
growth of the two plants. We can sometimes see the reason why one tree will not
take on another, from differences in their
rate of growth, in the hardness of their
wood, in the period of the flow or nature
of their sap, etc.; but in a multitude of
cases we can assign no reason whatever.
Great diversity in the size of two plants,
one being woody and the other herbaceous,
one being evergreen and the other de
ciduous, and adaptation to widely different
climates, does not always prevent the two
grafting together. As in hybridisation, so
with grafting, the capacity is limited by
systematic affinity, for no one has been
able to graft trees together belonging to
quite distinct families ; and, on the other
hand, closely allied species, and varieties
of the same species, can usually, but not
invariably, be grafted with ease. But this
capacity, as in hybridisation, is by no
means absolutely governed by systematic
affinity. Although many distinct genera
within the same family have been grafted
together, in other cases species of the
same genus will not take on each other.
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The pear can be grafted far more readily
on the quince, which is ranked as a distinct
genus, than on the apple, which is a
member of the same genus. Even different
varieties of the pear take with different
degrees of facility on the quince; so do
’different varieties of the apricot and peach
on certain varieties of the plum.
As Gartner found that there was some
times an innate difference in different indi
viduals of the same two species in crossing,
so Sagaret believes this to be the case
with different individuals of the same two
species in being grafted together. As, in
reciprocal crosses, the facility of effecting
an union is often very far from equal, so it
sometimes is in grafting ; the common
gooseberry, for instance, cannot be grafted
on the currant, whereas the currant will
take, though with difficulty, on the goose
berry.
We have seen that the sterility of hybrids,
which have their reproductive organs in an
imperfect condition, is a very different case
from the difficulty of uniting two pure
species, which have their reproductive
organs perfect; yet these two distinct cases
run to a certain extent parallel. Something
analogous occurs in grafting; for Thouin
found that three species of Robinia, which
seeded freely on their own roots, and which
could be grafted with no great difficulty on
another species, when thus grafted were
rendered barren. On the other hand,
certain species of Sorbus, when grafted on
other species, yielded twice as much fruit
as when on their own roots. We arc
reminded by this latter fact of the extra
ordinary case of Hippeastrum, Lobelia,
etc., which seeded much more freely when
fertilised with the pollen of distinct species
than when self-fertilised with their own
pollen.
We thus see that, although there is a
clear and fundamental difference between
the mere adhesion of grafted stocks and
the union of the male and female elements
in the act of reproduction, yet that there
is a rude degree of parallelism in the results
of grafting and of crossing distinct species.
And as we must look at the curious and
complex laws governing the facility with
which trees can be grafted on each other
as incidental or unknown differences in
their vegetative systems, so I believe that
the still more complex laws governing the
facility of first crosses are incidental on
unknown differences chiefly in their repro
ductive systems. These differences, in
both cases, follow to a certain extent, as
�HYBRIDISM
109
long as it is nourished within its mother’s
womb or within the egg or seed produced
by the mother, it may be exposed to condi
tions in some degree unsuitable, and con
sequently be liable to perish at an early
period ; more especially as all very young
beings seem eminently sensitive to injurious
or unnatural conditions of life.
In regard to the sterility of hybrids, in
which the sexual elements are imperfectly
developed, the case is very different. I
have more than once alluded to a large
body of facts, which I have collected, show
Causes of ike Sterility offirst Crosses an d ing that, when animals and plants are
of Hybrids.—We may now look a little
removed from their natural conditions, they
closer at the probable causes of the sterility
are extremely liable to have their repro
of first crosses and of hybrids. These two
ductive systems seriously affected. This,
cases are fundamentally different, for, as just in fact, is the great bar to the domestica
remarked, in the union of two pure species
tion of animals. Between the sterility thus
the male and female sexual elements are
superinduced and that of hybrids there are
perfect, whereas in hybrids they are im- j many points of similarity. In both cases
perfect. Even in first crosses the greater i the sterility is independent of general health,
or lesser difficulty in effecting a union ' and is often accompanied by excess of size
apparently depends on several distinct
or great luxuriance. In both cases the
causes. There must sometimes be a
sterility occurs in various degrees; in both’,
physical impossibility in the male element
the male element is the most liable to be
reaching the ovule, as would be the case
affected, but sometimes the female more
with a plant having a pistil too long for
than the male. In both the tendency goes,
the pollen-tubes to reach the ovarium. It
to a certain extent, with systematic affinity,
has also been observed that when pollen
for whole groups of animals and plants are
of one species is placed on the stigma of rendered impotent by the same unnatural
a distinctly allied species, though the pollen
conditions ; and whole groups of species
tubes protrude, they do not penetrate the
tend to produce sterile hybrids. On the
stigrnatic surface. Again, the male element
other hand, one species in a group will
may reach the female element, but be
sometimes resist great changes of conditions
incapable of causing an embryo to be
with unimpared fertility, and certain species
developed, as seems to have been the case
in a group will produce unusually fertile
with some of Thuret’s experiments on Fuci.
hybrids. No one can tell, till he tries,
No explanation cam be given of these facts,- whether any particular animal will breed
any more than why certain trees cannot be
under confinement or any exotic plant seed
grafted on others. Lastly, an embryo may
freely under culture; nor can he tell, till he
be developed, and then perish at an early
tries, whether any two species of a genus
period. This latter alternative has not been
will produce more or less sterile hybrids.
sufficiently attended to; but I believe, from
Lastly, when organic beings are placed
observations communicated to me by Mr.
during several generations under conditions
Hewitt, who has had great experience in
not natural to them, they are extremely
hybridising gallinaceous birds, that the
liable to vary, which is due, as I believe, to
early death of the embryo is a very frequent
their reproductive systems having been
cause of sterility in first crosses. I was at
specially affected, though in a lesser degree
first very unwilling to believe in this view,
than when sterility ensues. So it is with
as hybrids, when once born, are generally
hybrids, for hybrids in successive gene
healthy and long-lived, as we see in the
rations are eminently liable to vary, as every
case of the common mule. Hybrids, how
experimentalist has observed.
ever, are differently circumstanced before
Thus we see that when organic beings
and after birth : when born and living in a
are placed under new and unnatural con
country where their two parents can live,
ditions, and when hybrids are produced by
they are generally placed under suitable
the unnatural crossing of two species, the
conditions of life. But a hybrid partakes
reproductive system, independently of the
of only half of the nature and constitution
general state of health, is affected by sterility
of its mother, and therefore before birth, as
in a very similar manner. In the one case
might have been expected, systematic
affinity, by which every kind of resemblance
and dissimilarity between organic beings
is attempted to be expressed. The facts
by no means seem to me to indicate that
the greater or lesser difficulty of either
grafting or crossing together various species
has been a special endowment; although
in the case of crossing the difficulty is as
important for the endurance and stability
of specific forms as in the case of grafting
it is unimportant for their welfare.
�no
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
the conditions of life have been disturbed,
though often in so slight a degree as to be
inappreciable by us ; in the other case, or
that of hybrids, the external conditions have
remained the same, but the organisation
has been disturbed by two different
structures and constitutions having been
blended into one. For it is scarcely pos
sible that two organisations should be com
pounded into one without some disturbance
occurring in the development, or periodical
action, or mutual relation of the different
parts and organs one to another, or to the
conditions of life. When hybrids are able
io breed inter se, they transmit to their off
spring from generation to generation the
same compounded organisation, and hence
we need not be surprised that their sterility,
though in some degree variable, rarely
diminishes.
It must, however, be confessed that we
•cannot understand, excepting on vague
hypotheses, several facts with respect to
the sterility of hybrids; for instance, the
Unequal fertility of hybrids produced from
reciprocal crosses; or the increased
sterility in those hybrids which occa
sionally and exceptionally resemble closely
cither pure parent. Nor do I pretend that
the foregoing remarks go to the root of the
matter : no explanation is offered why an
organism, when placed under unnatural
-conditions, is rendered sterile. All that I
have attempted to show is that in two
cases, in some respects allied, sterility is
the common result—in the one case from
the conditions of life having been disturbed,
in the other case from the organisation
having been disturbed by two organisations
having been compounded into one.
It may seem fanciful, but I suspect that
a similar parallelism extends to an allied
yet very different class of facts. It is an
old and almost universal belief, founded, I
think, on a considerable body of evidence,
that slight changes in the conditions of
life are beneficial to all living things. We
see this acted on by farmers and gardeners
in their frequent exchanges of seeds, tubers,
■etc., from one soil or climate to another,
and back again. During the convalescence
of animals we plainly see that great benefit
is derived from almost any change in the
habits of life. Again, both with plants and
animals, there is abundant evidence that a
cross between very distinct individuals of
the same species—that is, between members
of different strains or sub-breeds—gives
vigour and fertility to the offspring. I
believe, indeed, from the facts alluded to in»
I our fourth chapter, that a certain amount
■ of crossing is indispensable even with her
maphrodites; and that close interbreeding
i continued during several generations be
tween the nearest relations, especially if
these be kept under the same conditions of
life, always induces weakness and sterility
• in the progeny.
Hence it seems that, on the one hand,
slight changes in the conditions of life
benefit all organic beings, and, on the other
hand, that slight crosses—that is, crosses
between the males and females of the same
species which have varied and become
slightly different—give vigour and fertility
to their offspring. But we have seen that
greater changes, or changes of a particular
nature, often render organic beings in some
degree sterile ; and that greater crosses—
that is, crosses between males and females
which have become widely or specifically
different—produce hybrids which are gene
rally sterile in some degree. I cannot
persuade myself that this parallelism is
an accident or an illusion. Both series of
facts seem to be connected together by
some common but unknown bond, which
is essentially related to the principle of life.
Fertility of Varieties when crossed, and
of their Mongrel offspring.—It may be
I
;
'
i
I
urged, as a most forcible argument, that
there must be some essential distinction
between species and varieties, and that
there must be some error in all the fore
going remarks, inasmuch as varieties, how
ever much they may differ from each other
in external appearance, cross with perfect
facility, and yield perfectly fertile offspring.
I fully admit that this is almost invariably
the case. But if we look to varieties pro
duced under nature, we are immediately
involved in hopeless difficulties ; for if two
hitherto reputed varieties be found in any
degree sterile together, they are at once
ranked by most naturalists as species.
For instance, the blue and red pimpernel,
the primrose and cowslip, which are con
sidered by many of our best botanists as
varieties, are said by Gartner not to be
quite fertile when crossed, and he conse
quently ranks them as undoubted species.
If we thus argue in a circle, the fertility of
all varieties produced under nature will
assuredly have to be granted.
If we turn to varieties, produced, or
supposed to have been produced, under
domestication, we are still involved in
doubt. For when it is stated, for instance,
that the German Spitz dog unites more
�HYBRIDISM
easily than other dogs with foxes, or that
certain South American indigenous domes-,
tic dogs do not readily cross with European
dogs, the explanation which will occur to
every one, and probably the true one, is
that these dogs have descended from
severalaboriginally-distinct species. Never
theless, the perfect fertility of so many
domestic varieties, differing widely from
each other in appearance—for instance, of
the pigeon or of the cabbage—is a remark
able fact, more especially when we reflect
how many species there are which, though
resembling each other most closely, are
utterly sterile when intercrossed. Several
considerations, however, render the fertility
of domestic varieties less remarkable than
at first appears. It can, in the first place,
be clearly shown that mere external dis
similarity between two species does not
determine their greater or lesser degree of
sterility when crossed, and we may apply
the same rule to domestic varieties. In the
second place, some eminent naturalists
believe that a long course of domestication
tends to eliminate sterility in the successive
generations of hybrids which were at first
only slightly sterile ; and, if this be so, we
surely ought not to expect to find sterility
both appearing and disappearing under
nearly the same conditions of life. Lastly,
and this seems to me by far the most
important consideration, new races of
animals and plants are produced under
domestication by man’s methodical and
unconscious power of selection, for his
own use and pleasure : he neither wishes
to select, nor could select, slight differences
in the reproductive system, or other con
stitutional differences correlated with the
reproductive system. He supplies his
several varieties with the same food ; treats
them in nearly the same manner, and does
not wish to alter their general habits of
life. Nature acts uniformly and slowly
during vast periods of time on the whole
organisation, in any way which may be for
each creature’s own good ; and thus she
may, either directly or more probably
indirectly, through correlation, modify the
reproductive system in the several descen
dants from any one species. Seeing this
difference in the process of selection, as
carried on by man and nature, we need
not be surprised at some difference in the
result.
I have as yet spoken as if the varieties
of the same species were invariably fertile
when intercrossed. But it seems to me
impossible to resist the evidence of the
in
existence of a certain amount of sterility
in the few following cases, which I will
briefly abstract. The evidence is, at least,
as good as that from which we believe in
the sterility of a multitude of species.
The evidence is also derived from hostile
witnesses, who in all other cases consider
fertility and sterility as safe criterions of
specific distinction. Gartner kept, during
several years, a dwarf kind of maize with
yellow seeds, and a tall variety with red
seeds, growing near each other in his
garden; and, although these plants have
separated sexes, they never naturally
crossed. He then fertilised thirteen flowers
of the one with the pollen of the other;
but only a single head produced any seed,
and this one head produced only five
grains. Manipulation in this case could
not have been injurious, as the plants have
separated sexes. No one, I believe, has
suspected that these varieties of maize are
distinct species ; and it is important to
notice that the hybrid plants thus raised
were themselves perfectly fertile ; so that
even Gartner did not venture to consider
the two varieties as specifically distinct.
Girou de Buzareingues crossed three
varieties of gourd, which, like the maize,
has separated sexes, and he asserts that
their mutual fertilisation is by so much the
less easy as their differences are greater.
How far these experiments may be trusted
I know not; but the forms experimentised
on are ranked by Sagaret, who mainly
founds his classification by the test of
infertility, as varieties.
The following case is far more remark
able, and seems at first quite incredible;
but it is the result of an astonishing number
of experiments made during many years
on nine species of Verbascum by so good
an observer and so hostile a witness as
Gartner—namely, that yellow and white
varieties of the same species of Verbascum
when intercrossed produce less seed than
do either coloured varieties when fertilised
with pollen from their own coloured flowers.
Moreover, he asserts that, when yellow and
white varieties of one species are crossed
with yellow and white varieties of a dis
tinct species, more seed is produced by
the crosses between the similarly-coloured
flowers than between those which are dif
ferently coloured. Yet these varieties of
Verbascum present no other difference
besides the mere colour of the flower ; and
one variety can sometimes be raised from
the seed of the other.
From observations which I have made
�112
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
on certain varieties of hollyhock, I am
inclined to suspect that they present analo
gous facts.
Kolreuter, whose accuracy has been con
firmed by every subsequent observer, has
proved the remarkable fact that one variety
of the common tobacco is more fertile,
when crossed with a widely distinct species,
than are the othervarieties. He experimentised on five forms, which are commonly
reputed to be varieties, and which he tested
by the severest trial—namely, by reciprocal
crosses—and he found their mongrel off
spring perfectly fertile. But one of these
five varieties, when used either as father
or mother, and crossed with the Nicotiana
glutinosa, always yielded hybrids not so
sterile as those which were produced from
the four other varieties when crossed with
N. glutinosa.
Hence the reproductive
system of this one variety must have
been in some manner and in some degree
modified.
From these facts; from the great diffi
culty of ascertaining theinfertilityof varieties
in a state of nature, for a supposed variety,
if infertile in any degree, would generally be
ranked as species; from man selecting only
external characters in the production of the
most distinct domestic varieties, and from
not wishing or being able to produce recon
dite and functional differences in the repro
ductive system—from these several con
siderations and facts, I do not think that
the very general fertility of varieties can be
proved to be of universal occurrence, or to
form a fundamental distinction between
varieties and species. The general fertility
of varieties does not seem to me sufficient
to overthrow the view which I have taken
with respect to the very general, but not
invariable, sterility of first crosses and of
hybrids—namely, that it is not a special
endowment, but is incidental on slowlyacquired modifications, more especially in
the reproductive systems of the forms which
are crossed.
Hybrids and Mongrels compared, indepen
dently of their fertility.-—Independently of
the question of fertility, the offspring of
species when crossed and of varieties when
crossed may be compared in several other
respects. Gartner, whose strong wish was
to draw a marked line of distinction
between species and varieties, could; find
very few and, as it seems to me, quite unim
portant differences between the so-called
hybrid offspring of species and the so-called
mongrel offspring of varieties. And, on the
other hand, they agree most closely in very
many important respects.
I shall here discuss this subject with
extreme brevity. The most important dis
tinction is that in the first generation
mongrels are more variable than hybrids;
but Gartner admits that hybrids from
species which have long been cultivated
are often variable in the first generation ;
and I have myself seen striking instances
of this. fact. Gartner further admits that
hybrids between very closely-allied species
are more variable than those from very dis
tinct species; and this shows that the
difference in the degree of variability
graduates away. When mongrels and the
more fertile hybrids are propagated for
several generations, an extreme amount of
variability in their offspring is notorious ;
but some few cases both of hybrids and
mongrels long retaining uniformity of char
acter could be given.
The variability,
however, in the successive generation^ of
mongrels is, perhaps, greater than in
hybrids.
This greater variability of mongrels than
of hybrids does not seem to me at all sur
prising. For the parents of mongrels are
varieties, and mostly domestic varieties
(very few experiments having been tried on
natural varieties), and this implies in most
cases that there has been recent variability;
and therefore we might expect that such
variability would often continue and be
super-added to that arising from the mere
act of crossing. The slight degree of
variability in hybrids from the first cross or
in the first generation, in contrast with their
extreme variability in the succeeding genera
tions, is a curious fact and deserves atten
tion. For it bears on and corroborates the
view which I have taken on the cause of
ordinary variability—namely, that it is due
to the reproductive system being eminently
sensitive to any change in the conditions of
life, being thus often rendered either im
potent or at least incapable of its proper
function of producing offspring identical
with the parent-form. Now, hybrids in the
first generation are descended from species
(excluding those long cultivated) which
have not had their reproductive systems in
any way affected, and they are not vari
able ; but hybrids themselves have their
reproductive systems seriously affected, and
their descendants are highly variable.
But to return to our comparison of
mongrels and hybrids : Gartner states that
mongrels are more liable than hybrids to
revert to either parentrform ; but this, if it
�HYBRIDISM
be true, is certainly only a difference in
degree. Gartner further insists that when
any two species, although most closely
allied to each other, are crossed with a
third species, the hybrids are widely dif
ferent from each other ; whereas, if two
- very distinct varieties of one species are
crossed with another species, the hybrids
do not differ much. But this conclusion,
as far as I can make out, is founded on a
single experiment, and seems directly
opposed to the results of several experi
ments made by Kolreuter.
These alone are the unimportant differ
ences which Gartner is able to point out
between hybrid and mongrel plants. On
the other hand, the resemblance in mongrels
and in hybrids to their respective parents,
more especially in hybrids produced from
nearly-related species, follows, according to
Gartner, the same laws. When two species
are crossed, one has sometimes a pre
potent power of impressing its likeness on
the hybrid; and so I believe it to be
with varieties of plants. With animals one
variety certainly often has this prepotent
power over another variety. Hybrid plants
produced from a reciprocal cross generally
resemble each other closely ; and so it is
with mongrels from a reciprocal cross.
Both hybrids and mongrels can be reduced
to either pure parent-form by repeated
crosses in successive generations with either
parent.
These several remarks are apparently
applicable to animals ; but the subject is
here excessively complicated, partly owing
to the existence of secondary sexual char
acters, but more espec#dly owing to pre
potency in transmitting likeness running
more strongly in one sex than in the other
both when one species is crossed with
another and when one variety is crossed
with another variety. For instance, I
think those authors are right who main
tain that the ass has a prepotent power over
the horse, so that both the mule and the
hinny more resemble the ass than the
horse ; but that the prepotency runs more
strongly in the male-ass than in the female,
so that the mule, which is the offspring of j
the male-ass and mare, is more like an ass
than is the hinny, which is the offspring of
the female-ass and stallion.
■ Much stress has been laid by some
authors on the supposed fact that mongrel
animals alone are born closely like one of
their parents; but it can be shown that this
does sometimes occur with hybrids, yet, I
grant, much less frequently with hybrids
113
than with mongrels. Looking to the cases
which I have collected of cross-bred
animals closely resembling one parent, the
resemblances seem chiefly confined to
characters almost monstrous in their nature,
and which have suddenly appeared—such
as albinism, melanism, deficiency of tail or
horns, or additional fingers and toes—and
do not relate to characters which have been
slowly acquired by selection. Consequently,
sudden reversions to the perfect character
of either parent would be more likely to
occur with mongrels, which are descended
from varieties often suddenly produced and
semi-monstrous in character, than with
hybrids, which are descended from species
slowly and naturally produced. On the
whole, I entirely agree with Dr. Prosper
Lucas, who, after arranging an enormous
body of facts with respect to animals,
comes to the conclusion that the laws of
resemblance of the child to its parents
are the same, whether the two parents
differ much or little from each other—
namely, in the union of individuals of the
same variety, or of different varieties, or of
distinct species.
Laying aside the question of fertility
and sterility, in. all other respects there
seems to be a general and close similarity
in the offspring of crossed species and of
crossed varieties. If we look at species
as having been specially created, and at
varieties as having been ^produced by
secondary laws, this similarity would be
an astonishing fact. But it harmonises
perfectly with the view that there is no
essential distinction between species and
varieties.
Summary of ‘ Chapter—Yfrsk crosses
between forms sufficiently distinct to be
ranked as species, and their hybrids, are
very generally, but not universally, sterile.
The sterility is of all degrees, and is often
so slight that the two most careful experi
mentalists who have ever lived have come
to diametrically opposite conclusions in
ranking forms by this test. The sterility
is innately variable in individuals of the
same species, and is eminently susceptible
of favourable and unfavourable conditions.
The degree of sterility does not strictly
follow systematic affinity, but is governed
by several curious and complex laws. It is
generally different, and sometimes widely
different, in reciprocal crosses between the
same two species. It is not always equal
in degree in a first cross and in the hybrid
produced from this cross.
I
�114
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
In the same manner as in grafting trees
the capacity of one species or variety to
take on another is incidental on generally
unknown differences in their vegetative
systems, so, in crossing, the greater or less
facility of one species to unite with another
is incidental on unknown differences in
their reproductive systems. There is no
more reason to think that species have
been specially endowed with various de
grees of sterility to prevent them crossing
and blending in nature than to think that
trees have been specially endowed with
various and somewhat analogous degrees
of difficulty in being grafted together in
order to prevent them becoming inarched
in our forests.
The sterility of first crosses between
pure species, which have their reproductive
organs perfect, seems to depend on several
circumstances—in some cases, largely on
the early death of the embryo. The sterility
of hybrids, which have their reproductive
systems imperfect, and which have had
this system and their whole organisation
disturbed by being compounded of two
distinct species, seems closely allied to
that sterility which so frequently affects
pure species, when their natural conditions
of life have been disturbed. This view is
supported by a parallelism of another kind
—namely, that the crossing of forms only
slightly different is favourable to the vigour
and fertility of their offspring; and that
slight changes in the conditions of life are
apparently favourable to the vigour and
fertility of all organic beings. It is not
surprising that the degree of difficulty in
I uniting two species, and the degree of
sterility of their hybrid-offspring should
generally correspond, though due to dis
tinct causes, for both depend on the
amount of difference of some kind between
the species which are crossed. Nor is it
surprising that the facility of effecting a
first cross, the fertility of the hybrids pro
duced from it, and the capacity of being
grafted together—though this latter capa
city evidently depends on widely different
circumstances—should all run, to a certain
extent, parallel with the systematic affinity
of the forms which are subjected to experi
ment ; for systematic affinity attempts to
express all kinds of resemblance between
all species.
First crosses between forms known to be
varieties, or sufficiently alike to be con
■ sidered as varieties, and their mongrel
offspring, are very generally, but not quite
universally, fertile. Nor is this nearly
general and perfect fertility surprising when
we remember how liable we are to argue
in a circle with respect to varieties in a
state of nature, and when we remember
that the greater number of varieties have
been produced under domestication by the
selection of mere external differences, and
not of differences in the reproductive
system. In all other respects, excluding
| fertility, there is a close general resemblance
between hybrids and mongrels. Finally,
j then, the facts briefly given in this chapter
j do not seem to me opposed to, but even
I rather to support, the view that there is no
j fundamental distinction between species
and varieties.
Chapter IX.
ON THE IMPERFECTION OF THE GEOLOGICAL
RECORD
On the absence of intermediate varieties at
the present day—On the nature of extinct
intermediate varieties ; on their number—On
the vast lapse of time, as inferred from the
rate of deposition and of denudation—On the
poorness of our palaeontological collections—
On the intermittence of geological formations
—On the absence of intermediate varieties in
any one formation—On the sudden appear
ance of groups of species—On their sudden
appearance in the lowest known fossiliferous
strata.
In the sixth chapter I enumerated the chief
�ON THE IMPERFECTION OF THE GEOLOGICAL RECORD
objections which might be justly urged
against the views maintained in this volume.
Most of them have now been discussed.
One—namely, the distinctness of specific
forms, and their not being blended together
by innumerable transitional links—is a very
obvious difficulty. I assigned reasons why
such links do not commonly occur at the
present day, under the circumstances appa
rently most favourable for their presence—
namely, on an extensive and continuous
area with graduated physical conditions.
I endeavoured to show that the life of
each species depends in a more important
manner on the presence of other already
defined organic forms than on climate;
and, therefore, that the really governing
conditions of life do not graduate away
quite insensibly, like heat or moisture. I
endeavoured also to show that intermediate
varieties, from existing in lesser numbers
than the forms which they connect, will
generally be beaten out and exterminated
during the course of further modification
and improvement. The main cause, how
ever, of innumerable intermediate links not
now occurring everywhere throughout
nature depends on the very process of
natural selection, through which new
varieties continually take the places of and
exterminate their parent-forms. But just
in proportion as this process of extermina
tion has acted on an enormous scale, so
must the number of intermediate varieties
which have formerly existed on the earth
be truly enormous. Why, then, is not every
geological formation and every stratum full
of such intermediate links ?
Geology
assuredly does not reveal any such finelygraduated organic chain ; and this, per
haps, is the most obvious and gravest
objection which can be urged against my
theory. The explanation lies, as I believe,
in the extreme imperfection of the geo
logical record.
In the first place, it should always be
borne in mind what sort of intermediate
forms must, on my theory, have formerly
existed. I have found it difficult, when
looking at any two species, to avoid pictur
ing to myself forms directly intermediate
between them. But this is a wholly false
view : we should always look for forms
intermediate between each species and a
common but unknown progenitor ; and the
progenitor will generally have differed in
some respects from all its modified descen
dants. To give a simple illustration : the
fantail and pouter pigeons have both des
cended from the rock-pigeon ; if we pos
115
sessed all the intermediate varieties which
have ever existed, we should have an
extremely close series between both and
the rock-pigeon ; but we should have no
varieties directly intermediate between the
fantail and pouter-—-none, for instance,
combining a tail somewhat expanded, with a
crop somewhat enlarged, the characteristic
features of these two breeds. These two
breeds, moreover, have become so much
modified that, if we had no historical or
indirect evidence regarding their origin, it
would not have been possible to have deter
mined, from a mere comparison of their
structure with that of the rock-pigeon,
whether they had descended from this
species or from some other allied species,
such as C. oenas.
So with natural species, if we look to
forms very distinct—for instance, to the
horse and tapir—we have no reason to
suppose that links ever existed directly
intermediate between them, but between
each and an unknown common parent.
The common parent will have had in its
whole organisation much general resem
blance to the tapir and to the horse, but
in some points of structure may have
differed considerably from both, even per
haps more than they differ from each other.
Hence, in all such cases we should be
unable to recognise the parent-form of any
two or more species, even if we closely
compared the structure of the parent with
that of its modified descendants, unless at
the same time we had a nearly perfect
chain of the intermediate links.
It is just possible, by my theory, that'one
of two living forms might have descended
from the other—for instance, a horse from
a tapir; and in this case direct intermediate
links will have existed between them. But
such a case would imply that one form had
remained for a very long period unaltered,
while its descendants had undergone a
vast amount of change ; and the principle
of competition between organism and
organism, between child and parent, will
render this a very rare event, for in all
cases the new and improved forms of life
tend to supplant the old and unimproved
forms.
By the theory of natural selection all
living species have been connected with
the parent-species of each genus, by differ
ences not greater than we see between the
varieties of the same species at the present
day; and these parent-species, now gene
rally extinct, have in their turn been similarly
connected with more ancient species; and
�' 116
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
so on backwards, always converging to the P miles any line of rocky cliff which is under
common ancestor of each great class. So
going degradation, we find that it is-only
that the number of intermediate and transi
here and there, along a short length, or
tional links, between all living and extinct
round a promontory, that the cliffs are at
species, must have been inconceivably
the present time suffering. The appear
great. But assuredly, if this theory be true,
ance of the surface and the vegetation
such have lived upon this earth.
show that elsewhere years have elapsed
since the waters washed their base.
On the lapse of Time.—Independently of
He who most closely studies the action
our not finding fossil remains of such
of the sea on our shores will, I believe, be
infinitely numerous connecting-links, it may
most deeply impressed with the slowness
be objected that time will not have sufficed
with which rocky coasts are worn away.
for so great an amount of organic change,
The observations on this head by Hugh
all changes having been effected very
Miller, and by that excellent observer, Mr.
slowly through natural selection. It is
Smith, of Jordan Hill, are most impressive.
hardly possible for me even to recall to the
With the mind thus impressed, let anyone
reader, who may not be a practical geo
examine beds of conglomerate many thou
logist, the facts leading the mind freely to
sand feet in thickness, which, though pro
comprehend the lapse of time. He who
bably formed at a quicker rate than many
can read Sir Charles Lyell’s grand work
other deposits, yet, from being formed of
on the Principles of Geology, which the
worn and rounded pebbles, each of which
future historian will recognise as having
bears the stamp of time, are good to show
produced a revolution in natural science,
how slowly the mass has been accumulated.
yet does not admit how incomprehensively i In the Cordillera I estimated one pile of
vast have been the past periods of time,
conglomerate at ten thousand feet in thick
ness. Let the observer remember Lyell’s
may at once close this volume. Not that
it suffices to study the Principles of Geology,
profound remark, that the thickness and
or to read special treatises by different
extent of sedimentary formations are the
observers on separate formations, and to
result and measure of the degradation
mark how each author attempts to give an
which the earth’s crust has elsewhere
inadequate idea of the duration of each
suffered. And what an amount of degrada
tion is implied by the sedimentary deposits
formation, or even each stratum. A man
of many countries ! Professor Ramsay has
must for years examine for himself great
given me the maximum thickness, in most
piles of superimposed strata, and watch the
cases from actual measurement, in a few
sea at work grinding down old rocks and
cases from estimate, of each formation in
making fresh sediment, before he can hope
different part of Great Britain ; and this is>
to comprehend anything of the lapse of
time, the monuments of which we see
the result :—
Feet.
around us.
Palaeozoic strata (not including
It is good to wander along lines of sea
igneous beds)...
...............
57>J54
coast, when formed of moderately hard
Secondary strata
...............
rocks, and mark the process of degradation.
Tertiary strata ...
...
...
2,240
The tides in most cases reach the cliffs
—making altogether 72,584 feet; that is,
only for a short time twice a day, and the
very nearly thirteen and three-quarters
waves eat into them only when they are
British miles. Some of the formations,
charged with sand or pebbles ; for there is
which are represented in England by thin
good evidence that pure water can effect
beds, are thousands of feet in thickness on
little or nothing in wearing away rock. At
the continent. Moreover, between each
last the base of the cliff is undermined,
successive formation we have, in the opinion
huge fragments fall down, and these,
of most geologists, enormously-long blank
remaining fixed, have to be worn away,
periods. So that the lofty pile of sedi
atom by atom, until reduced in size they
mentary rocks in Britain gives but an
can be roiled about by the waves, and
inadequate idea of the time which has
then are more quickly ground into pebbles,
elapsed during their' accumulation; yet
sand, or mud. But how often do we see
what time this must have consumed!
along the bases of retreating cliffs rounded
Good observers have estimated that sedi
boulders, all thickly clothed by marine
ment is deposited by the great Mississippi
productions, showing how little they are
river at the rate of only 600 feet in a
abraded and how seldom they are rolled
hundred thousand years. This estimate
about! Moreover, if we follow for a few
�ON THE IMPERFECTION OF THE GEOLOGICAL RECORD
117
ments meet and close, one can safely
has no pretension to strict exactness ; yet,
picture to oneself the great dome of rocks
considering over what wide spaces very
which must have covered up the Weald
fine sediment is transported by the currents
within so limited a period as since the
of the sea, the process of accumulation in
latter part of the Chalk formation. The
any one area must be extremely slow.
distance from the northern to the southern
But the amount of denudation which the
Downs is about 22 miles, and the thickness
strata have in many places suffered, inde
of the several formations is on an average
pendently of the rate of accumulation of
about 1,100 feet, as I am informed by Pro
the degraded matter, probably offers the
fessor Ramsay. But if, as some geologists
best evidence of the lapse of time. I re
member having been much struck with
suppose, a range of older rocks underlies
the Weald, on the flanks of which the
the evidence of denudation, when viewing
volcanic islands, which have been worn by
overlying sedimentary deposits might have
accumulated in thinner masses than else
the waves and pared all round into perpen
dicular cliffs of one or two thousand feet in
where, the above estimate would be erro
neous ; but this source of doubt probably
height; for the gentle slope of the larva
streams, due to their former liquid state,
would not greatly affect the estimate as
showed at a glance how far the hard,
applied to the western extremity of the
rocky beds had once extended into the
district. If, then, we knew the rate at
which the sea commonly wears away a
open ocean. The same story is still more
plainly told by faults—those great cracks
line of cliff of any given height, we could
along which the strata have been upheaved
measure the time requisite to have denuded
on one side, or thrown down on the other,
the Weald. This, of course, cannot be
to the height or depth of thousands of
done ; but we may, in order to form some
feet; for, since the crust cracked, the sur
crude notion on the subject, assume that
face of the land has been so completely
the sea would eat into cliffs 500 feet in
planed down by the action of the sea that
height at the rate of one inch in a century.
no trace of these vast dislocations is ex This will at first appear much too small an
ternally visible.
allowance ; but it is the same as if we were
The Craven fault, for instance, extends
to assume a cliff one yard in height to be
for upwards of 30 miles, and along this
eaten back along a whole line of coast at
line the vertical displacement of the strata
the rate of one yard in nearly every twentyhas varied from 600 to 3,000 feet. Pro two years. I doubt whether any rock, even
fessor Ramsay has published an account
as soft as chalk, would yield at this rate
of a downthrow in Anglesea of 2,300 feet;
excepting on the most exposed coasts ;
and he informs me that he fully believes
though no doubt the degradation of a lofty
• there is one in Merionethshire of 12,000
cliff would be more rapid from the breakage
feet; yet in these cases there is nothing on
of the falling fragments. On the other
the surface to show such prodigious move hand, I do not believe that any line of*
ments, the pile of rocks on the one or
coast, ten or twenty miles in length, ever
other side having been smoothly swept • suffers degradation at the same time along
away. The consideration of these facts
its whole indented length ; and we must
impresses my mind almost in the same
remember that almost all strata contain
manner as does the vain endeavour to
harder layers or nodules, which from long
grapple with the idea of eternity.
resisting attrition form a breakwater at the
I am tempted to give one other case, the
base. We may at least confidently believe
well-known one of the denudation of the
that no rocky coast 500 feet in height
Weald. Though it must be admitted that
commonly yields at the rate of a foot per
the denudation of the Weald has been a
century; for this would be the same in
mere trifle, in comparison with that which
amount as a cliff one yard in height retreat
has removed masses of our palaeozoic
ing twelve yards in twenty-two years ; and
strata, in parts ten thousand feet in thick no one, I think, who has carefully observed
ness, as shown in Professor Ramsay’s
the shape of old fallen fragments at the
masterly memoir on this subject; yet it base of cliffs will admit any near approach
is an admirable lesson to stand on the
to such rapid wearing away. Hence,
intermediate hilly country and look on the
under ordinary circumstances, I should
one hand at the North Downs, and on the
infer that for a cliff 500 feet in height a
other hand at the South Downs ; for,
denudation of one inch per century for the
remembering that at no great distance to
whole length would be a sufficient allow
the west the northern and southern escarp ance. At this rate, on the above data, the
�ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
denudation of the Weald must have
required 306,662,400 years ; or say three
hundred million years. But perhaps it
would be safer to allow two or three inches
per century, and this would reduce the
number of years to one hundred and fifty
or one hundred million years.
The action of fresh water on the gently
inclined Wealden district, when upraised,
could hardly have been great, but it would
somewhat reduce the above estimate. On
the other hand, during oscillations of level,
which we know this area has undergone,
the surface may have existed for millions of
years as land, and thus have escaped the
action of the sea : when deeply submerged
for perhaps equally long periods, it would,
likewise, have escaped the action of the
coast-waves. So that it is not improbable
that a longer period than 300 million years
has elapsed since the latter part of the
Secondary period.
I have made these few remarks because
it is highly important for us to gain some
notion, however imperfect, of the lapse of
years. During each of these years, over the
whole world, the land and the water has been
peopled by hosts of living forms. What
an infinite number of generations, which
the mind cannot grasp, must have succeeded
each other in the long roll of years ! Now
turn to our richest geological museums,
and what a paltry display we behold 1
On the poorness of our Palceontological
collections.—That our palaeontological col
lections are very imperfect is admitted by
every one. The remark of that admirable
palaeontologist, the late Edward Forbes,
should not be forgotten—namely, that
numbers of our fossil species are known
and named from single and often broken
specimens, or from a few specimens col
lected on some one spot. Only a small
portion of the surface of the earth has been
geologically explored, and no part with
sufficient care, as the important discoveries
made every year in Europe prove. No
organism wholly soft can be preserved.
Shells and bones will decay and disappear
when left on the bottom of the sea, where
sediment is not accumulating. I believe we
are continually taking a most erroneous
view when we tacitly admit to ourselves
that sediment is being deposited over
nearly the whole bed of the sea at a rate
sufficiently quick to embed and preserve
fossil remains. Throughout an enormously
large proportion of the ocean the bright
blue tint of the water bespeaks its purity.
The many cases on record of a formation
conformably covered, after an enormous
interval of time, by another and later forma
tion, without the underlying bed having
suffered in the interval any wear and tear,
seem explicable only on the view of the
bottom of the sea not rarely lying for ages
in an unaltered condition. The remains
which do become embedded, if in sand or
gravel, will, when the beds are upraised,
generally be dissolved by the percolation of
rain-water. I suspect that but few of the
very many animals which live on the beach
between high and low watermark are pre
served. For instance, the several species
of the Chthamalinae (a sub-family of sessile
cirripedes) coat the rocks all over the world
in infinite numbers : they are all strictly
littoral, with the exception of a single
Mediterranean species, which inhabits deep
water and has been found fossil in Sicily,
whereas not one other species has hitherto
been found in any tertiary formation ; yet
it is now known that the genus Chthamalus
existed during the chalk period. The molluscan genus Chiton offers a partially ana
logous case.
With respect to the terrestrial produc
tions which lived during the Secondary and
Palaeozoic periods, it is superfluous to state
that our evidence from fossil remains is
fragmentary in an extreme degree. For
instance, not a land shell is known be
longing to either of these vast periods,
with the exception of one species dis
covered by Sir C. Lyell and Dr. Dawson in
the carboniferous strata of North America,
of which shell several specimens have now *
been collected. In regard to mammiferous
remains, a single glance at the historical
table published in the Supplement to
Lyell’s Manual will bring home the truth,
how accidental and rare is their preser
vation, far better than pages of detail.
Nor is their rarity surprising when we
remember how large a proportion of the
bones of tertiary mammals have been dis
covered either in caves or in lacustrine
deposits; and that not a cave or true
lacustrine bed is known belonging to the age
of our secondary or palaeozoic formations.
But the imperfection in the geological
record mainly results from another and
more important cause than any of the
foregoing—-namely, from the several forma
tions being separated from each other by
wide intervals of time. When we see the
formations tabulated in written works, or
when we follow them in nature, it is diffi
• cult to avoid believing that they are closely
�ON THE IMPERFECTION OF THE GEOLOGICAL RECORD
consecutive. But we know, for instance,
from Sir R. Murchison’s great work on
Russia, what wide gaps there are in that
country between the superimposed forma
tions ; so it is in North America, and in
many other parts of the world. The most
skilful geologist, if his attention had been
exclusively confined to these large terri
tories, would never have suspected that
during the periods which were blank and
barren in his own country great piles of
sediment, charged with new and peculiar
forms of life, had elsewhere been accumu
lated. And if in each separate territory
hardly any idea can be formed of the
length of time which has elapsed between
the consecutive formations, we may infer
that this could nowhere be ascertained.
The frequent and great changes in the
mineralogical composition of consecutive
formations, generally implying great
changes in the geography of the sur
rounding lands, whence the sediment has
been derived, accords with the belief of
vast intervals of time having elapsed
between each formation.
But we can, I think, see why the geo
logical formations of each region are
almost invariably intermittent — that is,
have not followed each other in close
sequence. Scarcely any fact struck me
more, when’ examining many hundred
miles of the South American coasts, which
have been upraised several hundred feet
within the recent period, than the absence
of any recent deposits sufficiently extensive
to last for even a short geological period.
« Along the whole west coast, which is
inhabited by a peculiar marine fauna,
tertiary beds are so poorly developed
that no record of several successive and
peculiar marine faunas will probably be
preserved to a distant age. A little reflec
tion will explain why along the rising coast
of the western side of South America no
extensive formations with recent or tertiary
remains can anywhere be found, though
the supply of sediment must for ages have
been great, from the enormous degradation
of the coast-rocks and from muddy streams
entering the sea.
The explanation, no
doubt, is that the littoral and sub-littoral
deposits are continually worn away as
soon as they are brought up by the slow
and gradual rising of the land within the
grinding action of the coast-waves.
We may, I think, safely conclude that
sediment must be accumulated in extremely
thick, solid, or extensive masses, in order
to withstand the incessant action of the
119
waves when first upraised and during
subsequent oscillations of level.
Such
thick and extensive accumulations of sedi
ment may be formed in two ways—either,
in profound depths of the sea, in which ,
case, judging from the researches of E.
Forbes, we may conclude that the bottom
will be inhabited by extremely few animals,
and the mass, when upraised, will give a
most imperfect record of the forms of life
which then existed ; or sediment may be
accumulated to any thickness and extent
over a shallow bottom, if it continue slowly
to subside. In this latter case, as long as
the rate of subsidence and supply of sedi
ment nearly balance each other, the sea
will remain shallow and favourable for life,
and thus a fossiliferous formation thick
enough, when upraised, to resist any
amount of degradation may be formed.
I am convinced that all our ancient
formations which are rich in fossils have
thus been formed during subsidence: Since
publishing my views on this subject in 1845,
I have watched the progress of Geology,
and have been surprised to note how author
after author, in treating of this or that great
formation, has come to the conclusion that
it was accumulated during subsidence. I
may add that the only ancient tertiary
formation on the west coast of South
America which has been bulky enough to
resist such degradation as it has as yet suf
fered, but which will hardly last to a distant
geological age, was certainly deposited
during a downward oscillation of level, and
thus gained considerable thickness.
All geological facts tell us plainly that
each area has undergone numerous slow
oscillations of level, and apparently these
oscillations have affected wide spaces.
Consequently, formations rich in fossils, and
sufficiently thick and extensive to resist
subsequent degradation, may have been
formed over wide spaces during periods of
subsidence, but only where the supply of
sediment was sufficient to keep the sea
shallow and to embed and preserve the
remains before they had time to decay.
On the other hand, as long as the bed of
the sea remained stationary, thick deposits
could not have been accumulated in the
shallow parts, which are the most favour
able to life. Still less could this have
happened during the alternate periods of
elevation ; or, to speak more accurately,
the beds which were then accumulated will
have been destroyed by being upraised and
brought within the limits of the coast
action.
�120
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
Thus the geological record will almost
necessarily be rendered intermittent. I
feel much confidence in the truth of these
views, for they are in strict accordance with
the general principles inculcated by Sir C.
Lyell; and E. Forbes subsequently but inde
pendently arrived at a similar conclusion.
One remark is here worth a passing
notice. During periods of elevation the
area of the land and of the adjoining shoal
parts of the sea will be increased, and new
stations will often be formed—all circum
stances most, favourable, as previously
explained, for the formation of new varieties
and species; but during such periods there
will generally be a blank in the geological
record. On the other hand, during subsi
dence the inhabited area and number of
inhabitants will decrease (excepting the
productions on the shores of a continent
when first broken up into an archipelago),
and consequently during subsidence,
though there will be much extinction, fewer
new varieties or species will be formed ;
and it is during these very periods of sub
sidence that our great deposits rich in
fossils have been accumulated. Nature
may almost be said to have guarded against
the frequent discovery of her transitional or
linking forms.
From the foregoing considerations it
cannot be doubted that the geological
record, viewed as a whole, is extremely im
perfect ; but if we confine our attention to
any one formation, it becomes more difficult
to understand why we do not therein find
closely graduated varieties between the
allied species which lived at its commence
ment and at its close. Some cases are on
record of the same species presenting
distinct varieties in the upper and lower
parts of the same formation ; but, as they
are rare, they may be here passed over.
Although each formation has indisputably
required a vast number of years for its
deposition, I can see several reasons why
each should not include a graduated series
of links between the species which then
lived; but I can by no means pretend
to assign due proportional weight to the
following considerations.
Although each formation may mark a
very long lapse of years, each perhaps is
short compared with the period requisite
to change one species into another. I am
aware that two palaeontologists, whose
opinions are worthy of much deference—
namely, Bronn and Woodward, have con
cluded that the average duration of each
formation is twice or thrice as long as the
average duration of specific forms. But
insuperable difficulties, as it seems to me,
prevent us coming to any just conclusion
on this head. When we see a species first
appearing in the middle of any formation,
it would be rash in the extreme to infer
that it had not elsewhere previously existed.
So again, when we find a species disap
pearing before the uppermost layers have
been deposited, it would be equally rash to
suppose that it then became wholly extinct.
We forget how small the area of Europe is
compared with the rest of the world ; nor
have the several stages of the same forma
tion throughout Europe been correlated
with perfect accuracy.
With marine animals of all kinds, we
may safely infer a large amount of migra
tion during climatal and other changes ;
and when we see a species first ap
pearing in any formation, the probability is
that it only then first immigrated into that
area. It is well known, for instance, that
several species appeared somewhat earlier
in the palaeozoic beds of North America
than in those of Europe; time having
apparently been required for their migra
tion from the American to the European
seas. In examining the latest'deposits of
various quarters of the world, it has every
where been noted that some few still
existing species are common in the deposit,
but have become extinct in the immediately
Surrounding sea; or, conversely, that some
are now abundant in the neighbouring sea,
but are rare or absent in this particular
deposit. It is an excellent lesson to reflect
on the ascertained amount of migration of
the inhabitants of Europe during the
Glacial period, which forms only a part of
one whole geological period ; and likewise
to reflect on the great changes of level, on
the inordinately great change of climate,
on the prodigious lapse of time, all included
within this same glacial period. Yet it
may be doubted whether in any quarter of
the world sedimentary deposits, including'
fossil remains, have gone on accumulating
within the same area during the whole of
this period. It is not, for instance, pro
bable that sediment was deposited during
the whole of the glacial period near the
mouth of the Mississippi, within that limit
of depth at which marine animals can
flourish ; for we know what vast geo
graphical changes occurred in other parts
of America during this space of time.
When such beds as were deposited in
shallow water near the mouth of the
Mississippi during some part of the glacial
�ON THE IMPERFECTION OF THE GEOLOGICAL RECORD
period shall have been upraised, organic
remains will probably first appear and
disappear at different levels, owing to the
migration of species and to geographical
changes.
And in the distant future a
geologist examining these beds might be
tempted to conclude that the average
duration of life of the embedded fossils
had been less than that of the glacial
period, instead of having been really far
greater—that is, extending from before the
glacial epoch to the present day.
In order to get a perfect gradation
between two forms in the upper and lower
parts of the same formation, the deposit
must have gone on accumulating for a
very long period, in order to have given
sufficient time for the slow process of
variation; hence the deposit will generally
have to be a very thick one; and the
species undergoing modification will have
had to live on the same area throughout
this whole time. But we have seen that a
thick fossiliferous formation can only be
accumulated during a period of subsidence;
and to keep the depth approximately the
same, which is necessary in order to enable
the same species to live on the same space,
the supply of sediment must nearly have
counterbalanced the amount of subsidence.
But this same movement of subsidence
will often tend to sink the area whence the
sediment is derived, and thus diminish the
supply while the downward movement con
tinues. In fact, this nearly exact balancing
between the supply of sediment and the
amount of subsidence is probably a rare
contingency ; for it has been observed by
more than one palaeontologist that very
thick deposits are usually barren of organic
remains, except near their upper or lower
limits.
It would seem that each separate forma
tion, like the whole pile of formations in
any country, has generally been intermittent
in its accumulation. When we see, as is
so often the case, a formation composed of
beds of different mineralogical composition,
we may reasonably suspect that the process
of deposition has been much interrupted,
as a change in the currents of the sea and
a supply of sediment of a different nature
will generally have been due to geographical
changes requiring much time. Nor will
the closest inspection of a formation give
any idea of the time which its deposition
has consumed. Many instances could be
given of beds only a few feet in thickness,
representing formations, elsewhere thou
sands of feet in thickness, and which must
121
have required an enormous period for their
accumulation ; yet no one ignorant of this
fact would have suspected the vast lapse of
time represented by the thinner formation.
Many cases could be given of the lower
beds of a formation having been upraised,
denuded, submerged, and then re-covered
by the upper beds of the same formation
—facts showing what wide, yet easily over
looked, intervals have occurred in its accu
mulation. In other cases we have the
plainest evidence in great fossilised trees,
still standing upright as they grew, of many
long intervals of time and changes of level
during the process of deposition, which would
never even have been suspected had not
the trees chanced to have been preserved :
thus Messrs. Lyell and Dawson found
carboniferous beds 1,400 feet thick in Nova
Scotia, with ancientroot-b earing strata,
one above the other, at no less than sixty
eight different levels. Hence, when the
same species occur at the bottom, middle,
and top of a formation, the probability is
that they have not lived on the same spot
during the whole period of deposition, but
have disappeared and reappeared, perhaps
many times, during the same geological
period. So that, if such species were to
undergo a considerable amount of modifi
cation during any one geological period, a
section would not probably include all the
fine intermediate gradations which must,
on my theory, have existed between them,
but abrupt, though perhaps very slight,
changes of form.
It is all-important to remember that
naturalists have no golden rule by which
*to distinguish species and varieties ; they
grant some little variability to each species,
but when they meet with a somewhat
greater amount of difference between any
two forms they rank both as species, unless
they are enabled to connect them together
by close intermediate gradations. And this,
from the reasons just assigned, we can
seldom hope to effect in any one geological
section. Supposing B and C to be two
species, and a third, A, to be found in an
underlying bed ; even if A were strictly
intermediate between B and C, it would
simply be ranked as a third and distinct
species, unless at the same time it could
be most closely connected with either one
or both forms by intermediate varieties.
Nor should it be forgotten, as before
explained, that A might be the actual
progenitor of B and C, and yet might not
at all necessarily be strictly intermediate
between them in all points of structure.
�122
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
So that we might obtain the parent-species
and its several modified descendants from
the lower and upper beds of a formation,
and, unless we obtained numerous transi
tional gradations, we should not recognise
their relationship, and should consequently
be compelled to rank them all as distinct
species.
It is notorious on what excessively slight
differences many palaeontologists have
founded their species; and they do this the
more readily if the specimens come from
different sub-stages of the same formation.
Some experienced conchologists are now
sinking many of the very fine species of
D’Orbigny and others into the rank ot
varieties ; and on this view we do find the
kind of evidence of change which on my
theory we ought to find. Moreover, if we
look to rather wider intervals—namely, to
distinct but consecutive stages of the same
great formation, we find that the embedded
fossils, though almost universally ranked as
specifically different, yet are far more
closely allied to each other than are the
species found in more widely separated
formations; but to this subject I shall have
to return in the following chapter.
One other consideration is worth notice :
with animals and plants that can propagate
rapidly and are not highly locomotive, there
is reason to suspect, as we have formerly
seen, that their varieties are generally at
first local; and that such local varieties do
not spread widely and supplant their parent
forms until they have been modified and
perfected in some considerable degree.
According to this view, the chance of dis
covering in a formation in any one country
all the early stages of transition between
any two forms is small, for the successive
changes are supposed to have been local or
confined to some one spot. Most marine
animals have a wide range; and we have
seen that with plants it is those which have
the widest range that oftenest present
varieties; so that with shells and other
marine animals it is probably those which
have had the widest range, far exceeding
the limits of the known geological forma
tions of Europe, which have oftenest given
rise, first to local varieties, and ultimately to
new species ; and this again would greatly
lessen the chance of our being able to trace
the stages of transition in any one geological
formation.
It should not be forgotten that at the
present day, with perfect specimens for
examination, two forms can seldom be con
nected by intermediate varieties and thus
proved to be the same species, until many
specimens have been collected from many
places; and in the case of fossil species this
could rarely be effected by palaeontologists.
We shall, perhaps, best perceive the impro
bability of our being enabled to connect
species by numerous, fine, intermediate,
fossil links, by asking ourselves whether,
for instance, geologists at some future period
will be able to prove that our different
breeds of cattle, sheep, horses, and dogs
have descended from a single stock or from
several aboriginal stocks; or, again, whether
certain sea-shells inhabiting the shores of
North America, which are ranked by some
conchologists as distinct species from their
European representatives, and by other
conchologists as only varieties, are really
varieties, or are, as it is called, specifically
distinct. This could be effected only by
the future geologist discovering in a fossil
state numerous intermediate gradations;
and such success seems to me improbable
in the highest degree.
Geological research, though it has added
numerous species to existing and extinct
genera, and has made the intervals between
some few groups less wide than they other
wise would have been, yet has done scarcely
anything in breaking down the distinc
tion between species, by connecting them
together by numerous, fine, intermediate
varieties; and this not having been effected
is probably the gravest and most obvious of
all the many objections which may be
urged against my views. Hence it will be
worth while to sum up the foregoing
remarks, under an imaginary illustration.
The Malay Archipelago is of about the
size of Europe from the North Cape to the
Mediterranean, and from Britain to Russia;
and therefore equals all the geological
formations which have been examined with
any accuracy, excepting those of the United
States of America. I fully agree with Mr.
Godwin-Austen, that the present condition
of the Malay Archipelago, with its numerous
large islands separated by wide and shallow
seas, probably represents the former state
of Europe, whilst most of our formations
were accumulating. The Malay Archi
pelago is one of the richest regions of the
whole world in organic beings ; yet, if all
the species were to be collected which have
ever lived there, how imperfectly would they
represent the natural history of the world !
But we have every reason to believe that
the terrestrial productions of the archipelago
would be preserved in an excessively im
perfect manner in the formations which we
�ON THE IMPERFECTION OF THE GEOLOGICAL RECORD
suppose to be there accumulating. I sus
pect that not many of the strictly littoral
animals, or of those which lived on naked
submarine rocks, would be embedded; and
those embedded in gravel or sand would
not endure to a distant epoch. Wherever
sediment did not accumulate on the bed of
the sea, or where it did not accumulate.at
a sufficient rate to protect organic bodies
from decay, no remains could be preserved.
I believe that fossiliferous formations
could be formed in the archipelago, of
thickness sufficient to last to an age as
distant in futurity as the secondary forma
tions lie in the past, only during periods of
subsidence. These periods of subsidence
would be separated from each other by
enormous intervals, during which the area
would be either stationary or rising; while
rising, each fossiliferous formation would
be destroyed, almost as soon as accumulated,
by the incessant coast-action, as we now
see on the shores of South America. During
the periods of subsidence there would pro
bably be much extinction of life ; during
the periods of elevation there would be
much variation; but the geological record
would then be at least perfect.
It may be doubted whether the duration
of any one great period of subsidence over
the whole or part of the archipelago,
together with a contemporaneous accu
mulation of sediment, would exceed the
average duration of the same specific forms;
and these contingencies are indispensable
for the preservation of all the transitional
gradations between any two or more species.
If such gradations were not fully preserved,
transitional varieties would merely.appear
as so many distinct species. It is,, also,
probable that each great period of subsi
dence would be interrupted, by oscillations
of level, and that slight climatal changes
would intervene during such lengthy periods;
and in these cases the inhabitants of the
archipelago would have to migrate, and no
closely consecutive record of their modi
fications could be preserved in any one
formation.
Very many of the marine inhabitants of
the archipelago now range thousands of
miles beyond its confines ; and analogy
leads me to believe that it would be chiefly
these far-ranging species which would
oftenest produce new varieties ; and the
varieties would at first generally be local or
confined to one place, but if possessed of
any decided advantage, or when further
modified and improved, they would slowly
spread and supplant their parent-forms.
123
When such varieties returned to their
ancient homes, as they would differ from
their former state, in a nearly uniform,
though perhaps extremely slight degree,
they would, according to the principles
followed by many palaeontologists, be ranked
as new and distinct species.
If, then, there be some degree of truth in
these remarks, we have no right to expect
to find in our geological formation an
infinite number of those fine transitional
forms which, on my theory, assuredly have
connected all the past and present species
of the same group into one long and branch
ing chain of life. We ought only to look
for a few links, some more closely, some
more distantly related to each other ; and
these links, let them be ever so close, if
found in different stages of the same forma
tion, would, by most palaeontologists, be
ranked as distinct species. But I do not
pretend that I should ever have suspected
how poor a record of tire mutations of life,
the best preserved geological section pre
sented, had not the difficulty of our not
discovering innumerable transitional links
between the species which appeared at the
commencement and close of each forma
tion pressed so hardly on my theory.
On the sudden appearance of whole groups
of Allied Species.—The abrupt manner in
which whole groups of species suddenly
appear in certain formations has been
urged by several palaeontologists—for
instance, by Agassiz, Pictet, and by none
more forcibly than by Professor Sedgwick
—as a fatal objection to the belief in the
transmutation of species. If numerous
species, belonging to the same genera or
families, have really started into life all at
once, the fact would be fatal to the theory
of descent with slow modification through
natural selection. For the development
of a group of forms, all of which have
descended from some one progenitor, must
have been an extremely slow process ; and
the progenitors must have lived long ages
before their modified descendants. But we
continually overrate the perfection of the
geological record, and falsely infer, because
certain genera or families have not been
found beneath a certain stage, that they
did not exist before that stage. We con
tinually forget how large the world is,
compared with the area over which our
geological formations have been carefully
examined ; we forget that groups of species
may elsewhere have long existed and have
slowly multiplied before they invaded the
�124
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
ancient archipelagoes of Europe and of
the United States. We do not make due
allowance for the enormous intervals of
time which have probably elapsed between
our consecutive formations—longer perhaps
in most cases than the time required for
the accumulation of each formation. These
intervals will have given time for the multi
plication of species from some one or some
few parent-forms; and in the succeeding
formation such species will appear as if
suddenly created.
I may here recall a remark formerly
made—namely, that it might require a
long succession of ages to adapt an organ
ism to some new and peculiar line of
life ; for instance, to fly through the air;
but that when this had been effected, and
a few species had thus acquired a great
advantage over other organisms, a com
paratively short time would be necessary
to produce many divergent forms, which
would be able to spread rapidly and widely
throughout the world.
I will now give a few examples to illus
trate these remarks, and to show how liable
we are to error in supposing that whole
groups of species have suddenly been pro
duced. I may recall the well-known fact that
in geological treatises, published not many
years ago, the great class of mammals was
always spoken of as having abruptly come
in at the commencement of the tertiary
series. And now one of the richest known
accumulations of fossil mammals,.for its
thickness, belongs to the middle of the
secondary series; and one true mammal has
been discovered in the new red sandstone
at nearly the commencement of this great
series. Cuvier used to urge that no monkey
occurred in any tertiary stratum ; but now
extinct species have been discovered in
India, South America, and in Europe even
as far back as the eocene stage. Had it
not been for the rare accident of the pre
servation of footsteps in the new red sand
stone of the United States, who would
have ventured to suppose that, besides
reptiles, no less than at least thirty kinds
of birds, some of gigantic size, existed
during that period? Not a fragment of
bone has been discovered in these beds.
Notwithstanding that the number of joints
shown in the fossil impressions correspond
with the number in the several toes of
living birds’ feet, some authors doubt
whether the animals which left the impres
sions were really birds. Until quite recently
these authors might have maintained, and
some have maintained, that the whole ciass
of birds came suddenly into existence
during an early tertiary period ; but now
we know, on the authority of Professor
Owen (as may be seen in Lyell’s Manual},
that a bird certainly lived during the deposi
tion of the upper greensand.
I may give another instance, which, from
having passed under my own eyes, has
much struck me. Ina memoir on Fossil
Sessile Cirripedes, I have stated that from
the number of existing and extinct tertiary
species ; from the extraordinary abundance
of the individuals of many species all over
the world, from-the Arctic regions to the
equator, inhabiting various zones of depths
from the upper tidal limits to 50 fathoms ;
from the perfect manner in which specimens
are preserved in the oldest tertiary beds ;
from the ease with which even a fragment
of a valve can be recognised; from all
these circumstances, I inferred that, had
sessile cirripedes existed during the secon
dary periods, they would certainly have
been preserved and discovered; and as not
one species had then been discovered in
beds of this age, I concluded that this
great group had been suddenly developed
at the commencement of the tertiary series.
This was a sore trouble to me, adding as I
thought one more instance of the abrupt
appearance of a great group of species.
But my work had hardly been published
when a skilful paleontologist, M. Bosquet,
sent me a drawing of a perfect specimen
of an unmistakable sessile cirripede, which
he had himself extracted from the chalk of
Belgium. And, as if to make the case as
striking as possible, this sessile cirripede
was a Chthamalus, a very common, large,
and ubiquitous genus, of which not one
specimen has as yet been found even in any
tertiary stratum. Hence we now positively
know that sessile cirripedes existed during
the secondary period ; and these cirripedes
might have been the progenitors of our
many tertiary and existing species.
The case most frequently insisted on by
palaeontologists, of the apparently sudden
appearance of a whole group of species, is
that of the teleostean fishes, low down in
the Chalk period. This group includes the
large majority of existing species. Lately,
Professor Pictet has carried their existence
one sub-stage further back; and some
palaeontologists believe that certain much
older fishes, of which the affinities are as
yet imperfectly known, are really teleostean.
Assuming, however, that the whole of them
did appear, as Agassiz believes, at the com
mencement of the chalk formation, the fact
�ON THE IMPERFECTION OF THE GEOLOGICAL RECORD
would certainly be highly remarkable ; but
I cannot see that it would be an insuperable
difficulty on my theory, unless it could like
wise be shown that the species of this
group appeared suddenly and simulta
neously throughout the world at this same
period. It is almost superfluous to remark
that hardly any fossil-fish are known from
south of the equator; and by running
through Pictet’s Palceontology it will be
seen that very few species are known from
several formations in Europe. Some few
families of fish now have a confined range ;
the teleostean fish might formerly have had
a similarly confined range, and, after having
been largely developed in some one sea,
might have spread widely. Nor have we
any right to suppose that the seas of the
world have always been so freely open
from south to north as they arc at present.
Even at this day, if the Malay Archipelago
were converted into land, the tropical parts
of the Indian Ocean would form a large
and perfectly enclosed basin, in which any
great group of marine animals might be
multiplied ; and here they would remain
confined until some of the species became
adapted to a cooler climate, and were
enabled to- double the southern capes of
Africa or Australia, and thus reach other
and distant seas.
From these and similar considerations,
but chiefly from our ignorance of the
geology of other countries beyond the
confines of Europe and the United States,
and from the revolution in our palaeonto
logical ideas on many points, which the
discoveries of even the last dozen years
have effected, it seems to me to be about as
rash in us to dogmatise on the succession
of organic beings throughout the world as
it would be for a naturalist to land for five
minutes on some one barren point in
Australia, and then to discuss the number
and range of its productions.
On the sudden appearance of groups of
Allied Species in the lowest known fossili
ferous strata.—There is another ami allied
difficulty which is much graver. I allude
to the manner in which numbers of species
of the same group suddenly appear in the
lowest known fossiliferous rocks. Most of
the arguments which have convinced me
that all the existing species of the same
group have descended from one progenitor
apply with nearly equal force to the earliest
known species. For instance, I cannot
doubt that all the Silurian trilobites have
descended from some one crustacean,
125
which must have lived long before the
Silurian age, and which probably differed
greatly from any known animal. Some of
the most ancient Silurian animals, as the
Nautilus, Lingula, etc., do not differ much
from living species ; and it cannot on my
theory be supposed that these old species
were the progenitors of all the species of
the orders to which they belong, for
they do not present characters in any
degree intermediate between them.
If,
moreover, they had been the progenitors
of. these orders, they would almost cer
tainly have been long ago supplanted and
exterminated by their numerous and im
proved descendants.
Consequently, if my theory be true, it is
indisputable that before the lowest Silurian
stratum was deposited, long periods elapsed,
as long as, or probably far longer than, the
whole interval from the Silurian age to the
present day ; and that during these vast,
yet quite unknown, periods of time the
world swarmed with living creatures.
To the question, why we do not find
records of these vast primordial periods, I
can give no satisfactory answer. Several
of the most eminent geologists, with Sir R.
Murchison at their head, are convinced that
we see in the organic remains of the lowest
Silurian stratum the dawn of life on this
planet. Other highly competent judges, as
Lyell and the late E. Forbes, dispute this
conclusion. We should not forget that
only a small portion of the world is known
with accuracy. M. Barrande has lately
added another and lower stage to the
Silurian system, abounding with new and
peculiar species. Traces of life have been
detected in the Longmynd beds, beneath
Barrande’s so-called primordial zone. The
presence of phosphatic nodules and bitu
minous matter in some of the lowest azoic
rocks probably indicates the former exist
ence of life at these periods. But the
difficulty of understanding the absence of
vast piles of fossiliferous strata, which on
my theory no doubt were somewhere accu
mulated before the Silurian epoch, is very
great. If these most ancient beds had been
wholly worn away by denudation, or oblite
rated by metamorphic action, we ought to
find only small remnants of the formations
next succeeding them in age, and these
ought to be very generally in a metamor
phosed condition. But the descriptions
which we now possess of the Silurian
deposits over immense territories in Russia
and in North America do not support the
viejjr, that the older a formation is, the more
�126
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
it has always suffered the extremity of
continents seem to have been formed by a
denudation and metamorphism.
preponderance, during many oscillations
The case at present must remain inex
of level, of the force of elevation ; but may
plicable; and maybe truly urged as a valid
not the areas of preponderant movement
argument against the views here enter
have changed in the lapse of ages ? At a
tained. To show that it may hereafter
period immeasurably antecedent to the
receive some explanation, I will give the
Silurian epoch continents may have existed
following hypothesis. From the nature of
where oceans are now spread out, and
the organic remains which do not appear
clear and open oceans may have existed
to have inhabited profound depths, in the
where our continents now stand. Nor
several formations of Europe and of the
should we be justified in assuming that if,
United States, and from the amount of
for instance, the bed of the Pacific Ocean
sediment, miles in thickness, of which the
were now converted into a continent, we
formations are composed, we may infer
should there find formations older than the
that from first to last large islands or tracts
Silurian strata, supposing such to have
been formerly deposited ; for it might well
of land, whence the sediment was derived,
occurred in the neighbourhood of the exist
happen that strata which had subsided
ing continents of Europe and North
some miles nearer to the centre of the
America. But we do not know what was
earth, and which had been pressed on by
the state of things in the intervals between
an enormous weight of superincumbent
the successive formations; whether Europe
water, might have undergone far more
and the United States during these intervals
metamorphic action than strata which
have always remained nearer to the sur
existed as dry land, or as a submarine
surface near land, on which sediment was
face. The immense areas in some parts of
not deposited, or as the bed of an open and
the world, for instance in South America,
of bare metamorphic rocks, which must
unfathomable sea.
Looking to the existing oceans, which
have been heated under great pressure,
are thrice as extensive as the land, we see
have always seemed to me to require some
special explanation ; and we may perhaps
them studded with many islands ; but not
believe that we see in these large areas the
one oceanic island is as yet known to afford
many formations long anterior to the Silu
even a remnant of any palaeozoic or secon
rian epoch in a completely metamorphosed
dary formation. Hence we may perhaps
condition.
infer that during the palaeozoic and secon
dary periods neither continents nor conti
The several difficulties here discussed—•
nental islands existed where our oceans now
namely, our not finding in the successive
extend ; for had they existed there, palaeo
formations infinitely numerous transitional
zoic and secondary formations would in all
links between the many species which now
probability have been accumulated from
exist or have existed ; the sudden manner
sediment derived from their wear and tear,
in which whole groups of species appear in
and would have been at least partially
our European formations; the almost entire
upheaved by the oscillations of level,
absence, as at present known, of fossiliwhich we may fairly conclude must have
ferous formations beneath the Silurian
intervened during these enormously long
strata, are all undoubtedly of the gravest
periods. If, then, we may infer anything
nature.
We see this in the plainest
from these facts, we may infer that where
manner by the fact that all the most
our oceans now extend oceans have ex
eminent palaeontologists—namely, Cuvier,
tended from the remotest period of which
Agassiz, Barrande, Falconer, E. Forbes,
we have any record ; and, on the other
etc., and all our greatest geologists, as
hand, that where continents now exist
Lyell, Murchison, Sedgwick, etc., have
large tracts of land have existed, subjected
unanimously, often vehemently, maintained
no doubt to great oscillations of level,
the immutability of species. But I have
since the earliest Silurian period. The
reason to believe that one great authority,
coloured map appended to my volume on
Sir Charles Lyell, from further reflection
Coral Reefs led me to conclude that the
entertains grave doubts on this subject.
great oceans are still mainly areas of sub
I feel how rash it is to differ from these
sidence, the great archipelagoes still areas
authorities, to whom, with others, we owe
of oscillations of level, and the continents
all our knowledge. Those who think the
areas of elevation. But have we any right
natural geological record in any degree
to assume that things have thus remained
perfect, and who do not attach much
from the beginning of this world ? Qur
�ON THE GEOLOGICAL SUCCESSION OF ORGANIC BEINGS
weight to the facts and arguments of other
kinds given in this volume, will undoubt
edly at once reject my theory. For my
part, following out Lyell’s metaphor, I look
at the natural geological record as a
history of the world imperfectly kept, and
written in a changing dialect; of this
history we possess the last volume alone,
relating only to two or three countries.
Of this volume only here and there a short
chapter has been preserved ; and of each '
127
page, only here and there a few lines.
Each word of the slowly-changing lan
guage in which the history is supposed
to be written, being more or less different
in the interrupted succession of chapters,
may represent the apparently abruptlychanged forms of life, entombed in our
consecutive, but widely separated, forma
tions. On this view, the difficulties above
discussed are greatly diminished, or even
disappear.
Chapter X.
ON THE GEOLOGICAL SUCCESSION OF ORGANIC
BEINGS
On the slow and successive appearance of new
species—On their different rates of change—Species once lost do not reappear—Groups of
species follow the same general rules in their
appearance and disappearance as do single
species—On Extinction—On simultaneous
changes in the forms of life throughout the
world—On the affinities of extinct species to
each other and to living species—On the state
of development of ancient forms—On the
succession of the same types within the same
areas—Summary of preceding and present
chapters.
Let us now see whether the several facts
and rules relating to the geological succes
sion of organic beings better accord with
the common view of the immutability of
species, or with that of their slow and
gradual modification, through descent and
natural selection.
New species have appeared very slowly,
one after another, both on the land and in
the waters. Lyell has shown that it is
hardly possible to resist the evidence on
this head in the case of the several tertiary
stages ; and every year tends to fill up the
blanks between them, and to make the
percentage system of lost and new forms
more gradual. In some of the most recent
beds, though undoubtedly of high antiquity
if measured by years, only one or two
species are lost forms, and only one or two
are new forms, having here appeared for
the first time, either locally, or, as far as
we know, on the face of the earth. If we
may trust the observations of Philippi in
Sicily, the successive changes in the marine
inhabitants of that island have been many
and most gradual. The secondary forma
tions are more broken ; but, as Bronn has
remarked, neither the appearance nor dis
appearance of their many now extinct
species has been simultaneous in each
separate formation.
Species of different genera and classes
have not changed at the same rate, or in
the same degree. In the oldest tertiary
beds a few living shells may still be found
in the midst of a multitude of extinct
forms.
Falconer has given a striking
instance of a similar fact in an existing
crocodile associated with many strange
and lost mammals and reptiles in the subHimalayan deposits. The Silurian Lingula
differs but little from the living species of
this genus; whereas most of the other
Silurian Molluscs and all the Crustaceans
have changed greatly. The productions
of the land seem to change at a quicker
rate than those of the sea, of which a
striking instance has lately been observed
in Switzerland. There is some reason to
believe that organisms, considered high in
the scale of nature, change more quickly
than those that are low, though there are
exceptions to this rule. The amount of
organic change, as Pictet has remarked,
does not strictly correspond with the
�128
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
succession of our geological formations ; so
that between each two consecutive forma
tions the forms of life have seldom changed
in exactly the same degree. Yet, if we
compare any but the most closely-related
formations, all the species will be found to
have undergone some change. When a
species has once disappeared from the face
of the earth, we have reason to believe
that the same identical form never reap
pears. The strongest apparent exception
to this latter rule is that of the so-called
“ colonies ” of M. Barrande, which intrude
for a period in the midst of an older forma
tion, and then allow the pre-existing fauna
to re-appear; but Lyell’s explanation—
namely, that it is a case of temporary
migration from a distinct geographical
province—seems to me satisfactory.
These several facts accord well with my
theory.
I believe in no fixed law of
development causing all the inhabitants of
a country to change abruptly, or simul
taneously, or to an equal degree.
The
process of modification must be extremely
slow. The variability of each species is
quite independent of that of all others.
Whether such variability be taken advan
tage of by natural selection, and whether
the variations be accumulated to a greater
or lesser amount, thus causing a greater or
lesser amount of modification in the varying
species, depends on many complex contin
gencies—on the variability being of a
beneficial nature, on the power of inter
crossing, on the rate of breeding, on the
slowly changing physical conditions of the
country, and more especially on the nature
of the other inhabitants with which the
varying species comes into competition.
Hence it is by no means surprising that
one species should retain the same iden
tical form much longer than others ; or, if
changing, that it should change less. We
see. the same fact in geographical distri
bution ; for instance, in the land-shells and
coleopterous insects of Madeira having
come to differ considerably from their
nearest allies on the continent of Europe,
whereas the marine shells and birds have
remained unaltered.
We can perhaps
understand the apparently quicker rate of
change in terrestrial and in more highlyorganised productions compared with
marine and lower productions, by the
more complex relations of the higher
beings to their organic and inorganic
conditions of life, as explained in a former
chapter. When many of the inhabitants
of a country have become modified and
improved, we can understand, on the
principle of competition, and on that of the
many all-important relations of organism
to organism, that any form which does not
become in some degree modified and im
proved will be liable to be exterminated.
Hence we can see why all the species in
the same region do at last, if we look to
wide enough intervals of time, become
modified; for those which do not change
will become extinct.
In members of the same class the
average amount of change, during long
and equal periods of time, may, perhaps,
be nearly the same; but as the accumula
tion of long-enduring fossiliferous formations
depends on great masses of sediment
having been deposited on areas while
subsiding, our formations have been almost
necessarily accumulated at wide and irregu
larly intermittent intervals; consequently,
the amount of organic change exhibited by
the fossils embedded in consecutive forma
tions is not equal. Each formation, on this
view, does not mark a new and complete
act of creation, but only an occasional scene,
taken almost at hazard, in a slowly chang
ing drama.
We can clearly understand why a species
when once lost should never reappear, even
if the very same conditions of life, organic
and inorganic, should recur. For though the
offspring of one species might be adapted
(and no doubt this has occurred in innumer
able instances) to fill the exact place of
another .species in the economy of nature,
and thus supplant it, yet the two forms—
the old and the new—would not be identi
cally the same ; for both would almost
certainly inherit different characters from
their distinct progenitors. For instance, it
is just possible, if our fantail-pigeons were
all destroyed, that fanciers, by striving
during long ages for the same object, might
make a new breed hardly distinguishable
from our present fantail ; but if the parent
rock-pigeon were also destroyed, and in
nature we have every reason to believe that
the parent-form will generally be sup
planted and exterminated by its improved
offspring, it is quite incredible that a fan
tail, identical with the existing breed, could
be raised from any other species of pigeon,
or even from the other well-established
races of the domestic pigeon, for the newlyformed fantail would be almost sure to
inherit from its new progenitor some slight
characteristic differences.
Groups of species—that is, genera and
families—follow the same general rules in
�ON THE GEOLOGICAL SUCCESSION OF ORGANIC BEINGS
their appearance and disappearance as do
single species, changingmoreor less quickly,
and in a greater or lesser degree. A group
does not reappear after it has once disap
peared; or its existence, as long as it lasts, is
continuous. I am aware that there are some
apparent exceptions to this rule, but the
exceptions are surprisingly few—so few that
E. Forbes, Pictet, and Woodward (though
all strongly opposed to such views as I
maintain) admit its truth ; and the rule
strictly accords with my theory. For, as all
the species of the same group have descended
from some one species, it is clear that as
long as any species of the group have
appeared in the long succession of ages, so
long must its members have continuously
existed, in order to have generated either
new and modified or the same old and un
modified forms. Species of the genus
Lingula, for instance, must have continu
ously existed by an unbroken succession of
generations, from the lowest Silurian
stratum to the present day.
We have seen in the last chapter that
the species of a group sometimes falsely
appear to have come in abruptly; and I
have attempted to give an explanation of
this fact, which, if true, would have been
fatal to my views. But such cases are
certainly exceptional, the general rule being
a gradual increase in number, till the group
reaches its maximum, and then, sooner or
later, it gradually decreases. If the number
of the species of a genus, or the number of
the genera of a family, be represented by a
vertical line of varying thickness, crossing
the successive geological formations in
which the species are found, the line will
sometimes falsely appear to begin at its
lower end, not in a sharp point, but abruptly;
it then gradually thickens upwards, some
times keeping for a space of equal thickness,
and ultimately thins out in the upper beds,
marking the decrease and final extinction
of the species. This gradual increase in
number of the species of a group is strictly
conformable with my theory, as the species
of the same genus, and the genera of the
same family, can increase only slowly and
progressively; for the process of modifica
tion and the production of a number of
allied forms must be slow and gradual—•
one species giving rise first to two or three
varieties, these being slowly converted into
species, which, in their turn, produce by
equally slow steps other species, and so on,
like the branching of a great tree from
a single stem, till the group becomes
large.
129
On Extinction.—We have as yet spoken
only incidentally of the disappearance of
species and of groups of species. On
the theory of natural selection the extinc
tion of old forms and the production of
new and improved forms are intimately
connected together. The old notion of all
the inhabitants of the earth having been
swept away at successive periods by catas
trophes is very generally given up, even
by those geologists, as Elie de Beaumont,
Murchison, Barrande, etc., whose general
views would naturally lead them to this
conclusion. On the contrary, we have
every reason to believe, from the study of
the tertiary formations, that species and
groups of species gradually disappear, one
after another, first from one spot, then from
another, and, finally, from the world. Both
single species and w’hole groups of species
last for very unequal periods ; some groups,
as we have seen, having endured from the
earliest dawn of life to the present day ;
some having disappeared before the close
of the palseozoic period. No fixed law
seems to determine the length of time
during which any single species or any
single genus endures. There is reason to
believe that the complete extinction of the
species of a group is generally a slower
process than their production : if the
appearance and disappearance of a group
of species be represented, as before, by a
vertical line of varying thickness, the line
is found to taper more gradually at its
upper end, which marks the progress of
extermination, than at its lower end, which
marks the first appearance and increase in
numbers of the species. In some cases,
however, the extermination of whole groups
of beings, as of ammonites towards the
close of the secondary period, has been
wonderfully sudden.
The whole subject of the extinction of
species has been involved in the most
gratuitous mystery. Some authors have
even supposed that as the individual has a
definite length of life, so have species a
definite duration. No one, I think, can
have marvelled more at the extinction of
species than I have done. When I found
in La Plata the tooth of a horse embedded
with the remains of Mastodon, Megatherium,
Toxodon, and other extinct monsters, which
all co-existed with still living shells at a
very late geological period, I was filled with
astonishment; for seeing that the horse,
since its introduction by the Spaniards into
South America, has run wild oyer the whole
country, and has increased in numbers at
K
�1^0
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
an unparalleled rate, I asked myself what
could so recently have exterminated the
former horse under conditions of life
apparently so favourable. But how utterly
groundless was my astonishment. Pro
fessor Owen soon perceived that the tooth,
though so like that of the existing horse,
belonged to an extinct species. Had this
horse been still living, but in some degree
rare, no naturalist would have felt the least
surprise at its rarity; for rarity is the
attribute of a vast number of species of all
classes, in all cou ltries. If we ask ourselves
why this or that species is rare, we answer
that something is unfavourable in its con
ditions of life ; but what that something is,
we can hardly ever tell. On the supposi
tion of the fossil horse still existing as a
rare species, we might have felt certain
from the analogy of all other animals, even
of the slow-breeding elephant, and from
the history of the naturalisation of the
domestic horse in South America, that
under more favourable conditions it would
in a very few years have stocked the whole
continent. But we could not have told
what the unfavourable conditions were
which checked its increase, whether some
one or several contingencies, and at what
period of the horse’s life, and in what
degree, they severally acted. If the con
ditions had gone on, however slowly,
becoming less and less favourable, we
assuredly should not have perceived the
fact, yet the fossil horse would certainly
have become rarer and rarer, and finally
extinct—its place being seized on by some
more successful competitor.
It is most difficult always to remember
that the increase of every living being is
constantly being checked by unperceived
injurious agencies, and that these same
unperceived agencies are amply sufficient
to cause rarity, and finally extinction. We
see in many cases in the more recent
tertiary formations that rarity precedes
extinction; and we know that this has
been the progress of events with those
animals which have been exterminated,
either locally or wholly, through man’s
agency. I may repeat what I published
in 1845—namely, that to admit that species
generally become rare before they become
extinct—to feel no surprise at the rarity of
a species, and yet to marvel greatly when
it ceases to exist, is much the same
as to admit that sickness in the indivi
dual is the forerunner of death—to feel
no surprise fat sickness, but when the
sick man dies, to wonder and to suspect
that he died by some unknown deed of
violence.
The theory of natural selection is
grounded on the belief that each new
variety, and ultimately each new species,
is produced and maintained by having
some advantage over those with which
it comes into competition ; and the con
sequent extinction of less favoured forms
almost inevitably follows. It is the same
with our domestic productions: when a
new and slightly improved variety has
been raised, it at first supplants the less
improved varieties in the same neigh
bourhood ; when much improved, it is
transported far and near, like our short
horn cattle, and takes the place of other
breeds in other countries. Thus the ap
pearance of new forms and the disappear
ance of old forms, both natural and
artificial, are bound together. In certain
flourishing groups the number of new
specific forms which have been produced
within a given time is probably greater
than that of the old specific forms which
have been exterminated; but we know
that the number of species has not gone on
indefinitely increasing, at least during the
later geological periods, so that, looking to
later times, we may believe that the pro
duction of new forms has caused the
extinction of about the same number of
old forms.
The competition will generally be most
severe, as formerly explained and illustrated
by examples, between the forms which are
most like each other in all respects; Hence
the improved and modified descendants of
a species will generally cause the extermi
nation of the parent-species ; and if many
new forms have been developed from any
one species, the nearest allies of that species
—z>., the species of the same genus—will be
the most liable to extermination. Thus, as
I believe, a number of new species des
cended from one species—that is, a new
genus—comes to supplant an old genus,
belonging to the same family.
But it
must often have happened that a new
species belonging to some one group will
have seized on the place occupied by a
species belonging to a distinct group, and
thus caused its extermination; and if many
allied forms be developed from the suc
cessful intruder, many will have to yield
their places; and it will generally be allied
forms which will suffer from some inherited
inferiority in common. But whether it be
species belonging to the same or to a
distinct class, which yield their places to
�ON THE GEOLOGICAL SUCCESSION OF ORGANIC BEINGS
other species which have been modified or
improved, a few of the sufferers may often
long be preserved, from being fitted to
some peculiar line of life, or from in
habiting some distant and isolated station,
where they have escaped severe compe
tition. For instance, a single species of
Trigonia, a great genus of shells in the
secondary formations, survives in the Aus
tralian seas ; and a few members of the
great and almost extinct group of Ganoid
fishes still inhabit our fresh waters. There
fore, the utter extinction of a group is
generally, as we have seen, a slower pro
cess than its production.
With respect to the apparently sudden
extermination of whole families or orders,
as of Trilobites at the close of the palaeo
zoic period, and of Ammonites at the close
of the secondary period, we must remem
ber what has been already said on the
probable wide intervals of time between
our consecutive formations ; and in these
intervals there may have been much slow
extermination. Moreover, when by sudden
immigration or by unusually rapid develop
ment, many species of a new group have
taken possession of a new area, they will
have exterminated in a correspondingly
rapid manner many of the old inhabitants;
and the forms which thus yield their places
will commonly be allied, for they will par
take of some inferiority in common.
Thus, as it seems to me, the manner in
which single species and whole groups of
species become extinct accords well with
the theory of natural selection. We need
not marvel at extinction; if we must marvel,
let it be at our presumption in imagining
for a moment that we understand the many
complex contingencies on which the exist
ence of each species depends. If we forget
for an instant that each species tends to
increase inordinately, and that some check
is always in action, yet seldom perceived
by us, the whole economy of nature will be
utterly obscured. Whenever we can pre
cisely say why this species is more abundant
in individuals than that; why this species
and not another can be naturalised in a
given country ; then, and not till then, we
may justly feel surprised why we cannot
account for the extinction of this particular
species or group of species.
On the Forms of Life changing almost
simultaneously throughout the "World.—■
Scarcely any palaeontological discovery is
more striking than the fact that the forms
of life change almost simultaneously
i31
throughout the world. Thus our European
Chalk formation can be recognised in many
distant parts of the world, under the most
different climates, where not a fragment of
the mineral chalk itself can be found—
namely, in North America, in equatorial
South America, in Tierra del Fuego, at the
Cape of Good Hope, and in the peninsula
of India. For at these distant points the
organic remains in certain beds present an
unmistakeable degree of resemblance to
those of the Chalk. It is not that the same
species are met with ; for in some cases not
one species is identically the same, but
they belong to the same families, genera,
and sections of genera, and sometimes are
similarly characterised in such trifling
points as mere superficial sculpture. More
over, other forms which are not found in
the Chalk of Europe, but which occur in the
formations either above or below, are
similarly absent at these distant points of
the world.
In the several successive
palaeozoic formations of Russia, Western
Europe, and North America a similar
parallelism in the forms of life has been
observed by several authors : so it is, ac
cording to Lyell, with the several European
and North American tertiary deposits.
Even if the few fossil species which are
common to the Old and' New Worlds be
kept wholly out of view, the general parallel
ism in the successive forms of life, in the
stages of the widely-separated palaeozoic
and tertiary periods, would still be manifest,
and the several formations could be easily
correlated.
These observations, however, relate to
the marine inhabitants of distant parts of
the world : we have not sufficient data to
judge whether the productions of the land
and of fresh water change at distant points
in the same parallel manner. We may
doubt whether they have thus changed : if
the Megatherium, Mylodon, Macrauchenia,
and Toxodon had been brought to Europe
from La Plata, without any information in
regard to their geological position, no one
would have suspected that they had co
existed with still living sea-shells ; but as
these anomalous monsters co-existed with
the Mastodon and Horse, it might at least
have been inferred that they had lived
during one of the later tertiary stages.
When the marine forms of life are spoken
of as having changed simultaneously
throughout the world, it must not be sup
posed that this expression relates to the
same thousandth or hundred-thousandth
year, or even that it has a very strict
�132
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
geological sense; for if all the marine
animals which live at the present day in
Europe, and all those that lived in Europe
duri ng the pleistocene period (an enormously
remote period as measured by years, in
cluding the whole glacial epoch), were to be
compared with those now living in South
America or in Australia, the most skilful
naturalist would hardly be able to say
whether the existing or the pleistocene in
habitants of Europe resembled most closely
those of the southern hemisphere. So,
again, several highly-competent observers
believe that the existing productions
of the United States are more closely
related to those which lived in Europe
during certain later tertiary stages than to
those which now live here ; and, if this be
so, it is evident that fossiliferous beds
deposited at the present day on the shores
of North America would hereafter be
liable to be classed with somewhat older
European beds. Nevertheless, looking to
a remotely-future epoch, there can, I think,
be little doubt that all the more modern
marine formations—namely, the upper
pliocene, the pleistocene, and strictly
modern beds, of Europe, North and South
America, and Australia, from containing
fossil remains in some degree allied, and
from not including those forms which are
only found in the older underlying deposits
—would be correctly ranked as simultaneous
in a geological sense.
The fact of the forms of life changing
simultaneously in the above large sense, at
distant parts of the world, has greatly struck
those admirable observers, MM.de Verneuil
and d’Archiac. After referring to the paral
lelism of the palaeozoic forms of life in
various parts of Europe, they add : “ If,
struck by this strange sequence, we turn
our attention to North America, and there
discover a series of analogous phenomena,
it will appear certain that all these modifi
cations of species, their extinction, and the
introduction of new ones, cannot be owing
to mere changes in marine currents or
other causes more or less local and
temporary, but depend on general laws
which govern the whole animal kingdom.”
M. Barrande has made forcible remarks to
precisely the same effect. It is, indeed,
quite futile to look to changes of currents,
climate, or other physical conditions, as
the cause of these great mutations in the
forms of life throughout the world, under
the most different climates. We must, as
Barrande has remarked, look to some
special law. We shall see this more clearly
when we treat of the present distribution
of organic beings, and find how slight is
the relation between the physical conditions
of various countries and the nature of their
inhabitants.
This great fact of the parallel succes
sion of the forms of life throughout the
world is explicable on the theory of natural
selection. New species are formed by new
varieties arising which have some advan
tage over older forms ; and those forms
which are already dominant, or have some
advantage over the other forms in their
own country, would naturally oftenest give
rise to new varieties or incipient species ;
for these latter must be victorious in a still
higher degree in order to be preserved
and to survive. We have distinct evidence
on this head in the plants which are
dominant—that is, which are commonest
in their own homes, and are most widely
diffused, having produced the greatest
number of new varieties. It is also natural
that the dominant, varying, and farspreading species, which already have
invaded to a certain extent the territories
of other species, should be those which
would have the best chance of spreading
still further, and of giving rise in new
countries to new varieties and species.
The process of diffusion may often be very
slow, being dependent on climatal and
geographical changes, or on strange acci
dents ; but, in the long run, the dominant
forms will generally succeed in spreading.
The diffusion would, it is probable, be
slower with the terrestrial inhabitants of
distinct continents than with the marine
inhabitants of the continuous sea. We
might, therefore, expect to find, as we
apparently do find, a less strict degree of
parallel succession in the productions of
the land than of the sea.
Dominant species spreading from any
region might encounter still more dominant
species, and then their triumphant course^
or even their existence, would cease. We
know not at all precisely what are all the
conditions most favourable for the multi
plication of new and dominant species ;
but we can, I think, clearly see that a
number of individuals, from giving a better
chance of the appearance of favourable
variations, and that severe competition
with many already existing forms, would be
highly favourable, as would be the power
of spreading into new territories. A certain
amount of isolation, recurring at long
intervals of time, would probably be also
favourable, as before explained.
One
�ON THE GEOLOGICAL SUCCESSION OF ORGANIC BEINGS
quarter of the world, may have been most
favourable for the production of new and
dominant species on the land, and another
for those in the waters of the sea. If two
great regions had been for a long period
favourably circumstanced in an equal
degree, whenever their inhabitants met
the battle would be prolonged and severe,
and some from one birthplace and some
from the ether might be victorious. But,
in the course of time, the forms dominant
in the highest degree, wherever produced,
would tend everywhere to prevail. As
they prevailed, they would cause the extinc
tion of other and inferior forms ; and as
these inferior forms would be allied in
groups by inheritance, whole groups would
tend slowly to disappear, though here and
there a single member might long be
enabled to survive.
Thus, as it seems to me, the parallel, and,
taken in a large sense, simultaneous, suc
cession of the same forms of life throughout
the world accords well with the principle
of new species having been formed by
dominant species spreading widely and
varying : the new species thus produced
being themselves dominant owing to in
heritance, and to having already had some
advantage over their parents or over other
species; these again spreading, varying,
and producing new species. The forms
which are beaten and which yield their
places to the new and victorious forms, will
generally be allied in groups, from inherit
ing some inferiority in common; and there
fore, as new and improved groups spread
throughout the world, old groups will
disappear from the world, and the succes
sion of forms in both ways will everywhere
tend to correspond.
There is one other remark connected
with this subject worth making. I have
given my reasons for believing that all our
greater fossiliferous formations were de
posited during periods of subsidence, and
that blank intervals of vast duration occur
red during the periods when the bed of the
sea was either stationary or rising, and
likewise when sediment was not thrown
down quickly enough to embed and preserve
organic remains. During these long and
blank intervals I suppose that the inhabi
tants of each region underwent a consider
able amount of modification and extinction,
and that there was much migration from
other parts of the world. As we have
reason to believe that large areas are
affected by the same movement, it is pro
bable that strictly contemporaneous forma
133
tions have often been accumulated over
very wide spaces in the same quarter of the
world ; but we are far from having any
right to conclude that this has invariably
been the case, and that large areas have
invariably been affected by the same move
ments. When two formations have been
deposited in two regions during nearly, but
not exactly, the same period, we should find
in both, from the causes explained in the
foregoing paragraphs, the same general
succession in the forms of life ; but the
species would not exactly correspond, for
there will have been a little more time in
the one region than in the other for modifi
cation, extinction, and immigration.
I suspect that cases of this nature occur
in Europe. Mr. Prestwich, in his admirable
Memoirs on the eocene deposits of England
and France, is able to draw a close general
parallelism between the successive stages
in the two countries;; but when he compares
certain stages in England with those in
France, although he finds in both a curious
accordance in the numbers of the species
belonging to the same genera, yet the
species themselves differ in a manner very
difficult to account for, considering the
proximity of the two areas—unless, indeed,
it be assumed that an isthmus separated
two seas inhabited by distinct, but con
temporaneous, faunas. Lyell has made
similar observations on some of the later
tertiary formations. Barrande also shows
that there is a striking general parallelism
in the successive Silurian deposits of
Bohemia and Scandinavia ; nevertheless,
he finds a surprising amount of difference
in the species. If the several formations
in these regions have not been deposited
during the same exact periods—a formation
in one region often corresponding with a
blank interval in the other—and if in both
regions the species have gone on slowly
changing during the accumulation of the
several formations and during the long
intervals of time between them—in this
case, the several formations in the two
regions could be arranged in the same
order, in accordance with the general
succession of the form of life, and the
order would falsely appear to be strictly
parallel; nevertheless, the species would
not all be the same in the apparently
corresponding stages in the two regions.
On the Affinities of extinct Species to each
other and to living forms.—Let us now
look to the mutual affinities of extinct and
I living species. They all fall into one grand
�134
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
natural system; and this fact is at once
explained on the principle of descent. The
more ancient any form is, the more, as a
general rule, it differs from living forms.
But, as Buckland long ago remarked, all
fossils can be classed either in still existing
groups or between them. That the extinct
forms of life help to fill up the wide intervals
between existing genera, families, and
orders cannot be disputed. For if we
confine our attention either to the living or
to the extinct alone, the series is far less
perfect than if we combine both into one
general system. With respect to the
Vertebrata, whole pages could be filled
with striking illustrations from our great
palaeontologist, Owen, showing how extinct
animals fall in between existing groups.
Cuvier ranked the Ruminants and Pachy
derms as the two most distinct orders of
mammals ; but Owen has discovered so
many fossil links that he has had to alter
the whole classification of these two orders,
and has placed certain pachyderms in
the same sub-order with ruminants : for
example, he dissolves by fine gradations
the apparently wide difference between the
pig and the camel. In regard to the
Invertebrata, Barrande (and a higher
authority could not be named) asserts that
he is every day taught that palaeozoic
animals, though belonging to the same
orders, families, or genera with those living
at the present day, were not at this early
epoch limited in such distinct groups as
they now are.
Some writers have objected to any extinct
species or group of species being considered
as intermediate between living species or
groups. If by this term it is meant that
an extinct form is directly intermediate in
all its characters between two living forms,
the objection is probably valid. But I
apprehend that in a perfectly natural classi
fication many fossil species would have to
stand between living species, and some
extinct genera between living genera, even
between genera belonging to distinct
families. The most common case, espe
cially with respect to very distinct groups,
such as fish and reptiles, seems to be that,
supposing them to be distinguished at the
present day from each other by a dozen
characters, the ancient members of the
same two groups would be distinguished
by a somewhat lesser number of characters,
so that the two groups, though formerly
quite distinct, at that period made some
small approach to each other.
ancient a form is, by so much the more it
tends to connect by some of its characters
groups now widely separated from each
other. This remark, no doubt, must be
restricted to those groups which have
undergone much change in the course of
geological ages; and it would be difficult
to prove the truth of the proposition, for
every now and then even a living animal,
as the Lepidosiren, is discovered having
affinities directed towards very distinct
groups. Yet if we compare the older
Reptiles and Batrachians, the older Fish,
the older Cephalopods, and the eocene
Mammals, with the more recent members
of the same classes, we must admit that
there is some truth in the remark.
Let us see how far these several facts
and inferences accord with the theory of
descent with modification. As the subject
is somewhat complex, I must request the
reader to turn to the diagram in the pre
liminary. We may suppose that the num
bered letters represent genera, and the
dotted lines diverging from them the
species in each genus. The diagram is
much too simple, too few genera and too
few species being given ; but this is unim
portant for us. The horizontal lines may
represent successive geological formations,
and all the forms beneath the uppermost
line may be considered as extinct. The
three existing genera, «14, y14, />r4, will form
a small family ; £14 and_/14, a closely allied
family or sub-family ; and 014, z?14, /zz'4, a
third family. These three families, together
with the many extinct genera on the several
lines of descent diverging from the parent
form (A), will form an order; for all will
have inherited something in common from
their ancient and common progenitor. On
the principle of the continued tendency
to divergence of character, which was
formerly illustrated by this diagram, the
more recent any form is, the more it will
generally differ from its ancient progenitor.
Hence we can understand the rule that the
most ancient fossils differ most from
existing forms. We must not, however,
assume that divergence of character is a
necessary contingency; it depends solely
on the descendants from a species being
thus enabled to seize on many and dif
ferent places in the economy of nature.
Therefore, it is quite possible, as we have
seen in the case of some Silurian forms,
that a species might go on being slightly
modified in relation to its slightly altered
conditions of life, and yet retain through
It is a common belief that the more
out a vast period the same general
�ON THE GEOLOGICAL SUCCESSION OF ORGANIC BEINGS
characteristics. This is represented in the
diagram by the letter F14.
All the many forms, extinct and recent,
descended from (A) make, as before re
marked, one order ; and this order, from
the continued effects of extinction and
divergence of character, has become
divided into several sub-families and
families, some of which are supposed to
have perished at different periods, and
some to have endured to the present day.
By looking at the diagram we can see
that, if many of the extinct forms supposed
to be embedded in the successive forma
tions were discovered at several points
low down in the series, the three existing
families on the uppermost line would be
rendered less distinct from each other. If,
for instance, the genera a1, «3, zzI0,y8, ;/z3, z/z6,
w9, were disinterred, these three families
would be so closely linked together that
they probably would have to be united
into one great family, in nearly the same
manner as has occurred with ruminants
and pachyderms. Yet he who objected to
call the extinct genera, which thus linked
the living genera of three families together,
intermediate in character would be justi
fied, as they are intermediate, not directly,
but only by a long and circuitous course
through many widely different forms. If
many extinct forms were to be discovered
above one of the middle horizontal lines or
geological formations—for instance, above
No. VI.—but none from beneath this line,
then only the two families on the left hand
(namely, <z14, etc., and £'4, etc.) would have
to be united into one family ; and the two
other families (namely, zz'4 to /t4, now in
cluding five genera, and z>'4 to 7/z14) would
yet remain distinct. These two families,
however, would be less distinct from each
other than they were before the discovery
of the fossils. If, for instance, we suppose
the existing genera of the two families to
differ from each other by a dozen char
acters, in this case the genera, at the early
period marked VI., would differ by a lesser
number of characters ; for at this early
stage of descent they have not diverged in
character from the common progenitor of
the order nearly so much as they subse
quently diverged.
Thus it comes that
ancient and extinct genera are often in
some slight degree intermediate in char
acter between their modified descendants,
or between their collateral relations.
In nature the case will be far more com
plicated than is represented in the diagram ;
for the groups will have been more nume
135
rous, they will have endured for extremely
unequal lengths of time, and will have
been modified in various degrees. As we
possess only the last volume of the geo
logical record, and that in a very broken
condition, we have no right to expect,
except in very rare cases, to fill up wide
intervals in the natural system, and thus
unite distinct families or orders. All that
we have a right to expect is that those
groups which have within known geo
logical periods undergone much modifica
tion should in the older formations make
some slight approach to each other ; so
that the older members should differ less
from each other in some of their characters
than do the existing members of the same
groups ; and this by the concurrent evi
dence of our best palaeontologists seems
frequently to be the case.
Thus on the theory of descent with
modification the main facts with respect
to the mutual affinities of the extinct forms
of life to each other and to living forms
seem to me explained in a satisfactory
manner. And they are wholly inexplicable
on any other view.
On this same theory, it is evident that
the fauna of any great period in the earth’s
history will be intermediate in general
character between that which preceded and
that which succeeded it. Thus the species
which lived at the sixth great stage of
descent in the diagram are the modified
offspring of those which lived at the fifth
stage, and are the parents of those which
became still more modified at the seventh
stage ; hence they could hardly fail to be
nearly intermediate in character between
the forms of life above and below. We
must, however, allow for the entire extinc
tion of some preceding founs, and in any
one region for the immigration of new forms
from other regions, and for a large amount
of modification, during the long and blank
intervals between the successive formations.
Subject to these allowances, the fauna of
each geological period undoubtedly is inter
mediate in character between the preced
ing and succeeding faunas. I need give
only one instance—namely, the manner in
which the fossils of the Devonian system,
when this system was first discovered, were
at once recognised by palaeontologists as
intermediate in character between those of
the overlying carboniferous and underlying
Silurian system. But each fauna is not
necessarily exactly intermediate, as unequal
intervals of time have elapsed between con
secutive formations,
�136
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
It is no real objection to the truth of the
statement, that the fauna of each period as
a whole is nearly intermediate in character
between the preceding and succeeding
faunas, that certain genera offer exceptions
to the rule. For instance, mastodons and
elephants, when arranged by Dr. Falconer
in two series, first according to their mutual
affinities and then according to their periods
of existence, do not accord in arrangement.
The species extreme in character are not
the oldest or the most recent; nor are
those which are intermediate in character,
intermediate in age. But supposing for an
instant, in this and other such cases, that
the record of the first appearance and dis
appearance of the species was perfect, we
have no reason to believe that forms suc
cessively produced necessarily endure for
corresponding lengths of time : a very
ancient form might occasionally last much
longer than a form elsewhere subsequently
produced, especially in the case of terres
trial productions inhabiting separated dis
tricts. To compare small things with great:
if the principal living and extinct races of
the domestic pigeon were arranged as well
as they could be in serial affinity, this
arrangement would not closely accord with
the order in time of their production, and
still less with the order of their disappear
ance ; for the parent rock-pigeon now lives,
and many varieties between the rock-pigeon
and the carrier have become extinct; and
carriers which are extreme in the important
character of length of beak originated
earlier than short-beaked tumblers, which
are at the opposite end of the series in this
same respect.
Closely connected with the statement,
that the organic remains from an inter
mediate formation are in some degree
intermediate in character, is the fact, insisted
on by all palaeontologists, that fossils from
two consecutive formations are far more
closely related to each other than are the
fossils from two remote formations. Pictet
gives as a well-known instance the general
resemblance of the organic remains from
the several stages of the Chalk formation,
though the species are distinct in each
stage. This fact alone, from its generality,
seems to have shaken Professor Pictet in
his firm belief in the immutability of
species. He who is acquainted with the
distribution of existing species over the
globe will not attempt to account for the
close resemblance of the distinct species
in closely-consecutive formations by the
physical conditions of the ancient areas
having remained nearly the same. Let it
be remembered that the forms of life, at
least those inhabiting the sea, have changed
almost simultaneously throughout the world,
and therefore under the most different
climates and conditions.
Consider the
prodigious vicissitudes of climate during
the pleistocene period, which includes the
whole glacial period, and note how little
the specific forms of the inhabitants of the
sea have been affected.
On the theory of descent, the full
meaning of the fact of fossil remains from
closely-consecutive formations, though
ranked as distinct species, being closely
related is obvious. As the accumulation
of each formation has often been inter
rupted, and as long blank intervals have
intervened between successive formations,
we ought not to expect to find, as I
attempted to show in the last chapter, in
any one or two formations all the inter
mediate varieties between the species
which appeared at the commencement and
close of these periods; but we ought to find
after intervals, very long as measured by
years, but only moderately long as
measured geologically, closely-allied forms,
or, as they have been called by some
authors, representative species; and these
we assuredly do find. We find, in short,
such evidence of the slow and scarcely
sensible mutation of specific forms as we
have a just right to expect to find.
On the state of Development of Ancient
Forms.—There has been much discussion
whether recent forms are more highly
developed than ancient. I will not here
enter on this subject, for naturalists have
not as yet defined to each other’s satisfac
tion what is meant by high and low forms.
The best definition probably is that the
higher forms have their organs more dis
tinctly specialised for different functions ;
and, as such division of physiological
labour seems to be an advantage to each
being, natural selection will constantly
tend insofar to make the later and more
modified forms higher than their early
progenitors, or than the slightly modified
descendants of such progenitors. In a
more general sense, the more recent forms
must, on my theory, be higher than the
more ancient; for each new species is
formed by having had some advantage in
the struggle for life over other and pre
ceding forms. If, under a nearly similar
climate, the eocene inhabitants of one
quarter of the world were put into
�ON THE GEOLOGICAL SUCCESSION OF ORGANIC BEINGS
competition with the existing inhabitants of
the same or some other quarter, the eocene
fauna or flora would certainly be beaten
and exterminated, as would a secondary
fauna by an eocene and a palaeozoic fauna
by a secondary fauna. I do not doubt
that this process of improvement has
affected in a marxed and sensible manner
the organisation of the more recent and
victorious forms of life, in comparison with
the ancient and beaten forms ; but I can
see no way of testing this sort of progress.
Crustaceans, for instance, not the highest
in their own class, may have beaten the
highest molluscs. From the extraordinary
manner in which European productions
have recently spread over New Zealand,
and have seized on places which must
have been previously occupied, we may
believe, if all the animals and plants of
Great Britain were set free in New
Zealand, that in the course of time a
multitude of British forms would become
thoroughly naturalised there, and would
exterminate many of the natives. On the
other hand, from what we now see occur
ring in New Zealand, and from hardly a
single inhabitant of the southern hemi
sphere having become wild in any part of
Europe, we may doubt, if all the produc
tions of New Zealand were set free in
Great Britain, whether any considerable
number would be enabled to seize on places
now occupied by our native plants and
animals. Under this point of view, the
productions of Great Britain may be said
to be higher than those of New Zealand.
Yet the most skilful naturalist, from an
examination of the species of the two
countries, could not have foreseen this
result.
Agassiz insists that ancient animals
resemble, to a certain extent, the embryos
of recent animals of the same classes, or
that the geological succession of extinct
forms is in some degree parallel to the
embryological development of recent forms.
I must follow Pictet and Huxley in thinking
that the truth of this doctrine is very far
from proved. Yet I fully expect to see it
hereafter confirmed, at least in regard to
subordinate groups, which have branched
off from each other within comparatively
recent times. For this doctrine of Agassiz
accords well with the theory of natural
selection. In a future chapter I shall
attempt to show that the adult differs from
its embryo, owing to variations supervening
at a not early age and being inherited at
a corresponding age. This process, while
137
it leaves the embryo almost unaltered, con
tinually adds, in the course of successive
generations, more and more difference to
the adult.
Thus the embryo comes to be left as a
sort of picture, preserved by nature, of the
ancient and less modified condition of each
animal. This view may be true, and yet
it may never be capable of full proof.
Seeing, for instance, that the oldest known
mammals, reptiles, and fish strictly belong
to their own proper classes, though some
of these old forms are in a slight degree
less distinct from each other than are the
typical members of the same groups at the
present day, it would be vain to look for
animals having the common embryological
character of the Vertebrata until beds far
beneath the lowest Silurian strata are dis
covered—a discovery of which the chance
is very small.
On the Succession of the same Types
within the same areas during the later
tertiary -periods.—Mr. Clift, many years
ago, showed that the fossil mammals from
the Australian caves were closely allied to
the living marsupials of that continent.
In South America a similar relationship is
manifest, even to an uneducated eye, in
the gigantic pieces of armour like those of
the armadillo, found in several parts of La
Plata ; and Professor Owen has shown in
the most striking manner that most of the
fossil mammals, buried there in such
numbers, are related to South American
types. This relationship is even more
clearly seen in the wonderful collection of
fossil bones made by MM. Lund and
Clausen in the caves of Brazil. I was so
much impressed with these facts that I
strongly insisted, in 1839 and 1845, on this
“ law of the succession of types ”—on “ this
wonderful relationship in the same continent
between the dead and the living.” Pro
fessor Owen has subsequently extended the
same generalisation to the mammals of the
Old World. We see the same law in this
author’s restorations of the extinct and
gigantic birds of New Zealand. We see
it also in the birds of the caves of Brazil.
Mr. Woodward has shown that the same
law holds good with sea-shells; but, from
the wide distribution of most genera of
molluscs, it is not well displayed by them.
Other cases could be added, as the relation
between the extinct and living land-shells
of Madeira, and between the extinct and
living brackish-water shells of the AraloCaspian Sea.
�140
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
formations are more closely allied to each
other than are those of remote formations,
for the forms are more closely linked
together by generation: we can clearly
see why the remains of an intermediate
formation are intermediate in character.
The inhabitants of each successive period
in the world’s history have beaten their
predecessors in the race for life, and are,
insofar, higher in the scale of nature ; and
this may account for that vague, yet illdefined sentiment, felt by many palaeonto
logists, that organisation on the whole has
progressed. If it should hereafter be
proved that ancient animals resemble, to
a certain extent, the embryos of more
recent animals of the same class, the fact
will be intelligible. The succession of the
same types of structure within the same
areas during the later geological periods
ceases to be mysterious, and is simply
explained by inheritance.
If, then, the geological record be as
imperfect as I believe it to be, and it may,
at least, be asserted that the record cannot
be proved to be much more perfect, the
main objections to the theory of natural
selection are greatly diminished or dis
appear. On the other hand, all the chief
laws of palaeontology plainly proclaim, as
it seems to me, that species have been
produced by ordinary generation : old
forms having been supplanted by new and
improved forms of life, produced by the
laws of variation still acting around us,
and preserved by natural selection.
Chapter XI.
GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION
Present distribution cannot be accounted for by
differences in physical conditions—-Importance
of barriers—Affinity of the productions of the
same continent—Centres of creation—Means
of dispersal, by changes of climate and of the
level of the land, and by occasional means—■
Dispersal during the Glacial period co-extensive with the world.
In considering the distribution of organic
beings over the face of the globe, the first
great fact which strikes us is that neither
the similarity nor the dissimilarity of the
inhabitants of various regions can be
accounted for by their climatal and other
physical conditions. Of late almost every
author who has studied the subject has
come to this conclusion. The case of
America alone would almost suffice to prove
its truth; for if we exclude the northern
parts, where the circumpolar land is almost
continuous, all authors agree that one of
the most fundamental divisions in geo
graphical distribution is that between the
New and Old Worlds; yet, if we travel
over the vast American continent, from
the central parts of the United States to its
extreme southern point, we meet with the
most diversified conditions; the most humid
districts, arid deserts, lofty mountains,
grassy plains, forests, marshes, lakes, and
great rivers, under almost every tempera
ture. There is hardly a climate or condi
tion in the Old World which cannot be
paralleled in the New—at least as closely
as the same species generally require ; for
it is a most rare case to find a group of
organisms confined to any small spot
having conditions peculiar in only a slight
degree ; for instance, small areas in the
Old World could be pointed out hotter than
any in the New World, yet these are not
inhabited by a peculiar fauna or flora.
Notwithstanding this parallelism in the
conditions of the Old and New Worlds,
how widely different are their living pro
ductions 1
In the southern hemisphere, if we com
pare large tracts of land in Australia, South
Africa, and western South America, between
latitudes 250 and 35’, we shall find parts
extremely similar in all their conditions,
yet it would not be possible to point out
three faunas and floras more utterly dis
similar. Or, again, we may compare the pro
ductions of South America south of latitude
350 with those north of 25°, which conse
quently inhabit a considerably different
�GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION
climate, and they will be found incompar
ably more closely related to each other
than they are to the productions of Australia
or Africa under nearly the same climate.
Analogous facts could be given with respect
to the inhabitants of the sea.
A second great fact which strikes us in
our general review is that barriers of any
kind, or obstacles to free migration, are
related in a close and important manner to
the differences between the productions of
various regions. We see this in the great
difference of nearly all the terrestrial pro
ductions of the New and Old Worlds,
excepting in the northern parts, where the
land almost joins, and where, under a
slightly different climate, there might have
been free migration for the northern tem
perate forms, as there now is for the strictly
arctic productions. We see the same fact
in the great difference between the inhabi
tants of Australia, Africa, and South
America under the same latitude, for these
countries are almost as much isolated from
each other as is possible. On each conti
nent also we see the same fact; for on
the opposite sides of lofty and continuous
mountain-ranges, and of great deserts, and
sometimes even of large rivers, we find
different productions; though as mountain
chains, deserts, etc., are not as impassable,
or likely to have endured so long as the
oceans separating continents, the differ
ences are very inferior in degree to those
characteristic of distinct continents.
Turning to the sea, we find the same
law. No two marine faunas are more
distinct, with hardly a fish, shell, or crab
in common, than those of the eastern and
western shores of South and Central
America ; yet these great faunas are
separated only by the narrow, but impas
sable, isthmus of Panama. Westward of
the shores of America a wide space of
open ocean extends, with not an island as
a halting-place for emigrants ; here we
have a barrier of another kind, and, as
soon as this is passed, we meet in the
eastern islands of the Pacific with another
and totally distinct fauna. So that here
three marine faunas range far northward
and southward, in parallel lines not far
from each other, under corresponding
climates ; but from being separated from
each other by impassable barriers, either
of land or open sea, they are wholly dis
tinct. On the other hand, proceeding still
further westward from the eastern islands ■
of the tropical parts of the Pacific, we
encounter no impassable barriers, and we
141
have innumerable islands as halting-places,
or continuous coasts, until, after travelling
over a hemisphere, we come to the shores
of Africa; and over this vast space we
meet with no well-defined and distinct
marine faunas. Although hardly one shell,
crab, or fish is common to the above-named
three approximate faunas of Eastern and
Western America and the eastern Pacific
islands, yet many fish range from the
Pacific into the Indian Ocean, and many
shells are common to the eastern islands
of the Pacific and the eastern shores of
Africa, on almost exactly opposite meridians
of longitude.
A third great fact, partly included in the
foregoing statements, is the affinity of the
productions of the same continent or sea,
though the species themselves are distinct
at different points and stations. It is a
law of the widest generality, and every
continent offers innumerable instances.
Nevertheless, the naturalist, in travelling,
for instance, from north to south, never fails
to be struck by the manner in which succes
sive groups of beings, specifically distinct,
yet clearly related, replace each other.
He hears from closely-allied yet distinct
kinds of birds notes nearly similar, and
sees their nests similarly constructed, but
not quite alike, with eggs coloured in nearly
the same manner. The plains near the
Straits of Magellan are inhabited by one
species of Rhea (American ostrich), and
northward the plains of La Plata by
another species of the same genus, and
not by a true ostrich or emu, like those
found in Africa and Australia under the
same latitude. On these same plains of
La Plata we see the agouti and bizcacha,
animals having nearly the same habits as
our haresand rabbits, and.belonging to the
same order of Rodents; but they plainly
display an American type of structure.
We ascend the lofty peaks of the Cordillera,,
and we find an alpine species of bizcacha ;
we look to the waters, and we do not find
the beaver or musk-rat, but the coypu and
capybara, rodents of the American type.
Innumerable other instances could be
given. If we look to the islands off the
American shore, however much they may
differ in geological structure, the inhabitants,
though they may be all peculiar species, are
essentially American. We may look back
to past ages, as shown in the last chapter,
and we find American types then prevalent
on the American continent and in the
American seas. We see in these facts some
deep organic bond, prevailing throughout
�142
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
space and time, over the same areas of
land and water, and independent of their
physical conditions. The naturalist must
feel little curiosity who is not led to inquire
what this bond is.
This bond, on my theory, is simply
inheritance, that cause which alone, as far
as we positively know, produces organisms
quite like, or, as we see in the case of
varieties, nearly like each other. The dis
similarity of the inhabitants of different
regions may be attributed to modification
through natural selection, and in a quite
subordinate degree to the direct influence
of different physical conditions. The
degree of dissimilarity will depend on the
migration of the more dominant forms of
life from one region into another having
been effected with more or less ease, at
periods more or less remote—on the nature
and number of the former immigrants—
and on their action and reaction in their
mutual struggles for life—the relation of
organism to organism being, as I have
already often remarked, the most impor
tant of all relations.
Thus the high
importance of barriers comes into play
by checking migration ; as does time for
the slow process of modification through
natural selection. Widely-ranging species,
abounding in individuals, which have
already triumphed over many competitors
in their own widely-extended homes will
have the best chance of seizing on new
places when they spread into new coun
tries. In their new homes they will be
exposed to new conditions, and will fre
quently undergo further modification and
improvement; and thus they will become
still further victorious, and will produce
groups of modified descendants. On this
principle of inheritance with modifica
tion, we can understand how it is that
sections of genera, whole genera, and
even families, are confined to the same
areas, as is so commonly and notoriously
the case.
I believe, as was remarked in the last
chapter, in no law of necessary develop
ment. As the variability of each species
is an independent property, and will be
taken advantage of by natural selection,
only so far as it profits the individual in its
complex struggle for life, so the degree of
modification in different species will be
no uniform quantity. If, for instance, a
number of specieswhich stand in direct com
petition with each other migrate in a body
into a new and afterwards isolated country,
they will be little liable to modification ;
for neither migration nor isolation in them
selves can do anything. These principles
come into play only by bringing organisms
into new relations with each other, and in
a lesser degree with the surrounding phy
sical conditions. As we have seen in the
last chapter that some forms have retained
nearly the same character from an enor
mously remote geological period, so certain
species have migrated over vast spaces,
and have not become greatly modified.
On these views it is obvious that the
several species of the same genus, though
inhabiting the most distant quarters of the
world, must originally have proceeded from
the same source, as they have descended
from the same progenitor. In the case of
those species which have undergone during
whole geological periods but little modication, there is not much difficulty in
believing that they may have migrated
from the same region ; for during the vast
geographical and climatal changes which
will have supervened since ancient times
almost any amount of migration is pos
sible. But in many other cases in which
we have reason to believe that the species
of a genus have been produced within
comparatively recent times there is great
difficulty on this head. It is also obvious
that the individuals of the same species,
though now iuhabiting distant and isolated
regions, must have proceeded from one spot,
where their parents were first produced ;
for, as explained in the last chapter, it is
incredible that individuals identically the
same should ever have been produced
through natural selection from parents
specifically distinct.
We are thus brought to the question
which has been largely discussed by
naturalists—namely, whether species have
been created at one or more points of the
earth’s surface. Undoubtedly there are
very many cases of extreme difficulty in
understanding how the same species could
possibly have migrated from some one
point to the several distant and isolated
points where now found.
Nevertheless,
the simplicity of the view that each species
was first produced within a single region
captivates the mind. He who rejects it
rejects the vera causa of ordinary gene
ration with subsequent migration, and calls
in the agency of a miracle. It is univer
sally admitted that in most cases the area
inhabited by a species is continuous ; and
when a plant or animal inhabits two points
so distant from each other, or with an
interval of such a nature that the space
�GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION
could not be easily passed over by migra
tion, the fact is given as something remark
able and exceptional.
The capacity of
migrating across the sea is more distinctly
limited in terrestrial mammals than perhaps
in any other organic beings ; and, accord
ingly, we find no inexplicable cases of the
same mammal inhabiting distant points of
the world. No geologist will feel any diffi
culty in such cases as Great Britain having
been formerly united to Europe, and conse
quently possessing the same quadrupeds.
But if the same species can be produced at
two separate points, why do we not find a
single mammal common to Europe and
Australia or South America ? The condi
tions of life are nearly the same, so that a
multitude of European animals and plants
have become naturalised in America and
Australia ; and some of the aboriginal
plants are identically the same as these
distant points of the northern and southern
hemispheres. The answer, as I believe,
is that mammals have not been able to
migrate, whereas some plants, from their
varied means of dispersal, have migrated
across the vast and broken interspace. The
great and striking influence which barriers
of every kind have had on distribution is
intelligible only on the view that the great
majority of species have been produced on
one side alone, and have not been able to
migrate to the other side. Some few
families, many sub families, very many
genera, and a still greater number of sec
tions of genera, are confined to a single
region; and it has been observed by several
naturalists that the most natural genera, or
those genera in which the species are most
closely related to each other, are generally
local or confined to one area. What a
strange anomaly it would be if, when
coming one step lower in the series, to the
individuals of the same species, a directly
opposite rule prevailed, and species were
not local, but had been produced in two or
more distinct areas !
Hence it seems to me, as it has to many
other naturalists, that the view of each
species having been produced in one area
alone, and having subsequently migrated
from that area as far as its powers of migra
tion and subsistence under past and present
conditions permitted, is the most probable.
Undoubtedly, many cases occur in which
we cannot explain how the same species
could have passed from one point to the
other. But the geographical and climatal
changes which have certainly occurred
within recent geological times must have
M3
interrupted or rendered discontinuous the
formerly continuous range of many species.
So that we are reduced to consider whether
the exceptions to continuity of range are so
numerous and of so grave a nature that
we ought to give up the belief, rendered
probable by general considerations, that
each species has been produced within one
area, and has migrated thence as far as it
could. It would be hopelessly tedious to
discuss all the exceptional cases of the
same species now living at distant and
separated points ; nor do I for a moment
pretend that any explanation could be
offered of many such cases. But, after some
preliminary remarks, I will discuss a few of
the most striking classes of facts—namely,
the existence of the same species on the
summits of distant mountain-ranges, and at
distant points in the arctic and antarctic
regions ; and, secondly (in the following
chapter), the wide distribution of fresh
water productions ; and, thirdly, the occur
rence of the same terrestrial species on
islands and on the mainland, though sepa
rated by hundreds of miles of open sea. If
the existence of the same species at distant
and isolated points of the earth’s surface,
can in many instances be explained on the
view of each species having migrated from
a single birthplace, then, considering our
ignorance with respect to former climatal
and geographical changes and various
occasional means of transport, the belief
that this has been the universal law seems
to me incomparably the safest.
In discussing this subject, we shall be
enabled at the same time to consider a
point equally important for us—namely,
whether the several distinct species of a
genus, which on my theory have all desscended from a common progenitor, can
have migrated (undergoing modification
during some part of their migration) from
the area inhabited by their progenitor. If
it can be shown to be almost invariably the
case that a region of which most of its
inhabitants are closely related to, or belong
to the same genera with the species of
a second region, has probably received
at some former period immigrants from
this other region, my theory will be
strengthened ; for we can clearly under
stand, on the principle of modification,
why the inhabitants of a region should be
related to those of another region whence
it has been stocked. A volcanic island,
for instance, upheaved and formed at the
distance of a few hundreds of miles from
a continent, would probably receive from
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ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
it in the course of time a few colonists, and
their descendants, though modified, would
still be plainly related by inheritance to
the inhabitants of the continent. Cases of
this nature are common, and are, as we
shall hereafter more fully see, inexplicable
on the theory of independent creation.
This view of the relation of species in one
region to those in another does not differ
much (by substituting the word variety for
species) from that lately advanced in an
ingenious paper by Mr. Wallace, in which
he concludes that “ every species has come
into existence coincident both in space
and time with a pre-existing closely-allied
species.” And I now know from corre
spondence that this coincidence he attri
butes to generation with modification.
The previous remarks on “ single and
multiple centres of creation ” do not directly
bear on another allied question—namely,
whether all the individuals of the same
species have descended from a single pair,
or single hermaphrodite, or whether, as
some authors suppose, from many indi
viduals simultaneously created. With those
organic beings which never intercross (if
such exist), the species, on my theory,
must have descended from a succession of
improved varieties, which will never have
blended with other individuals or varieties,
but will have supplanted each other ; so
that at each successive stage of modifica
tion and improvement all the individuals
of each variety will have descended from
a single parent. But in the majority of
cases—namely, with all organisms which
habitually unite for each birth, or which
often intercross—I believe that during the
slow process of modification the individuals
of the species will have been kept nearly
uniform by intercrossing; so that many
individualswill have gone on simultaneously
changing, and the whole amount of modifi
cation will not have been due, at each
stage, to descent from a single parent.
To illustrate what I mean : Our English
race-horses differ slightly from the horses
of every other breed ; but they do not owe
their difference and superiority to descent
from any single pair, but to continued care
in selecting and training many individuals
during many generations.
Before discussing' the three classes of
facts which I have selected as presenting
the greatest amount of difficulty on the
theory of “single centres of creation,” I
must say a few words on the means of
dispersal.
Means of Dispersal.—Sir C. Lyell and
other authors have ably treated this subject.
I can give here only the briefest abstract
of the more important facts. Change of
climate must have had a powerful influence
on migration : a region when its climate
was different may have been a high road
for migration, but now be impassable. I
shall, however, presently have to discuss
this branch of the subject in some detail.
Changes of level in the land must also
have been highly influential : a narrow
isthmus now separates two marine faunas ;
submerge it, or let it formerly have been
submerged, and the two faunas will now
blend or may formerly have blended:
where the sea now extends, land may at a
former period have connected islands or
possibly even continents together, and
thus have allowed terrestrial productions
to pass from one to the other. No geologist
will dispute that great mutations of level
have occurred within the period of existing
organisms, Edward Forbes insisted that
all the islands in the Atlantic must recently
have been connected with Europe or
Africa, and Europe likewise with America.
Other authors have thus hypothetically
bridged over every ocean and have united
almost every island to some mainland. If,
indeed, the arguments used by Forbes are
to be trusted, it must be admitted that
scarcely a single island exists which has
not recently been united to some continent.
This view cuts the Gordian knot of the
dispersal of the same species to the most
distant points, and removes many a diffi
culty ; but to the best of my judgment we
are not authorised in admitting such enor
mous geographical changes within the
period of existing species. It seems to
me that we have abundant evidence of
great oscillations of level in our continents;
but not of such vast changes in their
position and extension as to have united
them within the recent period to each other
and to the several intervening oceanic
islands. I freely admit the former existence
of many islands, now buried beneath the
sea, which may have served as haltingplaces for plants and for many animals
during their migration.
In the coral
producing oceans such sunken islands are
now marked, as I believe, by rings of coral
or atolls standing over them. Whenever
it is fully admitted, as I believe it will
some day be, that each species has pro
ceeded from a single birthplace, and when
in the course of time we know something
defiilite about the means of distribution,
�GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION
we shall be enabled to speculate with
security on the former extension of the
land. But I do not believe that it will ever
be proved that within the recent period
continents which are now quite separate
have been continuously, or almost con
tinuously, united with each other, and with
the many existing oceanic islands. Several
facts in distribution—such as the great
differences in the marine faunas on the
opposite sides of almost every continent—
the close relation of the tertiary inhabi
tants of several lands and even seas to
their present inhabitants—a ceitain degree
of relation (as we shall hereafter see)
between the distribution of mammals and
the depth of the sea—these and other such
facts seem to me opposed to the admission
of such prodigious geographical revolutions
within the recent period as are necessitated
on the view advanced by Forbes and ad
mitted by many of his followers. The
nature and relative proportions of the
inhabitants of oceanic islands likewise
seem to me opposed to the belief of their
former continuity with continents. Nor
does their almost universally volcanic com
position favour the admission that they
are the wrecks of sunken continents—if
they had originally existed as mountain
ranges on the land, some at least of the
islands would have been formed, like other
mountain summits, of granite, metamorphic
schists, old fossiliferous or other such rocks,
instead of consisting of mere piles of vol
canic matter.
I must now say a few words on what are
called accidental means, but which more
properly might be called occasional means,
of distribution. I shall here confine myself
to plants. In botanical works this or that
plant is stated to be ill adapted for wide
dissemination; but for transport across
the sea the greater or less facilities may
be said to be almost wholly unknown.
Until I tried, with Mr. Berkeley’s aid, a
few experiments, it was not even known
how far seeds could resist the injurious
action of sea-water. To my surprise, I
found that, out of 87 kinds, 64 germinated
after an immersion of 28 days, and a few
survived an immersion of 137 days. For
convenience sake, I chiefly tried small
seeds, without the capsule or fruit; and, as
all of these sank in a few days, they could
not be floated across wide spaces of the
sea, whether or not they were injured by
the salt-water. Afterwards I tried some
larger fruits, capsules, etc., and some of
these floated for a long time. It is well
145
known what a difference there is in the
buoyancy of green and seasoned timber;
and it occurred to me that floods might
wash down plants or branches, and that
these might be dried on the banks, and
then by a fresh rise in the stream be
washed into the sea. Hence I was led to
dry stems and branches of 94 plants with
ripe fruit, and to place them on sea-water.
The majority sank quickly, but some which
while green floated for a very short time,
when dried floated much longer; for
instance, ripe hazel-nuts sank immediately,
but when dried they floated for 90 days,
and afterwards when planted they ger
minated ; an asparagus plant with ripe
berries floated for 23 days, when dried it
floated for 85 days, and the seeds after
wards germinated; the ripe seeds of Helosciadium sank in 2 days, when dried they
floated for above 90 days, and afterwards
germinated. Altogether out of the 94 dried
plants, 18 floated for above 28 days, and
some of the 18 floated for a very much
longer period. So that as
seeds germi
nated after an immersion of 28 days, and
as || plants with ripe fruit (but not all the
same species as in the foregoing experi
ment) floated, after being dried, for above
28 days, as far as we may infer anything
from these scanty facts, we may conclude
that the seeds of
plants of any country
might be floated by sea-currents during
28 days, and would retain their power of
germination. In Johnston’s Physical Atlas
the average rate of the several Atlantic
currents is 33 miles per diem (some currents
running at the rate of 60 miles per diem);
on this average, the seeds of
plants
belonging to one country might be floated
across 924 miles of sea to another country;
and when stranded, if blown to a favour
able spot by an inland gale, they would
germinate.
Subsequently to my experiments, M.
Martens tried similar ones, but in a much
better manner, for he placed the seeds in a
box in the actual sea, so that they were
alternately wet and exposed to the air like
really floating plants. He tried 98 seeds,
mostly different from mine ; but he chose
many large fruits and likewise seeds from
plants which live near the sea ; and this
would have favoured the average length of
their flotation and of their resistance to the
injurious action of the salt-water. On the
other hand, he did not previously dry the
plants or branches with the fruit; and this,
as we have seen, would have caused some
of them to have floated much longer. The
L
1
�146
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
result was that |f of his seeds floated for
42 days, and were then capable of germina
tion. But I do not doubt that plants
exposed to the waves would float for a less
time than those protected from violent
movement, as in our experiments. There
fore, it would perhaps be safer to assume
that the seeds of about rVT plants of a flora,
after having been dried, could be floated
across a space of sea 900 miles in width,
and would then germinate. The fact of
the larger fruits often floating longer than
the small is interesting ; as plants with
large seeds or fruit could hardly be trans
ported by any other means ; and Alph.
de Candolle has shown that such plants
generally have restricted ranges.
But seeds may be occasionally trans
ported in another manner. Drift timber is
thrown up on most islands, even on those
in the midst of the wildest oceans ; and
the natives of the coral islands in the
Pacific procure stones for their tools solely
from the roots of drifted trees, these stones
being a valuable royal tax. I find on
examination that, when irregularly-shaped
stones are embedded in the roots of trees,
small parcels of earth are very frequently
enclosed in their interstices and behind
them—so perfectly that not a particle could
be washed away in the longest transport :
out of one small portion of earth thus com
pletely enclosed by wood in an oak about
50 years old three dicotyledonous plants
germinated. I am certain of the accuracy
of this observation. Again, I can show
that the carcasses of birds, when floating
on the sea, sometimes escape being im
mediately devoured ; and seeds of many
kinds in the crops of floating birds long
retain their vitality. Peas and vetches, for
instance, are killed by even a few days’
immersion in sea-water; but some taken
out of the crop of a pigeon which had
floated on artificial salt water for 30 days
to my surprise nearly all germinated.
Living birds can hardly fail to be highly
effective agents in the transportation of
seeds. I could give many facts showing
how frequently birds of many kinds are
blown by gales to vast distances across the
ocean. We may, I think, safely assume
that under such circumstances their rate
of flight would often be 35 miles an
hour ; and some authors have given a far
higher estimate. I have never seen an
instance of nutritious seeds passing through
the intestines of a bird; but hard seeds of
fruit pass uninjured through even the
digestive organs of a turkey.
In the
course of two months I picked up in my
garden 12 kinds of seeds out of the excre
ment of small birds, and these seemed
perfect, and some of them which I tried
germinated.
But the following fact is
more important: the crops of birds do not
secrete gastric juice, and do not in the
least injure, as I know by trial, the germi
nation of seeds. Now, after a bird has
found and devoured a large supply of food,
it is positively asserted that all the grains
dp not pass into the gizzard for twelve or even
eighteen hours. A bird in this interval might
easily be blown to the distance of 500
miles; and hawks are known to look out
for tired birds, and the contents of their
torn crops might thus readily get scattered.
Mr. Brent informs me that a friend of his
had to give up flying carrier-pigeons from
France to England, as the hawks on the
English coast destroyed so many on their
arrival. Some hawks and owls bolt their
prey whole, and after an interval of from
twelve to twenty hours disgorge pellets
which, as I know from experiments made
in the Zoological Gardens, include seeds
capable of germination. Some seeds of the
oat, wheat, millet, canary, hemp, clover,
and beet germinated after having been
from twelve to twenty-one hours in the
stomachs of different birds of prey; and
two seeds of beet grew after having been
thus retained for two days and fourteen
hours. Fresh-water fish, I find, eat seeds
of many land and water plants ; fish are
frequently devoured by birds, and thus the
seeds might be transported from place to
place. I forced many kinds of seeds into
the stomachs of dead fish, and then gave
their bodies to fishing-eagles, storks, and
pelicans ; these birds, after an interval of
many hours, either rejected the seeds in
pellets or passed them in their excrement;
and several of these seeds retained their
power of germination. Certain seeds, how
ever, were always killed by this process.
Although the beaks and feet of birds
are generally quite clean, I can show that
earth sometimes adheres to them; in one
instance I removed twenty-two grains of
argillaceous earth from one foot of a par
tridge, and in this earth there was a pebble
quite as large as the seed of a vetch. Thus
seeds might occasionally be transported to
great distances ; for many facts could be
given showing that soil almost everywhere
is charged with seeds. Reflect for a
moment on the millions of quails which
annually cross the Mediterranean; and
can we doubt that the earth adhering to
�GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION
their feet would sometimes include a few
minute seeds ? But I shall presently have
to recur to this subject.
As icebergs are known to be some
times loaded with earth and stones, and
have even carried brushwood, bones, and
the nest of a land-bird, I can hardly doubt
that they must occasionally have trans
ported seeds from one part to another of
the arctic and antarctic regions, as sug
gested by Lyell, and, during the Glacial
period, from one part of the now temperate
regions to another. In the Azores, from
the large number of the species of plants
common to Europe, in comparison with
the plants of other oceanic islands nearer
to the mainland, and (as remarked by Mr.
H. C. Watson) from the somewhat northern
character of the flora in comparison with
the latitude, I suspected that these islands
had been partly stocked by ice-borne seeds
during the Glacial epoch. At my request,
Sir C. Lyell wrote to M. Hartung to
inquire whether he had observed erratic
boulders on these islands, and he answered
that he had found large fragments of
granite and other rocks which do not occur
in the archipelago. Hence we may safely
infer that icebergs formerly landed their
rocky burthens on the shores of these mid
ocean islands, and it is at least possible that
they may have brought thither the seeds of
northern plants.
Considering that the several above
means of transport, and that several other
means, which without doubt remain to be
discovered, have been in action year after
year, for centuries and tens of thousands
of years, it would, I think, be a marvellous
fact if many plants had not thus become
widely transported. These means of
transport are sometimes called accidental,
but this is not strictly correct: the currents
of the sea are not accidental, nor is the
direction of prevalent gales of wind. It
should be observed that scarcely any
means of transport would carry seed for
very great distances, for seeds do not retain
their vitality when exposed for a great length
of time to the action of sea-water, nor could
they be long carried in the crops or
intestines of birds. These means, how
ever, would suffice for occasional transport
across tracts of sea some hundred miles in
breadth, or from island to island, or from a
continent to a neighbouring island, but not
from one distant continent to another.
The floras of distant continents would not
by such means become mingled in any
great degree, but would remain as distinct
147
as we now see them to be. The currents,
from their course, would never bring seeds
from North America to Britain, though
they might and do bring seeds from the
West Indies to our western shores, where,
if not killed by so long an immersion in
salt water, they could not endure our
climate. Almost every year one or two
land-birds are blown across the whole
Atlantic Ocean, from North America to
the western shores of Ireland and England;
but seeds could be transported by these
wanderers only by one means—namely, in
dirt sticking to their feet, which is in itself
a rare accident. Even in this case, how
small would be the chance of a seed falling
on favourable soil, and coming to maturity 1
But it would be a great error to argue that
because a well-stocked island, like Great
Britain, has not, as far as is known (and it
would be very difficult to prove this),
received within the last few centuries,
through occasional means of transport,
immigrants from Europe or any other
continent, that a poorly-stocked island,
though standing more remote from the
mainland, would not receive colonists by
similar means. I do not doubt that out of
twenty seeds or animals transported to an
island, even if far less well stocked than
Britain, scarcely more than one would be
so well fitted to its new home as to become
naturalised. But this, as it seems to me,
is no valid argument against what would
be effected by occasional means of trans
port, during the long lapse of geological
time, while an island was being upheaved
and formed, and before it had become fully
stocked with inhabitants. On almost bare
land, with few or no destructive insects or
birds living there, nearly every seed which
chanced to arrive, if fitted for the climate,
would be sure to geiminate and survive.
Dispersal during the Glacial period.—
The identity of many plants and animals
on mountain-summits, separated from each
other by hundreds of miles of lowlands,
where the Alpine species could not possibly
exist, is one of the most striking cases
known of the same species living at distant
points, without the apparent possibility of
their having migrated from one to the
other. It is, indeed, a remarkable fact to
see so many of the same plants living on
the snowy regions of the Alps or Pyrenees
and in the extreme northern parts of
Europe; but it is far more remarkable
that the plants on the White Mountains,
in the United States of America, are all
�148
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
the same with those of Labrador, and
nearly all the same, as we hear from Asa
Gray, with those on the loftiest mountains
of Europe. Even as long ago as 1747 such
facts led Gmelin to conclude that the same
species must have been independently
created at several distinct points ; and we
might have remained in this same belief
had not Agassiz and others called vivid
attention to the Glacial period, which, as
we shall immediately see, affords a simple
explanation of these facts. We have
evidence of almost every conceivable kind,
organic and inorganic, that within a very
recent geological period central Europe
and North America suffered under an
Arctic climate. The ruins of a house by
fire do not tell their tale more plainly than
do the mountains of Scotland and Wales,
with their scored flanks, polished surfaces,
and perched boulders, of the icy streams
with which their valleys were lately filled.
So greatly has the climate of Europe
changed that in Northern Italy gigantic
moraines left by old glaciers are now
clothed by the vine and maize. Through
out a large part of the United States, erratic
boulders and rocks, scored by drifted ice
bergs and coast-ice, plainly reveal a former
cold period.
The former influence of the glacial
climate on the distribution of the inhabi
tants of Europe, as explained with remark
able clearness by Edward Forbes, is
substantially as follows. But we shall
follow the changes more readily by sup
posing a new Glacial period to come slowly
on, and then pass away, as formerly occur
red. As the cold came on, and as each
more southern zone became fitted for arctic
beings and ill-fitted for their former more
temperate inhabitants, the latter would be
supplanted, and arctic productions would
take their places. The inhabitants of the
more temperate regions would at the same
time travel southward, unless they were
stopped by barriers, in which case they
would perish. The mountains would be
come covered with snow and ice, and their
former Alpine inhabitants would descend
to the plains. By the time that the cold
had reached its maximum we should have
a uniform arctic fauna and flora covering
the central parts of Europe as far south as
the Alps and Pyrenees, and even stretching
into Spain. The now temperate regions
of the United States would likewise be
covered by arctic plants and animals, and
these would be nearly the same with those
of Europe; for the present circumpolar
inhabitants, which we suppose to have
everywhere travelled southward, are re
markably uniform round the world. We
may suppose that the Glacial period came
on a little earlier or later in North America
than in Europe, so will the southern migra
tion there have been a little earlier or later;
but this will make no difference in the final
result.
As the warmth returned, the arctic
forms would retreat northward, closely
followed up in their retreat by the produc
tions of the more temperate regions. And
as the snow melted from the bases of the
mountains, the arctic forms would seize on
the cleared and thawed ground, always
ascending higher and higher as the warmth
increased, while their brethren were pur
suing their northern journey. Hence, when
the warmth had fully returned, the same
arctic species which had lately lived in a
body together on the lowlands of the Old
and New Worlds would be left isolated
on distant mountain-summits (having been
exterminated on all lesser heights) and in
the arctic regions of both hemispheres.
Thus we can understand the identity of
many plants at points so immensely remote
as on the mountains of the United States
and of Europe. We can thus also under
stand the fact that the Alpine plants of
each mountain-range are more especially
related to the arctic forms living due north
or nearly due north of them ; for the migra
tion as the cold came on, and the re-migration on the returning warmth, will generally
have been due south and north. The
Alpine plants, for example, of Scotland, as
remarked by Mr. H. C. Watson, and those
of the Pyrenees, as remarked by Ramond,
are more especially allied to the plants of
northern Scandinavia; those of the United
States to Labrador; those of the mountains
of Siberia to the arctic regions of that
country. These views, grounded as they
are on the perfectly well-ascertained occur
rence of a former Glacial period, seem to
me to explain in so satisfactory a manner
the present distribution of the alpine and
arctic productions of Europe and America,
that, when in other regions we find the same
species on distant mountain-summits, we
may almost conclude, without other evi
dence, that a colder climate permitted their
former migration across the low intervening
tracts, since become too warm for their
existence.
If the climate, since the Glacial period,
has ever been in any degree warmer than
at present (as some geologists in the
�GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION
United States believe to have been the
case, chiefly from the distribution of the
fossil Gnathodon), then the arctic and
temperate productions will at a very late
period have marched a little further north,
and subsequently have retreated to their
present homes; but I have met with no
satisfactory evidence with respect to this
intercalated slightly warmer period since
the Glacial period.
The arctic forms, during their long
southern migration and re-migration north
ward, will have been exposed to nearly the
same climate, and, as is especially to be
noticed, they will have kept in a body
together ; consequently, their mutual rela
tions will not have been much disturbed,
and, in accordance with the principles in
culcated in this volume, they will not have
been liable to much modification. But
with our alpine productions, left isolated
from the moment of the returning warmth,
first at the bases and ultimately on the
summits of the mountains, the case will have
been somewhat different; for it is not likely
that all the same arctic species will have been
left on mountain-ranges distant from each
other, and have survived there ever since ;
they will also, in all probability, have
become mingled with ancient alpine
species which must have existed on the
mountains before the commencement of
the Glacial epoch, and which during its
coldest period will have been temporarily
driven down to the plains ; they will also
have been exposed to somewhat different
climatal influences. Their mutual relations
will thus have been in some degree dis
turbed ; consequently, they will have been
liable to modification, and this we find
has been the case ; for, if we compare the
present alpine plants and animals of the
several great European mountain-ranges,
though very many of the species are identi
cally the same, some present varieties,
some are ranked as doubtful forms, and
some few are distinct yet closely-allied or
representative species.
In illustrating what, as I believe, actually
took place during the Glacial period, I
assumed that at its commencement the
arctic productions were as uniform round
the polar regions as they are at the present
day. But the foregoing remarks on dis
tribution apply not only to strictly arctic
forms, but also to many sub-arctic and to
some few northern temperate forms, for
some of these are the same on the lower
mountains and on the plains of North
America and Europe; and it may be
149
reasonably asked how I account for the
necessary degree of uniformity of the sub
arctic and northern temperate forms round
the world at the commencement of the
Glacial period. At the present day the
sub-arctic and northern temperate produc
tions of the Old and New Worlds are
separated from each other by the Atlantic
Ocean and by the extreme northern part of
the Pacific. During the Glacial period,
when the inhabitants of the Old and New
Worlds lived further southwards than at
present, they must have been still more
completely separated by wider spaces of
ocean. I believe the above difficulty may
be surmounted by looking to still earlier
changes of climate of an opposite nature.
We have good reason to believe that
during the newer Pliocene period, before
the Glacial epoch, and while the majority
of the inhabitants of the world were speci
fically the same as now, the climate was
warmer than at the present day. Hence
we may suppose that the organisms now
living under the climate of latitude 6o°,
during the Pliocene period lived further
north under the Polar Circle, in latitude
66°-67°; and that the strictly arctic pro
ductions then lived on the broken land
still nearer to the pole. Now, if we look
at a globe, we shall see that under the
Polar Circle there is almost continuous
land from western Europe, through Siberia,
to eastern America. And to the continuity
of the circumpolar land, and to the conse
quent freedom for intermigration under a
more favourable climate, I attribute the
necessary amount of uniformity in the sub
arctic and northern temperate productions
of the Old and New Worlds at a period
anterior to the Glacial epoch.
Believing, from reasons before alluded
to, that our continents have long remained
in nearly the same relative position, though
subjected to large, but partial, oscillations
of level, I am strongly inclined to extend
the above view, and to infer that during
some earlier and still warmer period, such
as the older Pliocene period, a large number
of the same plants and animals inhabited
the almost continuous circumpolar land ;
and that these plants and animals, both in
the Old and New Worlds, began slowly to
migrate southwards as the climate became
less warm, long before the commencement
of the Glacial period. We now see, as I
believe, their descendants, mostly in a
modified condition, in the central parts of
Europe and the United States. On this
view we can understand the relationship,
�150
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
with very little identity, between the pro
ductions of North America and Europe—
a relationship which is most remarkable
considering the distance of the two areas
and their separation by the Atlantic Ocean.
We can further understand the singular
fact, remarked on by several observers,
that the productions of Europe and America
during the later tertiary stages were more
closely related to each other than they are
at the present time; for during these
warmer periods the northern parts of the
Old and New Worlds will have been almost
continuously united by land, serving as a
bridge, since rendered impassable by cold,
for the intermigration of their inhabitants.
During the slowly-decreasing warmth of
the Pliocene period, as soon as the species
in common which inhabited the New and
Old Worlds migrated south of the Polar
Circle, they must have been completely
cut off from each other. This separation,
as far as the more temperate productions
are concerned, took place long ages ago.
And as the plants and animals migrated
southward, they will have become mingled
in the one great region with the native
American productions, and have had to
compete with them ; and, in the other great
region, with those of the Old World. Con
sequently, we have here everything favour
able for much modification—for far more
modification than with the Alpine produc
tions, left isolated within a much more
recent period, on the several mountain
ranges and on the arctic lands of the two
Worlds. Hence it has come that, when
we compare the now living productions of
the temperate regions of the New and Old
Worlds, we find very few identical species
(though Asa Gray has lately shown that
more plants are identical than was formerly
supposed), but we find in every great class
many forms which some naturalists rank
as geographical races and others as distinct
species, and a host of closely-allied or
representative forms which are ranked by
all naturalists as specifically distinct.
As on the land, so in the waters of the
sea, a slow southern migration of a marine
fauna, which during the Pliocene or even
a somewhat earlier period was nearly
uniform along the continuous shores of the
Polar Circle, will account, on the theory of
modification, for many closed-allied forms
now living in areas completely sundered.
Thus, I think, we can understand the
presence of many existing and tertiary
representative forms on the eastern and
western shores of temperate North America;
and the still more striking case of many
closely-allied crustaceans (as described in
Dana’s admirable work), of some fish and
other marine animals, in the Mediterranean
and in the seas of Japan—areas now sepa
rated by a continent and by nearly a hemi
sphere of equatorial ocean.
These cases of relationship, without
identity, of the inhabitants of seas now
disjoined, and likewise of the past and
present inhabitants of the temperate lands
of North America and Europe, are inexpli
cable on the theory of creation. We cannot
say that they have been created alike, in
correspondence with the nearly similar
physical conditions of the areas ; for if we
compare, for instance, certain parts of
South America with the southern continents
of the Old World, we see countries closely
corresponding in all their physical con
ditions, but with their inhabitants utterly
dissimilar.
But we must return to our more imme
diate subject, the Glacial period. I am
convinced that Forbes’s view may be largely
extended. In Europe we have the plainest
evidence of the cold period, from the
western shores of Britain to the Oural
range, and southward to the Pyrenees. We
may infer from the frozen mammals and
nature of the mountain vegetation that
Siberia was similarly affected. Along the
Himalaya, at points 900 miles apart, glaciers
have left the marks of their former low
descent; and in Sikkim Dr. Hooker saw
maize growing on giganticancient moraines.
South of the equator we have some direct
evidence of former glacial action in New
Zealand ; and the same plants, found on
widely-separated mountains in that island,
tell the same story. If one account which
has been published can be trusted, we have
direct evidence of glacial action in the south
eastern corner of Australia.
Looking to America : in the northern
half, ice-borne fragments of rock have been
observed on the eastern side as far south
as latitude 36°-37°, and on the shores of
the Pacific, where the climate is now so
different, as far south as latitude 46°; erratic
boulders have also been noticed on the
Rocky Mountains. In the Cordillera of
Equatorial South America glaciers once
extended far below their present level. In
central Chili I was astonished at the struc
ture of a vast mound of detritus, about
800 feet in height, crossing a valley of the
Andes ; and this, I now feel convinced, was
a gigantic moraine, left far below any exist
ing glacier. Further south on both sides
�GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION
of the continent, from latitude 410 to the
southernmost extremity, we have the clearest
evidence of former glacial action in huge
boulders transported far from their parent
souice.
We do not know that the Glacial epoch
was strictly simultaneous at these several
far distant points on opposite sides of the
world. But we have good evidence in
almost every case that the epoch was in
cluded within the latest geological period.
We have also excellent evidence that it
endured for an enormous time, as measured
by years, at each point. The cold may
have come on, or have ceased, earlier at
one point of the globe than at another, but
seeing that it endured for long at each, and
that it was contemporaneous in a geological
sense, it seems to me probable that it was,
during a part at least of the period, actually
simultaneous throughout the world. With
out some distinct evidence to the contrary,
we may at least admit as probable that the
glacial action was simultaneous on the
eastern and western sides of North America,
in the Cordillera under the equator and
under the warmer temperate zones, and on
both sides of the southern extremity of the
continent. If this be admitted, it is difficult
to avoid believing that the temperature of
the whole world was at this period simul
taneously cooler. But it would suffice for
my purpose if the temperature was at the
same time lower along certain broad belts
of longitude.
On this view of the whole world, or at
least of broad longitudinal belts, having
been simultaneously colder from pole to
pole, much light can be thrown on the
present distribution of identical and allied
species.
In America Dr. Hooker has
shown that between forty and fifty of the
flowering plants of Tierra del Fuego, form
ing no inconsiderable part of its scanty
flora, are common to Europe, enormously
remote as these two points are ; and there
are many closely-allied species. On the
lofty mountains of equatorial America a
host of peculiar species belonging to
European genera occur. On the highest
mountains of Brazil some few European
genera were found by Gardner which do
not exist in the wide intervening hot
countries. So on the Silla of Caraccas the
illustrious Humboldt long ago found species
belonging to genera characteristic of the
Cordillera. On the mountains of Abyssinia
several European forms and some few re
presentatives of the peculiar flora of the
Cape of Good Hope occur. At the Cape
151
of Good Hope a very few European species,
believed not to have been introduced by
man, and on the mountains some few
representative European forms, are found
which have not been discovered in the intertropical parts of Africa. On the Himalaya
and on the isolated mountain-ranges of the
peninsula of India, on the heights of Ceylon,
and on the volcanic cones of Java, many
plants occur either identically the same or
representing each other, and at the same
time representing plants of Europe, not
found in the intervening hot lowlands. A
list of the genera collected on the loftier
peaks of Java raises a picture of a collec
tion made on a hill in Europe ! Still more
striking is the fact that southern Australian
forms are clearly represented by plants
growing on the summits of the mountains
of Borneo. Some of these Australian
forms, as I hear from Dr. Hooker, extend
along the heights of the peninsula of
Malacca, and are thinly scattered, on the
one hand, over India and, on the other, as
far north as Japan.
On the southern mountains of Australia
Dr. F. Muller has discovered several
European species ; other species, not intro
duced by man, occur on the lowlands ; and
a long list can be given, as I am informed
by Dr. Hooker, of European genera found
in Australia, but not in the intermediate
torrid regions. In the admirable Introduc
tion to the Flora of New Zealand, by Dr.
Hooker, analogous and striking facts are
given in regard to the plants of that large
island. Hence we see that throughout the
world the plants growing on the more lofty
mountains, and on the temperate lowlands
of the northern and southern hemispheres,
are sometimes identically the same; but
they are much oftener specifically distinct,
though related to each other in a most
remarkable manner.
This brief abstract applies to plants
alone : some strictly analogous facts could
be given on the distribution of terrestrial
animals. In marine productions similar
cases occur ; as an example, I may quote
a remark by the highest authority, Professor
Dana, that “ it is certainly a wonderful fact
that New Zealand should have a closer
resemblance in its Crustacea to Great
Britain, ‘its antipode, than to any other
part of the world.” Sir J. Richardson also
speaks of the reappearance on the shores
of New Zealand, Tasmania, etc., of northern
forms of fish. Dr. Hooker informs me that
twenty-five species of Algae are common to
New Zealand and to Europe, but have not
�152
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
been found in the intermediate tropical
seas.
It should be observed that the northern
species and forms found in the southern
parts of the southern hemisphere, and on
the mountain-ranges of the intertropical
regions, are not arctic, but belong to the
northern temperate zones. As Mr. H. C.
Watson has recently remarked : “In
receding from polar towards equatorial
latitudes, the alpine or mountain floras
really become less and less arctic.” Many
of the forms living on the mountains of
the warmer regions of the earth and in the
southern hemisphere are of doubtful value,
being ranked by some naturalists as speci
fically distinct, by others as varieties ; but
some are certainly identical, and many,
though closely related to northern forms,
must be ranked as distinct species.
Now, let us see what light can be thrown
on the foregoing facts on the belief, sup
ported as it is by a large body of geological
evidence, that the whole world, or a large
part of it, was, during the Glacial period,
simultaneously much colder than at present.
The Glacial period, as measured by years,
must have been very long ; and when we
remember over what vast spaces some
naturalised plants and animals have spread
within a few centuries, this period will have
been ample for any amount of migration.
As the cold came slowly on, all the tropical
plants and other productions will have
retreated from both sides towards the
equator, followed in the rear by the tem
perate productions, and these by the arctic;
but with the latter we are not now con
cerned. The tropical plants probably
suffered much extinction—how much no
one can say ; perhaps formerly the tropics
supported as many species as we see at
the present day crowded together at the
Cape of Good Hope and in parts of tem
perate Australia. As we know that many
tropical plants and animals can withstand
a considerable amount of cold, many
might have escaped extermination during
a moderate fall of temperature, more espe
cially by escaping into the lowest, most
protected, and warmest districts. But the
great fact to bear in mind is that all
tropical productions will have suffered to
a certain extent. On the other hand, the
temperate productions, after migrating
nearer to the equator, though they will
have been placed under somewhat new
conditions, will have suffered less. And it
is certain that many temperate plants, if
protected from the inroads of competitors,
can withstand a much warmer climate than
their own. Hence it seems to me possible,
bearing in mind that the tropical productions
were in a suffering state, and could not have
presented a firm front against intruders,
that a certain number of the more vigorous
and dominant temperate forms might have
penetrated the native ranks, and have
reached or even crossed the equator. The
invasion would, of course, have been
greatly favoured by high land, and perhaps
by a dry climate; for Dr. Falconer informs
me that it is the damp with the heat of the
tropics which is so destructive to perennial
plants from a temperate climate. On the
other hand, the most humid and hottest
districts will have afforded an asylum to
the tropical natives. The mountain-ranges
north-west of the Himalaya and the long
line of the Cordillera seem to have afforded
two great lines of invasion ; and it is a
striking fact, lately communicated to me
by Dr. Hooker, that all the flowering
plants, about forty-six in number, common
to Tierra del Fuego and to Europe, still
exist in North America, which must have
lain on the line of march. But I do not
doubt that some temperate productions
entered and crossed even the lowlands of
the tropics at the period when the cold
was most intense—when arctic forms had
migrated some twenty-five degrees of lati
tude from their native country and covered
the land at the foot of the Pyrenees. At
this period of extreme cold I believe that
the climate under the equator at the level
of the sea was about the same with that
now felt there at the height of six or seven
thousand feet. During this the coldest
period, I suppose that large spaces of the
tropical lowlands were clothed with a
mingled tropical and temperate vegetation,
like that now growing with strange luxu
riance at the base of the Himalaya, as
graphically described by Hooker.
Thus, as I believe, a considerable num
ber of plants, a few terrestrial animals, and
some marine productions migrated during
the Glacial period from the northern and
southern temperate zones into the inter
tropical regions, and some even crossed
the equator. As the warmth returned,
these temperate forms would naturally
ascend the higher mountains, being exter
minated on the lowlands; those which
had not reached the equator would re
migrate northward or southward towards
their former homes ; but the forms, chiefly
northern, which had crossed the equator
would travel still further from their homes
�GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION
into the more temperate latitudes of the
opposite hemisphere. Although we have
reason to believe from geological evidence
that the whole body of arctic shells under
went scarcely any modification during their
long southern migration and re-migration
northward, the case may have been wholly
different with those intruding forms which
settled themselves on the intertropical
mountains and in the southern hemisphere.
These, being surrounded by strangers, will
have had to compete with many new forms
of life ; and it is probable that selected
modifications in their structure, habits, and
constitutions will have profited them. Thus
many of these wanderers, though still
plainly related by inheritance to their
brethren of the northern or southern hemi
spheres, now exist in their new homes as
well-marked varieties or as distinct species.
It is a remarkable fact, strongly insisted
on by Hooker in regard to America, and
by Alph. de Candolle in regard to Aus
tralia, that many more identical plants and
allied forms have apparently migrated from
the north to the south than in a reversed
direction. We see, however, a few southern
vegetable forms on the mountains of Borneo
and Abyssinia. I suspect that this prepon
derant migration from north to south js
due to the greater extent of land in the
north, and to the northern forms having
existed in their own homes in greater
numbers, and having, consequently, been
advanced through natural selection and
competition to a higher stage of perfection
or dominating power than the southern
forms. And thus, when they became com
mingled during the Glacial period, the
northern forms were enabled to beat the
less powerful southern forms. Just in the
same manner as we see at the present day
that very many European productions
cover the ground in La Plata, and in a
lesser degree in Australia, and have to a
certain extent beaten the natives ; whereas
extremely few southern forms have become
naturalised in any part of Europe, though
hides, wool, and other objects likely to
carry seeds have been largely imported into
Europe during the last two or three
centuries from La Plata, and during the
last thirty or forty years from Australia.
Something of the same kind must have
occurred on the intertropical mountains :
no doubt before the Glacial period they
were stocked with endemic Alpine forms ;
but these have almost everywhere largely
yielded to the more dominant forms, gene
rated in the larger areas and more efficient
153
workshops of the north. In many islands
the native productions are nearly equalled
or even outnumbered by the naturalised ;
and if the natives have not been actually
exterminated, their numbers have been
greatly reduced, and this is the first stage
towards extinction. A mountain is an
island on the land, and the intertropical
mountains before the Glacial period must
have been completely isolated ; and I
believe that the productions of these islands
on the land yielded to those produced
within the larger areas of the north, just in
the same way as the productions of real
islands have everywhere lately yielded to
continental forms, naturalised by man’s
agency.
I am far from supposing that all diffi
culties are removed on the view here given
in regard to the range and affinities of the
allied species which live in the northern
and southern temperate zones and on the
mountains of the intertropical regions.
Very many difficulties remain to be solved.
I do not pretend to indicate the exact lines
and means of migration, or the reason why
certain species and not others have migra
ted—why certain species have been modi
fied and have given rise to new groups of
forms, and others have remained unaltered.
We cannot hope to explain such facts,
until we can say why one species and not
another becomes naturalised by man’s
agency in a foreign land ; why one ranges
twice or thrice as far, and is twice or thrice
as common, as another species within their
own homes.
I have said that many difficulties remain
to be solved: some of the most remarkable
are stated with admirable clearness by Dr.
Hooker in his botanical works on the ant
arctic regions. These cannot be here dis
cussed. I will only say that as far as
regards the occurrence of identical species
at points soenormouslyremote as Kerguelen
Land, New Zealand, and Fuegia, I believe
that towards the close of the Glacial period
icebergs, as suggested by Lyell, have been
largely concerned in their dispersal. But
the existence of several quite distinct
species, belonging to genera exclusively
confined to the south, at these and other
distant points of the southern hemisphere,
is, on my theory of descent with modifica
tion, a far more remarkable case of diffi
culty. For some of these species are so
distinct that we cannot suppose that there
has been time since the commencement of
the Glacial period for their migration, and
for their subsequent modification to the
�154
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
necessary degree. The facts seem to ine
to indicate that peculiar and very distinct
species have migrated in radiating lines
from some common centre ; and I am
inclined to look in the southern as in the
northern hemisphere, to a former and
warmer period, before the commencement
of the Glacial period, when the antarctic
lands, now covered with ice, supported a
highly peculiar and isolated flora. I sus
pect that before this flora was exterminated
by the Glacial epoch a few forms were
widely dispersed to various points of the
southern hemisphere by occasional means
of transport, and by the aid, as haltingplaces, of existing and now sunken islands.
By these means, as I believe, the southern
shores of America, Australia, New Zealand,
have become slightly tinted by the same
peculiar forms of vegetable life.
Sir C. Lyell, in a striking passage, has
speculated, in language almost identical
with mine, on'the effects of great alterna
tions of climate on geological distribution.
I believe that the world has recently felt
one of his great cycles of change ; and
that on this view, combined with modifica
tion through natural selection, a multitude
of facts in the present distribution, both of
the same and of allied forms of life, can be
explained. The living waters may be said
to have flowed during one short period
from the north and from the south, and to
have crossed at the equator, but to have
flowed with greater force from the north, so
as to have freely inundated the south. As
the tide leaves its drift in horizontal lines,
though rising higher on the shores where
the tide rises highest, so have the living
waters left their living drift on our moun
tain-summits in a line gently rising from the
arctic lowlands to a great height under the
equator. The various beings thus left
stranded may be compared with savage
races of man, driven up and surviving in
the mountain-fastnesses of almost every
land, which serve as a record, full of
interest to us, of the former inhabitants of
the surrounding lowlands.
Chapter XII.
GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION—Continued
Distribution of fresh-water productions—On the
inhabitants of oceanic islands—Absence of
Batrachians and of terrestrial Mammals—On
the relation of the inhabitants of islands to
those of the nearest mainland—On colonisa
tion from the nearest source with subsequent
modification — Summary of the last and
present chapters.
As lakes and river-systems are separated
from each other by barriers of land, it
might have been thought that fresh-water
productions would not have ranged widely
within the same country, and, as the sea is
apparently a still more impassable barrier,
that they never would have extended to
distant countries. But the case is exactly
the reverse. Not only have many fresh
water species, belonging to quite different
classes, an enormous range, but allied
species prevail in a remarkable manner
throughout the world. I well repierriber.
when first collecting in the fresh waters of
Brazil, feeling much surprise at the simi
larity of the fresh-water insects, shells, etc.,
and at the dissimilarity of the surrounding
terrestrial beings, compared with those of
Britain.
But this power in fresh-water productions
of ranging widely, though so unexpected,
can, I think, in most cases be explained by
their having become fitted, in a manner
highly useful to them, for short and fre
quent migrations from pond to pond, or
from stream to stream ; and liability to
wide dispersal would follow from this
capacity as an almost necessary conse
quence. We can here consider only a few
cases. In regard to fish, I believe that the
same species never occur in the fresh
waters of distant continents. But on the
same continent the species often range
widely and almost capriciously; for two
river-systems will have some fisft ip common
�GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION
155
and some different. A few facts seem to
duck-weed from one aquarium to another,
favour the possibility of their occasional
that I have quite unintentionally stocked
transport by accidental means—like that
the one with fresh-water shells from the
of the live fish not rarely dropped by whirl
other. But another agency is perhaps more
winds in India, and the vitality of their ova
effectual : I suspended a duck’s feet, which
when removed from the water. But I am
might represent those of a bird sleeping in
inclined to attribute the dispersal of fresh
a natural pond, in an aquarium where
water fish mainly to slight changes within
many ova of fresh-water shells were hatch
the recent period in the level of the land
ing ; and I found that numbers of the
having caused rivers to flow into each
extremely minute and just-hatched shells
other. Instances also could be given of this
crawled on the feet and clung to them so
having occurred during floods, without any
firmly that, when taken out of the water,
change of level. We have evidence in the
they could not be jarred off, though at a
loess of the Rhine of considerable changes
somewhat more advanced age they would
of level in the land within a very recent
voluntarily drop off. These just-hatched
geological period, and when the surface
molluscs, though aquatic in their nature,
was peopled by existing land and fresh
survived on the duck’s feet, in damp air,
water shells. The wide difference of the
from twelve to twenty hours ; and in this
fish on opposite sides of continuous moun
length of time a duck or heron might fly at
tain-ranges, which from an early period
least six or seven hundred miles, and would
must have parted river-systems and com
be sure to alight on a pool or rivulet, if
pletely prevented their inosculation, seems
blown across sea to an oceanic island or to
to lead to this same conclusion. With
any other distant point. Sir Charles Lyell
respect to allied fresh-water fish occurring
also informs me that a Dyticus has been
at very distant points of the world, no doubt
caught with an Ancylus (a fresh-water shell
there are many cases which cannot at
like a limpet) firmly adhering to it ; and a
present be explained; but some fresh-water
water-beetle of the same family, a Colymfish belong to very ancient forms, and in
betes, once flew on board the Beagle when
such cases there will have been ample time
forty-five miles distant from the nearest
for great geographical changes, and conse
land ; how much farther it might have
quently time and means for much migra
flown with a favouring gale no one can tell.
tion. In the second place, salt-water fish
With respect to plants, it has long been
can with care be slowly accustomed to live
known what enormous ranges many fresh
in fresh water ; and, according to Valen
water and even marsh species have, both
ciennes, there is hardly a single group of over continents and to the most remote
fishes confined exclusively to fresh water, » oceanic islands. This is strikingly shown,
so that we may imagine that a marine
as remarked by Alph. de Candolle, in large
member of a fresh-water group might travel
groups of terrestrial plants which have
far along the shores of the sea, and subse
only a very few aquatic members ; for
quently become modified and adapted to
these latter seem immediately to acquire,
the fresh waters of a distant land.
as if in consequence, a very wide range.
Some species of fresh-water shells have
I think favourable means of dispersal
a very wide range, and allied species, which,
explain this fact. I have before mentioned
on my theory, are descended from a common
that earth occasionally, though rarely,
parent and must have proceeded from a
adheres in some quantity to the feet and
single source, prevail throughout the world.
beaks of birds. Wading birds, which
Their distribution at first perplexed me
frequent the muddy edges of ponds, if
much, as their ova are not likely to be
suddenly flushed, would be the most likely
transported by birds, and they are im
to have muddy feet. Birds of this order, I
mediately killed by sea-water, as are the
can show, are the greatest wanderers, and
adults. I could not even understand how
are occasionally found on the most remote
some naturalised species have rapidly
and barren islands in the open ocean ;
spread throughout the same country. But
they would not be likely to alight on the
two facts which I have observed—and no
surface of the sea, so that the dirt would
doubt many others remain to be observed
not be washed off their feet; when making
-—throw some light on this subject. When
land, they would be sure to fly to their
a duck suddenly emerges from a pond
natural fresh-water haunts. I do not believe
covered with duck-weed, I have twice seen
that botanists are aware how charged the
these little plants adhering to its back; and
mud of ponds is with seeds. I have tried
it has happened to me, in removing a little
several little experiments, but will here give
�T56
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
only the most striking case : I took, in
February, three table-spoonfuls of mud from
three different'points, beneath water, on the
edge of a little pond; this mud when dry
weighed only 6X ounces ; I kept it covered
up in my study for six months, pulling up
and counting each plant as it grew ; the
plants were of many kinds, and were
altogether 537 in number; and yet the
viscid mud was all contained in a breakfast
cup ! Considering these facts, I think it
would be an inexplicable circumstance if
water-birds did not transport the seeds of
fresh-water plants to vast distances, and if,
consequently, the range of these plants
was not very great. The same agency may
have come into play with the eggs of some
of the smaller fresh-water animals.
Other and unknown agencies probably
have also played a part. I have stated
that fresh-water fish eat some kinds of
seeds, though they reject many other kinds
after having swallowed them ; even small
fish swallow seeds of moderate size, as
of the yellow water-lily and Potamogeton.
Herons and other birds, century after
century, have gone on daily devouring
fish ; they then take flight and go to other
waters, or are blown across the sea ; and
we have seen that seeds retain their power
of germination, when rejected in pellets
or in excrement, many hours afterwards.
When I saw the great size of the seeds of
that fine water-lily, the Nelumbium, and
remembered Alph. de Candolle’s remarks
on this plant, I thought that its distribu
tion must remain quite inexplicable ; but
Audubon states that he found the seeds of
the great southern water-lily (probably,
according to Dr. Hooker, the Nelumbium
luteum) in a heron’s stomach ; although I
do not know the fact, yet analogy makes
me believe that a heron, flying to another
pond and getting a hearty meal of fish,
would probably reject from its stomach a
pellet containing the seeds of the Nelum
bium undigested, or the seeds might be
dropped by the bird while feeding its
young, in the same way as fish are known
sometimes to be dropped.
In considering these several means of
distribution, it should be remembered that
when a pond or stream is first formed, for
instance, on a rising islet, it will be unoccu
pied ; and a single seed or egg will have
a good chance of succeeding. Although
there will always be a struggle for life
between the individuals of the species,
however few, already occupying any pond,
yet as the number of kinds is small com
pared with those on the land, the competi
tion will probably be less severe between
aquatic than between terrestrial species ;
consequently, an intruder from the waters
of a foreign country would have a better
chance of seizing on a place than in the
case of terrestrial colonists. We should
also remember that some, perhaps many,
fresh-water productions are low in the scale
of nature, and that we have reason to
believe that such low beings change or
become modified less quickly than the
high ; and this will give longer time than
the average for the migration of the same
aquatic species. We should not forget
the probability of many species having
formerly ranged as continuously as fresh
water productions ever can range over
immense areas, and having subsequently
become extinct in intermediate regions.
But the wide distribution of fresh-water
plants and of the lower animals, whether
retaining the same identical form or in
some degree modified, I believe mainly
depends on the wide dispersal of their
seeds and eggs by animals, more especially
by fresh-water birds, which have large
powers of flight, and naturally travel from
one to another and often distant piece of
water. Nature, like a careful gardener,
thus takes her seeds from a bed of a par
ticular nature, and drops them in another
equally well fitted for them.
On the Inhabitants of Oceanic Islands.—
We now come to the last of the three
classes of facts which I have selected as
presenting the greatest amount of difficulty,
on the view that all the individuals both
of the same and of allied species have
descended from a single parent; and
therefore have all proceeded from a
common birth-place, notwithstanding that
in the course of time they have come to
inhabit distant points of the globe. I
have already stated that I cannot honestly
admit Forbes’s view on continental exten
sions, which, if legitimately followed out,
would lead to the belief that within the
recent period all existing islands have been
nearly or quite joined to some continent.
This view would remove many difficulties,
but it would not, I think, explain all the
facts in regard to insular productions. In
the following remarks I shall not confine
myself to the mere question of dispersal ;
but shall consider some other facts which
bear on the truth of the two theories of
independent creation and of descent with
modification.
�GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION
The species of all kinds which inhabit
oceanic islands are few in number com
pared with those on equal continental
areas : Alph. de Candolle admits this for
plants, and Wollaston for insects. If we
look to the large size and varied stations of
New Zealand, extending over 780 miles of
latitude, and compare its flowering plants,
only 750 in number, with those on an
equal area at the Cape of Good Hope or in
Australia, we must, I think, admit that
something quite independently of any dif
ference in physical conditions has caused
so great a difference in number. Even the
uniform county of Cambridge has 847
plants, and the little island of Anglesey
764, but a few ferns and a few introduced
plants are included in these numbers, and
the comparison in some other respects is
not quite fair. We have evidence that the
barren island of Ascension aboriginally
possessed under half a dozen flowering
plants ; yet many have become naturalised
on it, as they have on New Zealand and on
every other oceanic island which can be
named. In St. Helena there is reason to
believe that the naturalised plants and
animals have nearly or quite exterminated
many native productions. He who admits
the doctrine of the creation of each sepa
rate species will have to admit that a
sufficient number of the best adapted
plants and animals have not been created
on oceanic islands ; for man has uninten
tionally stocked them from various sources
far more fully and perfectly than has
nature.
Although in oceanic islands the number
of kinds of inhabitants is scanty, the pro
portion of endemic species (z>., those found
nowhere else in the world) is often ex
tremely large. If we compare, for instance,
the number of the endemic land-shells in
Madeira, or of the endemic birds in the
Galapagos Archipelago, with the number
found on any continent, and then compare
the area of the islands with that of the
continent, we shall see that this is true.
This fact might have been expected on my
theory, for, as already explained, species
occasionally arriving after long intervals in
a new and isolated district, and having to
compete with new associates, will be
eminently liable to modification, and will
often produce groups of modified descen
dants. But it by no means follows that,
because in an island nearly all the species
of one class are peculiar, those of another
class, or of another section of the same
class, are peculiar; and this difference
157
seems to depend partly on the species
which do not become modified having
immigrated with facility and in a body, so
that their mutual relations have not been
much disturbed; and partly on the frequent
arrival of unmodified immigrants from the
mother-country, and the consequent inter
crossing with them. With respect to the
effects of this intercrossing, it should be
remembered that the offspring of such
crosses would almost certainly gain in
vigour; so that even an occasional cross
would produce more effect than might at
first have been anticipated. To give a few
examples: in the Galapagos Islands nearly
every land bird, but only two out of the
eleven marine birds, are peculiar ; and it is
obvious that marine birds could arrive at
these islands more easily than land birds.
Bermuda, on the other hand, which lies at
about the same distance from North
America as the Galapagos Islands do from
South America, and which has a very
peculiar soil, does not possess one endemic
land bird ; and we know, from Mr. J. M.
Jones’s admirable account of Bermuda, that
very many North American birds, during
their great annual migrations, visit either
periodically or occasionally this island.
Madeira does not possess one peculiar bird,
and many European and African birds are
almost every year blown there, as I am
informed by Mr. E. V. Harcourt. So that
these two islands of Bermuda and Madeira
have been stocked by birds, which for long
ages have struggled together in their former
homes, and have become mutually adapted
to each other; and when settled in their
new homes, each kind will have been kept
by the others to their proper places and
habits, and will consequently have been
little liable to modification. Any tendency
to modification will also have been
checked by intercrossing with the unmodi
fied immigrants from the mother-country.
Madeira, again, is inhabited by a wonder
ful number of peculiar land-shells, whereas
not one species of sea-shell is confined to
its shores : now, though we do not know
how sea-shells are dispersed, yet we can
see that their eggs or larvae, perhaps
attached to sea-weed or floating timber, or
to the feet of wading-birds, might be trans
ported far more easily than land-shells
across three or four hundred miles of open
sea. The different orders of insects in
Madeira apparently present analogous
facts.
Oceanic islands are sometimes deficient
in certain classes, and their places are
�i5S
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
apparently occupied by the other inhabi
tants ; in the Galapagos Islands reptiles,
and in New Zealand gigantic wingless
birds, take the place of mammals. In the
plants of the Galapagos Islands Dr.
Hooker has shown that the proportional
numbers of the different orders are very
different from what they are elsewhere.
Such cases are generally accounted for by
the physical conditions of the islands ; but
this explanation seems to me not a little
doubtful. Facility of immigration, I believe,
has been at least as important as the
nature of the conditions.
Many remarkable little facts could be given
with respect to the inhabitants of remote
islands. For instance, in certain islands
not tenanted by mammals some of the en
demic plants have beautifully hooked seeds;
yet few relations are more striking than
the adaptation of hooked seeds for trans
portal by the wool and fur of quadrupeds.
This case presents no difficulty on my view,
for a hooked seed might be transported
to an island by some other means ; and
the plant, then becoming slightly modified,
but still retaining its hooked seeds, would
form an endemic species, having as useless
an appendage as any rudimentary organ
•—for instance, as the shrivelled wings under
the soldered elytra of many insular beetles.
Again, islands often possess trees or bushes
belonging to orders which elsewhere in
clude only herbaceous species ; now trees,
as Alph. de Candolle has shown, generally
have, whatever the cause may be, confined
ranges. Hence trees would be little likely
to reach distant oceanic islands ; and an
herbaceous plant, though it would have no
chance of successfully competing in stature
with a fully developed tree, when established
on an island and having to compete with
herbaceous plants alone, might readily gain
an advantage by growing taller and taller
and overtopping the other plants. If so,
natural selection would often tend to add
to the stature of herbaceous plants when
growing on an oceanic island, to whatever
order they belonged, and thus convert
them first into bushes and ultimately into
trees.
With respect to the absence of whole
orders on oceanic islands, Bory St. Vincent
long ago remarked that Batrachians (frogs,
toads, newts) have never been found on
any of the many islands with which the
great oceans are studded. I have taken
pains. to verify this assertion, and I have
found it strictly true. I have, however,
been assured that a frog exists on the
mountains of the great island of New
Zealand ; but I suspect that this exception
(if the information be correct) may be
explained through glacial agency. This
general absence of frogs, toads, and newts
on so many oceanic islands cannot be
accounted for by their physical conditions ;
indeed, it seerris that islands are peculiarly
well fitted for these animals ; for frogs have
been introduced into Madeira, the Azores,
and Mauritius, and have multiplied so as
to become a nuisance. But as these animals
and their spawn are known to be imme
diately killed by sea-water, on my view we
can see that there would be great difficulty
in their transportal across the sea, and
therefore why they do not exist on any
oceanic island. But why, on the theory of
creation, they should not have been created
there, it would be very difficult to explain.
Mammals offer another and similar case.
I have carefully searched the oldest voyages,
but have not finished my search ; as yet I
have not found a single instance, free from
doubt, of a terrestrial mammal (excluding
domesticated animals kept by the natives)
inhabiting an island situated above 300
miles from a continent or great continental
island; and many islands situated at a
much less distance are equally barren.
The Falkland Islands, which are inhabited
by a wolf-like fox, come nearest to an
exception ; but this group cannot be con
sidered as oceanic, as it lies on a bank
connected with the mainland ; moreover,
icebergs formerly brought boulders to its
western shores, and they may have formerly
transported foxes, as so frequently now
happens in the arctic regions. Yet it
cannot be said that small islands will not
support small mammals, for they occur in
many parts of the world on very small
islands, if close to a continent; and hardly
an island can be named on which our
smaller quadrupeds have not become
naturalised and greatly multiplied. It
cannot be said, on the ordinary view of
creation, that there has not been time for
the creation of mammals ; many volcanic
islands are sufficiently ancient, as shown
by the stupendous degradation which they
have suffered and by their tertiary strata.
There has also been time for the produc
tion of endemic species belonging to other
classes ; and on continents it is thought
that mammals appear and disappear at a
quicker rate than other and lower animals.
Though terrestrial mammals do not occur
on oceanic islands, aerial mammals do
occur on almost every island. New Zealand
�GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION
possesses two bats found nowhere else in
the world : Norfolk Island, the Viti Archi
pelago, the Bonin Islands, the Caroline and
Marianne Archipelagoes, and Mauritius—
all possess their peculiar bats. Why, it
may be asked, Has the supposed creative
force produced bats and no other mammals
on remote islands ? On my view, this ques
tion can easily be answered ; for no terres
trial mammal can be transported across
a wide space of sea, but bats can fly
across. Bats have been seen wandering
by day far over the Atlantic Ocean ; and
two North American species either regularly
or occasionally visit Bermuda, at the dis
tance of 600 miles from the mainland. I
hear from Mr. Tomes, who has specially
studied this family, that many of the same
species have enormous ranges, and are
found on continents and on far distant
islands. Hence we have only to suppose
that such wandering species have been
modified through natural selection in their
new homes in relation to their new position,
and we can understand the presence of
endemic bats on islands, with the absence
of all terrestrial mammals.
Besides the absence of terrestrial mam
mals in relation to the remoteness of islands
from continents, there is also a relation, to
a certain extent independent of distance,
between the depth of the sea separating an
island from the neighbouring mainland
and the presence in both of the same mammiferous species or of allied species in a
more or less modified condition. Mr.
Windsor Earl has made some striking
observations on this head in regard to the
great Malay Archipelago, which is traversed
near Celebes by a space of deep ocean ;
and this space separates two widely distinct
mammalian faunas. On either side the
islands are situated on moderately deep
submarine banks, and they are inhabited
by closely-allied or identical quadrupeds.
No doubt some few anomalies occur in this
great archipelago, and there is much diffi
culty in forming a judgment in some cases
owing to the probable naturalisation of
certain mammals through man’s agency ;
but we shall soon have much light thrown
on the natural history of this archipelago
by the admirable zeal and researches of
Mr. Wallace. I have not as yet had time
to follow up this subject in all other quarters
of the world ; but as far as I have gone the
relation generally holds good. We see
Britain separated by a shallow channel from
Europe, and the mammals are the same on
both sides ; we meet with analogous facts
159
on many islands separated by similar chan
nels from Australia. The West Indian
Islands stand on a deeply submerged bank,
nearly 1,000 fathoms in depth, and here we
find American forms, but the species and
even the genera are distinct. As the amount
of modification in all cases depends to a
certain degree on the lapse of time, and as
during changes of level it is obvious that
islands separated by shallow channels are
more likely to have been continuously united
within a recent period to the mainland than
islands separated by deeper channels, we
can understand the frequent relation between
the depth of the sea and the degree of affinity
of the mammalian inhabitants of islands
with those of a neighbouring continent—
an inexplicable relation on the view of
independent acts of creation.
All the foregoing remarks on the inhabi
tants of oceanic islands—namely, the
scarcity of kinds; the richness in endemic
forms in particular classes or sections of
classes; the absence of whole groups, as
of batrachians, and of terrestrial mammals,
notwithstanding the presence of aerial bats ;
the singular proportions of certain orders
of plants, herbaceous forms having been
developed into trees, etc.—seem to me to
accord better with the view of occasional
means of transport having been largely
efficient in the long course of time than
with the view of all our oceanic islands
having been formerly connected by con
tinuous land with the nearest continent ;
for on this latter view the migration would
propably have been more complete ; and
if modification be admitted, all the forms of
life would have been more equally modified,
in accordance with the paramount impor
tance of the relation of organism to organ
ism.
I do not deny that there are many and
grave difficulties in understanding how
several of the inhabitants of the more
remote islands, whether still retaining the
same specific form or modified since their
arrival, could have reached their present
homes. But the probability of many islands
having existed as halting-places, of which
not a wreck now remains, must not be over
looked. I will here give a single instance
oi one of the cases of difficulty. Almost
all oceanic islands, even the most isolated
and smallest, are inhabited by land-shells,
generally by endemic species, but sometimes
by species found elsewhere. Dr. Aug. A.
Gould has given several interesting cases
in regard to the land-shells of the islands
of the Pacific. Now, it is notorious that
�i6o
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
land-shells are very easily killed by salt;
their eggs, at least such as I have tried,
sink in sea-water and are killed by it. Yet
there must be, on my view, some unknown
but highly efficient means for their trans
portal. Would the just-hatched young
occasionally crawl on and adhere to the
feet of birds roosting on the ground, and
thus get transported? It occurred to me
that land-shells, when hibernating and
having a membranous diaphragm over the
mouth of the shell, might be floated in
chinks of drifted timber across moderately
wide arms of the sea. And I found that
several species did in this state withstand
uninjured an immersion in sea-water during
seven days : one of these shells was the
Helix pomatia, and after it had again
hibernated I put it in sea-water for twenty
days, and it perfectly recovered. As this
species has a thick calcareous operculum,
I removed it, and when it had formed a
new membranous one, I immersed it for
fourteen days in sea-water, and it recovered
and crawled away ; but more experiments
are wanted on this head.
The most striking and important fact for
us in regard to the inhabitants of islands
is their affinity to those of the nearest
mainland, without being actually the same
species. Numerous instances could be
given of this fact. I will give only one,
that of the Galapagos Archipelago, situated
under the equator, between 500 and 600
miles from the shores of South America.
Here almost every product of the land and
water bears the unmistakeable stamp of the
American continent. There are twenty-six
land-birds, and twenty-five of these are
ranked by Mr. Gould as distinct species,
supposed to have been created here; yet
the close affinity of most of these birds to
American species in every character, in
their habits, gestures, and tones of voice,
was manifest. So it is with the other
animals, and with nearly all the plants, as
shown by Dr. Hooker in his admirable
memoir on the Flora of this archipelago.
The naturalist, looking at the inhabitants
of these volcanic islands in the Pacific,
distant several hundred miles from the
continent, yet feels that he is standing on
American land. Why should this be so ?
Why should the species which are supposed
to have been created in the Galapagos
Archipelago, and nowhere else, bear so
plain a stamp of affinity to those created
in America? There is nothing in the con
ditions of life, in the geological nature of
the islands, in their height or climate, or
in the proportions in which the several
classes are associated together, which
resembles closely the conditions of the
South American coast; in fact, there is
a considerable dissimilarity in all these
respects. On the other hand, there is a
considerable degree of resemblance in the
volcanic nature of the soil, in climate,
height, and size of the islands, between
the Galapagos and Cape de Verde Archi
pelagos ; but what an entire and absolute
difference in their inhabitants! The inhabi
tants of the Cape de Verde Islands are
related to those of Africa, like those of the
Galapagos to America. I believe this
grand fact can receive no sort of explana
tion on the ordinary view of independent
creation ; whereas, on the view here main
tained, it is obvious that the Galapagos
Islands would be likely to receive colonists,
whether by occasional means of transport
or by formerly continuous land, from
America, and the Cape de Verde Islands
from Africa ; and that such colonists would
be liable to modification—the principle of
inheritance still betraying their original
birthplace.
Many analogous facts could be given ;
indeed, it is an almost universal rule that
the endemic productions of islands are
related to those of the nearest continent,
or of other near islands. The exceptions
are few, and most of them can be explained.
Thus the plants of Kerguelen Land, though
standing nearer to Africa than to America,
are related, and that very closely, as we
know from Dr. Hooker’s account, to those
of America; but on the view that this
island has been mainly stocked by seeds
brought with earth and stones on ice
bergs, drifted by the prevailing currents,
this anomaly disappears. New Zealand'in
its endemic plants is much more closely
related to Australia, the nearest mainland,
than to any other region : and this is what
might been expected ; but it is also plainly
related to South America, which, although
the next nearest continent, is so enormously
remote that the fact becomes an anomaly.
But this difficulty almost disappears on the
view that both NewZealand, South America,
and other southern lands were long ago
partially stocked from a nearly intermediate
though distant point—-namely, from the
antarctic islands-—when they were clothed
with vegetation, before the commencement
of the Glacial period. The affinity, which,
though feeble, I am assured by Dr. Hooker
is real, between the flora of the south-western
corner of Australia and of the Cape of Good
�GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION
Hope, is a far more remarkable case, and
is at present inexplicable ; but this affinity
is confined to the plants, and will, I do not
doubt, be some day explained.
The law which causes the inhabitants of
an archipelago, though specifically distinct,
to be closely allied to those of the nearest
continent we sometimes see displayed on
a small scale, yet in a most interesting
manner, within the limits of the same
archipelago. Thus the several islands of
the Galapagos Archipelago are tenanted,
as I have elsewhere shown, in a quite mar
vellous manner, by very closely-related
species ; so that the inhabitants of each
separate island, though mostly distinct, are
related in an incomparably closer degree to
each other than to the inhabitants of any
other part of the world. And this is just
what might have been expected on my view,
for the islands are situated so near each
other that they would almost certainly
receive immigrants from the same original
source, or from each other. But this dis
similarity between the endemic inhabitants
of the islands may be used as an argument
against my views, for, it may be asked, how
has it happened in the several islands
situated within sight of each other, having
the same geological nature, the same height,
climate, etc., that many of the immigrants
should have been differently modified, though
only in a small degree ? This long appeared
to me a great difficulty, but it arises in chief
part from the deeply-seated error of con
sidering the physical conditions of a country
as the most important for its inhabitants ;
whereas it cannot, I think, be disputed that
the nature of the other inhabitants, with
which each has to compete, is at least as
important, and generally a far more impor
tant, element of success. Now, if we look
to those inhabitants of the Galapagos Archi
pelago which are found in other parts of
the world (laying on one side for the moment
the endemic species, which cannot be here
fairly included, as we are considering how
they have come to be modified since their
arrival), we find a considerable amount of
difference in the several islands. This
difference might indeed have been expected
on the view of the islands having been
stocked by occasional means of transport—a seed, for instance, of one plant having been
brought to one island, and that of another
plant to another island. Hence, when in
former times an immigrant settled on any
one or more of the islands, or when it subse
quently spread from one island to another, it
would undoubtedly be exposed to different
conditions of life in the different islands, for
it would have to compete with different sets
of organisms. A plant, for instance, would
find the best-fitted ground more perfectly
occupied by distinct plants in one island
than in another, and it would be exposed to
the attacks of somewhat different enemies.
If, then, it varied, natural selection would
probably favour different varieties in the
different islands. Some species, however,
might spread and yet retain the same
character throughout the group, just as we
see on continents some species spreading
widely and remaining the same.
The really surprising fact in this case of
the Galapagos Archipelago, and in a lesser
degree in some analogous instances, is that
the new species formed in the separate
islands have not quickly spread to the other
islands. But the islands, though in sight
of each other, are separated by deep arms
of the sea, in most cases wider than the
British Channel, and there is no reason to
suppose that they have at any former period
been continuously united. The currents of
the sea are rapid and sweep across the
archipelago, and gales of wind are extra
ordinarily rare ; so that the islands are far
more effectually separated from each other
than they appear to be on a map.
Nevertheless, a good many species, both
those found in other parts of the world
and those confined to the archipelago, are
common to the several islands, and we may
infer from certain facts that these have
probably spread from some one island to
the others. But we often take, I think, an
erroneous view of the probability of closelyallied species invading each other’s territory
when put into free intercommunication.
Undoubtedly, if one species has any advan
tage whatever over another, it will in a very
brief time wholly or in part supplant it ;
but if both are equally well fitted for their
own places in nature, both probably will
hold their own places and keep separate for
almost any length of time. Being familiar
with the fact that many species, naturalised
through man’s agency, have spread with
astonishing rapidity over new countries,
we are apt to infer that most species would
thus spread; but we should remember
that the forms which become naturalised
in new countries are not generally closely
allied to the aboriginal inhabitants, but are
very distinct species, belonging in a large
proportion of cases, as shown by Alph. de
Candolle, to distinct genera. In the Gala
pagos Archipelago many even of the birds,
though so well adapted for flying from
M
�162
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
island to island, are distinct on each ; thus
there are three closely-allied species of
mocking-thrush, each confined to its own
island. Now, let us suppose the mockingthrush of Chatham Island to be blown to
Charles Island, which has its own mockingthrush : why should it succeed in estab
lishing itself there? We may safely infer
that Charles Island is well stocked with
its own species, for annually more eggs are
laid there than can possibly be reared ;
and we may infer that the mocking-thrush
peculiar to Charles Island is, at least, as
well fitted for its home as is the species
peculiar to Chatham Island. Sir C. Lyell
and Mr. Wollaston have communicated
to me a remarkable fact bearing on this
subject—namely, that Madeira and the
adjoining islet of. Porto Santo possess
many distinct but representative land
shells, some of which live in crevices of
stone ; and although large quantities of
stone are annually transported from Porto
Santo to Madeira, yet this latter island has
not become colonised by the Porto Santo
species ; nevertheless, both islands have
been colonised by some European land
shells, which no doubt had some advantage
over the indigenous species. From these
considerations, I think we need not greatly
marvel at the endemic and representative
species, which inhabit the several islands
of the Galapagos Archipelago, not having
universally spread from island to island.
In many other instances, as in the several
districts of the same continent, pre-occupation has probably played an important
part in checking the commingling of species
under the same conditions of life. Thus
the south-east and south-west corners of
Australia have nearly the same physical
conditions, and are united by continuous
land, yet they are inhabited by a vast
number of distinct mammals, birds, and
plants.
The principle which determines the
general character of the fauna and flora
of oceanic islands—namely, that the inhabi
tants, when not identically the same, yet
are plainly related to the inhabitants of
that region whence colonists could most
readily have been derived—the_ colonists
having been subsequently modified and
better fitted to their new horpes—is of the
widest application throughout nature. We
see this on every mountain, in every lake
and marsh. For alpine species, excepting
in so far as the same forms, chiefly of plants,
have spread widely throughout the world
during the recent Glacial epoch, are related
to those of the surrounding lowlands ; thus
we have in South America alpine humming
birds, alpine rodents, alpine plants, etc., all
of strictly American forms, and it is obvious
that a mountain, as it became slowly
upheaved, would naturally be colonised
from the surrounding lowlands. So it is
with the inhabitants of lakes and marshes,
excepting in so far as great facility of trans
port has given the same general forms
to the whole world. We see this same
principle in the blind animals inhabiting
the caves of America and of Europe. Other
analogous facts could be given. And it
will, I believe, be universally found to be
true that wherever in two regions, let them
be ever so distant, many closely-allied or
representative species occur, there will like.wise be found some identical species, show
ing, in accordance with the foregoing view,
that at some former period there has been
intercommunication or migration between
the two regions. And wherever many
closely-allied species occur, there will be
found many forms which some naturalists
rank as distinct species and some as varie
ties, these doubtful forms showing us the
steps in the process of modification.
This relation between the power and
extent of migration of a species, either at
the present time or at some former period
under different physical conditions, and
the existence at remote points of the world
of other species allied to it, is shown in
another and more general way. Mr. Gould
remarked to me long ago that in those
genera of birds which range over the world
many of the species have very wide ranges.
I can hardly doubt that this rule is generally
true, though it would be difficult to prove
it. Among mammals, we see it strikingly
displayed in Bats, and in a lesser degree in
the Felidse and Canidas. We see it if we
compare the distribution of butterflies and
beetles. So it is with most fresh-water pro
ductions, in which so many genera range
over the world, and many individual species
have enormous ranges. It is not meant
that in world-ranging genera all th; species
have a wide range, or even that they have
on an average a wide range, but only that
some of the species range very widely; for
the facility with which widely-ranging
species vary and give rise to new forms
will largely determine their average range.
For instance, two varieties of the same
species inhabit America and Europe, and
the species thus has an immense range ;
but, if the variation had been a little greater,
the two varieties would have been ranked
�GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION
as distinct species, and the common range
would have been greatly reduced. Still, less
is it meant that a species which apparently
has the capacity of crossing barriers and
ranging widely, as in the case of certain
powerfully-winged birds, will necessarily
range widely; for we should never forget
that to range widely implies, not only the
power of crossing barriers, but the more
important power of being victorious in
distant lands in the struggle for life with
foreign associates. But on the view of all
the species of a genus having descended
from a single parent, though now distributed
to the most remote points of the world, we
ought to find, and I believe as a general
rule we do find, that some at least of the
species range very widely; for it is necessary
that the unmodified parent should range
widely, undergoing modification during its
diffusion, and should place itself under
divers conditions favourable for the con
version of its offspring, firstly into new
varieties, and ultimately into new species.
In considering the wide distribution of
certain genera, we should bear in mind that
some are extremely ancient, and must have
branched off from a common parent at a
remote epoch ; so that in such cases there
will have been ample time for great climatal
and geographical changes and for accidents
of transport, and, consequently, for the
migration of some of the species into all
quarters of the world, where they may have
become slightly modified in relation to their
new conditions. There is, also, some reason
to believe, from geological evidence, that
organisms low in the scale within each
great class generally change at a slower
rate than the higher forms ; and conse
quently the lower forms will have had a
better chance of ranging widely and of still
retaining the same specific character. This
fact, together with the seeds and eggs of
many low forms being very minute and
better fitted for distant transportation, pro
bably accounts for a law which has long
been observed, and which has lately been
admirably discussed by Alph. de Candolle
in regard to plants—namely, that the lower
any group of organisms is, the more widely
it is apt to range.
The relations just discussed—namely,
low and slowly-changing organisms ranging
more widely than the high ; some of the
species of widely-ranging genera themselves
ranging widely ; such facts, as alpine,
lacustrine, and marsh productions being
related (with the exceptions before specified)
to those on the surrounding low lands and
163
dry lands, though these stations are so
different; the very close relation of the
distinct species which inhabit the islets
of the same archipelago ; and especially
the striking relation of the inhabitants of
each whole archipelago or island to those
of the nearest mainland—are, I think,
utterly inexplicable on the ordinary view of
the independent creation of each species,
but are explicable on the view of colonisa
tion from the nearest or readiest source,
together with the subsequent modification
and better adaptation of the colonists to
their new homes.
Summary of last and present Chapters.—
In these chapters I have endeavoured to
show that, if we make due allowance for out
ignorance of the full effects of all the
changes of climate and of the level of the
land which have certainly occurred within
the recent period, and of other similar
changes which may have occurred within
the same period ; if we remember how
profoundly ignorant we are with respect to
the many and curious means of occasional
transport, a subject which has hardly ever
been properly experimentised on ; if we
bear in mind how often a species may have
ranged continuously over a wide area, and
then have become extinct in the intermediate
tracts—I think the difficulties in believing
that all the individuals of the same species,
wherever located, have descended from the
same parents, are not insuperable. And
we are led to this conclusion, which has
been arrived at by many naturalists under
the designation of single centres of creation,
by some general considerations, more
especially from the importance of barriers
and from the analogical distribution of sub
genera, genera, and families.
With respect to the distinct species of
the same genus, which on my theory must
have spread from one parent-source, if we
make the same allowances as before for our
ignorance, and remember that some forms
of life change most slowly, enormous
periods of time being thus granted for
their migration, I do not think that the
difficulties are insuperable, though they
often are in this case, and in that of the
individuals of the same species, extremely
great.
As exemplifying the effects- of climatal
changes on distribution, I have attempted
to show how important has been the
influence of the modern Glacial period,
which I am fully convinced simultaneously
affected the whole world, or at least great
�164
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
meridional belts. As showing how diversi
fied are the means of occasional transport,
I have discussed at.some little length the
means of dispersal of fresh-water produc
tions.
If the difficulties be not insuperable in
admitting that in the long course of time
the individuals of the same species, and
likewise of allied species, have proceeded
from some one source, then I think all the
grand leading facts of geographical distri
bution are explicable on the theory of
migration (generally of the more dominant
forms of life), together with subsequent
modification and multiplication of new
forms. We can thus understand the high
importance of barriers whether of land or
water, which separate our several zoological
and botanical provinces. We can thus
understand the localisation of sub-genera,
genera, and families ; and how it is that
under different latitudes—for instance, in
South America—the inhabitants of the plains
and mountains, of the forests, marshes, and
deserts, are in so mysterious a manner
linked together by affinity, and are like
wise linked to the extinct beings which
formerly inhabited the same continent.
Bearing in mind that the mutual relation
of organism to organism is of the highest
importance, we can see why two areas
having nearly the same physical conditions
should often be inhabited by very different
forms of life : for according to the length
of time which has elapsed since new inhabi
tants entered one region; according to the
nature of the communication which allowed
certain forms and not others to enter, either
in greater or lesser numbers; according or
not as those which entered happened to
come in more or less direct competition
with each other and with the aborigines ;
and according as the immigrants were
capable of varying more or less rapidly—
there would ensue in different regions,
independently of their physical conditions,
infinitely diversified conditions of life;
there would be an almost endless amount
of organic action and reaction ; and we
should find, as we do find, some groups
of beings greatly and some only slightly
modified—some developed in great force,
some existing in scanty numbers—in the
different great geographical provinces of
the world.
On these same principles, we can under
stand, as I have endeavoured to show, why
oceanic islands should have few inhabitants,
but of these a great number should be
endemic or peculiar; and why, in relation
to the means of migration, one group of
beings, even within the same, class, should
have all its species endemic, and another
group should have all its species common
to other quarters of the world. We can
see why whole groups of organisms, as
batrachians and terrestrial mammals, should
be absent from oceanic islands, while the
most isolated islands possess their own
peculiar species of aerial mammals or bats.
We can see why there should be some
relation between the presence of mammals,
in a more or less modified condition, and
the depth of the sea between an island and
the mainland. We can clearly see why all
the inhabitants of an archipelago, though
specifically distinct on the several islets,
should be closely related to each other, and
likewise be related, but less closely, to those
of the nearest continent or other source,
whence immigrants were probably derived.
We can see why in two areas, however
distant from each other, there should be
a correlation, in the presence of identical
species, of varieties, of doubtful species,
and of distinct but representative species.
As the late Edward Forbes often insisted,
there is a striking parallelism in the laws
of life throughout time and space, the laws
governing the succession of forms in past
times being- nearly the same with those
governing at the present time the differences
in different areas. We see this in many
facts. The endurance of each species and
group of species is continuous in time ; for
the exceptions to the rule are so few that
they may fairly be attributed to our not
having as yet discovered in an intermediate
deposit the forms which are therein absent,
but which occur above and below ; so in
space it certainly is the general rule that
the area inhabited by a single species, or
by a group of species, is continuous; and
the exceptions, which are not rare, may, as
I have attempted to show, be accounted for
by migration at some former period under
different conditions or by occasional means
of transport, and by the species having
become extinct in the intermediate tracts.
Both in time and space species and groups
of species have their points of maximum
development. Groups of species, belonging
either to a certain period of time, or to a
certain area, are often characterised by
trifling characters in common, as of sculp
ture or colour. In looking to the long
succession of ages, as in now looking to
distant provinces throughout the world, we
find that some organisms differ little,
while others belonging to a different class,
�CLASSTFICA TION
or to a different order, or even only to a
different family of the same order, differ
greatly. In both time and space the lower
members of each class generally change
less than the higher; but there are in both
cases marked exceptions to the rule. On
my theory, these several relations through
out time and space are intelligible ; for
whether we look to the forms of life which
have changed during successive ages within
the same quarter of the world, or to those
165
which have changed after having migrated
into distant quarters, in both cases the
forms within each class have been con
nected by the same bond of ordinary gene
ration ; and the more nearly any two forms
are related in blood, the nearer they will
generally stand to each other in time and
space ; in both cases the laws of variation
have been the same, and modifications
have been accumulated by the same power
of natural selection.
Chapter XIII.
MUTUAL AFFINITIES OF ORGANIC BEINGS: MOR
PHOLOGY: EMBRYOLOGY: RUDIMENTARY
ORGANS
Classification, groups subordinate to groups
—Natural system—Rules and difficulties in
classification, explained on the theory of
descent with modification—Classification of
varieties—Descent always used in classifica
tion—Analogical or adaptive characters—Affinities, general, complex, and radiating—
Extinction separates and defines groups—■
Morphology, between members of the same
class, between parts of the same individual—•
Embryology, laws of, explained by variations
not supervening at an early age, and being
inherited at a corresponding age—Rudi
mentary organs ; their origin explained—
Summary.
From the first dawn of life all organic
beings are found to resemble each other in
descending degrees, so that they can be
classed in groups under groups. This
classification is evidently not arbitrary like
the grouping of the stars in constellations.
The existence of groups would have been
of simple signification if one group had
been exclusively fitted to inhabit the land
and another the water—one to feed on fish,
another on vegetable matter, and so on ;
but the case is widely different in nature,
for it is notorious how commonly members
of even the same sub-group have different
habits. In our second and fourth chapters,
on Variation and on Natural Selection, I
have attempted to show that it is the widely-
ranging, the much diffused and common—
that is, the dominant species belonging to
the larger genera—which vary most. The
varieties, or incipient species, thus produced
ultimately become converted, as I believe,
into new and distinct species ; and these,
on the principle of inheritance, tend to
produce other new and dominant species.
Consequently, the groups which are now
large, and which generally include many
dominant species, tend to go on increasing
indefinitely in size. I further attempted to
show that, from the varying descendants of
each species trying to occupy as many
and as different places as possible in the
economy of nature, there is a constant
tendency in their characters to diverge.
This conclusion was supported by looking
at the great diversity of the forms of life
which, in any small area, come into the
closest competition, and by looking to
certain facts in naturalisation.
I attempted also to show that there is a
constant tendency in the forms, which are
increasing in number and diverging in
character, to supplant and exterminate the
less divergent, the less improved, and pre
ceding forms. I request the reader to
turn to the diagram illustrating the action,
as formerly explained, of these several
principles ; and he will see that the inevit
able result is that the modified descendants
�i66
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
proceeding from one progenitor become
broken up into groups subordinate to
groups. In the diagram each letter on the
uppermost line may represent a genus
including several species; and all the
genera on this line form together one class,
for all have descended from one ancient
but unseen parent, and, consequently, have
inherited something in common. But the
three genera on the left hand have, on this
same principle, much in common, and form
a sub-family, distinct from that including
the next two genera on the right hand,
which diverged from a common-parent at
the fifth stage of descent. These five
genera have also much, though less, in
common ; and they form a family distinct
from that including the three genera still
further to the right hand, which diverged
at a still earlier period. And all these
genera descended from (A) form an order
distinct from the genera descended from
(I). So that we here have many species
descended from a single progenitor grouped
into genera ; and the genera are included
in, or subordinate to, sub-families, families,
and orders, all united into one class. Thus
the grand fact in natural history of the sub
ordination of group under group, which, from
its familiarity, does not always sufficiently
strike us, is in my judgment explained.
Naturalists try to arrange the species,
genera, and families in each class on what
is called the natural system. But what is
meant by this system ? Some authors look
at it merely as a scheme for arranging
together those living objects which are
most alike, and for separating those which
are most unlike ; or as an artificial means
for enunciating, as briefly as possible,
general propositions—that is, by one sen
tence to give the characters common, for
instance, to all mammals; by another, those
common to all carnivora ; by another, those
common to the dog-genus ; and then, by
adding a single sentence, a full description
is given to each kind of dog. The ingenuity'
and utility of this system are indisputable.
But many naturalists think that something
more is meant by the natural system : they
believe that it reveals the plan of the
Creator ; but unless it be specified whether
order in time or space, or what else is
meant by the plan of the Creator, it seems
to me that nothing is thus added to our
knowledge. Such expressions as that
famous one of Linneeus, and which we
often meet with in a more or less concealed
form, that the characters do not make the
genus, but that the genus gives the char
acters, seem to imply that something more
is included in our classification than mere
resemblance. I believe that something
more is included, and that propinquity of
descent—the only known cause of the
similarity of organic beings—is the bond,
hidden as it is by various degrees of modi
fication, which is partially revealed to us by
our classifications.
Let us now consider the rules followed
in classification, and the difficulties which
are encountered on the view that classifica
tion either gives some unknown plan of
creation or is simply a scheme for enun
ciating general propositions and of placing
together the forms most like each other.
It might have been thought (and was in
ancient times thought) that those parts of
the structure which determined the habits
of life and the general place of each being
in the economy of nature would be of very
high importance in classification. Nothing
can be more false. No one regards the
external similarity of a mouse to a shrew,
of a dugong to a whale, of a whale to a fish,
as of any importance. These resemblances,
though so intimately connected with the
whole life of the being, are ranked as
merely “adaptive or analogical characters”;
but to the consideration of these resem
blances we shall have to recur. It may
even be given as a general rule that, the
less any part of the organisation is con
cerned with special habits, the more impor
tant it becomes for classification. As an
instance, Owen, in speaking of the dugong,
says: “The generative organs, being those
which are most remotely related to the
habits and food of an animal, I have always
regarded as affording very clear indications
of its true affinities. We are least likely in
the modifications of these organs to mistake
a merely adaptive for an essential char
acter.” So with plants, how remarkable it
is that the organs of vegetation on which
their whole life depends are of little signifi
cation, excepting in the first main divisions ;
whereas the organs of reproduction, with
their product the seed, are of paramount
importance !
We must not, therefore, in classifying,
trust to resemblances in parts of the organi
sation, however important they may be for
the welfare of the being in relation to the
outer world. Perhaps from this cause it
has partly arisen that almost all naturalists
lay the greatest stress on resemblances in
organs of high vital or physiological impor
tance. No doubt this view of the cl^ssifi-
catory importance of organs which are
�CLASSIFICATION
important is generally, but by no means
always, true. But their importance for
classification, I believe, depends on their
greater constancy throughout large groups
of species ; and this constancy depends on
such organs having generally been subjected
to less change in the adaptation of the species
to their conditions of life. That the mere
physiological importance of an organ does
not determine its classificatory value _ is
almost shown by the one fact that in allied
groups in which the same organ, as we have
every reason to suppose, has nearly the same
physiological value its classificatory value
is widely different. No naturalist can have
worked at any group without being struck
with this fact; and it , has been fully
acknowledged in the writings of almost
every author. It will suffice to quote the
highest authority, Robert Brown, who, in
speaking of certain organs in the Proteaceae,
says their generic importance, “like that of
all their parts, not only in this but, as I
apprehend, in every natural family, is very
unequal, and in some cases seems to be
entirely lost.” Again, in another work, he
says, the genera of the Connaraceae “ differ
in having one or more ovaria, in the exist
ence or absence of albumen, in the imbri
cate or valvular aestivation. Any one of
these characters singly is frequently of
more than generic importance, though here,
even when all taken together, they appear
insufficient to separate Cnestis from Connarus.” To give an example among insects,
in one great division of the Ilymenoptera,
the antennae, as Westwood has remarked,
are most constant in structure ; in another
division they differ much, and the differences
are of quite subordinate value in classifica
tion ; yet no one probably will say that the
antennae in these two divisions of the same
order are of unequal physiological impor
tance. Any number of instances could be
given of the varying importance for classi
fication of the same important organ within
the same group of beings.
Again, no one will say that rudimentary
or atrophied organs are of high physio
logical or vital importance; yet undoubtedly
organs in this condition are often of high
value in classification. No one will dispute
that the rudimentary teeth in the upper jaws
of young ruminants and certain rudimentary
bones of the leg are highly serviceable in
exhibiting the close affinity between Rumi
nants and Pachyderms. Robert Brown has
strongly insisted on the fact that the rudi
mentary florets are of the highest impor
tance in the classification of the Grasses.
167
Numerous instances could be given of
characters derived from parts which must
be considered of very trifling physiological
importance, but which are universally
admitted as highly serviceable in the defi
nition of whole groups. For instance,
whether or not there is an open passage
from the nostrils to the mouth, the only
character, according to Owen, which abso
lutely distinguishes fishes and reptiles—the
inflection of the angle of the jaws in Mar
supials, the manner in which the wings of
insects are folded, mere colour in certain
Algae, mere pubescence on parts of the
flower in grasses, the nature of the dermal
covering, as hair or feathers, in the vertebrata. If the Ornithorhynchus had been
covered with feathers instead of hair, this
external and trifling character would, I
think, have been considered by naturalists
as important an aid in determining the
degree of affinity of this strange creature
to birds and reptiles as an approach in
structure in any one internal and important
organ.
The importance, for classification, of
trifling characters mainly depends on their
being correlated with several other charac
ters of more or less importance. The value,
indeed, of an aggregate of characters is very
evident in natural history. Hence, as has
often been remarked, a species may depart
from its allies in several characters, both
of high physiological importance and of
almost universal prevalence, and yet leave
us in no doubt where it should be ranked.
Hence, also, it has been found that a classi
fication founded on any single character,
however important that may be, has always
failed, for no part of the organisation is
universally constant. The importance of
an aggregate of characters, even when
none are important, alone explains, I think,
that saying of Linnieus, that the characters
do not give the genus, but the genus gives
the characters; for this saying seems
founded on an appreciation of many trifling
points of resemblance, too slight to be
defined. Certain plants belonging to the
Malpighiaceae bear perfect and degraded
flowers ; in the latter, as A. de Jussieu has
remarked, “ the greater number of the
characters proper to the species, to the
genus, to the family, to the class, disappear,
and thus laugh at our classification.” But
when Aspicarpa produced in France, during
several years, only degraded flowers, depart
ing so wonderfully in a number of the most
important points of structure from the
proper type of the order, yet M. Richard
�i68
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
sagaciously saw, as Jussieu observes, that
this genus should still be retained among
the Malpighiacese. This case seems to me
well to illustrate the spirit with which our
classifications are sometimes necessarily
founded.
Practically, when naturalists are at work,
they do not trouble themselves about the
physiological value of the characters which
they use in defining a group, or in allocating
any particular species. If they find a
character nearly uniform, and common to
a great number of forms, and not common
to others, they use it as one of high value ;
if common to some lesser number, they use
it as of subordinate value. This principle
has been broadly confessed by some natu
ralists to be the true one ; and by none more
clearly than by that excellent botanist, Aug.
St. Hilaire. If certain characters are always
found correlated with others, though no
apparent bond of connection can be dis
covered between them, especial value is set
on them. . As in most groups of animals,
important organs such as thosefor propelling
the blood, or for aerating it, or those for
propagating the race, are found nearly
uniform, they are considered as highly
serviceable in classification ; but in some
groups of animals all these, the most
important vital organs, are found to offer
characters of quite subordinate value.
We can see why characters derived from
the embryo should be of equal importance
with those derived from the adult, for our
classifications of course include all ages of
each species. But it is by no means obvious,
on the ordinary view, why the structure of
the embryo should be more important for
this purpose than that of the adult, which
alone plays its full part in the economy of
nature. Yet it has been strongly urged by
those great naturalists, Milne Edwards and
Agassiz, that embryonic characters are the
most important of any in the classification
of animals ; and this doctrine has very
generally been admitted as true. The same
fact holds good with flowering plants, of
which the two main divisions have been
fonnded on characters derived from the
embryo—on the number and position of
the embryonic leaves or cotyledons, and on
the mode of development of the plumule
and radicle. In our discussion on embry
ology we shall see why such characters
are so valuable, on the view of classification
tacitly including the idea of descent.
Our classifications are often plainly
influenced by chains of affinities. Nothing
can be easier than to denne a number of
characters common to all birds; but in the
case of crustaceans such definition has
hitherto been found impossible. There are
crustaceans at the opposite ends of the
series which have hardly a character in
common ; yet the species at both ends,
from being plainly allied to others, and
these to others, and so onwards, can be
recognised as unequivocally belonging to
this and to no other class of the Articulata.
Geographical distribution has often been
used, though perhaps not quite logically, in
classification, more especially in very large
groups of closely-allied forms. Temminck
insists on the utility or even necessity of
this practice in certain groups of birds;
and it has been followed by several ento
mologists and botanists.
Finally, with respect to the comparative
value of the various groups of species, such
as orders, sub-orders, families, sub-families,
and genera, they seem to be, at least at
present, almost arbitrary. Several of the
best botanists, such as Mr. Bentham and
others, have strongly insisted on their
arbitrary value. Instances could be given
among plants and insects of a group of
forms, first ranked by practised naturalists
as only a genus, and then raised to the
rank of a sub-family or family; and this
has been done, not because further research
has detected important structural differ
ences, at first overlooked, but because
numerous allied species, with slightly
different grades of difference, have been
subsequently discovered.
All the foregoing rules and aids and
difficulties in classification are explained,
if I do not greatly deceive myself, on the
view that the natural system is founded
on descent with modification : that the
characters which naturalists consider as
showing true affinity between any two or
more species are those which have been
inherited from a common parent, and in
so far all true classification is genealogical;
that community of descent is the hidden
bond which naturalists have been uncon
sciously seeking, and not some unknown
plan of creation, or the enunciation of
general propositions, and the mere putting
together and separating objects more or
less alike.
But I must explain my meaning more
fully. I believe that the arrangement of
the groups within each class, in due sub
ordination and relation to the other groups,
must be strictly genealogical in order to be
natural ; but that the amount of difference
in the several branches or groups, though
�CLASStFICA TION
169
allied in the same degree in blood to their
single genus. But this genus, though much
common progenitor, may differ greatly,
isolated, will still occupy its proper inter
being due to the different degrees of modifi
mediate position; for F originally was
cation which they have undergone ; and
intermediate in character between A and I,
this is expressed by the forms being ranked
and the several genera descended from
under different genera, families, sections,
these two genera will have inherited, to a
or orders. The reader will best understand
certain extent, their characters. This
what is meant if he will take the trouble of
natural arrangement is shown, as far as
referring to the diagram in the preliminary.
is possible on paper, in the diagram, but
We will suppose the letters A to L to
in much too simple a manner. If a
represent allied genera, which lived during
branching diagram had not been used,
the Silurian epoch, and these have des
and only the names of the groups had
cended from a species which existed at an
been written in a linear series, it would
unknown anterior period. Species of three
have been still less possible to have given
of these genera (A, F, and I) have trans
a natural arrangement; and it is notoriously
mitted modified descendants to the present
not possible to represent in a series, on a
day, represented by the fifteen genera («14
flat surface, the affinities which we discover
to .s’14) on the uppermost horizontal line.
in nature among the beings of the same
Now, all these modified descendants from a
group. Thus, on the view which I hold,
single species are represented as related in
the natural system is genealogical in its
blood or descent to the same degree ; they
arrangement, like a pedigree; but the
may metaphorically be called cousins to
degrees of modification which the different
the same millionth degree ; yet they differ
groups have undergone have to be expressed
widely and in different degrees from each
by ranking them under different so-called
other. The forms descended from A, now
genera, sub-families, families, sections,
broken up into two or three families, con
orders, and classes.
stitute a distinct order from those descended
It may be worth while to illustrate this
from I, also broken up into two families.
view of classification by taking the case of
Nor can the existing species descended
languages. If we possessed a perfect pedi
from A be ranked in the same genus with
gree of mankind, a genealogical arrange
the parent A, or those from I with the
ment of the races of man would afford the
parent I. But the existing genus F'4 may
best classification of the various languages
be supposed to have been but slightly j now spoken throughout the world ; and if all
modified, and it will then rank with the j extinct languages and all intermediate and
parent-genus F,just as some few still living
slowly-changing dialects had to be included,
organic beings belong to Silurian genera.
such an arrangement would, I think, be the
So that the amount or value of the differ
only possible one. Yet it might be that
ences between organic beings all related
some very ancient language had altered
to each other in the same degree in blood
little, and had given rise to few new
has come to be widely different. Never
languages, while others (owing to the
theless, their genealogical arrangement
spreading and subsequent isolation and
remains strictly true, not only at the present
states of civilisation of the several races,
time, but at each successive period of
descended from a common race) had altered
descent. All the modified descendants
much, and had given rise to many new
from A will have inherited something in
languages and dialects. The various degrees
common from their common parent, as will
of difference in the languages from the
all the descendants from I; so will it be
same stock would have to be expressed by
with each subordinate branch of descen
groups subordinate to groups ; but the
dants, at each successive period. If, how
proper or even only possible arrangement
ever, we choose to suppose that any of the
would still be genealogical ; and this would
descendants of A or of I have been so
be strictly natural, as it would connect
much modified as to have more or less
together all languages, extinct and modern,
completely lost traces of their parentage,
by the closest affinities, and would give the
in this case them places in a natural classi
filiation and origin of each tongue.
fication will have been more or less com
In confirmation of this view, let us glance
pletely lost—as sometimes seems to have
at the classification of varieties which are
occurred with existing organisms. All the
believed or known to have descended from
descendants of the genus F, along its whole
one species. These are grouped under
line of descent, are supposed to have been
species, with sub-varieties under varieties ;
but little modified, and they yet form a
and with our domestic productions several
�>
I^o
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
other grades of difference are requisite, as
we have seen with pigeons. The origin of
the existence of groups subordinate to
groups is the same with varieties as with
species—namely, closeness of descent with
various degrees of modification. Nearly
the same rules are followed in classifying
varieties as with species. Authors have
insisted on the necessity of classing varie
ties on a natural instead of an artificial
system ; we are cautioned, for instance,
not to class two varieties of the pine-apple
together merely because their fruit, though
the most important part, happens to be
nearly identical; no one puts the Swedish
and common turnips together, though the
esculent and thickened stems are so similar.
Whatever part is found to be most constant
is used in classing varieties : thus the great
agriculturist Marshall says the horns are
very useful for this purpose with cattle,
because they are less variable than the
shape or colour of the body, etc.; whereas
with sheep the horns are much less service
able, because less constant. In classing
varieties, I apprehend, if we had a real
pedigree, a genealogical classification would
be universally preferred, and it has been
attempted by some authors. For we might
feel sure, whether there had been more or
less modification, the principle of inheri
tance would keep the forms together which
were allied in the greatest number of points.
In tumbler pigeons, though some sub
varieties differ from the others in the
important character of having a longer
beak, yet all are kept together from having
the common habit of tumbling, but the
short-faced breed has nearlyor quite lostthis
habit; nevertheless, without any reasoning
or thinking on the subject, these tumblers
are kept in the same group, because allied
in blood and alike in some other respects.
If it could be proved that the Hottentot had
descended from the Negro, I think he would
be classed under the Negro group, however
much he might differ in colour and other
important characters from negroes.
With species in a state of nature, every
naturalist has, in fact, brought descent into
his classification, for he includes in his
lowest grade, or that of a species, the two
sexes ; and how enormously these some
times differ in the most important charac
ters is known to every naturalist : scarcely
a single fact can be predicated in common
of the males and hermaphrodites of certain
cirripedes, when adult, and yet no one
dreams of separating them. The naturalist
includes as one species the several larval
stages of the same individual, however
much they may differ from each other and
from the adult ; as he likewise includes the
so-called alternate generations of Steenstrup,
which can only in a technical sense be con
sidered as the same individual. He includes
monsters ; he includes varieties, not solely
because they closely resemble the parent
form, but because they are descended from
it. He who believes that the cowslip is
descended from the primrose, or conversely,
ranks them together as a single species,
and gives a single definition. As soon as
three Orchidean forms (Monochanthus,
Myanthus, and Catasetum), which had
previously been ranked as three distinct
genera, were known to be sometimes pro
duced on the same spike, they were imme
diately included as a single species.
As descent has universally been used in
classing together the individuals of the
same species, though the males and females
and larvae are sometimes extremely differ
ent; and as it has been used in classing
varieties which have undergone a certain
and sometimes a considerable amount of
modification, may not this same element
of descent have been unconsciously used
in grouping species under genera, and
genera under higher groups, though in
these cases the modification has been
greater in degree, and has taken a longer
time to complete ? I believe it has thus
been unconsciously used; and only thus
can I understand the several rules and
guides which have been followed by our
best systematists. We have no written
pedigrees; we have to make out community
of descent by resemblances of any kind.
Therefore, we choose those characters which,
as far as we can judge, are the least likely
to have been modified in relation to the
conditions of life to which each species
has been recently exposed. Rudimentary
structures on this view are as good as, or
even sometimes better than, other parts of
the organisation. We care not how trifling
a character may be—let it be the mere
inflection of the angle of the jaw, the
manner in which an insect’s wing is folded,
whether the skin be covered by hair or
feathers—if it prevail throughout many
and different species, especially those having
very different habits of life, it assumes high
value ; for we can account for its presence
in so many forms with such different habits
only by its inheritance from a common
parent. We may err in this respect in
regard to single points of structure, but
when several characters, let them be ever
�CLASSIFICATION
so trifling, occur together throughout a
large group of beings having different
habits, we may feel almost sure, on the
theory of descent, that these characters
have been inherited from a common
ancestor. And we know that such corre
lated or aggregated characters have especial
value in classification.
We can understand why a species or a
group of species may depart, in several of
its most important characteristics, from its
allies, and yet be safely classed with them.
This maybe safely done, and is often done,
as long as a sufficient number of characters,
let them be ever so unimportant, betrays
the hidden bond of community of descent.
Let two forms have not a single character
in common, yet, if these extreme forms are
connected together by a chain of inter
mediate groups, we may at once infer their
community of descent, and we put them
all into the same class. As we find organs
of high physiological importance—those
which serve to preserve life under the
most diverse conditions of existence—are
generally the most constant, we attach
especial value to them ; but if these same
organs, in another group or section of a
group, are found to differ much, we at once
value them less in our classification. We
shall hereafter, I think, clearly see why
embryological characters are of such high
classificatory importance.
Geographical
distribution may sometimes be brought
usefully into play in classing large and
widely-distributed genera, because all the
species of the same genus, inhabiting any
distinct and isolated region, have in all
probability descended from the same
parents.
We can understand, on these views, the
very important distinction between real
affinities and analogical or adaptive resem
blances. Lamarck first called attention to
this distinction, and he has been ably
followed by Macleay and others. The
resemblance, in the shape of the body and
in the fin-like anterior limbs, between the
dugong, which is a pachydermatous animal,
and the whale, and between both these
mammals and fishes, is analogical. Among
insects there are innumerable instances :
thus Linnaeus, misled by external appear
ances, actually classed an homopterous
insect as a moth. We see something of
the same kind even in our domestic varieties,
as in the thickened stems of the common
and Swedish turnip. The resemblance of
the greyhound and racehorse is hardly
more fanciful than the analogies which
171
have been drawn by some authors between
very distinct animals. On my view of
characters being of real importance for
classification only in so far as they reveal
descent, we can clearly understand why
analogical or adaptive character, although
of the utmost importance to the welfare of
the being, are almost valueless to the
systematist. For animals belonging to
two most distinct lines of descent may
readily become adapted to similar con
ditions, and thus assume a close external
resemblance ; but such resemblances will
not reveal—will rather tend to conceal,
their blood-relationship to their proper
lines of descent. We can also understand
the apparent paradox that the very same
characters are analogical when one class
or order is compared with another, but
give true affinities when the members of
the same class or order are compared one
with another : thus, the shape of the body
and fin-like limbs are only analogical when
whales are compared with fishes, being
adaptations in both classes for swimming
through the water; but the shape of the
body and fin-like limbs serve as characters
exhibiting true affinity between the several
members of the whale family; for these
cetaceans agree in so many characters,
great and small, that we cannot doubt that
they have inherited their general shape of
body and structure of limbs from a common
ancestor. So it is with fishes.
As members of distinct classes have
often been adapted by successive slight
modifications to live under nearly similar
circumstances—to inhabit, for instance, the
three elements of land, air, and water—we
can perhaps understand how it is that a
numerical parallelism has sometimes been
observed between the sub-groups in distinct
classes. Anaturalist, struck by a parallelism
of this nature in any one class, by arbitrarily
raising or sinking the value of the groups
in other classes (and all our experience
shows that this valuation has hitherto been
arbitrary), could easily extend theparallelism
over a wide range ; and thus the septenary,
quinary, quaternary, and ternary classifica
tions have probably arisen.
As the modified descendants of dominant
species belonging to the larger genera tend
to inherit the advantages which made the
groups to which they belong large and their
parents dominant, they are almost sure to
spread widely, and to seize on more and
more places in the economy of nature.
The larger and more dominant groups thus
tend to go on increasing in size; and they
�172
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
consequently supplant many smaller and
feebler groups. Thus we can account for
the fact that all organisms, recent and
extinct, are included under a few great
orders, under still fewer classes, and all in
one great natural system. As showing how
few the higher groups are in number, and
how widely spread they are throughout the
world, the fact is striking that the discovery
of Australia has not added a single insect
belonging to a new class ; and that in the
vegetable kingdom, as I learn from Dr.
Hooker, it has added only two or three
orders of small size.
In the chapter on Geological Succession
I attempted to show, on the principle of
each group having generally diverged much
in character during the long-continued pro
cess of modification, how it is that the more
ancient forms of life often present characters
in some slight degree intermediate between
existing groups. A few old and intermediate
parent-forms, having occasionally trans
mitted to the present day descendants but
little modified, will give to us our so-called
osculant or aberrant groups. The more
aberrant any form is, the greater must be
the number of connecting forms which, on
my theory, have been exterminated and
utterly lost. And we have some evidence
of aberrant forms having suffered severely
from extinction, for they are generally repre
sented by extremely few species ; and such
species as do occur are generally very
distinct from each other, which, again,
implies extinction. The genera Ornithorhynchus and Lepidosiren, for example,
would not have been less aberrant had
each been represented by a dozen species
instead of by a single one ; but such rich
ness in species, as I find after some investi
gation, does not commonly fall to the lot
of aberrant genera. We can, I think,
account for this fact only by looking at
aberrant forms as failing groups con
quered by more successful competitors
with a few members preserved by some
unusual coincidence of favourable circum
stances.
Mr. Waterhouse has remarked that, when
a member belongingto one group of animals
exhibits an affinity to a quite distinct group,
this affinity in most cases is general and
not special: thus, according to Mr. Water
house, of all Rodents, the bizcacha is most
nearly related to Marsupials ; but in the
points in which it approaches this order its
relations are general, and not to any one
marsupial species more than to another.
As the points of affinity of the bizcacha to
Marsupials are believed to be real and not
merely adaptive, they are due, on my
theory, to inheritance in common. There
fore, we must suppose either that all
Rodents, including the bizcacha, branched
off from some very ancient Marsupial, which
will have had a character in some degree
intermediate with respect to all existing
Marsupials; or that both Rodents and
Marsupials branched off from a common
progenitor, and that both groups have since
undergone much modification in divergent
directions. On-either view we may suppose
that the bizcacha has retained, by inherit
ance, more of the character of its ancient
progenitor than have other Rodents ; and
therefore it will not be specially related to
any one existing Marsupial, but indirectly
to all, or nearly all, Marsupials, from having
partially retained the character of their
common progenitor, or of an early member
of the group. On the other hand, of all Mar
supials, as Mr. Waterhouse has remarked,
the phascolomys resembles most nearly, not
any one species, but the general order of
Rodents. In this case, however, it may be
strongly suspected that the resemblance is
only analogical, owing to the phascolomys
having become adapted to habits like those
of a Rodent. The elder De Candolle has
made nearly similar observations on the
general nature of the affinities of distinct
orders of plants.
On the principle of the multiplication and
gradual divergence in character of the
species descended from a common parent,
together with their retention, by inheritance,
of some characters in common, we can
understand the excessively complex and
radiating affinities by which all the members
of the same family or higher group are
connected together. For the common
parent of a whole family of species, now
broken up by extinction into distinct groups
and sub-groups, will have transmitted some
of its characters, modified in various ways
and degrees, to all; and the several species
will consequently be related to each other
by circuitous lines of affinity of various
lengths (as may be seen in the diagram so
often referred to), mounting up through
many predecessors. As it is difficult to show
the blood-relationsh ip between the numerous
kindred of any ancient and noble family,
even by the aid of a genealogical tree, and
almost impossible to do this without this aid,
we can understand the extraordinary diffi
culty which naturalists have experienced in
describing, without the aid of a diagram,
the various affinities which they perceive
�CLASSIFICATION
between the many living and extinct
members of the same great natural class.
Extinction, as we have seen in the fourth
chapter, has played an important part in
defining and widening the intervals between
the several groups in each class. We may
thus account even for the distinctness of
whole classes from each other—for instance,
of birds from all other vertebrate animals—
by the belief that many ancient forms of life
have been utterly lost, through which the
early progenitors of birds were formerly
connected with the early progenitors of the
other vertebrate classes. There has been
less entire extinction of the forms of life
which once connected fishes with batrachians. There has been still less in some
other classes, as in that of the Crustacea,
for here the most wonderfully diverse forms
are still tied together by a long, but broken,
chain of affinities. Extinction has only
separated groups : it has by no means made
them; for if every form which has ever lived
on this earth were suddenly to reappear,
though it would be quite impossible to give
definitions by which each group could be
distinguished from other groups, as all
would blend together by steps as fine as
those between the finest existing varieties,
nevertheless a natural classification, or at
least a natural arrangement, would be
possible. We shall see this by turning to
the diagram : the letters A to L may
represent eleven Silurian genera, some of
which have produced large groups of modi
fied descendants. Every intermediate link
between these eleven genera and their
primordial parent, and every intermediate
link in each branch and sub-branch of their
descendants, may be supposed to be still
alive, and the links to be as fine as those
between the finest varieties. In this case it
would be quite impossible to give any
definition by which the several members cf
the several groups could be distinguished
from their more immediate parents ; or
these parents from their ancient and un
knownprogenitor. Yet the natural arrange
ment in the diagram would still hold good ;
and, on the principle of inheritance, all the
forms descended from A, or from I, would
have something in common. In a tree we
can specify this or that branch, though at
the actual fork the two unite and blend
together. We could not, as I have said,
define the several groups ; but we could
pick out types, or forms, representing most
of the characters of each group, whether
large or small, and thus give a general idea
of the value of the differences between them.
173
This is what we should be driven to if we
were ever to succeed in collecting all the
forms in any class which have lived through
out all time and space. We shall certainly
never succeed in making so perfect a collec
tion ; nevertheless, in certain classes, we
are tending in this direction; and Milne
Edwards has lately insisted, in an able
paper, on the high importance of looking to
types, whether or not we can separate and
define the groups to which such types
belong.
Finally, we have seen that natural selec
tion, which results from the struggle for
existence, and which almost inevitably
induces extinction and divergence of char
acter in many descendants from one
dominant parent-species, explains that great
and universal feature in the affinities of all
organic beings—namely, their subordina
tion in group under group. We use the
element of descent in classing the indi
viduals of both sexes and of all ages,
although having few characters in common,
under one species; we use descent in
classing acknowledged varieties, however
different they may be from their parent;
and I believe this element of descent is
the hidden bond of connection which
naturalists have sought under the term of
the Natural System. On this idea of the
natural system being, in so far as it has
been perfected, genealogical in its arrange
ment, with the grades of difference between
the descendants from a common parent,
expressed by the terms genera, families,
order, etc., we can understand the rules
which we are compelled to follow in our
classification. We can understand why
we value certain resemblances far more
than others ; why we are permitted to use
rudimentary and useless organs, or others
of trifling physiological importance ; why,
in comparing one group with a distinct
group, we summarily reject analogical or
adaptive characters, and yet use these same
characters within the limits of the same
group. We can clearly see how it is that
all living and extinct forms can be grouped
together in one great system ; and how the
several members of each class are con
nected together by the most complex and
radiating lines of affinities. We shall
never, probably, disentangle the inextric
able web of affinities between the members
of any one class ; but when we have a
distinct object in view, and do not look to
some unknown plan of creation, we may
hope to make sure but slow progress.
�174
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
Morphology.—We have seen that the
members of the same class, independently
of their habits of life, resemble each other
in the general plan of their organisation.
The resemblance is often expressed by the
term “unity of type,” or by saying that
the several parts and organs in the different
species of the class are homologous. The
whole subject is included under the general
name of morphology. This is the most inte
resting department of natural history, and
may be said to be its very soul. What can
be more curious than that the hand of a
man, formed for grasping, that of a mole
for digging, the leg of the horse, the paddle
of the porpoise, and the wing of the bat,
should all be constructed on the same
pattern, and should include similar bones,
m the same relative positions ? Geoffroy
St. Hilaire has insisted strongly on the high
importance of relative connection in homo
logous organs : the parts may change to
almost any extent in form and size, and yet
they always remain connected together in
the same order. We never find, for instance,
the bones of the arm and forearm, or of the
thigh and leg, transposed. Hence the same
names can be given to the homologous
bones in widely different animals. We see
the same great law in the construction of
the mouths of insects : what can be more
different than the immensely long spiral
proboscis of a sphinx-moth, the curious
folded one of a bee or bug, and the great
jaws of a beetle?—yet all these organs,
serving for such different purposes, are
formed by infinitely numerous modifications
of an upper lip, mandibles, and two pairs
of maxillae. Analogous laws govern the
construction of the mouths and limbs of
crustaceans. So it is with the flowers of
plants.
Nothing can be more hopeless than to
attempt to explain this similarity of pattern
in members of the same class, by utility or
by the doctrine of final causes. The hope
lessness of the attempt has been expressly
admitted by Owen in his most interesting
work on The Nature of Limbs. On the
ordinary view of the independent creation
of each being, we can only say that so it is—that it has so pleased the Creator to con
struct each animal and plant.
The explanation is manifest on the theory
of the natural selection of successive slight
modifications—each modification being
profitable in some way to the modified form,
but often affecting by correlation of growth
other parts of the organisation. I n changes
of this nature there will be little or no
tendency to modify the original pattern, or
to transpose parts. The bones of a limb
might be shortened and widened to any
extent, and become gradually enveloped in
thick membrane, so as to serve as a fin; or
a webbed foot might have all its bones, or
certain bones, lengthened to any extent, and
the membrane connecting them increased
to any extent, so as to serve as a wing; yet
in all this great amount of modification
there will be no tendency to alter the frame
work of bones or the relative connection of
the several parts. If we suppose that the
ancient progenitor—the archetype, as it may
be called—of all mammals had its limbs
constructed on the existing general pattern,
for whatever purpose they served, we can
at once perceive the plain signification of
the homologous construction of the limbs
throughout the whole class. So with the
mouths of insects, we have only to suppose
that their common progenitor had an upper
lip, mandibles, and two pairs of maxillae,
these parts being perhaps very simple in
form; and then natural selection, acting on
some originally created form, will account
for the infinite diversity in structure and
function of the mouths of insects. Never
theless, it is conceivable that the general
pattern of an organ might become so much
obscured as to be finally lost, by the atrophy
and ultimately by the complete abortion of
certain parts, by the soldering together of
other parts, and by the doubling or multi
plication of others—variations which we
know to be within the limits of possibility.
In the paddles of the extinct gigantic sea
lizards, and in the mouths of certain suctorial
crustaceans, the general pattern seems to
have been thus to a certain extent obscured.
There is another and equally curious
branch of the present subject—namely, the
comparison, not of the same part in different
members of a class, but of the different
parts or organs in the same individual.
Most physiologists believe that the bones
of the skull are homologous with—that is,
correspond in number and in relative con
nection with—the elemental parts of a cer
tain number of vertebrae. The anterior
and posterior limbs in each member of the
vertebrate and articulate classes are plainly
homologous. We see the same law in
comparing the wonderful complex jaws and
legs in crustaceans. It is familiar to almost
every one that in a flowei- the relative
position of the sepals, petals, stamens, and
pistils, as well as their intimate structure,
are intelligible on the view that they consist
of metamorphosed leaves, arranged in a
�MORPHOLOGY
spire. In monstrous plants we often get
direct evidence of the possibility of one
organ being transformed into another; and
we can actually see in embryonic crus
taceans and in many other animals, and in
flowers, that organs which, when mature,
become extremely different are at an early
stage of growth exactly alike.
How inexplicable are these facts on the
ordinary view of creation! Why should
the brain be enclosed in a box composed
of such numerous and such extraordinary
shaped pieces of bone ? As Owen has
remarked, the benefit derived from the
yielding of the separate pieces in the act of
parturition of mammals will by no means
explain the same construction in the skulls
of birds. Why should similar bones have
been created in the formation of the wing
and leg of a bat, used as they are for such
totally different purposes ? Why should
one crustacean which has an extremely
complex mouth formed of many parts con
sequently always have fewer legs ; or, con
versely, those with many legs have simpler
mouths ? Why should the sepals, petals,
stamens, and pistils in any individual flower,
though fitted for such widely different
purposes, be all constructed on the same
pattern ?
On the theory of natural selection, we
can satisfactorily answer these questions.
In the vertebrata we see a series of internal
vertebrae bearing certain processes and
appendages ; in the articulata we see the
body divided into a series of segments
bearing external appendages; and in flower
ing plants we see a series of successive
spiral whorls of leaves. An indefinite repe
tition of the same part or organ is the
common characteristic (as Owen has
observed) of all low or little modified
forms ; therefore, we may readily believe
that the unknown progenitor of the verte-,
brata possessed many vertebrae; the un
known progenitor of the articulata, many
segments ; and the unknown progenitor of
flowering plants, many spiral whorls of
leaves. We have formerly seen that parts
many times repeated are eminently liable
to vary in number and structure; conse
quently, it is quite probable that natural
selection, during a long-continued course
of modification, should have seized on a
certain number of the primordially similar
elements, many times repeated, and have
adapted them to the most diverse purposes.
And as the whole amount of modification
will have been effected by slight successive
steps, we need, not wonder at discovering
175
in such parts or organs a certain degree of
fundamental resemblance, retained by the
strong principle of inheritance.
In the great class of molluscs, though we
can homologise the parts of one species
with those of other and distinct species, we
can indicate but few serial homologies;
that is, we are seldom enabled to say that
one part or organ is homologous with
another in the same individual. And we
can understand this fact; for in molluscs,
even in the lowest members of the class,
we do not find nearly so much indefinite
repetition of any one part as we find in the
other great classes of the animal and vege
table kingdoms.
Naturalists frequently speak of the skull
as formed of metamorphosed vertebrae ; the
jaws of crabs as metamorphosed legs ; the
stamens and pistils of flowers as metamor
phosed leaves ; but it would in these cases
probably be more correct, as Professor
Huxley has remarked, to speak of both
skull and vertebrae, both jaws and legs,
etc., as having been metamorphosed, not
one from the other, but from some common
element. Naturalists, however, use such
language only in a metaphorical sense :
they are far from meaning that, during a
long course of descent, primordial organs
of any kind—vertebrae in the one case
and legs in the other—have actually been
modified into skulls or jaws. Yet so strong
is the appearance of a modification of this
nature having occurred that naturalists can
hardly avoid employing language having
this plain signification. On my view these
terms may be used literally; and the
wonderful fact of the jaws, for instance, of
a crab retaining numerous characters, which
they would probably have retained through
inheritance if they had really been meta
morphosed during a long course of descent
from true legs, or from some simple appen
dage, is explained.
Embryology.—It has already been cas
ually remarked that certain organs in the
individual which, when mature, become
widely different, and serve for different
purposes, are in the embryo exactly alike.
The embryos, also, of distinct animals
within the same class are often strikingly
similar: a better proof of this cannot be
given than a circumstance mentioned by
Agassiz—namely, that, having forgotten to
ticket the embryo of some vertebrate animal,
he cannot now tell whether it be that of a
mammal, bird, or reptile. The vermiform
larvae of moths, flies, beetles, etc., resemble
�176
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
each other much more closely than do the
mature insects ; but in the case of larvae
the embryos are active, and have been
adapted for special lines of life. A trace
of the law of embryonic resemblance some
times lasts till a rather late age : thus birds
of the same genus and of closely-allied
genera often resemble each other in their
first and second plumage ; as we see in the
spotted feathers in the thrush group. In
the cat tribe most of the species are
striped or spotted in lines, and stripes can
be plainly distinguished in the whelp of
the lion. We occasionally, though rarely,
see something of this kind in plants : thus
the embryonic leaves of the ulex or furze
and the first leaves of the phyllodineous
acaceas are pinnate or divided like the
ordinary leaves of the leguminosae.
The points of structure in which the
embryos of widely-different animals of the
same class resemble each other often have
no direct relation to their conditions of
existence. We cannot,for instance, suppose
that in the embryos of the vertebrata the
peculiar loop-like course of the arteries
near the branchial slits are related to
similar conditions—in the young mammal
which is nourished in the womb of its
mother, in the egg of the bird which is
hatched in a nest, and in the spawn of a
frog under water. We have no more
reason to believe in such a relation than
we have to believe that the same bones in
the hand of a man, wing of a bat, and fin
of a porpoise are related to similar con
ditions of life. No one will suppose that
the stripes on the whelp of a lion, or the
spots on the young blackbird, are of any
use to these animals, or are related to the
conditions to which they are exposed.
The case, however, is different when an
animal during any part of its embryonic
career is active, and has to provide for
itself. The period of activity may come
on earlier or later in life ; but, whenever it
comes on, the adaptation of the larva to
its conditions of life is just as perfect and
as beautiful as in the adult animal. From
such special adaptations the similarity of
the larvae or active embryos of allied
animals is sometimes much obscured ; and
cases could be given of the larvae of two
species, or of two groups of species, differing
quite as much, or even more, from each
other than do their adult parents. In most
cases, however, the larvae, though active,
still obey, more or less closely, the law of
common embryonic resemblance. Cirripedes afford a good instance of this : even
the illustrious Cuvier did not perceive that
a barnacle was, as it certainly is, a crusta
cean ; but a glance at the larva shows this
to be the case in an unmistakeable manner.
So, again, the two main divisions of cirri
pedes, the pedunculated and sessile, which
differ widely in external appearance, have
larvae in all their stages barely distinguish
able.
The embryo in the course of develop
ment generally rises in organisation. I use
this expression, though I am aware that it
is hardly possible to define clearly what is
meant by the organisation being higher or
lower. But no one probably will dispute
that the butterfly is higher than the cater
pillar. In some cases, however, the mature
animal is generally considered as lower in
the scale than the larva, as with certain
parasitic crustaceans. To refer once again
to cirripedes : the larvae in the first stage
have three pairs of legs, a very simple
single eye, and a probosciformed mouth,
with which they feed largely, for they
increase much in size. In the second
stage, answering to the chrysalis stage of
butterflies, they have six pairs of beauti
fully constructed natatory legs, a pair of
magnificent compound eyes, and extremely
complex antennae ; but they have a closed
and imperfect mouth, aud cannot feed:
their function at this stage is to search by
their well-developed organs of sense, and
to reach by their active powers of swimming
a proper place on which to become attached
and to undergo their final metamorphosis.
When this is completed they are fixed for
life : their legs are now converted into
prehensile organs; they again obtain a
well-constructed mouth ; but they have no
antennae, and their two eyes are now recon
verted into a minute, single, and very simple
eye-spot. In this last and complete state
cirripedes may be considered as either
more highly or more lowly organised than
they were in the larval condition. But in
some genera the larvae become developed
either into hermaphrodites having the
ordinary structure, or into what I have
called complemental males; and in the
latter the development has assuredly been
retrograde, for the male is a mere sack,
which lives for a short time, and is destitute
of mouth, stomach, or other organ of im
portance, excepting for reproduction.
We are so much accustomed to see dif
ferences in structure between the embryo
and the adult, and likewise a close similarity
in the embryos of widely-different animals
within the same class, that we might be led
�EMBRYOLOGY
177
will be tall or short, or what its precise
to look at these facts as necessarily continfeatures will be. The question is not at
gent in some manner on growth. But there
what period of life any variation has been
is no obvious reason why, for instance, the
caused, but at what period it is fully dis
wing of a bat, or the fin of a porpoise,
played. The cause may have acted, and I
ghchlld not have been sketched out with all
believe generally has acted, even before the
the parts in proper proportion as soon as
embryo is formed; and the variation may
any structure became visible in the embryo.
be due to the male and female sexual
And ill some whole groups of animals and
elements having been affected by the con
in certain members of other groups the
ditions to which either parent or their
embryo does not at any period differ widely
ancestors have been exposed. Neverthe
from the adult. Thus Owen has remarked
less, an effect thus caused at a very early
in regard to cuttle-fish: “There is no meta
period, even before the formation of the
morphosis ; the cephalopodic character is
embryo, may appear late in life; as when
manifested long before the parts of the
an hereditary disease, which appears in old
embryo are completed”; and again in
age alone, has been communicated to the
spiders: “There is nothing worthy to be
called a metamorphosis.” The larvae of offspring from the reproductive element of
one parent. Or, again, as when the horns
insects, whether adapted to the most diverse
of cross-bred cattle have been affected by
and active habits, or quite inactive, being
the shape of the horns of either parent.
fed by their parents or placed in the midst
For the welfare of a very young animal, as
of proper nutriment, yet nearly all pass
through a similar worm-like stage of de
long as it remains in its mother’s womb, or
velopment ; but in some few cases, as in
in the egg, or as long as it is nourished and
that of Aphis, if we look to the admirable
protected by its parent, it must be quite
drawings by Professor Huxley of the de
unimportant whether most of its characters
velopment of this insect, we see no trace of are fully acquired a little earlier or later in
life. It would not signify, for instance, to a
the vermiform stage.
How, then, can we explain these several
bird which obtained its food best by having
a long beak whether or not it assumed a
facts in embryology—-namely, the very
beak of this particular length, as long as it
general, but not universal, difference in
structure between the embryo and the
was fed by its parents. Hence, I conclude
that it is quite possible that each of the
adult; of parts in the same individual
many successive modifications by which
embryo, which ultimately became very un
each species has acquired its present
like and serve for diverse purposes, being
at this early period of growth alike; of i structure may have supervened at a not
very early period of life; and some direct
embryos of different species within the
evidence fromourdomesticanimals supports
same class generally, but not universally,
resembling each other; of the structure of this view. But in other cases it is quite
the embryo not being closely related to its
possible that each successive modification,
conditions of existence, except when the or most of them, may have appeared at an
embryo becomes at any period of life active
extremely early period.
and has to provide for itself; of the embryo
I have stated in the first chapter that
apparently having sometimes a higher
there is some evidence to render it probable
organisation than the mature animal into
that, at whatever age any variation first
which it is developed ? I believe that all
appears in the parent, it tends to reappear
these facts can be explained, as follows, on
at a corresponding age in the offspring.
the view of descent with modification.
Certain variations can only appear at cor
It is commonly assumed, perhaps from
responding ages—for instance, peculiarities
monstrosities often affecting the embryos
in the caterpillar, cocoon, or imago states
at a very early period, that slight variations
of the silk-moth; or, again, in the horns of
necessarily appear at an equally early
almost full-grown cattle. But, further than
period. But we have little evidence on
this, variations which, for all that we can
filis head—indeed, the evidence rather
see, might have appeared earlier in life
points the other way; for it is notorious that
tend to appear at a corresponding age in
breeders of cattle, horses, and various fancy
the offspring and parent. I am far from
animals cannot positively tell, until some
meaning that this is invariably the case ;
fee after the animal has been born, what
and I could give a good many cases of
its merits or form will ultimately turn out.
variations (taking the word in the largest
We see this plainly in our own children :
sense) which have supervened at an earlier
W cannot always tell whether the child
age in the child than in the parent.
N
�i78
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
These two principles, if their truth be
admitted, will, I believe, explain all the
above specified leading facts in embryology.
But first let us look at a few analogous
cases in domestic varieties. Some authors
who have written on Dogs maintain that
the greyhound and bull-dog, though appear
ing so different, are really varieties most
closely allied, and have probably descended
from the same wild stock ; hence, I was
curious to see how far their puppies differed
from each other: I was told by breeders
that they differed just as much as their
parents, and this, judging by the eye,
seemed almost to be the case; but, on
actually measuring the old dogs and their
six-days old puppies, I found that the
puppies had not nearly acquired their full
amount of proportional difference. So,
again, I was told that the foals of cart
and race horses differed as much as the
full-grown animals ; and this surprised me
greatly, as I think it probable that the
difference between these two breeds has
been wholly caused by selection under
domestication; but, having had careful
measurements made of the dam and of a
three-days old colt of a race and heavy
cart-horse, I find that the colts have by no
means acquired their full amount of pro
portional difference.
As the evidence appears to me conclusive
that the several domestic breeds of Pigeon
have descended from one wild species, I
compared young pigeons of various breeds
within twelve hours after being hatched; I
carefully measured the proportions (but
will not here give details) of the beak,
width of mouth, length of nostril and of
eyelid, size of feet and length of leg, in the
wild stock, in pouters, fantails, runts, barbs,
dragons, carriers, and tumblers. Now, some
of these birds, when mature, differ so extra
ordinarily in length and form of beak that
they would, I cannot doubt, be ranked in
distinct genera had they been natural pro
ductions. But when the nestling birds of
these several breeds were placed in a row,
though most of them could be distinguished
from each other, yet their proportional
differences in the above specified several
points were incomparably less than in the
full-grown birds.
Some characteristic
points of difference—for instance, that of
the width of mouth — could hardly be
detected in the young. But there was one
remarkable exception to this rule, for the
young of the short-faced tumbler differed
from the young of the wild rock-pigeon and
of the other breeds, in all its proportions,
almost exactly as much as in the adult
state.
The two principles above given seem to
me to explain these facts in regard to the
latter _ embryonic stages of our domestic
varieties. Fanciers select their horses, dogs,
and pigeons, for breeding, when they are
nearly grown up : they are indifferent
whether the desired qualities and structures
have been acquired earlier or later in life
if the full-grown animal possess them. And
the cases just given, more especially that of
pigeons, seem to show that the character
istic differences which give value to each
breed, and which have been accumulated
by man’s selection, have not generally first
appeared at an early period of life, and have
been inherited by the offspring at a corres
ponding not early period. But the case of
the short-faced tumbler, which, when twelve
hours old, had acquired its proper propor
tions, proves that this is not the universal
rule ; for here the characteristic differences
must either have appeared at an earlier
period than usual, or, if not so, the diffe
rences must have been inherited, not at the
corresponding, but at an earlier age.
Now, let us apply these facts, and the
above two principles—which latter, though
not proved true, can be shown to be in
some degree probable—to species in a state
of nature. Let us take a genus of birds,
descended on my theory from some one
parent-species, and of which the several
new species have become modified through
natural selection in accordance with their
diverse habits. Then, from the many slight
successive steps of variation having super
vened at a rather late age, and having been
inherited at a corresponding age, the young
of the new species of our supposed genus
will manifestly tend to resemble each other
much more closely than do the adults, just
as we have seen in the case of pigeons.
We may extend this view to whole families,
or even classes. The fore-limbs, for instance,
which served as legs in the parent-species
may have become, by a long course of
modification, adapted in one descendant to
act as hands, in another as paddles, in
another as wings ; and on the above two
principles—namely, of each successive modi
fication supervening at a rather late age, and
being inherited at a corresponding late age—
the fore-limbs in the embryos of the several
descendants of the parent-species will still
resemble each other closely, for they will
not have been modified. But in each of
our new species the embryonic fore-limbs
will differ greatly from the fore-limbs in the
�EMBRYOLOGY
mature animal; the limbs in the latter
having undergone much modification at a
rather late period of life, and having thus
been converted into hands, or paddles, or
wings. Whatever influence long-continued
exercise or use on the one hand, and disuse
on the other, may have in modifying an
organ, such influence will mainly affect the
mature animal, which has come to its full
powers of activity and has to gain its own
living ; and the effects thus produced will
be inherited at a corresponding mature age.
Whereas the young will remain unmodified,
or be modified in a lesser degree, by the
effects of use and disuse.
In certain cases the successive steps of
variation might supervene, from causes of
which we are wholly ignorant, at a very
early period of life, or each step might be
inherited at an earlier period than that at
which it first appeared. In either case (as
with the short-faced tumbler) the young or
embryo would closely resemble the mature
parent-form. We have seen that this is the
rule of development in certain whole groups
of animals, as with cuttle-fish and spiders,
and with a few members of the great class
of insects, as with Aphis. With respect to
the final cause of the young in these cases
not undergoing any metamorphosis, or
closely resembling their parents from their
earliest age, we can see that this would
result from the two following contingencies :
firstly, from the young, during a course of
modification carried on for many genera
tions, having to provide for their own wants
at a very early stage of development; and,
secondly, from their following exactly the
same habits of life with their parents, for
in this case, it would be indispensable, for
the existence of the species, that the child
should be modified at a very early age in
the same manner with its parents, in accor
dance with their similar habits.
Some
further explanation, however, of the embryo
not undergoing any metamorphosis is
perhaps requisite. If, on the other hand,
it profited the young to follow habits of life
in any degree different from those of their
parent, and consequently to be constructed
in a slightly different manner, then, on the
principle of inheritance at corresponding
ages, the active young or larvae might easily
be rendered by natural selection different
to any conceivable extent from their parents.
Such differences might also become cor
related with successive stages of develop
ment ; so that the larvae, in the first stage,
might differ greatly from the larvae in the
second stage, as we have seen to be the case
179
with cirripedes. The adult might become
fitted for sites or habits in which organs of
locomotion or of the senses, etc., would be
useless ; and in this case the final metamor
phosis would be said to be retrograde.
As all the organic beings, extinct and
recent, which have ever lived on this earth
have to be classed together, and as all have
been connected by the finest gradations,
the best, or indeed, if our collections were
nearly perfect, the only possible, arrange
ment would be genealogical: descent
being on my view the hidden bond of con
nection which naturalists have been seeking
under the term of the natural system. On
this view we can understand how it is that,
in the eyes of most naturalists, the structure
of the embryo is even more important for
classification than that of the adult. For
the embryo is the animal in its less modified
state, and in so far it reveals the structure
of its progenitor. In two groups of animals,
however much they may at present differ
from each other in structure and habits, if
they pass through the same or similar
embryonic stages, we may feel assured that
they have both descended from the same
or nearly similar parents, and are therefore
in that degree closely related. Thus com
munity in embryonic structure reveals com
munity of descent.
It will reveal this
community of descent, however much the
structure of the adult may have been modi
fied and obscured. We have seen, for
instance, that cirripedes can at once be
recognised by their larvae as belonging to
the great class of crustaceans. As the
embryonic state of each species and group
of species partially shows us the structure
of their less modified ancient progenitors,
we can scarcely see why ancient and extinct
forms of life should resemble the embryos
of their descendants—our existing species.
Agassiz believes this to be a law of nature;
but I am bound to confess that I only hope
to see the law hereafter proved true. It
can be proved true in those cases alone in
which the ancient state, now supposed to
be represented in existing embryos, has not
been obliterated, either by the successive
variations in a long course of modification
having supervened at a very early age, or
by the variations having been inherited at
an earlier period than that at which they
first appeared. It should also be borne in
mind that the supposed law of resemblance
of ancient forms of life to the embryonic
stages of recent forms may be true, but yet,
owing to the geological record not extend
ing far enough back in time, may remain
�i8o
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
for a long period, or for ever, incapable of
demonstration.
Thus, as it seems to me, the leading
facts in embryology, which are second in
importance to none in natural history, are
explained on the principle of slight modifi
cations not appearing, in the many descen
dants from one ancient progenitor, at a very
early period in the life of each, though per
haps caused at the earliest, and being in
herited at a corresponding not early period.
Embryology rises greatly in interest when
we thus look at the embryo as a picture,
more or less obscured, of the common
parent-form of each great class of animals.
Rudimentary, atrophied, or aborted
Organs.—Organs or parts in this strange
condition, bearing the stamp of inutility,
are extremely common throughout nature.
For instance, rudimentary mamma: are
very general in the males of mammals : I
presume that the “ bastard-wing ” in birds
may be safely considered as a digit in a
rudimentary state: in very many snakes one
lobe of the lungs is rudimentary ; in other
snakes there are rudiments of the pelvis
and hind limbs. Some of the cases of
rudimentary organs are extremely curious ;
for instance, the presence of teeth in fcetal
whales, which, when grown up, have not a
tooth in their heads ; and the presence of
teeth, which never cut through the gums,
in the upper jaws of our unborn calves.
It has even been stated on good authority
that rudiments of teeth can be detected
in the beaks of certain embryonic birds.
Nothing can be plainer than that wings are
formed for flight, yet in how many insects
do we see wings so reduced in size as to
be utterly incapable of flight, and not rarely
lying under wing-cases, firmly soldered
together 1
The meaning of rudimentary organs is
often quite unmistakeable ; for instance,
there are beetles of the same genus (and
even of the same species) resembling each
other most closely in all respects, one of
which will have full-sized wings, and
another mere rudiments of membrane ;
and here it is impossible to doubt that the
rudiments represent wings. Rudimentary
organs sometimes retain their potentiality,
and are merely not developed : this seems
to be the case with the mammae of male
mammals, for many instances are on record
of these organs having become well
developed in full-grown fnales, and having
secreted milk. So, again, there are normally
four developed and two rudimentary teats
in the udders of the genus Bos, but in our
domestic cows the two sometimes become
developed and give milk. In plants of the
same species the petals sometimes occur
as mere rudiments, and sometimes in a
well-developed state. In plants with sepa
rated sexes the male flowers often have a
rudiment of a pistil; and Kolreuter found
that, by crossing such male plants with an
hermaphrodite species, the rudiment of the
pistil in the hybrid offspring was much
increased in size ; and this shows that the
rudiment and the perfect pistil are essen
tially alike in nature.
An organ serving for two purposes may
become rudimentary or utterly aborted for
one, even the more important purpose, and
remain perfectly efficient for the other.
Thus in plants the office of the pistil is to
allow the pollen-tubes to reach the ovules
protected in the ovarium at its base. The
pistil consists of a stigma supported on the
style ; but in some Compositas the male
florets, which, of course, cannot be fecun
dated, have a pistil which is in a rudi
mentary state, for it is not crowned with
a stigma ; but the style remains well
developed, and is clothed with hairs as in
other Composite, for the purpose of brushing
the pollen out of the surrounding anthers.
Again, an organ may become rudimentary
for its proper purpose, and be used for a
distinct object: in certain fish the swim
bladder seems to be nearly rudimentary for
its proper function of giving buoyancy,
but has become converted into a nascent
breathing organ or lung. Other similar
instances could be given.
Organs, however little developed, if of
use, should not be called rudimentary; they
cannot properly be said to be in an atro
phied condition; they may be called
nascent, and may hereafter be developed
to any extent by natural selection. Rudi
mentary organs, on the other hand, are
essentially useless, as teeth which never cut
through the gums; in a still less developed
condition, they would be of still less use.
They cannot, therefore, under their present
condition, have been formed by natural
selection, which acts solely by the preserva
tion of useful modifications; they have been
retained, as we shall see, by inheritance,
and relate to a former condition of their
possessor. It is difficult to know what are
nascent organs ; looking to the future, we
cannot of course tell how any part will be
developed, and whether it is now nascent;
looking to the past, creatures with an organ
in a nascent condition will generally have
�RUDIMENTARY ORGANS
been supplanted and exterminated by their
successors with the organ in a more perfect
and developed condition. The wing of the
penguin is of high service, and acts as a fin;
it may, therefore, represent the nascent
state of the wings of birds ; not that I
believe this to be the case—it is more prob
ably a reduced organ, modified for a new
function: the wing of the Apteryx is useless,
and is truly rudimentary. The mammary
glands of the Ornithorhynchus may, per
haps, be considered, in comparison with
the udder of a cow, as in a nascent state.
The ovigerous frena of certain cirripedes,
which are only slightly developed and which
have ceased to give attachment to the ova,
are nascent branchiae.
Rudimentary organs in the individuals of
the same species are very liable to vary in
degree of development and in other respects.
Moreover, in closely-allied species the
degree to which the same organ has been
rendered rudimentary occasionally differs
much. This latter fact is well exemplified
in the state of the wings of the female
moths in certain groups. Rudimentary
* organs may be utterly aborted ; and this
implies that we find in an animal or plant
no trace of an organ which analogy would
lead us to expect to find, and which is
occasionally found in monstrous individuals
of the species. Thus in the snapdragon
(antirrhinum) we generally do not find a
rudiment of a fifth stamen ; but this may
sometimes be seen. In tracing the homo
logies of the same part in different members
of a class, nothing is more common or more
necessary than the use and discovery of
rudiments. This is well shown in the
drawings given by Owen of the bones of
the leg of the horse, ox, and rhinoceros.
It is an important fact that rudimentary
organs, such as teeth in the upper jaws of
whales and ruminants, can often be detected
in the embryo, but afterwards wholly dis
appear. It is also, I believe, a universal
rule that a rudimentary part or organ is of
greater size relatively to the adjoining parts
in the embryo than in the adult ; so that
the organ at this early age is less rudi
mentary, or even cannot be said to be in
any degree rudimentary. Hence, also, a
rudimentary organ in the adult is often
said to have retained its embryonic con
dition.
I have now given the leading facts with
respect to rudimentary organs. In reflect
ing on them, everyone must be struck with
astonishment; forthe same reasoning power
which tells us plainly that most parts a>nd
181
organs are exquisitely adapted for certain
purposes, tells us with equal plainness
that these rudimentary or atrophied organs
are imperfect and useless. In works on
natural history rudimentary organs are
generally said to have been created “ for
the sake of symmetry,” or in order “ to
complete the scheme of nature”; but this
seems to me no explanation—merely a re
statement of the fact. Would it be thought
sufficient to say that, because planets
revolve in elliptic courses round the sun,
satellites follow the same course round the
planets, for the sake of symmetry, and to
complete the scheme of nature ? An
eminent physiologist accounts for the pre
sence of rudimentary organs by supposing
that they serve to excrete matter in excess,
or injurious to the system ; but can we
suppose that the minute papilla, which often
represents the pistil in male flowers, and
which is formed merely of cellular tissue,
can thus act ? Can we suppose that the
formation of rudimentary teeth, which are
subsequently absorbed, can be of any service
to the rapidly-growing embryonic calf by
the excretion of precious phosphate of lime?
When a man’s fingers have been amputated,
imperfect nails sometimes appear on the
stumps : I could as soon believe that these
vestiges of nails have appeared, not from
unknown laws of growth, but in order to
excrete horny matter, as that the rudimen
tary nails on the fin of the manatee were
formed for this purpose.
On my view of descent with modification,
the origin of rudimentary organs is simple.
We have plenty of cases of rudimentary
organs in our domestic productions—as the
stump of a tail in tailless breeds, the vestige
of an ear in earless breeds, the reappear
ance of minute dangling horns in hornless
breeds of cattle (more especially, according
to Youatt, in young animals), and the state
of the whole flower in the cauliflower. We
often see rudiments of various parts in
monsters. But I doubt whether any of
these cases throw light on the origin of
rudimentary organs in a state of nature
further than by showing that rudiments can
be produced; for I doubt whether species
under nature ever undergo abrupt changes.
I believe that disuse has been the main
agency; that it has led in successive
generations to the gradual reduction of
various organs until they have become
rudimentary—as in the case of the eyes of
animals inhabiting dark caverns, and of
the wings of birds inhabiting oceanic
islands, which have seldom been forced to
�182
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
take flight, and have ultimately lost the
power of flying. Again, an organ useful
under certain conditions might become
injurious under others, as with the wings
of beetles living on small and exposed
islands; and in this case natural selection
would continue slowly to reduce the organ
until it was rendered harmless and rudi
mentary.
Any change in function which can be
effected by insensibly smali steps is within
the power of natural selection ; so that an
organ rendered, during changed habits of
life, useless or injurious for one purpose
might be modified and used for another
purpose. Or an organ might be retained
for one alone of its former functions. An
organ, when rendered useless, may well
be variable, for its variations cannot be
checked by natural selection. At whatever
period of life disuse or selection reduces an
organ, and this will generally be when the
being has come to maturity and to its full
powers of action, the principle of inherit
ance at corresponding ages will reproduce
the organ in its reduced state at the same
age, and, consequently, will seldom affect
or reduce it in the embryo. Thus we can
understand the greater relative size of
rudimentary organs in the embryo and
their lesser relative size in the adult. But
if each step of the process of reduction were
to be inherited, not at the corresponding
age, but at an extremely early period of
life (as we have good reason to believe to
be possible), the rudimentary part would
tend to be wholly lost, and we should have
a case of complete abortion. The prin
ciple also of economy, explained in a
former chapter, by which the materials
forming any part or structure, if not useful
to the possessor, will be saved as far as is
possible, will probably often come into
play ; and this will tend to cause the entire
obliteration of a rudimentary organ.
As the presence of rudimentary organs
is thus due to the tendency in every part of
the organisation, which has long existed,
to be inherited, we can understand, on the
genealogical view of classification, how it
is that systematists have found rudimentary
parts as useful as, or even sometimes more
useful than, parts of high physiological
importance. Rudimentary organs may be
compared with the letters in a word, still
retained in the.spelling, but become useless
in the pronunciation, but which serve as a
clue in seeking for its derivation. On the
view of descent with modification, we may
conclude that the existence of organs in a
rudimentary, imperfect, and useless con
dition, or quite aborted, far from presenting
a strange difficulty, as they assuredly do
on the ordinary doctrine of creation, might
even have been anticipated, and can be
accounted for by the laws of inheritance.
Summary.—In this chapter I have
attempted to show that the subordination
of group to group in all organisms through
out all time; that the nature of the rela
tionship by which all living and extinct
beings are united by complex, radiating,
and circuitous lines of affinities into one
grand system; the rules followed and the
difficulties encountered by naturalists in
their classifications ; the value set upon
characters, if constant and prevalent,
whether of high vital importance or of
the most trifling importance, or, as in rudi
mentary organs, of no importance ; the
wide opposition in value between analogical
or adaptive characters and characters of
true affinity ; and other such rules—all
naturally follow on the view of the common
parentage of those forms which are con
sidered by naturalists as allied, together*
with their modification through natural
selection, with its contingencies of extinc
tion and divergence of character. In con
sidering this view of classification, it should
be borne in mind that the element of
descent has been universally used in ranking
together the sexes, ages, and acknowledged
varieties of the same species, however
different they may be in structure. If we
extend the use of this element of descent
-—the only certainly known cause of simi
larity in organic beings—we shall under
stand what is meant by the natural system :
it is genealogical in its attempted arrange
ment, with the grades of acquired difference
marked by the terms varieties, species,
genera, families, orders, and classes.
On this same view of descent with modi
fication, all the great facts in Morphology
become intelligible—whether we look to the
same pattern displayed in the homologous
organs, to whatever purpose applied, of the
different species of a class, or to the homo
logous parts constructed on the same
pattern in each individual animal and
plant.
On the principle of successive slight
variations, not necessarily or generally
supervening at a very early period of life,
and being inherited at a corresponding
period, we can understand the great leading
facts in Embryology ; namely, the resem
blance in an individual embryo of the
�RECAPITULATION AND CONCLUSION
homologous parts, which, when matured,
will become widely different from each
other in structure and function ; and the
resemblance in different species of a class
of the homologous parts or organs, though
fitted in the adult members for purposes, as
different as possible. Larva; are active
embryos, which have become specially
modified in relation to their habits of life,
through the principle of modifications being
specially inherited at corresponding ages.
On this same principle—and bearing, in
mind that, when organs are reduced in size,
either from disuse or selection, it will
generally be at that period of life when the
being has to provide for its own wants, and
bearing in mind how strong is the principle
of inheritance—the occurrence of rudimen
tary organs and their final abortion present
183
to us no inexplicable difficulties ; on the
contrary, their presence might have been
even anticipated. The importance of em
bryological characters and of rudimentary
organs in classification is intelligible, on the
view that an arrangement is only so far
natural as it is genealogical.
Finally, the several classes of facts which
have been considered in this chapter seem
to me to proclaim so plainly that the innu
merable species, genera, and families «of
organic beings with which this world is
peopled, have all descended, each within
its own class or group, from common
parents, and have all been modified in the
course of descent, that I should without
hesitation adopt this view, even if it were
unsupported by other facts or arguments.
Chapter XIV.
RECAPITULATION AND CONCLUSION
Recapitulation of the difficulties on the theory of
Natural Selection — Recapitulation of the
general and special circumstances in its favour
—Causes of the general belief in the immut
ability of species—-How far the theory of
natural selection may be extended—Effects of
its adoption on the study of natural history—
Concluding remarks.
As this whole volume is one long argument,
it may be convenient to the reader to have
the leading facts and inferences briefly re
capitulated.
That many and serious objections may be
advanced against the theory of descent with
modification through natural selection I do
not deny. I have endeavoured to give them
their full force. Nothing at first can appear
more difficult to believe than that the more
complex organs and instincts should have
been perfected, not by means superior to,
though analogous with, human reason, but
by the accumulation of innumerable slight
variations, each good for the individual
possessor.
Nevertheless, this difficulty,
though appearing to our imagination in
superably great, cannot be considered real
if we admit the following propositions—
namely, that gradations in the perfection
of any organ or instinct which we may con
sider either do now exist or could have
existed, each good of its kind; that all
organs and instincts are, in ever so slight
a degree, variable; and, lastly, that there is
a struggle for existence leading to the pre
servation of each profitable deviation of
structure or instinct. The truth of these
propositions cannot, I think, be disputed.
It is, no doubt, extremely difficult even to
conjecture by what gradations many struc
tures have been perfected, more especially
among broken and failing groups of
organic beings; but we see so many strange
gradations in nature that we ought to be
extremely cautious in saying that any organ
or instinct, or any whole being, could not
have arrived at its present state by many
graduated steps. There are, it must be
admitted, cases of special difficulty on the
theory of natural selection; and one of the
most curious of these is the existence of two
or three defined castes of workers or sterile
females in the same community of ants ;
but I have attempted to show how this diffi
culty can be mastered.
With respect to the almost universal
sterility of species when first crossed, which
�184
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
forms so remarkable a contrast with the
almost universal fertility of varieties when
crossed, I must refer the reader to the re
capitulation of the facts given at the end of
the eighth chapter, which seem to me con
clusively to show that this sterility is no
more a special endowment than is the in
capacity of two trees to be grafted together;
but that it is incidental on constitutional
differences in the reproductive systems of
the intercrossed species. We see the truth
of this conclusion in the vast difference in
the result, when the same two species are
crossed reciprocally—that is, when one
species is first used as the father and then
as the mother.
The fertility of varieties when intercrossed
and of their mongrel offspring cannot be
considered as universal; nor is their very
general fertility surprising when we re
member that it is not likely that either their
constitutions or their reproductive systems
should have been profoundly modified.
Moreover, most of the varieties which have
been experimentised on have been pro
duced under domestication ;■ and as domesti
cation (I do not mean mere confinement)
apparently tends to eliminate sterility, we
ought not to expect it also to produce
sterility.
The sterility of hybrids is a very different
case from that of first crosses, for their repro
ductive organs are more or less functionally
impotent; whereas in first crosses the organs
on both sides are in a perfect condition.
As we continually see that organisms of all
kinds are rendered in some degree sterile
from their constitutions having been dis
turbed by slightly different and new con
ditions of life, we need not feel surprised at
hybrids being in some degree sterile, for
their constitutions can hardly fail to have
been disturbed from being compounded of
two distinct organisations. This parallelism
is supported by another parallel, but directly
opposite, class of facts—-namely, that the
vigour and fertility of all organic beings
are increased by slight changes in their
conditions of life, and that the offspring of
slightly modified forms or varieties acquire,
from being crossed, increased vigour and
fertility. So that, on the one hand, con
siderable changes in the conditions of life
and crosses between greatly modified
forms lessen fertility; and, on the other
hand, lesser changes in the conditions of
life and crosses between less modified
forms increase fertility.
Turning to geographical distribution, the
difficulties encountered on the theory of
descent with modification are grave enough.
All the individuals of the same species,
and all the species of the same genus, or
even higher group, must have descended
from common parents; and therefore, in
however distant and isolated parts of the
world they are now found, they must, in
the course of successive generations, have
passed from some one part to the others.
We are often wholly unable even to con
jecture how this could have been effected.
Yet, as we have reason to believe that some
species have retained the same specific
form for very long periods, enormously
long as measured by years, too much stress
ought not to be laid on the occasional wide
diffusion of the same species; for during
very long periods of time there will always
have been a good chance for wide migration
by many means. A broken or interrupted
range may often be accounted for by the
extinction of the species in the intermediate
regions. It cannot be denied that we are
as yet very ignorant of the full extent of the
various climatal and geographical changes
which have affected the earth during modern
periods ; and such changes will obviously
have greatly facilitated migration. As an
example, I have attempted to show how
potent has been the influence of the Glacial
period on the distribution both of the same
and of representative species throughout the
world. We are as yet profoundly ignorant
of the many occasional means of transport.
With respect to distinct species of the same
genus inhabiting very distant and isolated
regions, as the process of modification has
necessarily been slow, all the means of
migration will have been possible during a
very long period ; and, consequently, the
difficulty of the wide diffusion of species *
of the same genus is in some degree
lessened.
As on the theory of natural selection an
interminable number of intermediate forms
must have existed, linking together all the
species in each group by gradations as fine
as our present varieties, it maybe asked,
Why do we not see these linking forms all
around us ? Why are not all organic beings
blended together in an inextricable chaos ?
With respect to existing forms, we should
remember that we have no right to expect
(excepting in rare cases) to discover directly
connecting-links between them, but only
between each and some extinct and sup
planted form. Even on a wide area, which
has during’ a long period remained con
tinuous, and of which the climate and other
conditions of life change insensibly in going
�RECAPITULATION AND CONCLUSION
from a district occupied by one species into
another district occupied by a closely-allied
species, we have no just right to expect
often to find intermediate varieties in the
intermediate zone. For we have reason to
believe that only a few species are under
going change at any one period; and all
changes are slowly effected. I have also
shown that the intermediate varieties which
will at first probably exist in the inter
mediate zones will be liable to be supplanted
by the allied forms on either hand ; and
the latter, from existing in greater numbers,
will generally be modified and improved at
aquickerrate than the intermediate varieties,
which exist in lesser numbers ; so that the
intermediate varieties will, i i the long run,
be supplanted and exterminated.
On this doctrine of the extermination of
an infinitude of connecting-links between
the living and extinct inhabitants of the
world, and at each successive period between
the extinct and still older species, why is
not every geological formation charg'ed
with such links? Why does not every collec
tion of fossil remains afford plain evidence
of the gradation and mutation of the forms
of life? We meet with no such evidence,
and this is the most obvious and forcible of
the many objections which may be urged
against my theory. Why, again, do whole
groups of allied species appear, though
certainly they often falsely appear, to have
come in suddenly on the several geological
stages ? Why do we not find great piles of
strata beneath the Silurian system stored
with the remains of the progenitors of the
Silurian groups of fossils? For certainly,
on my theory,'inch strata must somewhere
have been deposited at these ancient and
utterly unknown epochs in the world’s
history.
I can answer these questions and grave
objections only on the supposition that the
geological record is far more imperfect
than most geologists believe. It cannot be
objected that there has not been time suffi
cient for any amount of organic change,
for the lapse of time has been so great as to
be utterly inappreciable by the human
intellect. The number of specimens in all
our museums is absolutely as nothing com
pared with the countless generations of
countless species which certainly have
existed. We should not be able to recog
nise a species as the parent of any one or
more species, if we were to examine them
ever so closely, unless we likewise pos
sessed many of the intermediate links
between their past or parent and present
!85
states; and these many links we could
hardly ever expect to discover, owing to
the imperfection of the geological record.
Numerous existing doubtful forms could be
named which are probably varieties ; but
who will pretend that in future ages so
many fossil links will be discovered that
naturalists will be able to decide, on the
common view, whether or not these doubt
ful forms are varieties ? As long as most of
the links between any two species are un
known, if any one link or intermediate
variety be discovered, it will simply be
classed as another and distinct species.
Only a small portion of the world has been
geologically explored. Only organic beings
of certain classes can be preserved in a
fossil condition, at least in any great number.
Widely ranging species vary most, and
varieties are often at first local —- both
causes rendering the discovery of inter
mediate links less likely. Local varie
ties will not spread into other and distant
regions until they are considerably modified
and improved; and when they do spread,
if discovered in a geological formation, they
will appear as if suddenly created there, and
will be simply classed as new species.
Most formations have been intermittent in
their accumulation ; and their duration, I
am inclined to believe, has been shorter
than the average duration of specific forms.
Successive formations are separated from
each other by enormous blank intervals of
time; for fossiliferous formations, thick
enough to resist future degradation, can be
accumulated only where much sediment is
deposited on the subsiding bed of the sea.
During the alternate periods of elevation
and of stationary level the record will be
blank. During these latter periods there
will probably be more variability in the
forms of life; during periods of subsidence,
more extinction.
With respect to the absence of fossili
ferous formations beneath the lowest
Silurian strata, I can only recur to the
hypothesis given in the ninth chapter.
That the geological record is imperfect all
will admit; but that it is imperfect to the
degree which I require few will be inclined
to admit. If we look to long enough inter
vals of time, geology plainly declares that
all species have changed; and they have
changed in the manner which my theory
requires, for they have changed slowly and
in a graduated manner. We clearly see
this in the fossil remains from consecutive
formations invariably being much more
closely related to each other than are the
�186
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
fossils from formations distant from each
other in time.
Such is the sum of the several chief
objections and difficulties which may justly
be' urged against my theory; and I have
now briefly recapitulated the answers and
explanations which can be given to them.
I have felt these difficulties far too heavily
duri: g many years to doubt their weight.
But it deserves especial notice that the more
important objections relate to questions on
which we are confessedly ignorant; nor do
we know how ignorant we are. We do not
know all the possible transitional gradations
between the simplest and the most perfect
organs ; it cannot be pretended that we
know all the varied means of Distribution
during the long lapse of years, or that we
know how imperfect the Geological Record
is. Grave as these several difficulties are,
in my judgment they do not overthrow the
theory of descent from a few created forms
with subsequent modification.
Now, let us turn to the other side of the
argument. Under domestication we see
much variability. This seems to be mainly
due to the reproductive system being
eminently susceptible to changes in the
conditions of life; so that this system, when
not rendered impotent, fails to reproduce
offspring exactly like the parent-form.
Variability is governed by many complex
laws—by correlation of growth, by use and
disuse, and by the direct action of the
physical conditions of life. There is much
difficulty in ascertaining how much modifi
cation our domestic productions have under
gone ; but we may safely infer that the
amount has been large, and that modifi
cations can be inherited for long periods.
As long as the conditions of life remain the
same, we have reason to believe that a
modification which has already been in
herited for many generations may continue
to be inherited for an almost infinite number
of generations. On the other hand, we have
evidence that variability, when it has once
come into play, does not wholly cease ; for
new varieties are still occasionally pro
duced by our most anciently domesticated
productions.
Man does not actually produce vari
ability ; he only unintentionally exposes
organic beings to new conditions of life,
and then nature acts on the organisation,
and causes variability. But man can and
does select the variations given to him by
nature, and thus accumulate them in any
desired manner. He thus adapts animals
and plants for his own benefit or pleasure.
He may do this methodically, or he may
do it unconsciously by preserving the in
dividuals most useful to him at the time,
without any thought of altering the breed.
It is certain that he can largely influence
the character of a breed by selecting, in
each successive generation, individual dif
ferences so slight as to be quite inappreci
able by an uneducated eye. This process
of selection has been the great agency in
the production of the most distinct and
useful domestic breeds. That many of the
breeds produced by man have to a large
extent the character of natural species is
shown by the inextricable doubts whether
very many of them are varieties or aboriginal
species.
There is no obvious reason why the
principles which have acted so efficiently
under domestication should not have acted
under nature.
In the preservation of
favoured individuals and races, during the
constantly-recurrent Struggle for Existence,
we see the most powerful and ever-acting
means of selection. The struggle for exist
ence inevitably follows from the high geo
metrical ratio of increase which is common
to all organic beings. This high rate of
increase is proved by calculation—by the
rapid increase of many animals and plants
during a succession of peculiar seasons, or
when naturalised in a new country. More
individuals are born than can possibly
survive. A grain in the balance will deter
mine which individual shall live and which
shall die—which variety or species shall
increase in number, and which shall
decrease, or finally become extinct. As
the individuals of the same species come
in all respects into the closest competition
with each other, the struggle will generally
be most severe between them ; it will be
almost equally severe between the varieties
of the same species, and next in severity
between the species of the same genus.
But the struggle will often be very severe
between beings most remote in the scale of
nature. The slightest advantage in one
being, at any age or during any season,
over those with which it comes into com
petition, or better adaptation in however
slight a degree to the surrounding physical
conditions, will turn the balance.
With animals having separated sexes
there will in most cases be a struggle
between the males for possession of the
females. The most vigorous individuals,
or those which have most successfully
struggled with their conditions of life, will
�RECAPITULA TION AND CONCL USION
generally leave most progeny. But success
will often depend on having special weapons
or means of defence, or on the charms of
the males ; and the slightest advantage will
lead to victory.
As geology plainly proclaims that each
land has undergone great physical changes,
we might have expected that organic beings
would have varied under nature, in the
same way as they generally have varied
under the changed conditions of domesti
cation. And if there be any variability
under nature, it would be an unaccountable
fact if natural selection had not come into
play. It has often been asserted, but the
assertion is quite incapable of proof, that
the amount of variation under nature is a
strictly limited quantity. Man, though
acting on external characters alone and
often capriciously, can produce within a
short period a great result by adding up
mere individual differences in his domestic
productions; and everyone admits that
there are, at least, individual differences in
species under nature. But, besides such
differences, all naturalists have admitted
the existence of varieties, which they think
sufficiently distinct to be worthy of record
in systematic works. No one can draw
any clear distinction between individual
differences and slight varieties, or between
more plainly-marked varieties and sub
species and species. Let it be observed
how naturalists differ in the rank which
they assign to the many representative
forms in Europe and North America.
If, then, we have under nature variability
and a powerful agent always ready to act
and select, why should we doubt that varia
tions in any way useful to beings, under
their excessively complex relations of life,
would be preserved, accumulated, and
inherited ? Why, if man can by patience
select variations most useful to himself,
should nature fail in selecting variations
useful, under changing conditions of life,
to her living products ? What limit can be
put to this power, acting during long ages
and rigidly scrutinising the whole constitu
tion, structure, and habits of each creature
—favouring the good and rejecting the bad ?
I can see no limit to this power in slowly
and beautifully adapting each form to the
most complex relations of life. The theory
of natural selection, even if we looked no
further than this, seems to me to be in itself
probable. 1 have already recapitulated, as
fairly as I could, the opposed difficulties and
objections ; now let us turn to the special
facts and arguments in favour of the theory.
187
On the view that species are only strongly
marked and permanent varieties, and that
each species first existed as a variety, we
can see why it is that no line of demarca
tion can be drawn between species com
monly supposed to have been produced by
special acts of creation and varieties which
are acknowledged to have been produced
by secondary laws. On this same view, .we
can understand how it is that in each region
where many species of a genus have been
produced, and where they now flourish,
these same species should present many
varieties; for where the manufactory of
species has been active we might expect,
as a general rule, to find it still in action ;
and this is the case if varieties be incipient
species. Moreover, the species of the larger
genera which afford the greater number of
varieties or incipient species retain to a
certain degree the character of varieties;
for they differ from each other by a less
amount of difference than do the species of
smaller genera. The closely-allied species
also of the larger genera apparently have
restricted ranges, and in their affinities they
are clustered in little groups round other
species—in which respects they resemble
varieties. These are strange relations on
the view of each species having been in
dependently created, but are intelligible if
all species first existed as varieties.
As each species tends by its geometrical
ratio of reproduction to increase inordinately
in number; and as the modified descen
dants of each species will be enabled to
increase by so much the more as they
become diversified in habits and structure,
so as to be enabled to seize on many and
widely-different places in the economy of
nature, there will be a constant tendency
in natural selection to preserve the most
divergent offspring of any one species.
Hence, during a long-continued course of
modification, the slight differences, charac
teristic of varieties of the same species,
tend to be augmented into the greater
differences characteristic of species of the
same genus. New and improved varieties
will inevitably supplant and exterminate
the older, less improved, and intermediate
varieties ; and thus species are rendered to
a large extent defined and distinct objects.
Dominant species belonging to the larger
groups tend to give birth to new and
dominant forms ; so that each large group
tends to become still larger, and at the
same time more divergent in character.
But as all groups cannot thus succeed in
increasing in size, for the world would not
�188
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
hold them, the more dominant groups beat
the less dominant. This tendency in the
large groups to go on increasing in size and
diverging in character, together with the
almost inevitable contingency of much
extinction, explains the arrangement of all
the forms of life, in groups subordinate to
groups, all within a few great classes, which
we now see everywhere around us, and
which has prevailed throughout all time.
This grand fact of the grouping of all
organic beings seems to me utterly in
explicable on the theory of creation.
As natural selection acts solely by ac
cumulating slight, successive, favourable
variations, it can produce no great or sudden
modification ; it can act only by very short
and slow steps. Hence the canon of Natura
nonfacit saltum,which every fresh addition
to our knowledge tends to make truer, is, on
this theory simply intelligible. We can
plainly see why nature is prodigal in variety,
though niggard in innovation. But why
this should be a law of nature if each species
has been independently created, no man can
explain.
Many other facts are, as it seems to me,
explicable on this theory. How strange it
is that a bird, under the form of wood
pecker, should have been created to prey
on insects on the ground; that upland
geese, which never or rarely swim, should
have been created with webbed feet; that
a thrush should have been created to dive
and feed on sub-aquatic insects; and that
a petrel should have been created with
habits and structure fitting it for the life of
an auk or grebe; and so on in endless other
cases. But on the view of each species
constantly trying to increase in number,
with natural selection always ready to adapt
the slowly varying descendants of each to
any unoccupied or ill-occupied place in
nature, these facts cease to be strange, or
perhaps might even have been anticipated.
As natural selection acts by competition,
it adapts the inhabitants of each country
only in relation to the degree of perfection
of their associates; so that we need feel
no surprise at the inhabitants of any one
country, although on the ordinary view sup
posed to have been specially created and
adapted for that country, being beaten and
supplanted by the naturalised productions
from another land. Nor ought we to marvel
if all the contrivances in nature be not, as
far as we can judge, absolutely perfect,
and if some of them be abhorrent to our
ideas of fitness. We need not marvel at
the sting of the bee causing the bee’s own
death ; at drones being produced in such
vast numbers for one single act, with the
great majority slaughtered by their sterile’
sisters ; at the astonishing waste of pollen
by our fir-trees ; at the instinctive hatred
of the queen bee for her own fertile
daughters; at ichneumonidae feeding within
the live bodies of caterpillars ; and at other
such cases. The wonder, indeed, is, on the
theory of natural selection, that more cases
of the want of absolute perfection have not
been observed.
The complex and little-known laws
governing variation are the same, as far
• as we can see, with the laws which have
governed the production of so-called specific
forms. In both cases physical conditions
seem to have produced but little direct
effect; yet when varieties enter any zone
they occasionally assume some of the
characters of the species proper to that
zone. In both varieties and species use
and disuse seem to have produced some
effect; for it is difficult to resist this con
clusion when we look, for instance, at the
logger-headed duck, which has wings incap
able of flight, in nearly the same condition
as in the domestic duck ; or when wre look
at the burrowing tucutucu, which is occa
sionally blind, and then at certain moles,
which are habitually blind and have their
eyes covered with skin ; or when we look
at the blind animals inhabiting the dark
caves of America and Europe. In both
varieties and species correlation of growth
seems to have played a most important
part, so that, when one part has been modi
fied, other parts are necessarily modified.
In both varieties and species reversions to
long-lost characters occur. How inexplic
able, on the theory of creation, is the occa
sional appearance of stripes on the s'houlder
and legs of the several species of the horse
genus and in their hybrids ! How simply
is this fact explained if we believe that these
species have descended from a striped pro
genitor, in the same manner as the several
domestic breeds of pigeon have descended
from the blue and barred rock-pigeon 1
On the ordinary view of each species
having been independently created, why
should the specific characters, or those by
which the species of the same genus differ
from each other, be more variable than the
generic characters in which they all agree?
Why, for instance, should the colour of a
flower be more likely to vary in any one
species of a genus if the other species,
supposed to have been created inde
pendently, have differently coloured flowers,
�RECAPITULATION AND CONCLUSION
than if all the species of the genus have
the same coloured flowers ? If species are
only well-marked varieties, of which the
characters have become in a high degree
permanent, we can understand this fact;
for they have already varied since they
branched off from a common progenitor in
certain characters, by which they have
come to be specifically distinct from each
other; and, therefore, these same char
acters would be more likely still to be
variable than the generic characters which
have been inherited without change for an
enormous period. It is inexplicable, on the
theory of creation, why a part developed
in a very unusual manner in any one
species of a genus, and therefore, as we
may naturally infer, of great importance to
the species, should be eminently liable to
variation ; but, on my view, this part has
undergone, since the several species
branched off from a common progenitor,
an unusual amount of variability and modi
fication, and, therefore, we might expect
this part generally to be still variable.
But a part may be developed in the most
unusual manner, like the wing of a bat,
and yet not be more variable than any
other structure, if the part be common to
many subordinate forms—that is, if it has
been inherited for a very long period ; for
in this case it will have been rendered con
stant by long-continued natural selection.
Glancing at instincts, marvellous as some
are, they offer no greater difficulty than does
corporeal structure on the theory of the
natural selection of successive,slight, but pro
fitable modifications. We can thus under
stand why nature moves by graduated steps
in endowing different animals of the same
class with their several instincts. I have
attempted to show how much light the
principle of gradation throws on the admir
able architectural powers of the hive-bee.
Habit, no doubt, sometimes comes into
play in modifying instincts ; but it certainly
is not indispensable, as we see, in the case
of neuter insects, which leave no progeny
to inherit the effects of long-continued
habit. On the view of all the species of
the same genus having descended from a
common parent, and having inherited much
in common, we can understand how it is
that allied species, when placed under con
siderably different conditions of life, yet
should follow nearly the same instincts ;
why the thrush of South America, for
instance, lines her nest with mud like our
British species. On the view of instincts
having been slowly acquired through natural
189
selection, we need not marvel at some
instincts being apparently not perfect and
liable to mistakes, and at many instincts
causing other animals to suffer.
If species be only well-marked and per
manent varieties, we can at once see why
their crossed offspring should follow the
same complex laws in their degrees and
kinds of resemblance to their parents—in
being absorbed into each other by succes
sive crosses, and in other such points—as
do the crossed offspring of acknowledged
varieties. On the other hand, these would
be strange facts if species have been inde
pendently created and varieties have been
produced by secondary laws.
If we admit that the geological record is
imperfect in an extreme degree, then such
facts as the record gives support the theory
of descent with modification. New species
have come on the stage slowly and at
successive intervals ; and the amount of
change, after equal intervals of time, is
widely different in different groups. The
extinction of species and of whole groups
of species, which has played so conspicuous
a part in the history of the organic world,
almost inevitably follows on the principle
of natural selection ; for old forms will be
supplanted by new and improved forms.
Neither single species nor groups of species
reappear when the chain of ordinary genera
tion has once been broken. The gradual
diffusion of dominant forms, with the slow
modification of their descendants, causes
the forms of life, after long intervals of
time, to appear as if they had changed
simultaneously throughout the world. The
fact of the fossil remains of each formation
being in some degree intermediate in char
acter between the fossils in the formations
above and below is simply explained by
their intermediate position in the chain of
descent. The grand fact that all extinct
organic beings belong to the same system
with recent beings, falling either into the
same or into intermediate groups, follows
from the living and the extinct being the
offspring of common parents. As the
groups which have descended from an
ancient progenitor have generally diverged
in character, the progenitor with its early
descendants will often be intermediate in
character in comparison with its later
descendants ; and thus we can see why
the more ancient a fossil is, the oftener it
stands in some degree intermediate between
existing and allied groups. Recent forms
are generally looked at as being, in some
vague sense, higher than ancient and
�190
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
extinct forms; and they are in so far
higher as the later and more improved
forms have conquered the older and less
improved organic beings in the struggle
for life. Lastly, the law of the long endur
ance of allied forms on the same continent
—of marsupials in Australia, of edentata
in America, and other such cases—is intel
ligible, for within a confined country the
recent and the extinct will naturally be
allied by descent.
Looking to geographical distribution, if
we admit that there has been during the
long course of ages much migration from
one part of the world to another, owing to
former climatal and geographical changes
and to the many occasional and unknown
means of dispersal, then we can understand,
on the theory of descent with modification,
most of the great leading facts in Distribu
tion. We can see why there should be so
striking a parallelism in the distribution of
organic beings throughout space, and in
their geological succession throughout time;
for in both cases the beings have been con
nected by the bond of ordinary generation,
and the means of modification have been
the same. We see the full meaning of the
wonderful fact, which must have struck
every traveller—namely, that on the same
continent, under the most diverse condi
tions, under heat and cold, on mountain
and lowland, on deserts and marshes, most
of the inhabitants within each great class
are plainly related ; for they will generally
be descendants of the same progenitors and
early colonists. On this same principle of
former migration, combined in most cases
with modification, we can understand, by
the aid of the Glacial period, the identity
of some few plants, and the close alliance
of many others, on the most distant moun
tains, under the most different climates ;
and likewise the close alliance of some of
the inhabitants of the sea in the northern
and southern temperate zones, though
separated by the whole intertropical ocean.
Although two areas may present the same
physical conditions of life, we need feel no
surprise at their inhabitants being widely
different, if they have. been for a long
period completely separated from each
other; for as the relation of organism to
organism is the most important of all rela
tions, and as the two areas will have
received colonists from some third source
or from each other, at various periods and
in different proportions, the course of modi
fication in the two areas will inevitably be
different.
On this view of migration, with subse
quent modification, we can see why oceanic
islands should be inhabited by few species,
but of these that many should be peculiar;
We can see clearly why those animals
which cannot cross wide spaces of ocean,
as frogs and terrestrial mammals, should
not inhabit oceanic islands ; and why, on
the other hand, new and peculiar species of
bats which can traverse the ocean should
so often be found on islands far distant
from any continent. Such facts as the
presence of peculiar species of bats, and
the absence of all other mammals, on
oceanic islands, are utterly inexplicable on
the theory of independent acts of creation.
The existence of closely-allied or repre
sentative species in any two areas implies,
on the theory of descent with modification,
that the same parents formerly inhabited
both areas ; and we almost invariably find
that, wherever many closely-allied species
inhabit two areas, some identical species
common to both still exist. Wherever many
closely-allied yet distinct species occur,
many doubtful forms and varieties of the
same species likewise occur. It is a rule of
high generality that the inhabitants of each
area are related to the inhabitants of the
nearest source whence immigrants might
have been derived. We see this in nearly
all the plants and animals of the Galapagos
Archipelago, of Juan Fernandez, and of the
other American islands being related in the
most striking manner to the plants and
animals of the neighbouring American
mainland; and those of the Cape de Verde
Archipelago and other African islands to
the African mainland. It must be admitted
that these facts receive no explanation on
the theory of creation.
The fact, as we have seen, that all past
and present organic beings constitute one
grand natural system, with group sub
ordinate to group, and with extinct groups
often falling in between recent groups, is
intelligible on the theory of natural selec
tion with its contingencies of extinction and
divergence of character. On these same
principles we see how it is that the mutual
affinities of the species and genera within
each class are so complex and circuitous.
We see why certain characters are far
more serviceable than others for classifi
cation—why adaptive characters, though of
paramount importance to the being, are of
hardly any importance in classification ;
why characters derived from rudimentary
parts, though of no service to the being,
are often of high classificatory value ; and
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RECAPITULATION AND CONCLUSION
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at corresponding ages, have been inherited
why embryological characters are the most
from a remote period to the present day.
valuable of all. The real affinities of all
On the view of each organic being and
organic beings are due to inheritance or
each separate organ having been specially
community of descent. The natural system
created, how utterly inexplicable it is that
is a genealogical arrangement, in which we
parts, like the teeth in the embryonic calf
have to discover the lines of descent by the
or like the shrivelled wings under the
most permanent characters, however slight
soldered wing-covers of some beetles, should
their vital importance may be.
thus so frequently bear the plain stamp of
The framework of bones being the same
inutility! Nature may be said to have
in the hand of a man, wing of a bat, fin of
taken pains to reveal, by rudimentary organs
the porpoise, and leg of the horse; the
and by homologous structure, her scheme
same number of vertebrae forming the neck
of modification, which it seems that we
of the giraffe and of the elephant; and
wilfully will not understand.
innumerable other such facts, at once
explain themselves on the theory of descept
I have now recapitulated the chief facts
with slow and slight successive modifraB
and considerations which have thoroughly
tions. The similarity of pattern in the wing
convinced me that species have been modi
and leg of a bat, though used for such
fied, during a long course of descent, by
different purpose—in the jaws and legs of
the preservation or the natural selection of
a crab, in the petals, stamens, and pistils
many successive slight favourable varia
of a flower—is likewise intelligible on t^e
tions. I cannot believe that a false theory
view of the gradual modification of parts or
would explain, as it seems to me that the
organs, which were alike in the early pro
theory of natural selection does explain,
genitor of each class. On the principle of
the several large classes of facts above
successive variations not always super
specified. I see no good reason why the
vening at an early age, and being inherited
views given in this volume should shock
at a corresponding not early period of life,
the religious feelings of any one. A cele
we can clearly see why the embryos of
brated author and divine has written to me
mammals, birds, reptiles, and fishes should
that “ he has gradually learnt to see that it
be so closely alike, and should be so unlike
is just as noble a conception of the Deity
the adult forms. We may cease marvelling
at the embryo of an air-breathing mammal ' to believe that He created a few original
forms capable of self-development into other
or bird having branchial slits and arteries
and needful forms as to believe that He re
running in loops, like those in a fish which
quired a fresh act of creation to supply the
has to breathe the air dissolved in water
voids caused by the action of His laws.”
by the aid of well-developed branchiae.
Why, it may be asked, have all the most
. Disuse, aided sometimes by natural selec
eminent living naturalists and geologists
tion, will often tend to reduce an organ
rejected this view of the mutability of
when, it has become useless by changed
species ? It cannot be asserted that organic
habits or under changed conditions of life ;
beings in a state of nature are subject to
and we can clearly understand on this view
no variation ; it cannot be proved that the
the meaning of rudimentary organs. But
amount of variation in the course of long
disuse and selection will generally act on
ages is a limited quantity ; no clear dis
each creature when it has come to maturity
tinction has been, or can be, drawn between
and has to play its full part in the struggle for
species and well-marked varieties. ‘It can
existence, and will thus have little power of
not be maintained that species when inter
acting on an organ during early life; hence
crossed are invariably sterile and varieties
the organ will not be much reduced or ren
invariably fertile; or that sterility is a
dered rudimentary at this early age. The
special endowment and sign of creation.
calf, for instance, has inherited teeth, which
The belief that species were immutable
never cut through the gums of the upper
productions was almost unavoidable as long
jaw, from an early progenitor having wellas the history of the world was thought to
developed teeth ; and we may believe that
be of short duration; and now that we have
the teeth in the mature animal were reduced,
acquired some idea of the lapse of time, we
during successive generations, by disuse or
are too apt to assume, without proof, that
by the tongue and palate having been better
the geological record is so perfect that it
fitted by natural selection to browse without
would have afforded us plain evidence of
their aid ; whereas in the calf the teeth
the mutation of species, if they had under
have been left untouched by selection or
gone mutation.
disuse, and, on the principle of inheritance
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�192
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
But the chief cause of our natural unwil
lingness to admit that one species has given
birth to other and distinct species is that
we are always slow in admitting any great
change of which we do not see the inter
mediate steps. The difficulty is the same
as that felt by so many geologists when
Lyell first insisted that long lines of inland
cliffs had been formed and great valleys
excavated by the slow action of the coast
waves. The mind cannot possibly grasp
the full meaning of the term of a hundred
million years ; it cannot add up and per
ceive the full effects of many slight varia
tions, accumulated during an almost infinite
number of generations.
Although I am fully convinced of the
truth of the views given in this volume
under the form of an abstract, I by no
means expect to convince experienced
naturalists whose minds are stocked with
a multitude of facts all viewed, during a
long course of years, from a point of view
directly opposite to mine. It is so easy to
hide our ignorance under such expressions
as the “ plan of creation,” “ unity of design,”
etc., and to think that we give an explana
tion when we only restate a fact. Anyone
whose disposition leads him to attach more
weight to unexplained difficulties than to
the explanation of a certain number of facts
will certainly reject my theory. A few
naturalists, endowed with much flexibility
of mind, and who have already begun to
doubt on the immutability of species, may
be influenced by this .volume ; but I look
with confidence to the future, to young and
rising naturalists, who will be able to view
both sides of the question with impartiality.
Whoever is led to believe that species are
mutable will do good service by conscien
tiously expressing his conviction ; for only
thus can the load of prejudice by which this
subject is overwhelmed be removed.
Several eminent naturalists have of late
published their belief that a multitude of
reputed species in each genus are not real
species, but that' other species are real—that is, have been independently created.
This seems to me a strange conclusion to
arrive at. They admit that a multitude of
forms which till lately they themselves
thought were special creations, and which
are still thus looked at by the majority of
naturalists, and which consequently have
every external characteristic feature of true
species—they admit that these have been
produced by variation, but they refuse to
extend the same view to other and very
slightly different forms. Nevertheless they
do not pretend that they can define, or even
conjecture, which are the created forms of
life, and which are those produced by
secondary laws. They admit variation as
a vera causa in one case, they arbitrarily
reject it in another, without assigning any
distinction in the two cases. The day will
come when this will be given as a curious
illustration of the blindness of preconceived
opinion. These authors seem no more
startled at a miraculous act of creation than
at an ordinary birth. But do they really
believe that at innumerable periods in the
earth’s history certain elemental atoms have
been commanded suddenly to flash into
living tissues? Do they believe that at
each supposed act of creation one individual
or many were produced? Were all the
infinitely numerous kinds of animals and
plants created as eggs or seed, or as fullgrown ? and in the case of mammals, were
they created bearing the false marks of
nourishment from the mother’s womb?
Although naturalists very properly demand
a full explanation of every difficulty from
those who believe in the mutability of
species, on their own side they ignore the
whole subject of the first appearance of
species in what they consider reverent
silence.
It may be asked how far I extend the
doctrine of the modification of species.
The question is difficult to answer, because
the more distinct the forms are which we
may consider, by so much the arguments
fall away in force. But some arguments of
the greatest weight extend very far. All
the members of whole classes can be con
nected together by chains of affinities, and
all can be classified on the same principle,
in groups subordinate to groups. Fossil
remains sometimes tend to fill up very wide
intervals between existing orders. Organs
in a rudimentary condition plainly show
that an early progenitor had the organ in
a fully developed state ; and this, in some
instances, necessarily implies an enormous
amount of modification in the descendants.
Throughout whole classes various struc
tures are formed on the same pattern, and
at an embryonic age the species closely
resemble each other. Therefore, I cannot
doubt that the theory of descent with modi
fication embraces all the members of'the
same class. I believe that animals have
descended from at most only four or five
progenitors, and plants from an equal or
lesser number.
Analogy would lead me one step further
—namely, to the belief that all animals and
�RECAPITULATION AND CONCLUSION
plants have descended from some one pro
totype. But analogy may be a deceitful
•guide. Nevertheless, all living things have
much in common, in their chemical compo
sition, their germinal vesicles, their cellular
Structure, and their laws of growth and re
production. We see this even in so trifling
a circumstance as that the same poison
often similarly affects plants and animals ;
or that the poison secreted by the gall-fly
produces monstrous growths on the wild
rose or oak-tree. Therefore, I should infer
from analogy that probably all the organic
beings which have ever lived on this earth
have descended from some one primordial
form, into which life was first breathed by
the Creator.
When the views advanced by me in this
volume, and by Mr. Wallace in the Linnean
Journal, or when analogous views on the
origin of species are generally admitted, we
can dimly foresee that there will be a
considerable revolution in natural history.
Systematists will be able to pursue their
labours as at present; but they will not be
incessantly haunted by the shadowy doubt
whether this or that form be in essence a
species. This I feel sure, and I speak after
experience, will be no slight relief. The
endless disputes whether or not some fifty
Species of British brambles are true species
will cease. Systematists will have only to
decide (not that this will be easy) whether
any form be sufficiently constant and dis
tinct from other forms to be capable of
definition ; and, if definable, whether the
differences be sufficiently important to
deserve a specific name. This latter point
will become a far more essential considera
tion than it is at present; for differences,
however slight, between any two forms, if
not blended by intermediate gradations, are
looked at by most naturalists as sufficient
to raise both forms to the rank of species.
’Hereafter we shall be compelled to acknow
ledge that the only distinction between
species and well-marked varieties is that
the latter are known, or believed, to be con
nected at the present day by intermediate
gradations, whereas species were formerly
thus connected. Hence, without rejecting
the consideration of the present existence
of intermediate gradations between any
WO forms, we shall be led to weigh more
carefully and to value higher the actual
amount of difference between them. It
is quite possible that forms now generally
acknowledged to be merely varieties may
hereafter be thought worthy of specific
193
names, as with the primrose and cowslip ;
and in this case scientific and common
language will come into accordance. In
short, we shall have to treat species in the
same manner as those naturalists treat
genera who admit that genera are merely
artificial combinations made for conveni
ence. This may not be a cheering pro
spect ; but we shall at least be freed from
the vain search for the undiscovered and
undiscoverable essence of the term species.
The other and more general departments
of natural history will rise greatly in interest.
The terms used by naturalists of affinity,
relationship, community of type, paternity,
morphology, adaptive characters, rudimen
tary and aborted organs, etc., will cease
to be metaphorical, and will have a plain
signification. When we no longer look at
an organic being as a savage looks at a
ship, as at something wholly beyond his
comprehension ; when we regard every
production of nature as one which has had
a history; when we contemplate every
complex structure and instinct as the sum
ming-up of many contrivances, each useful
to the possessor, nearly in the same way
as when we look at any great mechanical
invention as the summing-up of the labour,
the experience, the reason, and even the
blunders of numerous workmen ; when we
thus view each organic being, how far more
interesting—-I speak from experience—
will the study of natural history become !
A grand and almost untrodden field of
inquiry will be opened on the causes and
laws of variation, on correlation of growth,
on the effects of use and disuse, on the
direct action of external conditions, and so
forth. The study of domestic productions
will rise immensely in value. A new variety
raised by man will be a more important
and interesting subject for study than one
more species added to the infinitude of
already recorded species. Our classifica
tions will come to be, as far as they can be
so made, genealogies, and will then truly
give what may be called the plan of crea
tion. The rules for classifying will, no
doubt, become simpler when we have a
definite object in view. We possess no
pedigrees or armorial bearings ; and we
have to discover and trace the many diverg
ing lines of descent in our natural gene
alogies by characters of any kind which
have long been inherited. Rudimentary
organs will speak infallibly with respect to
the nature of long-lost structures. Species
and groups of species which are called
aberrant, and which may fancifully be
O
�194
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
called living fossils, will aid us in forming i remain for a long period unchanged, while
a picture of the ancient forms of life. ' . within this same period several of these
Embryology will reveal to us the structure,
species, by migrating into new countries
in some degree obscured, of the prototypes
and coming into competition with foreign
of each great class.
associates, might become modified; so that
When we can feel assured that all the
we must not overrate the accuracy of
individuals of the same species, and all the
organic change as a measure of time.
closely-allied species of most genera, have
During early periods of the earth’s history,
within a not very remote period descended
when the forms of life were probably fewer
from one parent, and have migrated from
and simpler, the rate of change was probsome one birth-place ; and when we better ! ably slower; and at the first dawn of life,
know the many means of migration, then, i when very few forms of the simplest strucby the light which geology now throws, j ture existed, the rate of change may have
and will continue to throw, on former ■ been slow in an extreme degree. The whole
changes of climate and of the level of the
history of the world, as at present known,
land, we shall surely be enabled to trace
although of a length quite incomprehensible
in an admirable manner the former migra
by us, will hereafter be recognised as a mere
tions of the inhabitants of the whole world.
fragment of time, compared with the ages
which have elapsed since the first creature,
Even at present, by comparing the dif
the progenitor of innumerable extinct and
ferences of the inhabitants of the sea on
living descendants, was created.
the opposite sides of a continent, and the
In the distant future I see open fields for
nature of the various inhabitants of that
far more important researches. Psychology
continent in relation to their apparent
will be based on a new foundation, that of
means of immigration, some light can be
the necessary acquirement of each mental
thrown on ancient geography.
power and capacity by gradation. Light
The noble science of geology loses glory
will be thrown on the origin of man and
from the extreme imperfection of the record.
his history.
The crust of the earth, with its embedded
Authors of the highest eminence seem to
remains, must not be looked at as a well- i
be fully satisfied with the view that each
filled museum, but as a poor collection
species has been independently created.
made at hazard and at rare intervals. The
To my mind, it accords better with what we
accumulation of each great fossiliferous
know of the laws impressed on matter by
formation will be recognised as having
the Creator that the production and extinc
depended on an unusual concurrence of
tion of the past and present inhabitants of
circumstances, and the blank intervals
the world should have been due to secondary
between the successive stages as having
causes, like those determining the birth and
been of vast duration. But we shall be
death of the individual. When I view all
able to gauge with some security the
beings not as special creations, but as the
duration of these intervals by a com
lineal descendants of some few beings
parison of- the preceding and succeeding
which lived long before the first bed of the
organic forms. We must be cautious in
Silurian system was deposited, they seem
attempting to correlate as strictly contem
to me to become ennobled. Judging from
poraneous two formations, which include
the past, we may safely infer that not one
few identical species, by the general suc
living species will transmit its unaltered
cession of their forms of life. As species
likeness to a distant futurity. And of the
are produced and exterminated by slowly
species now living very few will transmit
acting and still existing causes, and not by
progeny of any kind to a far distant futurity;
miraculous acts of creation and by catastro
for the manner in which all organic beings
phes; and as themost important of all causes
are grouped shows that the greater number
of organic change is one which is almost
of species of each genus, and all the species
independent of altered, and perhaps sud
of many genera, have left no descendants,
denly altered, physical conditions—namely,
but have become utterly extinct. We can
the mutual relation of organism to organism,
the improvement of one being entailing I so far take a prophetic glance into futurity
the improvement or the extermination of ; as to foretell that it will be the common
others—it follows that the amount of organic I and widely-spread species, belonging to
change in the fossils of consecutive forma ‘ the larger and dominant groups, which will
tions probably serves as a fair measure of I ultimately prevail and procreate new and
the lapse of actual time. A number of j dominant species. As all the living forms
of life are the lineal descendants of those
species, however, keeping in a body might
�RECAPITULATION AND CONCLUSION
195
which lived long before the Silurian epoch, | with Reproduction ; Inheritance, which is
ralmost implied by reproduction; Variability,
)■ s we may feel certain that the ordinary suc
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cession by generation has never once been
broken, and that no cataclysm has desolated
the whole world. Hence we may look with
some confidence to a secure future of
equally inappreciable length. And as
natural selection works solely by and for
the good of each being, all corporeal and
mental endowments will tend to progress
towards perfection.
It is interesting to contemplate an en
tangled bank, clothed with many plants of
many kinds, with birds singing on the
bushes, with various insects flitting about,
and with worms crawling through the damp
earth, and to reflect that these elaborately
constructed forms, so different from each
other, and dependent on each other in so
complex a manner, have all been produced
by laws acting around us. These laws,
taken in the largest sense, being Growth
from the indirect and direct action of the
external conditions of life, and from use and
disuse ; a Ratio of Increase so high as to
lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a con
sequence to Natural Selection, entailing
Divergence of Character and the Extinction
of less-improved forms. Thus, from the
war of nature, from famine and death, the
most exalted object which we are capable
of conceiving—namely, the production of
the higher animals—directly follows. There
is grandeur in this view of life, with its
several powers, having been originally
breathed by the Creator into a few forms
or into one ; and that, while this planet has
gone cycling on according to the fixed law
of gravity, from so simple a beginning end
less forms most beautiful and most wonder
ful have been, and are being, evolved.
�INDEX
Aberrant groups, 172
Abyssinia, plants of, 151
Acclimatisation, 61
Affinities of extinct species, 133
’------ of organic beings, 165
Agassiz on Amblyopsis, 61
------ on groups of species suddenly appearing,
123-4
------ on embryological succession, 137
•----- on the glacial period, 148
----- - on embryological characters, 168
------ on the embryos of vertebrata, 175
------ on parallelism of embryological develop
ment and geological succession, 180
Algae of New Zealand, 151
Alligators, males, fighting, 42
Amblyopsis, blind fish, 61
America, North, productions allied to those of
Europe, 150
------- ---- - boulders and glaciers of, 150
------ South, no modern formations on west
coast, 119
Ammonites, sudden extinction of, 131
Anagallis, sterility of, 103
Analogy of variations, 69
Ancylus, 155
Animals, not domesticated from being variable, 15
------ domestic, descended from several stocks, 15
------ acclimatisation of, 62
------ of Australia, 52-3
----- - with thicker fur in cold climates, 59
------blind, in caves, 60
------ extinct, of Australia, 137
Anomma, 100
Antarctic islands, ancient flora of, 160
Antirrhinum, 70
Ants attending aphides, 88
------ slave-making instinct, 92
------ neuter, structure of, 98
Aphides, attended by ants, 88
Aphis, development of, 177
Apteryx, 77
Arab horses, 22
Aralo-Caspian Sea, 137
Archiac, M. de, on the succession of species, 132
Artichoke, Jerusalem, 62
Ascension, plants of, 157
Asclepias, pollen of, 82
Asparagus, 145
Aspicarpa, 167
Asses, striped, 70
Ateuchus, 60
Audubon on habits of frigate-bird, 79
Audubon on variation in birds’-nests, 89
------ on heron eating seeds, 156
Australia, animals of, 52-3
------ dogs of, 90
------ extinct animals of, 137
------ European plants in, 151
Azara on flies destroying cattle, 36
Azores, flora of, 147
Babington, Mr., on British plants, 27
Balancement of growth, 64
Bamboo with hooks, 83
Barberry, flowers of, 46
Barrande, M., on Silurian colonies, 128
------ on the succession of species, 132
------ on parallelism of palaeozoic formations, 133
------on affinities of ancient species, 134
Barriers, importance of, 141
Batrachians on islands, 158
Bats, how structure acquired, 77
------ distribution of, 159
Bear catching water-insects, 78
Bee, sting of, 85
------queen, killing rivals, 85
Bees fertilising flowers, 37
------hive, not sucking the red clover, 44
------ hive, cell-making instinct, 94
------ humble, cells of, 94
------parasitic, 91
Beetles, wingless, in Madeira, 60
------ with deficient tarsi, 60
Bentham, Mr., on British plants, 27
------ on classification, 168
Berkeley, Mr., on seeds in salt-water, 145
Bermuda, birds of, 157
Birds acquiring fear, 89
------annually cross the Atlantic, 147
------ colour of, on continents, 59
—— footsteps and remains of, in secondary
rocks, 124
—— fossil, in caves of Brazil, 137
------ of Madeira, Bermuda, and Galapagos, 157
------ song of males, 42
------ transporting seeds, 146
----- - waders, 155
------wingless, 59, 77
•----- - with traces of embryonic teeth, 180
Bizcacha, 141
------ affinities of, 172
Bladder for swimming in fish, 81
Blindness of cave animals, 60
Blyth, Mr., on distinctness of Indian cattle, 15
------ on striped Hemionus, 70
�INDEX
Bly th, Mr., on crossed geese, 105
Boar, shoulder-pad of, 42
Borrow, Mr., on the Spanish pointer, 22
Bory St. Vincent on Batrachians, 158
Bosquet, M,t on fossil Chthamalus, 124
Boulders, erratic, on the Azores, 147
Bran chi®, 81
Brent, Mr., on house-tumblers, 90
----- on hawks killing pigeons, 146
Brewer, Dr., on American cuckoo, 91
Britain, mammals of, 159
Bronn on duration of specific forms, 120
Brown, Robert, on classification, 167
Buckman on variation in plants, 12
Buzareingues on sterility of varieties, ill
Cabbag®, varieties of, crossed, 46
Calceolaria, 104
Canary-birds, sterility of hybrids, 105
Cape de Verde Islands, 160
Cape of Good Hope, plants of, 50, 151
Carrier-pigeons killed by hawks, 146
Cassini on flowers of composite, 63
Catasetum, 170
Cats, with blue eyes, deaf, 13
----- variation in habits of, 43
------curling tail when-going to spring, 85
Cattle destroying fir-trees, 36
------destroyed by flies in Paraguay, 36
------breeds of, locally extinct, 50
------ fertility of Indian and European breeds, 105
Cave, inhabitants of, blind, 60
Centres of creation, 142
Cephalopoda:, development of, 177
Cervulus, 105
Cetacea, teeth and hair, 63
Ceylon, plants of, 151
Chalk formation, 131
Characters, divergence of, 51
------ sexual, variable, 73
------ adaptive or analogical, 171
Charlock, 38
Checks to increase, 34
------ mutual, 36
Chickens, instinctive tameness of, 90
Chthamalinae, 118
Chthamalus, cretacean species of, 124
Circumstances favourable to selection of domestic
products, 24
----- to natural selection, 47
Cirripedes capable of crossing, 47
carapace aborted, 65
their ovigerous frena, 81
fossil, 124
------larvae of, 176
Classification, 165
Clift, Mr., on the succession of types, 137
Climate, effects of, in checking increase of beings,
35
.
.
------ adaptation of, to organisms, 01
Cobites, intestine of, 80
Cockroach, 38
Collections, palaeontological, poor, 118
Colour, influenced by climate, 59
in relation to attacks by flies, 84
i
197
Columba livia, parent of domestic pigeons, 17
Colymbetes, 155
Compensation of growth, 64
Composite, outer and inner florets of, 63
------ male flowers of, 180
Conclusion, general, 191
Conditions, slight changes in, favourable to
fertility, no
Coot, 79
Coral-islands, seeds drifted to, 146
------ reefs, indicating movements of earth, 126
Corn-crake, 79
Correlation of growth in domestic productions,
12-13
■------of growth, 63, 84
Cowslip, 27
Creation, single centres of, 142
Crinum, 104
Crosses, reciprocal, 107
Crossing of domestic animals, importance in
altering breeds, 15-16
------ advantages of, 45
Crustacea of New Zealand, 151
Crustacean, blind, 61
Cryptocerus, 99
Ctenomys, blind, 60
Cuckoo, instinct of, 91
Currants, grafts of, 108
Currents of sea, rate of, 145
Cuvier on conditions of existence, 87
------ on fossil monkeys, 124
------ Fred., on instinct, 87
Dana, Prof., on blind cave-animals, 61
------ on relations of crustaceans of Japan, 150
------ on crustaceans of New Zealand, 151
De Candolle on struggle for existence, 32
------ on umbelliferae, 64
------ on general affinities, 172
------ Alph., on low plants, widely dispersed, 163
------ on widely ranging plants being variable, 29
------ on naturalisation, 52
------on winged seeds, 64
------on Alpine species suddenly becoming rare,75
------ on distribution of plants with large seeds, 146
----- - on vegetation of Australia, 153
------ on fresh-water plants, 155
------ on insular plants, 157
Degradation of coast-rocks, 116
Denudation, rate of, 117
------ of oldest rocks, 125
Development of ancient forms, 136
Devonian system, 135
Dianthus, fertility of crosses, 106
Dirt on feet of birds, 146
Dispersal, means of, 144
------ during glacial periods, 147
Distribution, geographical, 140
----- means of, 144
Disuse, effects of, under nature, 59
Divergence of character, 51
Division, physiological, of labour, 52
Dogs, hairless, with imperfect teeth, 1
------ descended from several wild stocks, 15
------ domestic instincts of, 90
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INDEX
Dogs, inherited civilisation of, 90
------ fertility of breeds together, 105
------of crosses, 110-11
------ proportions of, when young, 178
Domestication, variation under, 11
Downing, Mr., on fruit trees in America, 41
Downs, North and South, 117
Dragon-flies, intestines of, 80
Drift timber, 146
Driver-ant, 100
Drones killed by other bees, 85
Duck, domestic, wings of, reduced, 12
------ logger-headed, 77
Duckweed, 155
Dugong, affinities of, 166
Dung-beetles with deficient tarsi, 60
Dyticus, 155
Earl, Mr. W., on the Malay Archipelago, 159
Ears, drooping, in domestic animals, 12
------ rudimentary, 181
Earth, seeds in roots of trees, 146
Eciton, 99
Economy of organisation, 64
.Edentata, teeth and hair, 63
------ fossil species of, 138
Edwards, Milne, on physiological divisions of
labour, 52
------ on gradations of structure, 82
------ on embryological characters, 168
Eggs, young birds escaping from. 42
Electric organs, 82
•Elephant, rate of increase, 33
------ of glacial period, 62
Embryology, 175
Existence, struggle for, 31
------ conditions of, 87
Extinction, as bearing on natural selection, 50
------ of domestic, varieties, 51
—— 129
Eye, structure of, 79
------ correction for aberration, 85
Eyes reduced in moles, 60
Fishes, ganoid, now confined to fresh water, 49
• ----- electric organs of, 82
------ ganoid, living in fresh water, 131
------of southern hemisphere, 151
Flight, powers of, how acquired, 78
Flowers, structure of, in relation to crossing, 43
—— of composite and umbelliferae, 63
Forbes, E., on colours of shells, 58
----- - on abrupt range of shells in depth, 75
----- - on poorness of palceontological collections
118
------on continuous succession of genera, 129
------ on continental extensions, 144
------ on distribution during glacial period, 148
------ on parallelism in time and space, 164
Forests, changes in, in America, 37
Formation, Devonian, 135
Formations, thickness of, in Britain, 116
----- - intermittent, 123
Formica rufescens, 92
----- -sanguinea, 92
------ flava, neuter of, ioo
Frena, ovigerous, of cirripedes, 81
Fresh-water productions, dispersal of, 154
Fries on species in large genera being closely
allied to other speoies, 30
Frigate-bird, 79
Frogs on islands, 158
Fruit-trees, gradual improvement of, 22
------ in United States, 41
------varieties of, acclimatised in United States, 62
Fuci, crossed, 107
Fur, thicker in cold climates, 59
Furze, 176
Galapagos Archipelago, birds of, 157
------productions of, 160-1
Galeopithecus, 77
Game, increase of, checked by vermin, 34.-5
Gartner on sterility of hybrids, 102-3
------ on reciprocal crosses, 107
------ on crossed maize and verbascum, hi
• ----- on comparison of hybrids and mongrels, 112
Geese, fertility when crossed, 105
Fabre, M., on parasitic sphex, 92
------upland, 79
Falconer, Dr., on naturalisation of plants in
Genealogy important in classification, 168
India, 33
Geoffroy St. Hilaire on balancement, 64
------ on fossil crocodile, 127
■----- on homologous organs, 174
------ on elephantsand mastodons, 136
------Isidore, on variability of repeated parts, 65
•---- - and Cautley on mammals of sub-Himalavan I ------ on correlation in monstrosities, 12-13
beds, 138
.
------on correlation, 63
Falkland Island, wolf of, 158
------ on variable parts being often monstrous, 67
Geographical distribution, 140
Faults, 117
Faunas, marine, 141
Geography, ancient, 194
Fear, instinctive, in birds, 89
Geology, future progress of, 194
Feet of birds, young molluscs adhering to, 155
------imperfection of the record, 114
Fertility of hybrids, 103
Giraffe, tail of, 82
----- from slight changes in conditions, no
Glacial period, 147
------ of crossed varieties, no
Gmelin on distribution, 148
Fir-trees destroyed by cattle, 36
Gnathod on, fossil, 149
------pollen of, 85
Godwin-Austen, Mr., on the Malay Archi
Fish, flying, 78
pelago, 122
------ teleostean, sudden appearance of, 124
Goethe on compensation of growth, 64
■----- eating seeds, 146, 156
Gooseberry, grafts of, 108
------ fresh-water, distribution of, 154
Gould, Dr. A., on land-shells, 159
�INDEX
Gould, Mr., on colours of birds, 59
------ on birds of the Galapagos, 160
------ on distribution of genera of birds, 162
Gourds, crossed, in
Grafts, capacity of, 108
Grasses, varieties of, 51-2
Gray, Dr. Asa, on trees of United States, 46
:----- on naturalised plants in the United States, 52
— on rarity of intermediate varieties, 75
—— on Alpine plants, 148
—- Dr. J. E., on striped mule, 71
Grebe, 79
Groups, aberrant, 172
Grouse, colours of, 41
—— red, a doubtful species, 27
Growth, compensation of, 64
------ correlation of, in domestic products, 12-13
------ correlation of, 63
Habit, effect of, under domestication, 12
------ effect of, under nature, 59
------ diversified, of same species, 78
Hair and teeth, correlated, 63
Harcourt, Mr. E. V., on the birds of Madeira, 157
Hartung, M., on boulders in the Azores, 147
Hazel-nuts, 145
Hearne on habits of bears, 78
Heath, changes in vegetation, 36
Heer, O., on plants of Madeira, 49
Helix pomatia, 160
Helosciadium, 145
Hemionus, striped, 71
Herbert, W., on struggle for existence, 32
—— on sterility of hybrids, 103
Hermaphrodites crossing, 45
Heron eating seed, 156
Heron, Sir R., on peacocks, 42
Heusinger on white animals not poisoned by
certain plants, 13
Hewitt, Mr., on sterility of first crosses, 109
Himalaya, glaciers of, 150
------ plants of, 151
Hippeastrum, 104
Holly-trees, sexes of, 44
Hollyhock, varieties of, crossed, 111-2
Hooker, Dr., on trees of New Zealand, 46
—*— on-acclimatisation of Himalayan trees, 62
■ ----- on flowers of umbelliferce, 63
-—- on glaciers of Himalaya, 150
■ ----- on alga; of New Zealand, 151
---- - on vegetation atthebaseof the Himalaya, 152.
■—— on plants of Tierra del Fuego, 131-2
------ on Australian plants, 151, 160
----- - on relations of flora of South America, 152-3
—on flora of the Antarctic lands, 153, 160
------ on the plants of the Galapagos, 158, 160
Hooks on bamboos, 83
------ to seeds on islands, 158
Horner, Mr., on the antiquity of Egyptians, 15
Horns, rudimentary, 181
Horse, fossil, in La Plata, 129
Horses destroyed by flies in Paraguay, 36
——striped, 71
------ proportions of, when young, 178
Horticulturists, selection applied by, 20-1
199
Huber on cells of bees, 96
------P., on reason blended with instinct, 88 '
------ on habitual nature of instincts, 88
------ on slave-making ants, 92
----- - on Melipona domestica, 94
Humble-bees, cells of, 94
Hunter, J., on secondary sexual characters, 66
Hutton, Captain, on crossed geese, 105
Huxley, Prof., on structure ofhermaphrodites,'47
------ on embryological succession, 137
----- - on homologous organs, 175
------ on the development of aphis, 177
Hybrids and mongrels compared, 112
Hybridism, 112
Hydra, structure of, 80
Ibla, 65
Icebergs transporting seeds, 147
Increase, rate of, 33
Individuals, numbers favourable to selection, 47
• ----- many, whether simultaneously created, 144
Inheritance, laws of, 13
------at corresponding ages, 13, 41 _
Insects, colour of, fitted for habitations, 41
----- sea-side, colours of, 59
------ blind in caves, 61
------luminous, 82
• ----- neuter, 98
Instinct, 87
Instincts, domestic, 90
Intercrossing, advantages of, 45
Islands, oceanic, 156
Isolation favourable to selection, 48
Japan, productions of, 150
Java, plants of, 151
Jones, Mr. J. M., on the birds of Bermuda, 157
Jussieu on classification, 167
•
Kentucky, caves of, 60-1
ICerguelen-land, flora of, 153s *6o
Kidney-bean, acclimatisation of, 62
Kidneys of birds, 63
Kirby on tarsi deficient in beetles, 60
Knight, Andrew, on cause of variation, 11
Kolreuter on the barberry, 46
------ on sterility of hybrids, 102
------on reciprocal crosses, 107
------ on crossed varieties of nicotiana, 112
------on crossing male and hermaphrodite flowers,
180
Lamarck, on adaptive characters, 171
Land-shells, distribution of, 159
------ of Madeira, naturalised, 162
Languages, classification of, 169
Lapse, great, of time, 116
Larvte, 175
Laurel, nectar secreted by the leaves, 43
Laws of variation, 58
Leech, varieties of, 37
Leguminosm, nectar secreted by glands, 43
Lepidosiren, 49, 134
Life, struggle for, 31
Lingula, Silurian, 125
�200
INDEX
Linnaeus, aphorism of, 167
Lion, mane of, 42
------ young of, striped, 176
Lobelia fulgens, 36
Lobelia, sterility of crosses, 104
Loess of the Rhine, 155
Lowness ofstructure connected with variability, 65
Lowness, related to wide distribution, 163
Lubbock, Mr., on the nerves of coccus, 26
Lucas, Dr. P., on inheritance, 13
------ on resemblance of child to parent, 113
Lund and Clausen on fossils of Brazil, 137
Lyell, Sir C., on the struggle for existence, 32
------ on modern changes of the earth, 45
----- - on measure of denudation, 116
------- on a carboniferous land-shell, 118
------ on strata beneath Silurian system, 125
• ---- - on the imperfection of the geological record,
>•
126
------ on the appearance of species, 127
------ on Barrande’s colonies, 128
------ on tertiary formations of Europe and North
America, 131
------ on parallelism of tertiary formations, 133
------on transport of seeds by icebergs, 147
------- on great alternations of climate, 154
------ on the distribution of fresh-water shells, i55
• ----- on land-shells of Madeira, 162
Lyell and Dawson on fossilised trees in Nova
Scotia, 121
MACLEAY on analogical characters, 171
Madeira, plants of, 49
------ beetles of, wingless, 60
----- - fossil land-shells of, 137
------ birds of, 157
Magpie tame in Norway, 89
Maize, crossed, ill
Malay Archipelago compared with Europe, 122
------ mammals of, 159
Malpighiaceae, 167
Mammie, rudimentary, 180
Mammals, fossil, in secondary formation, 124
------ insular, 158
Man, origin of races of, 84
Manatee, rudimentary nails of, 181
Marsupials of Australia, 52-3
----- - fossil species of, 138
Martens, M., experiment on seeds, 145
Martin, Mr. W. C., on striped mules, 71
Matteucci, on the electric organs of rays, 81
Matthiola, reciprocal crosses of, 107
Means of dispersal, 144
Melipona domestica, 94
Metamorphism of oldest rocks, 125
Mice destroying bees, 37
------ acclimatisation of, 62
Migration, bears on first appearance of fossils, 122
Miller, Prof., on the cells of bees, 95
Mirabilis, crosses of, 107
Missel-thrush, 38
Mistletoe, complex relations of, 8
Mississippi, rate of deposition at mouth, 116
Mocking thrush of the Galapagos, 162
Modification of species, how far applicable, 192
Moles, blind, 60
Mongrels, fertility and sterility of, no
------ and hybrids compared, 112
Monkeys, fossil, 124
Monochan thus, 170
Mons, Van, on the origin of fruit-trees, 19
Moquin-Tandon on sea-side plants, 59
Morphology, 157
Mozart, musical powers of, 88
Mud, seeds in, 155-6
Mules, striped, 71
Muller, Dr. F., on Alpine Australian plants, 151
Murchison, Sir R., on the formations of Russia, 119
----- - on azoic formations, 125
----- - on extinction, 129
Mustela vision, 77
Myanthus, 170
Myrmecocystus, 99
Myrmica, eyes of, 100
Nails, rudimentary, 181
Natural history, future progress of, 193
------ selection, 39
----- - system, 166
Naturalisation of forms distinct from the indi
genous species, 52
----- - in New Zealand, 85
Nautilus, Silurian, 125
Nectar of plants, 43
Nectaries, how formed, 43
Nelumbium luteum, 156
Nests, variation in, 89
Neuter insects, 98
Newman, Mr., on humble bees, 37
New Zealand, productions of, not perfect, 85
------ naturalised products of, 137
------ fossil birds of, 137
------ glacial action in, 150
------ crustaceans of, 151
----- - algce of, 151
------ number of plants of, 157
------ flora of, 160
Nicotiana, crossed varieties of, 112
----- - certain species very sterile, 106
Noble, Mr., on fertility of rhododendron, 104
Nodules, phosphatic, in azoic rocks, 125
Oak, varieties of, 28
Onites apelles, 60
Orchis, pollen of, 82
Organs of extreme perfection, 79
----- electric, of fishes, 82
----- - of little importance, 82
----- homologous, 174
------rudiments of, and nascent, i3o
Ornithorhynchus, 49, 167
Ostrich not capable of flight, 60
----- habit of laying eggs together, 91
------American, two species of, 141
Otter, habits of, how acquired, 77
Ouzel, water, 79
Owen, Prof., on birds not flying, 59
------ on vegetative repetition, 65
------ on variable length of arms in ourang-outang,
65
�INDEX
Owen, Prof., on the swim-bladder of fishes, 81
— on electric organs, 82
—-— on fossil horse of La Plata, 129
—— on relations of ruminants and pachyderms,
134
------on fossil birds of New Zealand, 137
------ on succession of types, 137
------ on affinities of the dugong, 166
------ on homologous organs, 174
------ on the metamorphosis of cephalopods and
spiders, 177
Pacific Ocean, faunas of, 141
Paley on no organ formed to give pain, 85
Pallas on the fertility of the wild stocks of
domestic animals, 105
Paraguay, cattle destroyed by flies, 36
Parasites, 91
Partridge, dirt on feet, 146
Parts greatly developed, variable, 65
——~ degrees of utility of, 85
Pares major, 78
Passiflora, 104
Peaches in United.States, 41
Pear, grafts of, 108
Pelargonium, flowers of, 64
------ sterility of, 104
Pelvis of women, 63
Peloria, 64
Period, glacial, 147
Petrels, habits of, 78
Phasianus, fertility of hybrids, 105
Pheasant, young, wild, 90
Philippi on tertiary species in Sicily, 127
Pictet, Prof., on groups of species suddenly
appearing, 123-4
------on rate of organic change, 127
----- - on continuous succession of genera, 129
----- - on close alliance of fossils in consecutive
formations, 136
—- on embryological succession,' 137
Pierce, Mr., on varieties of wolves, 43
Pigeons with feathered feet and skin between
toes, 13
— breeds described, and origin of, 16-17
------ breeds of, how produced, 23-4
—— tumbler, not being able to get out of egg, 42
reverting to blue colour, 69
—— instinct of tumbling, 90
. carriers, killed by hawks, 146
------ young of, 178
Pistil, rudimentary, 180
Plants, poisonous, not affecting certain coloured
animals, 13
—— selection applied to, 21
----- - gradual improvement of, 22
------not improved in barbarous countries, 23
----- - destroyed by insects, 34
----- - in midst of range, have to struggle with
other plants, 38
------ nectar of, 43
------fleshy, on sea-shores, 59
——- fresh-water, distribution of, 155
— low in scale, widely distributed, 163
Plumage, laws of change in sexes of birds, 42
201
Plums in the United States, 41
Pointer dog, origin of, 22
------ habits of, 90
Poison not affecting certain coloured animals, 13
----- - similar effects of, on animals and plants, 193
Pollen of fir-trees, 85
Poole, Col., on striped hemionus, 71
Potamogeton, 156
Prestwich, Mr., on English and French eocene
formations, 133
Primrose, 27
------ sterility of, 103
Primula, varieties of, 27
Proteolepas, 65
Proteus, 61
Psychology, future progress of, 194
Quagga, striped, 71
Quince, grafts of, 108
Rabbit, disposition of young, 90
Races, domestic, characters of, 14-16
Race-horses, Arab, 22
----- - English, 144
Ramond on plants of Pyrenees, 148
Ramsay, Prof., on thickness of the British for
mations, 116
------ on faults, 117
Ratio of increase, 33
Rats, supplanting each other, 38
------ acclimatisation of, 62
------ blind, in cave, 61
Rattle-snake, 85
Reason and instinct, 87
Recapitulation, general, 183
Reciprocity of crosses, 107
Record, geological, imperfect, 114
Rengger on flies destroying cattle, 36
Reproduction, rate of, 33
Resemblance to parents in mongrels and hybrids,
112
Reversion, law of inheritance, 13-14
------ in pigeons to blue colour, 69
Rhododendron, sterility of, 104
Richard, Prof., on Aspicarpa, 167
Richardson, Sir J., on structure of squirrels, 77
------ on fishes of the southern hemisphere, 151
Robinia, grafts of, 108
Rodents, blind, 60
Rudimentary organs, 180
Rudiments important for classification, 167
Sagaret on grafts, 108
Salmon, males fighting, and hooked jaws of, 42
Salt-water, how far injurious to seeds, 145
Saurophagus sulphuratus, 78
Schiodte on blind insects, 61
Schlegel on snakes, 63
Sea-water, how far injurious to seeds, 145
Sebright, Sir J., on crossed animals, 16
------ on selection of pigeons, 20
Sedgwick, Prof., on groups of species suddenly
appearing, 123
Seedlings destroyed by insects, 34
Seeds, nutriment in, 38
------winged, 64
�202
INDEX
Seeds, power of, resisting salt-water, 145
Strata, thickness of, in Britain, 116
------ in crops and intestines of birds, 146
Stripes on horses, 71
------ eaten by fish, 146, 156
Structure, degrees of utility of, 85
------ in mud, 155
Struggle for existence, 32
,------ hooked, on islands, 158
Succession, geological, 127
Selection of domestic products, 19
Succession of types in same areas, 137
------principle not of recent origin, 21
Swallow, one species supplanting another, 38
------ unconscious, 21
Swim-bladder, 81
------ natural, 39
System, natural, 166
------sexual, 42
------ natural circumstances favourable to, 47
Tail of giraffe, 82
Sexes, relations of, 42
• ----- - of aquatic animals, 83
Sexual characters variable, 6S
------ rudimentary, 181
------- selection, 42
Tarsi deficient, 60
Sheep, merino, their selection, 20
Tausch on umbelliferous flowers, 64
----- - two sub-breeds, unintentionally produced,
Teeth and hair correlated, 63
22
- ---- - embryonic, traces of, in birds, 180
------ mountain, varieties of, 37
• ------ rudimentary, in embryonic calf, 180, 191
Shells, colours of, 59
Tegetmeier, Mr., on cells of bees, 95, 97
------ littoral, seldom embedded, 118
Temminck on distribution aiding classification,
------- fresh-water, dispersal of, 154
168
------ of Madeira, 157
Thouin on grafts, 108
----- - land, distribution of, 159
Thrush, aquatic species of, 79
Silene, fertility of crosses, 106
------ mocking, of the Galapagos, 162
Silliman, Prof., on blind rat, 61
------ young of, spotted, 176
Skulls of young mammals, 83
------ nest of, 101
Slave-making instinct, 92
Thuret, M., on crossed fucT7io7
Smith, Col. Hamilton, on striped horses, 71
Thwaites, Mr., on acclimatisation, 62
------ Mr. Fred., on slave-making ants, 92
Tierra del Fuego, dogs of, 90
------- on neuter ants, 100
1 -------plants of, 152-3
------- Mr., of Jordan Hill, on the degradation of
Timber-drift, 146
coast-rocks, 116
Time, lapse of, 116
Snap-dragon, 70
Titmouse, 78
Somerville, Lord, on selection of sheep, 20
Toads on islands, 158
Sorbus, grafts of, 108
Tobacco, crossed varieties of, 112
Spaniel, King Charles’s breed, 22
Tomes, Mr., on the distribution of bats, 159
Species, polymorphic, 26
Transitions in varieties rare, 74
------ common, variable, 29
Trees on islands belong to peculiar orders, 158
----- - in large genera variable, 29
------ - with separated sexes, 46
------ groups of, suddenly appearing, 123, 125
Trifolium pratense, 37, 44
■----- - incarnatum, 44
------ beneath Silurian formations, 125
------ successively appearing, 127
Trigonia, 131
’
------ changing simultaneously throughout the
Trilobites, 125
world, 131
• ----- - sudden extinction of, 131
Spencer, Lord, on increase in size of cattle, 22
Troglodytes, 101
Sphex, parasitic, 91-2
Tucutucu, blind, 60
Tumbler pigeons, habits of, hereditary, 90
Spiders, development of, 177
Spitz-dog crossed with fox, 110-11
------ young of, 178
. Turkey-cock, brush of hair on breast, 43
Sports in plants, 12
Turkey, naked skin on head, 83
Sprengel, C. C., on crossing, 46
------ young, wild, 90
• ---- - on ray-florets, 64
Turnip and cabbage, analogous variations of,
Squirrels, gradations in structure, 77
69
Staffordshire heath, changes in, 36
Type, unity of, 87
Stag-beetles, fighting, 42
Types, succession of, in same areas, 137
Sterility from changed conditions of life, 12
------ of hybrids, 102
Udders enlarged by use, 12
------laws of, 105
------ rudimentary, 180
• ----- causes of, 109
Ulex, young leaves of, 176
------from unfavourable conditions, 109
Umbelliferae, outer and inner florets of, 63
----- - of certain varieties, III
St. Helena, productions of, 157
Unity of type, 87
St. Hilaire, Aug., on classification, 167
Use, effects of, under domestication, 12
St.John, Mr. , on habits of cats, 43
------ effects of, in a state of nature, 59
Sting of bees, 85
Utility, how far important in the construction of
Stocks, aboriginal, of domestic animals, 15
each part, 84
�INDEX
Valenciennes on fresh-water fish, 155
Variability of mongrels and hybrids, 112
Variation under domestication, 11
------ caused by reproductive system being affected
by conditions of life, 11
------ under nature, 25
----- - laws of, 58
Variations appear at corresponding ages, 13, 42
------ analogous in distinct species, 69
Varieties natural, 25
----- - struggle between, 37
—— domestic, extinction of, 51
•----- - transitional, rarity of, 74
----- - when crossed, fertile, no
------ when crossed, sterile, ill
------ classification of, 169
Verbascum, sterility of, 104
—— varieties of, crossed, in
Verneuil, M. de, on the succession of species,
132
Viola tricolor, 37
Volcanic islands, denudation of, 117
Vulture, naked skin on head, 83
Wading-birds, 155
Wallace, Mr., on origin of species, 7
—■ — on law of geographical distribution, 144
------ on the Malay Archipelago, 159
Wasp, sting of, 85
Water, fresh, productions of, 154
Water-hen, 79
Waterhouse, Mr., on Australian marsupials, 53
------ on greatly developed parts being variable,
65
------ on the cells of bees, 94
------ on general affinities, 172
Water-ouzel, 79
Watson, Mr. H. C., on range of varieties of
British plants, 27
------on acclimatisation, 62
----- - on rarity of intermediate varieties, 75
203
Watson, Mr. H. C., on flora of Azores, 147
—— on Alpine plants, 148, 152
Weald, denudation of, 117
Web of feet in water-birds, 79
West Indian islands, mammals of, 159
Westwood on species in large genera being
closely allied to others, 30
•—— on the tarsi of Engidce, 68
------- on the antennae of hymenopterous insects,
l67
Wheat, varieties of, 51-2
White Mountains, flora of, 147
Wings, reduction of size, 59-60
Wings of insects homologous with branchile, 81
------ rudimentary, in insects, 180
Wolf crossed with dog, 90
------ of Falkland Isles, 158
Wollaston, Mr., on varieties of insects, 27
----- - on fossil varieties of land-shells in Madeira,
28
------ on colours of insects on sea-shore, 59
------ on wingless beetles, 60
------ on rariety of intermediate varieties, 75
------ on insular insects, 157
------ on land-shells of Madeira, naturalised, 162
Wolves, varieties of, 43
Woodpecker, habits of, 79
----- - green colour of, 83
Woodward, Mr., on the duration of specific
forms, 120
—— on the continuous succession of genera, 129
----- - on the succession of types, 137
World, species changing simultaneously through
out; 131
Wrens, nest of, 101
Youatt, Mr., on selection, 20
—-— on sub-breeds of sheep, 22
•----- - on rudimentary horns in young cattle, 181
Zebra, stripes on, 71
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or: The preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life
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Darwin, Charles [1809-1882]
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 208 p. ; 22 cm.
Series title: R.P.A. Cheap Reprints
Series number: No. 11
Notes: Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Includes index. First published 1859-60. Reprint of 1st ed. "Mr John Murray, the original publisher, is now issuing the final edition in cloth binding...Students and all admirers of Darwin should compare the first and last editions...in order to fully understand the development of the doctrine of Evolution."--Publishers' note. Publisher's advertisements (RPA, Longmans, Grant Richards) at the end (p. 204-208). Printed in double columns.
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Watts & Co.
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1903
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N186
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Evolution
Science
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or: The preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
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English
Evolution
Evolution (Biology)
Natural Selection
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1
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NATIONAL SEOUL/
Rome
WTOTY
Reason
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A REPLY TO
MANNING.
CARDINAL
BY
COL. R. G. INGERSOLL.
Reprinted from
THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW,
October and November, 1888.
PRICE THREEPENCE.
London:
1 THE FREETHOUGHT PUBLISHING COMPANY, LTD.,
2 Newcastle Street, Farringdgn Street, E.C.
1903.
I
41
�PRINTED BY
THE FREETHOUGHT PUBLISHING COMPANY, LTD,,
2 NEWCASTLE-STREET, FARRINGDON-STREET, LONDON, E.C.
�ROME OR REASON?
A REPLY TO CARDINAL MANNING.
PART I.
Superstition “ has ears more deaf than adders to the voice oj
any true, decision."
Cardinal Manning has stated the claims of the Roman
Catholic Church with great clearness, and apparently
without reserve. The age, position, and learning of this
man give a certain weight to his words, apart from their
worth. He represents the oldest of the Christian
Churches. The questions involved are among the most
important that can engage the human mind. No one
having the slightest regard for that superb thing known
as intellectual honesty will avoid the issues tendered, or
seek in any way to gain a victory over truth.
Without candor, discussion, in the highest sense, is
impossible. All have the same interest, whether they
know it or not, in the establishment of facts. All have
the same to gain, the same to lose. He loads the dice
against himself who scores a point against the right.
Absolute honesty is to the intellectual perception what
light is to the eyes. Prejudice and passion cloud the
mind. In each disputant should be blended the advocate
and judge.
In this spirit, having in view only the ascertainment
of the truth, let us examine the arguments, or rather the
statements and conclusions, of Cardinal Manning.
The proposition is that “ The Church itself, by its
marvellous propagation, its eminent sanctity, its inex
haustible fruitfulness in all good things, its catholic
�4
ROME OR REASON ?
unity and invincible stability, is a vast and perpetu?
motive of credibility, and an irrefragable witness of its
own divine legation.”
The reasons given as supporting this proposition are:-—
That the Catholic Church interpenetrates all the
nations of the civilised world; that it is extra-national
and independent in a supernational unity ; that it is the
same in every place; that it speaks all the languages in
the civilised world ; that it is obedient to one head ; that
as many as seven hundred bishops have knelt before the
Pope ; that pilgrims from all nations have brought gifts
to Rome, and that all these things set forth in the most
self-evident way the unity and universality of the Roman
Church.
It is also asserted that “ men see the Head of the
Church year by year speaking to the nations of the
world, treating with empires, republics, and govern
ments ” that “ there is no other man on earth that can
so bear himself,” and that “ neither from Canterbury nor
from Constantinople can such a voice go forth to which
rulers and people listen.”
It is also claimed that the Catholic Church has
enlightened and purified the world ; that it has given us
the peace and purity of domestic life; that it has
destroyed idolatry and demonology; that it gave us a
body of law from a higher source than man ; that it has
produced the civilisation of Christendom ; that the popes
were the greatest of statesmen and rulers; that celibacy
is better than marriage, and that the revolutions and
reformations of the last three hundred years have been
destructive and calamitous.
We will examine these assertions as well as some
others.
No one will dispute that the Catholic Church is the
best witness of its own existence. The same is true of
everything that exists ; of every Church, great and
small; of every man, and of every insect.
But it is contended that the marvellous growth or
propagation of the Church is evidence of its divine
origin. Can it be said that success is supernatural ?
All success in this world is relative. Majorities are not
�ROME OR REASON ?
5
necessarily right. If anything is known—if anything
can be known—we are sure that very large bodies of
men have frequently been wrong. We believe in what
is called the progress of mankind. Progress, for the
most part, consists in finding new truths and getting rid
of old errors—that is to say, getting nearer and nearer
in harmony with the facts of nature, seeing with greater
clearness the conditions of well-being.
There is no nation in which a majority leads the way.
In the progress of mankind, the few have been the nearest
right. There have been centuries in which the light
seemed to emanate only from a handful of men, while
the rest of the world was enveloped in darkness. Some
great man leads the way—he becomes the morning star,
the prophet of a coming day. Afterwards, many millions
accept his views. But there are still heights above and
beyond; there are other pioneers, and the old day, in
comparison with the new, becomes a night. So, we cannot
say that success demonstrates either divine origin or
supernatural aid.
We know, if we know anything, that wisdom has often
been trampled beneath the feet of the multitude. We
know that the torch of science has been blown out by
the breath of the hydra-headed. We know that the whole
intellectual heaven has been darkened again. The truth
or falsity of a proposition cannot be determined by
ascertaining the number of those who assert, or of those
who deny.
If the marvellous propagation of the Catholic Church
proves its divine origin, what shall we say of the mar
vellous propagation of Mohammedanism ?
Nothing can be clearer than that Christianity arose out
of the ruins of the Roman Empire—-that is to say, the
ruins of Paganism. And it is equally clear that Moham
medanism arose out of the wreck and ruin of Catholicism.
After Mohammed came upon the stage, “ Christianity
was for ever expelled from its most glorious seat—from
Palestine, the scene of its most sacred recollections ; from
Asia Minor, that of its first churches; from Egypt,
whence issued the great doctrine of Trinitarian Ortho
doxy, and from Carthage, who imposed her belief on
�6
ROME OR REASON ?
Europe.” Before that time “the ecclesiastical chiefs of
Rome, of Constantinople, and of Alexandria were
engaged in a desperate struggle for supremacy, carrying
out their purposes by weapons and in ways revolting to
the conscience of man. Bishops were concerned in
assassinations, poisonings, adulteries, blindings, riots,
treasons, civil war. Patriarchs and primates were
excommunicating and anathematising one another in
their rivalries for earthly power ; bribing eunuchs with
gold and courtesans and royal females with concessions
of episcopal love. Among legions of monks who carried
terror into the imperial armies and riot into the great
cities arose hideous clamors for theological dogmas, but
never a voice for intellectual liberty or the outraged
rights of man.
“ Under these circumstances, amid these atrocities and
crimes, Mohammed arose, and raised his own nation from
Fetichism, the adoration of the meteoric stone, and from
the basest idol worship, and irrevocably wrenched from
Christianity more than half—and that by far the best
half—of her possessions, since it included the Holy Land,
the birth-place of the Christian faith, and Africa, which
had imparted to it its Latin form ; and now, after a lapse
of more than a thousand years, that continent, and a very
large part of Asia, remain permanently attached to the
Arabian doctrine.”
It may be interesting in this connection to say that the
Mohammedan now proves the divine mission of his
Apostle by appealing to the marvellous propagation of
the faith. If the argument is good in the mouth of a
Catholic, is it not good in the mouth of a Moslem ? Let
us see if it is not better.
According to Cardinal Manning, the Catholic Church
triumphed only over the institutions of men, triumphed
only over religions that had been established by men, by
wicked and ignorant men. But Mohammed triumphed
not only over the religions of men, but over the religion
of God. This ignorant driver of camels, this poor,
unknown, unlettered boy, unassisted by God, unen
lightened by supernatural means, drove the armies of the
true cross before him as the winter’s storm drives
�ROME OR REASON ?
7
withered leaves. At his name, priests, bishops, and
cardinals fled with white faces, popes trembled, and the
armies of God, fighting for the true faith, were conquered
on a thousand fields.
If the success of a church proves its divinity, and after
that another church arises and defeats the first, what does
that prove ?
Let us put this question in a milder form : Suppose
the second church lives and flourishes in spite of the
first, what does that prove ?
As a matter of fact, however, no Church rises with
everything against it. Something is favorable to it, or
it could not exist. If it succeeds and grows, it is abso
lutely certain that the conditions are favorable. If it
spreads rapidly, it simply shows that the conditions are
exceedingly favorable, and that the forces in opposition
are weak and easily overcome.
Here, in my own country, within a few years, has
arisen a new religion. Its foundations were laid in an
intelligent community, having had the advantages of
what is known as modern civilisation. Yet this new
faith—founded on the grossest absurdities, as gross as
we find in the Scriptures—in spite of all opposition
began to grow, and kept growing. It was subjected to
persecution, and the persecution increased its strength.
It was driven from State to State by the believers in
universal love, until it left what was called civilisation,
crossed the wide plains, and took up its abode on the
shores of the Great Salt Lake. It continued to grow.
Its founder, as he declared, had frequent conversations
with God, and received directions from that source.
Hundreds of miracles were performed, multitudes upon
the desert were miraculously fed, the sick were cured,
the dead were raised, and the Mormon Church continued
to grow, until now, less than half a century after the
death of its founder, there are several hundred thousand
believers in the new faith.
Do you think that men enough could join this Church
to prove the truth of its creed ?
Joseph Smith said that he found certain golden plates
that had been buried for many generations, and upon
�8
ROME OR REASON ?
these plates, in some unknown language, had been
engraved this new revelation, and I think he insisted
that by the use of miraculous mirrors this language was
translated. If there should be Mormon bishops in the
countries of the world eighteen hundred years from now,
do you think a cardinal of that faith could prove the
truth of the golden plates simply by the fact that the
faith had spread and that seven hundred bishops had
knelt before the head of that Church ?
It seems to me that a “supernatural” religion—that
is to say, a religion that is claimed to have been divinely
founded and to be authenticated by miracle—is much
easier to establish among an ignorant people than any
other, and the more ignorant the people, the easier such
a religion could be established. The reason for this is
plain. All ignorant tribes, all savage men, believe in
the miraculous, in the supernatural. The conception
of uniformity, of what may be called the eternal con
sistency of nature, is an idea far above their compre
hension. They are forced to think in accordance with
their minds, and as a consequence they account for all
phenomena by the acts of superior beings—that is to
say, by the supernatural. In other words, that religion
having most in common with the savage, having most
that was satisfactory to his mind, or to his lack of mind,
would stand the best chance of success.
It is probably safe to say that at one time, or during
one phase of the development of man, everything was
miraculous. After a time, the mind slowly developing,
certain phenomena, always happening under like con
ditions, were called “ natural,” and none suspected any
special interference. The domain of the miraculous
grew less and less—the domain of the natural larger ;
that is to say, the common became the natural, but the
uncommon was still regarded as the miraculous. I he
rising and setting of the sun ceased to excite the wonder
of mankind—there was no miracle about that; but an
eclipse of the sun was miraculous. Men did not then
know that eclipses are periodical, that they happen with
the same certainty as the sun rises. It took many
observations through many generations to arrive at this
�ROME OR REASON ?
(J
conclusion. Ordinary rains became “ natural,” floods
remained “ miraculous.”
But it can all be summed up in this: The average
man regards the common as natural, the uncommon as
supernatural. The educated man—and by that I mean
the developed man—is satisfied that all phenomena are
natural, and that the supernatural does not and cannot
exist.
As a rule, an individual is egotistic in the proportion
that he lacks intelligence. The same is true of nations
and races. The barbarian is egotistic enough to suppose
that an Infinite Being is constantly doing something, or
failing to do something, on his account. But as man
rises in the scale of civilisation, as he becomes really
great, he comes to the conclusion that nothing in Nature
happens on his account—that he is hardly great enough
to disturb the motions of the planets.
Let us make an application of this : To me, the success
of Mormonism is no evidence of its truth, because it has
succeeded only with the superstitious. It has been
recruited from communities brutalised by other forms of
superstition. To me, the success of Mohammed does not
tend to show that he was right—for the reason that he
triumphed only over the ignorant, over the superstitious.
The same is true of the Catholic Church. Its seeds were
planted in darkness. It was accepted by the credulous,
by men incapable of reasoning upon such questions. It
did not, it has not, it cannot, triumph over the intellectual
world. To count its many millions does not tend to
prove the truth of its creed. On the contrary, a creed
that delights the credulous gives evidence against itself.
Questions of fact or philosophy cannot be settled
simply by numbers. There was a time when the Coper
nican system of astronomy had but few supporters—the
multitude being on the other side. There was a time
when the rotation of the earth was not believed by the
majority.
Let us press this idea further. There was a time when
Christianity was not in the majority, anywhere. Let us
suppose that the first Christian missionary had met a
prelate of the Pagan faith, and suppose this prelate had
�10
RoSiE OR REASON ?
used against the Christian missionary the Cardinal’s
argument—how could the missionary have answered if
the Cardinal’s argument is good?
But, after all, is the success of the Catholic Church a
marvel ? If this Church is of divine origin, if it has
been under the special care, protection, and guidance of
an Infinite Being, is not its failure far more wonderful
than its success ? For eighteen centuries it has perse
cuted and preached, and the salvation of the world is
still remote. This is the result, and it may be asked
whether it is worth while to try to convert the world to
Catholicism.
Are Catholics better than Protestants ? Are they nearer
honest, nearer just, more charitable ? Are Catholic
nations better than Protestant ?
Do the Catholic
nations move in the van of progress ? Within their
jurisdiction are life, liberty, and property safer than
anywhere else ? Is Spain the first nation of the world ?
Let me ask another question : Are Catholics or Pro
testants better than Freethinkers ? Has the Catholic
Church produced a greater man than Humboldt ? Has
the Protestant produced a greater than Darwin ? Was
not Emerson, so far as purity of life is concerned, the
equal to any true believer ? Was Pius IX., or any
other Vicar of Christ, superior to Abraham Lincoln ?
But it is claimed that the Catholic Church is universal,
and that its universality demonstrates its divine origin.
According to the Bible, the Apostles were ordered to
go into all the world to preach the gospel—yet not one of
them, nor one of their converts at any time, nor one of
the Vicars of God, for fifteen hundred years afterward,
knew of the existence of the Western Hemisphere.
During all that time, can it be said that the Catholic
Church was universal ? At the close of the fifteenth
century, there was one half of the world in which the
Catholic faith had never been preached, and in the other
half not one person in ten had ever heard of it, and of
those who had heard of it, not one in ten believed it.
Certainly the Catholic Church was not then universal.
Is it universal now ? What impression has Catholicism
made upon the many millions of China, of Japan, of
�ROME OR REASON ?
II
India, of Africa ? Can it truthfully be said that the
Catholic Church is now universal ? When any church
becomes universal, it will be the only church. There
cannot be two universal churches, neither can there be
one universal church and any other.
The Cardinal next tries to prove that the Catholic
Church is divine, “ by its eminent sanctity and its inex
haustible fruitfulness in all good things.”
And here let me admit that there are many millions of
good Catholics—that is, of good men and women who
are Catholics. It is unnecessary to charge universal
dishonesty or hypocrisy, for the reason that this would
be only a kind of personality. Many thousands of heroes
have died in defence of the faith, and millions of Catholics
have killed, and been killed, for the- sake of their religion.
And here it may be well enough to say that martyrdom
does not even tend to prove the truth of a religion. The
man who dies in flames, standing by what he believes to
be true, establishes, not the truth of what he believes,
but his sincerity.
Without calling in question the intentions of the
Catholic Church, we can ascertain whether it has been
“ inexhaustibly fruitful in all good things,” and whether
it has been “ eminent for its sanctity.”
In the first place, nothing can be better than goodness.
Nothing is more sacred, or can be more sacred, than the
well-being of man. All things that tend to increase or
preserve the happiness of the human race are good—
that is to say, they are sacred. All things that tend to
his unhappiness, are bad, no matter by whom they are
taught or done.
It is perfectly certain that the Catholic Church has
taught, and still teaches, that intellectual liberty is dan
gerous—that it should not be allowed. It was driven to
take this position because it had taken another. It
taught, and still teaches, that a certain belief is necessary
to salvation. It has always known that investigation
and inquiry led, or might lead, to doubt; that doubt leads,
or may lead, to heresy, and that heresy leads to hell. In
other words, the Catholic Church has something more
important than this world, more important than the well
�12
ROME OR REASON ?
being of man here. It regards this life as an oppor
tunity for joining that Church, for accepting that creed,
and for the saving of your soul.
If the Catholic Church is right in its premises, it is
right in its conclusion. If it is necessary to believe the
Catholic creed in order to obtain eternal joy, then, of
course, nothing else in this world is, comparatively
speaking, of the slightest importance. Consequently,
the Catholic Church has been, and still is, the enemy of
intellectual freedom, of investigation, of inquiry—in
other words, the enemy of progress in secular things.
The result of this was an effort to compel all men to
accept the belief necessary to salvation. This effort
naturally divided itself into persuasion and persecution.
It will be admitted that the good man is kind, merciful,
charitable, forgiving, and just. A Church must be
judged by the same standard. Has the Church been
merciful ? Has it been “ fruitful in the good things ” of
justice, charity, and forgiveness ? Can a good man,
believing a good doctrine, persecute for opinion’s sake ?
If the Church imprisons a man for the expression of an
honest opinion, is it not certain, either that the doctrine
of the Church is wrong or that the Church is bad ?
Both cannot be good. “ Sanctity ” without goodness is
impossible. Thousands of “ saints ” have been the most
malicious of the human race. If the history of the world
proves anything, it proves that the Catholic Church was
for many centuries the most merciless institution that
ever existed among men. I cannot believe that the
instruments of persecution were made and used by the
eminently good ; neither can I believe that honest people
were imprisoned, tortured, and burned at the stake by a
Church that was “ inexhaustibly fruitful in all good
things.”
And let me say here that I have no Protestant pre
judices against Catholicism, and have no Catholic
prejudices against Protestantism. I regard all religions
either without prejudice or with the same prejudice.
They were all, according to my belief, devised by men,
and all have for a foundation ignorance of this world
and fear of the next. All the gods have been made by
�ROME OR REASON ?
*3
men. They are all equally powerless and equally use
less. I like some of them better than I do others, for
the same reason that I admire some characters in fiction
more than I do others. I prefer Miranda to Caliban,
but have not the slightest idea that either of them existed.
So I prefer Jupiter to Jehovah, although perfectly satisfied
that both are myths. I believe myself to be in a frame
of mind to justly and fairly consider the claims of
different religions, believing as I do that all are wrong,
and admitting as I do that there is some good in all.
When one speaks of the “ inexhaustible fruitfulness in
all good things ” of the Catholic Church we remember
the horrors and atrocities of the Inquisition—the rewards
offered by the Roman Church for the capture and murder
of honest men. We remember the Dominican Order,
the members of which, upheld by the Vicar of Christ,
pursued the heretics like sleuth-hounds, through many
centuries.
The Church, “ inexhaustible in fruitfulness in all good
things,” not only imprisoned and branded and burned
the living, but violated the dead. It robbed graves, to
the end that it might convict corpses of heresy—to the
end that it might take from widows their portions and
from orphans their patrimony.
We remember the millions in the darkness of dungeons
-—the millions who perished by the sword-—the vast
multitudes destroyed in flames—those who were flayed
alive—those who were blinded—those whose tongues
were cut out—those into whose ears were poured molten
lead—those whose eyes were deprived of their lids—
those who were tortured and tormented in every way by
which pain could be inflicted and human nature over
come.
And we remember, too, the exultant cry of the Church
over the bodies of her victims : “ Their bodies were
burned here, but their souls are now tortured in hell.”
We remember that the Church, by treachery, bribery,
perjury, and the commission of every possible crime, got
possession and control of Christendom, and we know the
use that was made of this power—that it was used to
brutalise, degrade, stupefy, and “ sanctify ” the children
�14
ROME OR REASON ?
of men. We know also that the Vicars of Christ were
persecutors for opinion’s sake—that they sought to
destroy the liberty of thought through fear—that they
endeavored to make every brain a Bastille in which the
mind should be a convict—that they endeavored to make
every tongue a prisoner, watched by a familiar of the
Inquisition—and that they threatened punishment here,
imprisonment here, burnings here, and, in the name of
their God, eternal imprisonment and eternal burnings
hereafter.
We know, too, that the Catholic Church was, during
all the years of its power, the enemy of every science. It
preferred magic to medicine, relics to remedies, priests to
physicians. It thought more of astrologers than of
astronomers. It hated geologists, it persecuted the
chemist, and imprisoned the naturalist, and opposed
every discovery calculated to improve the condition of
mankind.
It is impossible to forget the persecutions of the Cathari,
the Albigenses, the Waldenses, the Hussites, the Hugue
nots, and of every sect that had the courage to think just
a little for itself. Think of a woman—the mother of a
family—taken from her children and burned, on account
of her view as to the three natures of Jesus Christ. Think
of the Catholic Church—an institution with a Divine
Founder, presided over by the agent of God—punishing
a woman for giving a cup of cold water to a fellow being
who had been anathematised. Think of this Church,
“ fruitful in all good things,” launching its curse at an
honest man—not only cursing him from the crown of
his head to the soles of his feet with a fiendish
particularity, but having at the same time the impudence
to call on God, and the Holy Ghost, and Jesus Christ,
and the. Virgin Mary, to join in the curse ; and to curse
him not only here, but for ever hereafter; calling upon
all the saints and upon all the redeemed to join in a
hallelujah of curses, so that earth and heaven should
reverberate with countless curses launched at a human
being simply for having expressed an honest thought.
This Church, so “fruitful in all good things,” invented
crimes that it might punish. This Church tried men for
�ROME OR REASON?
15
a “ suspicion of heresy ”—imprisoned them for the vice
of being suspected—stripped them of all they had on
earth and allowed them to rot in dungeons, because they
were guilty of the crime of having been suspected.
This was a part of the Canon Law.
It is too late to talk about the “ invincible stability ”
of the Catholic Church.
It was not invincible in the seventh, in the eighth, or
in the ninth centuries. It was not invincible in Germany
in Luther’s day. It was not invincible in the Low
Countries. It was not invincible in Scotland, or in
England. It was not invincible in France. It is not
invincible in Italy. It is not supreme in any intellectual
centre of the world. It does not triumph in Paris, or
Berlin ; it is not dominant in London, in England;
neither is it triumphant in the United States. It
has not within its fold the philosophers, the statesmen,
and the thinkers, who are the leaders of the human
race.
It is claimed that Catholicism “ interpenetrates all the
nations of the civilised world,” and that “ in some it
holds- the whole nation in its unity.”
I suppose the Catholic Church is more powerful in
Spain than in any other nation.
The history of this
nation demonstrates the result of Catholic supremacy,
the result of an acknowledgment by a people that a
religion is too sacred to be examined.
Without attempting in an article of this character to
point out the many causes that contributed to the adop
tion of Catholicism by the Spanish people, it is enough
to say that Spain, of all nations, has been and is the
most thoroughly Catholic, and the most thoroughly inter
penetrated and dominated by the spirit of the Church of
Rome.
Spain used the sword of the Church. In the name of
religion it endeavoured to conquer the infidel world. It
drove from its territory the Moors, not because they
were bad, not because they were idle and dishonest, but
because they were infidels. It expelled the Jews, not
because they were ignorant or vicious, but because they
were unbelievers. It drove out the Moriscoes, and
�16
ROME OR REASON ?
deliberately made outcasts of the intelligent, the industri
ous, the honest and the useful, because they were not
Catholics. It leaped like a wfild beast upon the Low
Countries, for the destruction of Protestantism.
It
covered the seas with its fleets, to destroy the intellec
tual liberty of man. And not only so—it established
the Inquisition within its borders. It imprisoned the
honest, it burned the noble, and succeeded after many
years of devotion to the true faith, in destroying the
industry, the intelligence, the usefulness, the genius, the
nobility and the wealth of a nation. It became a wreck,
a jest of the conquered, and excited the pity of its former
victims.
In this period of degradation, the Catholic Church
held “ the whole nation in its unity.”
At last Spain began to deviate from the path of the
Church. It made a treaty with an infidel power. In
1782 it became humble enough, and wise enough, to be
friends with Turkey. It made treaties with Tripoli and
Algiers and the Barbary States. It had become too
poor to ransom the prisoners taken by these powers. It
began to appreciate the fact that it could neither conquer
nor convert the world by the sword.
Spain has progressed in the arts and sciences, in all
that tends to enrich and ennoble a nation, in the pre
cise proportion that she has lost faith in the Catholic
Church. This may be said of every other nation in
Christendom. Torquemada is dead ; Castelar is alive.
The dungeons of the Inquisition are empty, and a little
light has penetrated the clouds and mists—not much,
but a little. Spain is not yet clothed and in her right
mind. A few years ago the cholera visited Madrid and
other cities. Physicians were mobbed. Processions of
saints carried the host through the streets for the pur
pose of staying the plague.
The streets were not
cleaned ; the sewers were filled. Filth and faith, old
partners, reigned supreme. The Church, “ eminent for
its sanctity,” stood in the light and cast its shadow on
the ignorant and the prostrate. The Church, in its
“ inexhaustible fruitfulness in all good things,” allowed
its children to perish through ignorance, and used the
�ROME OR REASON ?
I?
diseases it had produced as an instrument to further
enslave its votaries and its victims.
No one will deny that many of its priests exhibited
heroism of the highest order in visiting the sick and
administering what are called the consolations of religion
to the dying, and in burying the dead. It is necessary
neither to deny nor disparage the self-denial and good
ness of these men. But their religion did more than all
other causes to produce the very evils that called for the
exhibition of self-denial and heroism. One scientist in
control of Madrid could have prevented the plague. In
such cases, cleanliness is far better than “ godliness ” ;
science is superior to superstition ; drainage much better
than divinity; therapeutics more excellent than theology.
Goodness is not enough—intelligence is necessary. Faith
is not sufficient, creeds are helpless, and prayers fruitless.
It is admitted that the Catholic Church exists in many
nations ; that it is dominated, at least in a great degree,
by the Bishop of Rome—that it is international in that
sense, and that in that sense it has what may be called
a “ supernational unity.” The same, however, is true of
the Masonic fraternity. It exists in many nations, but
it is not a national body. It is in the same sense extra
national, in the same sense international, and has in the
same sense a supernational unity. So the same may be
said of other societies. This, however, does not tend to
prove that anything supernational is supernatural.
It is also admitted that in faith, worship, ceremonial,
discipline and government, the Catholic’ Church is
substantially the same wherever it exists. This estab
lishes the unity, but not the divinity of the institution.
The church that does not allow investigation, that
teaches that all doubts are wicked, attains unity through
tyranny—that is, monotony by repression. Wherever
man has had something like freedom, differences have
appeared, heresies have taken root, and the divisions
have become permanent. New sects have been born,
and the Catholic Church has been weakened. The
boast of unity is the confession of tyranny.
It is insisted that the unity of the Church substantiates
its claim to divine origin, This is asserted over and over
�i8
ROMS OR REASON ?
again, in many ways ; and yet in the Cardinal’s article is
found this strange mingling of boast and confession:
“ Was it only by the human power of man that the
unity, external and internal, which for fourteen hundred
years had been supreme, was once more restored in the
Council of Constance, never to be broken again ?”
By this it is admitted that the internal and external
unity of the Catholic Church has been broken, and that
it required more than human power to restore it. Then
the boast is made that it will never be broken again.
Yet it is asserted that the internal and external unity of
the Catholic Church is the great fact that demonstrates
its divine origin.
Now if this internal and external unity was broken,
and remained broken for years, there was an interval
during which the Church had no internal or external
unity, and during which the evidence of divine origin
failed. The unity was broken in spite of the Divine
Founder. This is admitted by the use of the word
“ again.” The unbroken unity of the Church is asserted,
and upon this assertion is based the claim of divine
origin ; it is then admitted that the unity was broken.
The argument is then shifted, and the claim is made that
it required more than human power to restore the internal
and external unity of the Church, and that the restora
tion, not the unity, is proof of the divine origin. Is there
any contradiction beyond this ?
Let us state the case in another way. Let us suppose
that a man has a sword which he claims was made by
God, stating that the reason he knows that God made
the sword is that it never had been, and never could be,
broken. Now if it was afterwards ascertained that it had
been broken, and the owner admitted that it had been,
what would be thought of him if he then took the ground
that it had been welded, and that the welding was the
evidence that it was of divine origin?
A prophecy is then indulged in, to the effect that the
internal and external unity of the Church can never be
broken again. It is admitted that it was broken, it is
asserted that it was divinely restored,? and^ then it. is
declared that it is never to be broken again. No reason
�ROME OR REASON ?
19
is given for this prophecy ; it must be born of the facts
already stated, Put in a form to be easily understood, it
is this :—
We know that the unity of the Church can never be
broken, because the Church is of divine origin.
We know that it was broken ; but this does not weaken
the argument, because it was restored by God, and it has
not been broken since.
Therefore, it never can be broken again.
It is stated that the Catholic Church is immutable, and
that its immutability establishes its claim to divine origin,
Was it immutable when its unity, internal and external,
was broken ? Was it precisely the same after its unity
was broken that it was before ? Was it precisely the same
after its unity was divinely restored that it was while
broken ? Was it universal while it was without unity ?
Which of the fragments was universal—which was im
mutable ?
The fact that the Catholic Church is obedient to the
Pope, establishes, not the supernatural origin of the
Church, but the mental slavery of its members. It estab
lishes the fact that it is a successful organisation ; that it
is cunningly devised; that it destroys the mental inde
pendence, and that whoever absolutely submits to its
authority loses the jewel of his soul.
The fact that Catholics are, to a great extent, obedient
to the Pope, establishes nothing except the thoroughness
of the organisation.
How was the Roman Empire formed ? By what means
did that great Power hold in bondage the then known
world ? How is it that a despotism is established ? How
is it that the few enslave the many ? How is it that the
nobility live on the labor of the peasants ? The answer
is in one word—Organisation. The organised few
triumph over the unorganised many. The few hold the
sword and the purse. The unorganised are overcome in
detail—terrorised, brutalised, robbed, conquered.
We must remember that when Christianity was estab
lished the world was ignorant, credulous, and cruel.
The Gospel, with its idea of forgiveness, with its heaven
and hell, was suited to the barbarians among whom it
�ao
ROME OR REASON ?
was preached. Let it be understood, once for all, that
Christ had but little to do with Christianity. The people
became convinced—being ignorant, stupid, and credulous
—that the Church held the keys of heaven and hell.
■ The foundation for the most terrible mental tyranny that
has existed among men was in this way laid. The
Catholic Church enslaved to the extent of its power. It
resorted to every possible form of fraud ; it perverted
every good instinct of the human heart; it rewarded
every vice; it resorted to every artifice that ingenuity
could devise, to reach the highest round of power. It
tortured the accused to make them confess ; it tortured
witnesses to compel the commission of perjury; it tor
tured children for the purpose of making them convict
their parents; it compelled men to establish their own
innocence; it imprisoned without limit; it had the
malicious patience to wait; it left the accused without
trial, and left them in dungeons until released by death.
There is no crime that the Catholic Church did not
commit, no cruelty that it did not practise, no form of
treachery that it did not reward, and no virtue that it did
not persecute. It was the greatest and most powerful
enemy of human rights. It did all that organisation,
cunning, piety, self-denial, heroism, treachery, zeal, and
brute force could do to enslave the children of men. It
was the enemy of intelligence, the assassin of liberty, and
the destroyer of progress. It loaded the noble with
chains and the infamous with honors. In one hand it
carried the alms-dish, in the other a dagger. It argued
with the sword, persuaded with poison, and convinced
with the faggot.
It is impossible to see how the divine origin of a
Church can be established by showing that hundreds of
bishops have visited the Pope.
Does the fact that millions of faithful visit Mecca
establish the truth of the Koran? Is it a scene for
congratulation when the bishops of thirty nations kneel
before a man ? Is it not humiliating to know that man
is willing to kneel at the feet of man ? Could a noble
man demand, or. joyfully receive, the humiliation of his
fellows?
�ROME OR REASON '?
21
As a rule, arrogance and humility go together. .He
who in power compels his fellow-man to kneel, .will him
self kneel when weak. The tyrant is a cringer in power ,
a cringer is a tyrant out of power. Great men stand
face to face. They meet on equal terms. The cardinal
who kneels in the presence of the Pope, wants the bishop
to kneel in his presence; and the bishop who kneels
demands that the priest shall kneel to. him; and the
priest who kneels demands that they in lower orders
shall kneel; and all, from Pope to the lowest—that is to
say, from Pope to exorcist, from Pope to the one in
charge of the bones of saints all demand that the
people, the laymen, those upon whom they live, shall
kneel to them.
The man of free and noble spirit will not kneel.
Courage has no knees. Fear kneels, or falls upon its
ctsh-di
The Cardinal insists that the Pope is the Vicar of
Christ, and that all Popes have been. What is a Vicar
of Jesus Christ ? He is a substitute, in office. He
stands in the place, or occupies the position in relation
to the Church, in relation to the world, that Jesus Christ
would occupy were he the Pope at Rome. In other
words, he takes Christ’s place; so that, according to the
doctrine of the Catholic Church, Jesus Christ himself is
present in the person of the Pope.
We all know that a good man may employ a bad
agent. A good king might leave his realm and put in
his place a tyrant and a wretch. The good man and the
good king cannot certainly know what manner of man
the agent is-—what kind of person the vicar is; conse
quently the bad may be chosen. But if the king
appointed a bad vicar, knowing him to. be bad, knowing
that he would oppress the people, knowing that he would
imprison and burn the noble and generous, what excuse
can be imagined for such a king ?
. .
Now, if the Church is of divine origin, and if each
Pope is the Vicar of Jesus Christ, he must have been
chosen by Jesus Christ", and when he was chosen
Christ must have known exactly what his Vicar would
do. Can we believ^xthat an infinity wise and good
�22
ROME OR REASON r1
Being would choose immoral, dishonest, ignorant,
malicious, heartless, fiendish, and inhuman Vicars ?
The Cardinal admits that “ the history of Christianity
is the history of the Church, and that the history of the
Church is the history of the Pontiffs,” and he then de
clares that “ the greatest statesmen and rulers that the
world has ever seen are the Popes of Rome.”
Let me call attention to a few passages in Draper’s
History of the Intellectual Development of Europe,
“ Constantine was one of the Vicars of Christ. After
wards, Stephen IV. was chosen. The eyes of Constan
tine were then put out by Stephen, acting in Christ’s
place. 1 he tongue of the Bishop Theodorus was
•
amputated by the man who had been substituted for
God. This bishop was left in a dungeon to perish of
thirst. Pope Leo III. was seized in the street and
forced into a church, where the nephew's of Pope Adrian
attempted to put out his eyes and cut off his tongue.
His successor, Stephen V., was driven ignominiously
from Rome. His successor, Paschal I., was accused of
blinding and murdering twro ecclesiastics in the Lateran
Palace. John VIII.,unable to resist the Mohammedans,
was compelled to pay them tribute.
“At this time, the Bishop of Naples was in secret
alliance with the Mohammedans, and they divided with
this Catholic bishop the plunder they collected from
other Catholics. This bishop was excommunicated by
the Pope; afterwards he gave him absolution because
he betrayed the chief Mohammedans, and assassinated
others. There was an ecclesiastical conspiracy to mur
der the Pope, and some of the treasures of the Church
were seized, and the gate of St. Pancrazia was opened
with false keys to admit the Saracens. Formosus, who
had been engaged in these transactions, who had been
excommunicated as a conspirator for the murder of Pope
John, was himself elected Pope in 891. Boniface VI.
was his successor. He had been deposed from the
diaconate and from the priesthood for his immoral and
lewd life. Stephen VII. was the next Pope, and he had
the dead body of Formosus taken from the grave,
clothed in papal habiliments, propped up in a chair and
tried before a Council. The corpse w'as found guilty,
three fingers were cut off, and the body cast into the
Tiber. Afterwards Stephen VII.. this Vicar of Christ,
was thrown into prison and strangled.
�ROME OR REASON ?
23
“ From 896 to 900, five popes were consecrated.
Leo V., in less than two months after he became Pope,
was cast into prison by Christopher, one of his chaplains.
This Christopher usurped his place, and in a little while
was expelled from Rome by Sergius III., who became
Pope in 905. This Pope lived in criminal intercourse
with the celebrated Theodora, who with her daughters
Marozia and Theodora, both prostitutes, exercised an
extraordinary control over him. The love of Theodora
was also shared by John X. She gave him the Arch
bishopric of Ravenna, and made him Pope in 915. The
daughter of Theodora overthrew this Pope. She sur
prised him in the Lateran Palace. His brother, Peter,
was killed; the Pope was thrown into prison, where he
was afterwards murdered. Afterward, this Marozia,
daughter of Theodora, made her own son Pope, John XI.
Many affirmed that Pope Sergius was his father, but his
mother inclined to attribute him to her husband Alberic,
whose brother Guido she afterwards married. Another
of her sons, Alberic, jealous of his brother, John the
Pope, cast him and their mother into prison. Alberic s
son was then elected Pope as John XII.
“John was nineteen years old when he became the
Vicar of Christ. His reign was characterised by the
most shocking immoralities, so that the Emperor Otho I.
was compelled by the German clergy to inteifere. He
was tried. It appeared that John had received bribes
for the consecration of bishops; that he had ordained
one who was only ten years old; that he was charged
with incest, and with so many adulteries that the Lateran
Palace had become a brothel. He put out the eyes of
* one ecclesiastic; he maimed another—both dying in
consequence of their injuries. He was given to drunken
ness and to gambling. He was deposed at last, and
Leo VII. elected in his stead. Subsequently he got the
upper hand. He seized his antagonists ; he cut off the
hand of one, the nose, the finger, and the tongue of
others. His life was eventually brought to an end by
the vengeance of a man whose wife he had seduced.”
And yet,I admit that the most infamous Popes, the
most heartless and fiendish bishops, friars, and priests
were models of mercy, charity, and justice when com
pared with the orthodox God—with the God they wor
shipped. These popes, these bishops, these priests could
persecute only for a few years—they could burn only for
�24
kOME OR REASON ?
a few moments—but their God threatened to imprison
and burn for ever; and their God is as much worse than
they were, as hell is worse than the Inquisition.
“John XIII, was strangled in prison. Boniface VII.
imprisoned Benedict VII., and starved him to death.
John XIV. was secretly put to death in the dungeons of
the castle of St. Angelo. The corpse of Boniface was
dragged by the populace through the streets.”
It must be remembered that the popes were assassin
ated by Catholics—murdered by the faithful; that one
Vicar of Christ strangled another Vicar of Christ, and
that these men were “ the greatest rulers and the
greatest statesmen of the earth.”
“ Pope John XVI. was seized, his eyes put out, his
nose cut off, his tongue torn from his mouth, and he was
sent through the streets mounted on an ass, with his
face to the tail. Benedict IX., a boy of less than
twelye years of age, was raised to the apostolic throne.
One of his successors, Victor III., declared that the life
of Benedict was so shameful, so foul, so execrable, that
he shuddered to describe it. He ruled like a captain of
banditti. The people, unable to bear longer his
adulteries, his homicides and his abominations, rose
against him, and in despair of maintaining his position,
he put up his papacy to auction, and it was bought by a
Presbyter named John, who became Gregory VI., in the
year of grace 1045. Well may we ask, Were these the
Vicegerents of God upon earth—these, who had truly
reached that goal beyond which the last effort of human
wickedness cannot pass?”
It may be sufficient to say that there is no crime that
man can commit that has not been committed by the
Vicars of Christ. They have inflicted every possible
torture, violated every natural right. Greater monsters
the human race has not produced.
Among the “some two hundred and fifty-eight”
Vicars of Christ there were probably some good men.
This would have happened even if the intention had
been to get all bad men, for the reason that man reaches
perfection neither in good nor in evil; but if they were
selected by Christ himself, if they were selected by a
Church with a divine origin and under divine guidance,
then there is no way to account for the selection of a
�roMe or
Reason?
25
bad one. If one hypocrite was duly elected Pope—one
murderer, one strangler, one starver—this demonstrates
that all the Popes were selected by men, and by men
only, that the claim of divine guidance is born of zeal
and uttered without knowledge.
But who were the Vicars of Christ ? How many
have there been ? Cardinal Manning himself does not
know. He is not sure. He says : “ Starting from St.
Peter to Leo. XIII., there have been some two hundred
and fifty-eight Pontiffs claiming to be recognised by the
whole Catholic unity as successors of St. Peter and
Vicars of Jesus Christ.” Why did he use the word
“some”? Why “claiming”? Does he positively
know ? Is it possible that the present Vicar of Christ is
not certain as to the number of his predecessors ? Is
he infallible in faith and fallible in fact ?
PART II.
“ If we live thus tamely—
To be thus jaded by a piece of scarlet—
Farewell nobility.”
No one will deny that “ the Pope speaks to many people
in many nations; that he treats with empires and
governments,” and that “neither from Canterbury nor
from Constantinople such a voice goes forth.”
How does the Pope speak ? What does he say ?
He speaks against the liberty of man—against the
progress of the human race. He speaks to calumniate
thinkers, and to warn the faithful against the discoveries
of science. He speaks for the destruction of civilisa
tion.
Who listens ? Do astronomers, geologists, and
scientists put the hand to the ear, fearing that an accent
�26
Rome or reason ?
may be lost ? Does France listen ? Does Italy hear ?
Is not the Church weakest at its centre ? Do those
who have raised Italy from the dead, and placed her
again among the great nations, pay attention ? Does
Great Britain care for this voice—this moan, this groan
—of the Middle Ages? Do the words of Leo XIII.
impress the intelligence of the Great Republic ? Can
anything be more absurd than for the Vicar of Christ to
attack a demonstration of science with a passage of
Scripture, or a quotation from one of the “ Fathers ” ?
Compare the popes with the kings and queens of
England. Infinite wisdom had but little to do with the
selection of these monarchs, and yet they were far better
than any equal number of consecutive popes. This is
faint praise, even for kings and queens ; but it shows
that chance succeeded in getting better rulers for England
than “ Infinite Wisdom ” did for the Church of Rome.
Compare the popes with the presidents of the Republic
elected by the people. If Adams had murdered
Washington, and Jefferson had imprisoned Adams, and
if Madison had cut out Jefferson’s tongue, and Monroe
had assassinated Madison, and John Quincey Adams had
poisoned Monroe, and General Jackson had hung Adams
and his Cabinet, we might say that presidents had been
as virtuous as popes. But if this had happened the
verdict of the world would be that the people are not
capable of selecting their presidents.
But this voice from Rome is growing feeble day by
day ; so feeble that the Cardinal admits that the Vicar
of God and the supernatural Church “are being tor
mented by Falck laws, by Mancini laws, and by Crispi
laws.” In other words, this representative of God, this
substitute of Christ, this Church of divine origin, this
supernatural institution—pervaded by the Holy Ghost—
are being “ tormented ” by three politicians. Is it pos
sible that this patriotic trinity is more powerful than the
other ?
It is claimed that if the Catholic Church “ be only a
human system, built up by the intellect, will, and energy
of men, the adversaries must prove it—that the burden
is upon them.”
�ROME OR REASON ?
As a general thing, institutions are natural. If this
Church is supernatural, it is the one exception. The
affirmative is with those who claim that it is of divine
origin. So far as we know, all governments and all
creeds are the work of man. No one believes that Rome
was a supernatural production, and yet its beginnings
were as small as those of the Catholic Church. Com
mencing in weakness, Rome grew, and fought, and con
quered, until it was believed that the sky bent above a
subjugated world. And yet all was natural. For every
effect there was an efficient cause.
The Catholic asserts that all other religions have been
produced by man—that Brahminism and Buddhism, the
religion of Isis and Osiris, the marvellous mythologies
of Greece and Rome, were the work of the human mind.
From these religions Catholicism has borrowed. Long
before Catholicism was born it w’as believed that women
had borne children whose fathers were gods. The Trinity
was promulgated in Egypt centuries before the birth of
Moses. Celibacy was taught by the ancient Nazarenes
and Essenes, by the priests of Egypt and India, by
mendicant monks, and by the piously insane of many
countries long before the Apostles lived. The Chinese
tell us that “ when there were but one man and one
woman upon the earth, the woman refused to sacrifice
her virginity even to people the globe ; and the gods,
honoring her purity, granted that she should conceive
beneath the gaze of her lover’s eyes, and a virgin mother
became the parent of humanity.”
The founders of many religions have insisted that it
was the duty of man to renounce the pleasures of sense,
and millions before our era took the vows of chastity,
poverty, and obedience, and most cheerfully lived upon
the labor of others.
The sacraments of baptism and confirmation are far
older than the Church of Rome. The Eucharist is
Pagan. Long before Popes began to murder each
other, Pagans ate cakes—the flesh of Ceres, and drank
wine—the blood of Bacchus. Holy water flowed in the
Ganges and Nile, priests interceded for the people, and
anointed the dying.
It will not do to say that every successful religion that
�28
ROME OR REASON ?
has taught unnatural doctrines, unnatural practices, must
of necessity have been of divine origin. In most reli
gions there has been a strange mingling of the good and
bad, of the merciful and cruel, of the loving and
malicious. Buddhism taught the universal brotherhood
of man, insisted on the development of the mind ; and
this religion was propagated, not by the sword, but by
preaching, by persuasion, and kindness ; yet in many
things it was contrary to the human will, contrary to the
human passions, and contrary to good sense. Buddhism
succeeded. Can we, for this reason, say that it is a super
natural religion ? Is the. unnatural the supernatural ?
It is insisted that, while other Churches have changed,
the Catholic Church alone has remained the same, and
that this fact demonstrates its divine origin.
Has the creed of Buddhism changed in three thousand
years ? Is intellectual stagnation a demonstration of
divine origin ? When anything refuses to grow, are we
certain that the seed was planted by God ? If the
Catholic Church is the same to-day that it has been for
many centuries, this proves that there has been no intel
lectual development. If men do not differ Upon religious
subjects, it is because they do not think.
Differentiation is the law of growth, of progress.
Every Church must gain or lose ; it cannot remain the
same ; it must decay or grow. The fact that the Catholic
Church has not grown—that it has been petrified from
the first—does not establish divine origin ; it simply
establishes the fact that it retards the progress of man.
Everything in nature changes ; every atom is in motion;
every star moves. Nations, institutions, and individuals
have youth, manhood, old age, death. This is, and will
be, true of the Catholic Church. It was once weak; it
grew stronger ; it reached its climax of power ; it began
to decay ; it can never rise again. It is confronted by
the dawn of Science. In the presence of the nineteenth
century it cowers.
It is not true that “ All natural causes run to disinte
gration.”
Natural causes run to integration as well as to dis
integration. All growth is integration, and all growth is
natural.
All decay is disintegration, and all decay is
�ROME OR REASON ?
29
natural. Nature builds and nature destroys. When
the acorn grows—when the sunlight and rain fall upon
it, and the oak rises—so far as the oak is concerned “all
natural causes” do not “run to disintegration.” But
there comes a time when the oak has reached its limit,
and then the forces of nature run towards disintegration,
and finally the. old oak falls. But if the Cardinal is
right, if “ all natural causes run to disintegration,” then
every success must have been of divine origin, and
nothing is natural but destruction. This, is Catholic
science: “All natural causes run to disintegration.’
What do these causes find to disintegrate? Nothing
that is natural. -The fact that the thing is not disinte
grated shows that it was, and is, of supernatural origin.
According to the Cardinal, the only business of nature
is to disintegrate the supernatural. To prevent this, the
supernatural needs the protection of the Infinite. Accord
ing to this doctrine, if anything lives and grows, it does
so in spite of nature. Growth, then, is not in accord
ance with, but in opposition to, nature. Every plant is
supernatural—it defeats the disintegrating influences of
rain and light. The generalisation of the Cardinal is
half the truth. It would be. equally true to say : All
natural causes run to integration.” But the whole truth
is that growth and decay are equal.
The Cardinal asserts that “ Christendom was created
by the world-wide Church as we see it before our eyes
at this day. Philosophers and statesmen believe it to
be the work of their own hands; they did not make it,
but they have for three hundred years been unmaking it
by reformations and revolutions.”
The meaning of this is that Christendom was far better
three hundred years ago than now ; that during these
three centuries Christendom has been going towards
barbarism. It means that the supernatural Church of
God has been a failure for three hundred years; that it
has been unable to withstand the attacks of philosophers
and statesmen, and that it has been helpless in the midst
of “ reformations and revolutions.”
What was the condition of the world three hundred
years ago, the period, according to the Cardinal, in which
the Church reached the height of its influence and since
�3°
ROME OR REASON ?
which it has been unable to withstand the rising tide of
reformation and the whirlwind of revolution ?
In that blessed time Phillip II. was King of Spain—he
with the cramped head and the monstrous jaw. Heretics
were hunted like wild and poisonous beasts ; the Inquisi
tion was firmly established, and priests were busy with
rack and fire. With a zeal born of the hatred of man
and the love of God, the Church with every instrument
of torture, touched every nerve in the human body.
In those happy days the Duke of Alva was devasta
ting the homes of Holland ; heretics were buried alive;
their tongues were torn from their mouths, their lids
from their eyes; the Armada was on the sea for the
destruction of the heretics of England, and the
Moriscoes, a million and a half of industrious people,
were being driven by sword and flame from their homes.
The Jews had been expelled from Spain. This Catholic
country had succeeded in driving intelligence and industry
from its territory; and this had been done with a cruelty,
with a ferocity, unequalled in the annals of crime.
Nothing was left but ignorance, bigotry, intolerance,
credulity, the Inquisition, the seven sacraments and the
seven deadly sins. And yet a Cardinal of the nine
teenth century, living in the land of Shakespeare, regrets
the change that has been wrought by the intellectual
efforts, by the discoveries, by the inventions and heroism
of three hundred years.
Three hundred years ago, under Charles IX., in France,
son of Catherine de Medici, in the year of grace 1572—
after nearly sixteen centuries of Catholic Christianity—
after hundreds of vicars of Christ had sat in St. Peter’s
chair—after the natural passions of man had been
“softened” by the creed of Rome—came the Massacre of
St. Bartholomew, the result of a conspiracy between the
Vicar of Christ, Philip II., Charles IX., and his fiendish
mother. Let the Cardinal read the account of this massacre
once more, and after reading it, imagine that he sees the
gashed and mutilated bodies of thousands of men and
women, and then let him say that he regrets the revolu
tions and reformations of three hundred years.
About three hundred years ago Clement VIII., Vicar
of Christ, acting in God’s place, substitute of the
�ROME OR REASON ?
31
Infinite, persecuted Giordano Bruno even unto death,
This great, this sublime man, was tried for heresy. He
had ventured to assert the rotary motion of the earth ;
he had hazarded the conjecture that there were in the
fields of infinite space worlds larger and more glorious
than ours. For these low and groveling thoughts, for
this contradiction of the word and Vicar of God, this
man was imprisoned for many years. But his noble
spirit was not broken, and finally in the year 1600, by
the orders of the infamous Vicar, he was chained to the
stake. Priests believing in the doctrine of universal
forgiveness; priests who when smitten upon one cheek
turned the other ; carried with a kind of ferocious joy
faggots to the feet of this incomparable man. These
disciples of “ Our Lord ” were made joyous as the
flames, like serpents, climbed around the body of Bruno.
In a few moments the brave thinker was dead, and the
priests who had burned him fell upon their knees and
asked the infinite God to continue the blessed work for
ever in hell.
There are two things that cannot exist in the same
universe—an infinite God and a martyr.
Does the Cardinal regret that kings and emperors are
not now engaged in the extermination of Protestants ?
Does he regret that dungeons of the Inquistion are no
longer crowded with the best and bravest ? Does he
long for the fires of the auto da fe ?
In coming to a conclusion as to the origin of the
Catholic Church ; in determining the truth of the claim
of infallibility, we are not restricted to the physical
achievements of that Church, or to the history of its
propagation, or to the rapidity of its growth.
This Church has a creed ; and if this Church is of
divine origin ; if its head is the Vicar of Christ, and, as
such, infallible in matters of faith and morals, this creed
must be true. Let us start with the supposition that
God exists, and that he is infinitely wise, powerful and
good—-and this is only a supposition. Now, if the creed
is foolish, absurd and cruel, it cannot be of divine origin.
We find in this creed, the following:
“ Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is
necessary that he hold the Catholic faith,”
�32
ROME OR REASON ?
It is not necessary, before all things, that he be good,
honest, merciful, charitable and just. Creed is more
important than conduct. The most important of all
things is, that he hold the Catholic faith. There were
thousands of years during which it was not necessary to
hold that faith, because that faith did not exist; and yet
during that time the virtues were just as important as
now, just as important as they ever can be. Millions of
the noblest of the human race never heard of this
creed. Millions of the bravest and best have heard of
it, examined, and rejected it. Millions of the most
infamous have believed it, and because of their belief, or
notwithstanding their belief, have murdered millions of
their fellows. We know that men can be, have been,
and are just as wicked with it as without it. We know
that it is not necessary to believe it to be good, loving,
tender, noble, and self-denying.
We admit that
millions who have believed it have also been self
denying and heroic, and that millions, by such belief,
were not prevented from torturing and destroying the
helpless.
Now if all who believed it were good, and all who
rejected it were bad, then there might be some propriety
in saying that “whosoever will be saved,before all things
it is necessary that he hold the Catholic faith.” But as
the experience of mankind is otherwise, the declaration
becomes absurd, ignorant and cruel.
There is still another clause :
“ Which faith, except everyone do keep entire and
inviolate, without doubt he shall everlastingly perish.”
We now have both sides of this wonderful truth:
The believer will be saved, the unbeliever will be lost.
We know that faith is not the child or servant of the
will. We know that belief is a conclusion based upon
what the mind supposes to be true. We know that it is
not an act of the will. Nothing can be more absurd
than to save a man because he is not intelligent enough
to accept the truth, and nothing can be more infamous
than to damn a man because he is intelligent enough to
reject the false. It resolves itself into a question of
intelligence. If the creed is true, then a man rejects it
because he lacks intelligence. Is this a crime for which
�ROME
or reason
?
33
a man should everlastingly perish ? If the creed is
false, then a man accepts it because he lacks intelligence.
In. both cases the crime is exactly the same. If a man
is to be damned for rejecting the truth, certainly he
should not be saved for accepting the false. _ This one
clause demonstrates that a being of infinite wisdom and
goodness did not write it. It also demonstrates that it
was the work of men who had neither wisdom nor a
sense of justice.
.
What is this Catholic faith that must be held ? It is
this:
’
...
„ . .
u That we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity m
Unity, neither confounding the persons nor dividing the
substance.”
Why should an Infinite Being demand worship ?
Why should one God wish to be worshipped as three ?
Why should three Gods wish to be worshipped as
one ? Why should we pray to one God and think of
three, or pray to three Gods and think of one ? Can
this increase the happiness of the one or of the three ?
Is it possible to think of one as three, or of three as one ?
If you think of three as one, can you think of one as
none, or of none as one ? When you think of three as
one, what do you do with the other two? You must not
“ confound the persons ”—they must be kept separate.
When you think of one as three, how do you get the
other two ? You must not “ divide the substance.
Is
it possible to write greater contradictions than these ?
This creed demonstrates the human origin of the
Catholic Church. Nothing could be more unjust than to
punish man for unbelief—for the expression of honest
thought—for having been guided by his reason for
having acted in accordance with his best judgment.
Another claim is made, to the effect “ that the Catholic
Church has filled the world with the true knowledge of
the one true God, and that it has destroyed all idols by
light instead of by fire.”
The Catholic Church described the true God as a being
who would inflict eternal pain on his weak and erring
children ; described him as a fickle, quick-tempered, un
reasonable deity, whom honesty enraged, and whom
flattery governed; one who loved to see fear upon its
�34
Rome or reason ?
knees, ignorance with closed eyes and open mouth ; one
who delighted in useless self-denial, who loved to’hear
the sighs and sobs of suffering nuns, as they lay prostrate
on dungeon floors; one who was delighted when the
husband deserted his family and lived alone in some cave
in the far wilderness, tormented by dreams and driven
to insanity by prayer and penance, by fasting and faith.
According to the Catholic Church, the true God enjoyed
the agonies of heretics. He loved the smell of their
burning flesh, he applauded with wide palms when
philosophers were flayed alive, and to him the auto da fc
was a divine comedy. The shrieks of wives, the cries
of babes, when fathers were being burned, gave contrast,
heightened the effect, and filled his cup with joy. This
true God did not know the shape of the earth he had
made, and had forgotten the orbits of the stars. “ The
stream of light which descended from the beginning ”
was propagated by faggot to faggot, until Christendom
was filled with the devouring fires of faith.
It may also be said that the Catholic Church filled the
world with the true knowledge of the one true Devil. It
filled the air with malicious phantoms, crowded innocent
sleep with leering fiends, and gave the world to the
domination of witches and wizards, spirits and spooks,
goblins and ghosts, and butchered and burned thousands
for the commission of impossible crimes.
It is contended that: “ In this true knowledge of the
Divine Nature was revealed to men their own relation
to a Creator as sons to a Father.”
This tender relation was revealed by the Catholics to
the Pagans, the Arians, the Cathari, the Waldenses, the
Albigenses, the heretics, the Jews, the Moriscoes, the
Protestants—to the natives of the West Indies, of
Mexico, of Peru—to philosophers, patriots, and thinkers.
All these victims were taught to regard the true God as
a loving Father, and this lesson was taught with every
instrument of torture—with branding and burnings,
with flayings and flames. The world was filled with
cruelty and credulity, ignorance and intolerance, and the
soil in which all these horrors grew was the true know
ledge of the one true God, and the true knowledge of
the one true Devil. And yet we are compelled to say
�ROME OR REASON ?
35
that the one true Devil described by the Catholic Church
was not as malevolent as the one true God.
Is it true that the Catholic Church overthrew idolatry ?
What is idolatry ? What shall we say of the worship
of popes, of the doctrine of the Real Presence, of divine
honors paid to saints, of sacred vestments, of holy water,
of consecrated cups and plates, of images and relics, of
amulets and charms ?
.
The Catholic Church filled the world with the spirit of
idolatry. It abandoned the idea of continuity in nature,
it denied the integrity of cause and effect. The govern
ment of the world was the composite result of the caprice
of God, the malice of Satan, the prayers of the faithful—
softened, it may be, by the charity of Chance. Yet the
Cardinal asserts, without the preface of a smile, that
“ Demonology was overthrown by the Church, with the
assistance of forces that were above nature
and in the
same breath gives birth to this enlightened statement:
“ Beelzebub is not divided against himself.” Is a belief
in Beelzebub a belief in demonology ? Has the Cardinal
forgotten the Council of Nice, held in the year of grace
787, that declared the worship of images to be lawful ?
Did that infallible Council, under the guidance of the
Holy Ghost, destroy idolatry ?
The Cardinal takes the ground that marriage is a
sacrament, and therefore indissoluble, and he also insists
that celibacy is far better than marriage—holier than a
sacrament—that marriage is not the highest state, but
that “the state of virginity unto death is the highest
condition of man and woman.”
The highest ideal of a family is where all are equal—
where love has superseded authority—where each seeks
the good of all, and where none obey—where no religion
can sunder hearts, and with which no church can
interfere.
The real marriage is based on mutual affection—the
ceremony is but the outward evidence of the inward
flame. To this contract there are but two parties. The
Church is an impudent intruder. Marriage is made
public to the end that the real contract may be known,
so that the world can see that the parties have been
actuated by the highest and holiest motives that find
�36
ROME OR REASON?
expression in the acts of human beings. The man and
woman are not joined together by God, or by the
Church, or by the State. The Church and State may
prescribe certain ceremonies, certain formalities; but all
these are only evidence of the existence of a sacred fact
in the hearts of the wedded. The indissolubility of
marriage is a dogma that has filled the lives of millions
with agony and tears. It has given a perpetual excuse
for vice and immorality. Fear has borne children
begotten by brutality. Countless women have endured
the insults, indignities and cruelties of fiendish husbands,
because they thought that it was the will of God. The
contract of marriage is the most important that human
beings can make ; but no contract can be so important
as to release one of the parties from the obligation of
performance; and no contract, whether made between
man and woman, or between them and God, after a
failure of consideration caused by the wilful act of the man
or woman, can hold and bind the innocent and honest.
Do the believers in indissoluble marriage treat their
wives better than others ? A little while ago a woman
said to a man who had raised his hand to strike her,
“ Do not touch me; you have no right to beat me ; I
am not your wife.”
About a year ago a husband, whom God in his infinite
wisdom had joined to a loving and patient woman in
the indissoluble sacrament of marriage, becoming en
raged, seized the helpless wife and tore out one of her
eyes. She forgave him. A few weeks ago he deliber
ately repeated this frightful crime, leaving his victim
totally blind. Would it not have been better if man,
before the poor woman was blinded, had put asunder
whom God had joined together ?
Thousands of
husbands, who insist that marriage is indissoluble, are
beaters of wives.
The law of the Church has created neither the purity
nor the peace of domestic life. Back of all Churches is
human affection. Back of all theologies is the love of
the human heart. Back of all your priests and creeds is
the adoration of the one woman by the one man, and of
the one man by the one woman. Back of your faith is
the fireside, back of your folly is the family ; and
�ROME OR REASON ?
37
back of all your holy mistakes and your sacred ab
surdities is the love of husband and wife, and of parent
and child.
It is not true that neither the Greek nor the Roman
world had any true conception of a home. The splendid
story of Ulysses and Penelope, the parting of Hector and
Andromache, demonstrate that a true conception, of
home existed among the Greeks. Before the establish
ment of Christianity the Roman matron commanded the
admiration of the then known world. She was free and
noble. The Church degraded woman, made her the
property of the husband, and trampled her beneath its
brutal feet. The “fathers” denounced woman as a
perpetual temptation, as the cause of all evil. The
Church worshipped a God who had upheld polygamy,
and had pronounced his curse on woman, and had
declared that she should be the serf of the husband.
This Church followed the teachings of St. Paul. It
taught the uncleanliness of marriage, and insisted that
all children were conceived in sin. This Church pre
tended to have been founded by one who offered a
reward in this world, and eternal joy in the next, to
husbands who would forsake their wives and children
and follow him. Did this tend to the elevation of
woman ? Did this detestable doctrine “ create the purity
and peace of domestic life ? ” Is it true that a monk is
purer than a good and noble father ? that a nun is holier
than a loving mother ?
Is there anything deeper and stronger than a mother s
love ? Is there anything purer, holier than a mother
holding her dimpled babe against her billowed breast ?
The good man is useful, the best man is the most
useful. Those who fill the nights with barren prayers
and holy hunger, torture themselves for their own good
and not for the benefit of others. They are earning
eternal glory for themselves ; they do not fast for their
fellow-men, their selfishness is only equalled by their
foolishness. Compare the monk in his selfish cell,
counting beads and saying prayers for the purpose, of
saving his barren soul, with a husband and father sitting
by his fireside with wife and children. Compare the
nun with the mother and her babe.
�38
ROME OR REASON ?
Celibacy is the essence of vulgarity. It tries to put a
stain upon motherhood, upon marriage, upon love_ that
is to say, upon all that is holiest in the human heart.
Take love from the world, and there is nothing left
worth living for. The Church. has treated this great,
this sublime, this unspeakably holy passion, as though it
polluted the heart. They have placed the love of God
above the love of woman, above the love of man.
Human love is generous and noble. The love of God is
selfish, because man does not love God for God’s sake
but for his own.
Yet the Cardinal asserts “ that the change wrought
by Christianity in the social, political, and international
relations of the world the root of this ethical change,
private and public, is the Christian home.” A moment
afterwards, this prelate insists that celibacy is far
better than marriage. If the world could be induced
to live, in accordance with the “highest state,” this
generation would be the last. Why were men and
women created ? Why did not the Catholic God com
mence with the sinless and sexless ? The Cardinal
ought to take the ground that to talk well is good, but
that to be dumb is the highest condition ; that hearing
is a pleasure, but that deafness is ecstasy ; and that to
think, to reason, is very well, but that to be a Catholic
is far better.
Why should we desire the destruction of human
passions ? Take passions from human beings, and
what is left? The great object should be, not to
destroy passions, but to make them obedient to the
intellect. To indulge passion to the utmost is one form
of intemperance, to destroy passion is another. The
reasonable gratification of passion under the domination
of the intellect is true wisdom and perfect virtue.
The goodness, the sympathy, the self-denial of the
nun, of the monk, all come from the mother instinct, the
father instinct; all were produced by human affection—
by the love of man for woman, of woman for man. Love
is a transfiguration. It ennobles, purifies, and glorifies.
In true marriage two hearts burst into flower. Two
lives unite. They melt in music. Every moment is a
�KOi\iE OR REASON '?
39
melody. Love is a revelation, a creation. From love
the world borrows its beauty and the heavens their glory.
Justice, self-denial, charity, and pity are the children of
love. Lover, wife, mother, husband, father, child, home
—these words shed light; they are the gems of human
speech. Without love all glory fades, the noble falls
from life, art dies, music loses meaning and becomes
mere motions of the air, and virtue ceases to exist.
It is asserted that this life of celibacy is above and
against the tendencies of human nature; and the Car
dinal then asks: “ Who will ascribe this to natural
causes, and, if so, why did it not appear in the first four
thousand years ?”
If there is in a system of religion"a doctrine, a dogma,
or a practice against the tendencies of human nature
if this religion succeeds, then it is claimed by the
Cardinal that such religion must be of divine origin. Is
it 11 against the tendencies of human nature for a
mother to throw her child into the Ganges to please a
supposed god ? Yet a religion that insisted on that
sacrifice succeeded, and has, to-day, more believers than
the Catholic Church can boast.
Religions, like nations and individuals, have always
gone along the line of least resistance. Nothing has
“ ascended the stream of human license by a power
mightier than nature.” There is no such power. There
never was, there never can be, a miracle. We know
that man is a conditioned being. We know that he is
affected by a change of conditions. If he is ignorant he
is superstitious—that is natural. If his brain is developed,
if he perceives clearly that all things are naturally pro
duced, he ceases to be superstitious and becomes scien
tific. He is not a saint, but a savant—not a priest, but
a philosopher. He does not worship, he works; he inves
tigates ; he thinks; he takes advantage, through
intelligence, of the forces of nature. He is no longer
the victim of appearances, the dupe of his own ignorance,
and the persecutor of his fellow-men.
He then knows that it is far better to love his wife
and children than to love God. He then knows that the
love of man for woman, of woman for man, of parent
for child, of child for parent, is far better, far holier, than
�4°
fear10^
ROME OR REASON ?
phantom born of ignorance and
It is illogical to take the ground that the world was
cruel and ignorant and idolatrous when the Catholic
Church was established, and that because the world is
better now than then, the Church is of divine origin.
.What was the world when science came ? What was
it in the days of Galileo, Copernicus, and Kepler ? What
was it when printing was invented ? What was it when
the Western World was found ? Would it not be much
easier to prove that science is of divine origin ?
. Science does not persecute. It does not shed blood—
it fills the world with light. It cares nothing for heresy;
it develops the mind, and enables man to answer his
own prayers.
Cardinal Manning takes the ground that Jehovah
practically abandoned the children of men for four
thousand years, and gave them over to every -abomina
tion. He claims that Christianity came “ in the fulness
of time,” and it is then admitted that “ what the fulness
of time may mean is one of the mysteries of times and
seasons that it is not for us to know.” Having declared
that it is a mystery, and one that we are not to know,
the Cardinal explains it: “One motive for the long
delay of four thousand years is not far to seek—it gave
time, full and ample, for the utmost development and
consolidation of all the falsehood and evil of which the
intellect and will of man is capable.”
Is it possible to imagine why an infinitely good and
wise being “ gave time full and ample for the utmost
development and consolidation of falsehood and evil ”?
Why should an infinitely wise God desire this develop
ment and consolidation ? What would be thought of a
father who should refuse to teach his son and deliberately
allow him to go into every possible excess, to the end
that he might “ develop all the falsehood and evil of
which his intellect and will were capable ”? If a super
natural religion is a necessity, and if without it all men
simply develop and consolidate falsehood and evil, why
was not a supernatural religion given to the first man ?
The Catholic Church, if this be true, should have been
founded in the garden of Eden. Was it not cruel to
�ROME OR REASON ?
4*
drown a world just for the want of a supernatural
religion ; a religion that man, by no possibility, could
furnish ? Was there “ husbandry in heaven ?
But the Cardinal contradicts himself by not only
admitting, but declaring, that the world had never seen
a legislation so just, so equitable, as that of Rome. Is
it possible that a nation in which falsehood and evil had
reached their highest development was, after all, so wise,
so just, and so equitable ? Was not the civil law far
better than the Mosaic—more philosophical, nearer just?
The civil law was produced without the assistance of God.
According to the Cardinal, it was produced by men in
whom all the falsehood and evil of which they were
capable had been developed and consolidated, while the
cruel and ignorant Mosaic code came from the lips of
infinite wisdom and compassion.
It is declared that the history of Rome shows what
man can do without God, and I assert that the history
of the Inquisition shows what man can do when assisted
by a church of divine origin, presided over by the
infallible vicars of God.
The fact that the early Christians not only believed
incredible things, but persuaded others of their truth, is
regarded by the Cardinal as a miracle. This is only
another phase of the old argument that success is the
test of divine origin. All supernatural religions have
been founded in precisely the same way. The credulity
of eighteen hundred years ago believed everything
except the truth.
A religion is a growth, and is of necessity adapted in
some degree to the people among whom it grows. It is
shaped and moulded by the general ignorance, the
superstition and credulity of the age in which it lives.
The key is fashioned by the lock. Every religion that
has succeeded has in some way supplied the wants of its
votaries, and has to a certain extent harmonised with
their hopes, their fears, their vices, and their virtues.
If, as the Cardinal says, the religion of .Christ is in
absolute harmony with nature, how can it be super
natural ? The Cardinal also declares that “ the religion
of Christ is in harmony with the reason and moral
nature in all nations and all ages to this day.” What
�42
Rome
or reason
?
becomes of the argument that Catholicism must be of
divine origin because “ it has ascended the stream of
human license, contra ictum fluminis, by a power mightier
than nature ? If “ it is in harmony with the reason and
moral nature of all nations and ages to this day,” it
has gone with the stream, and not against it. If “ the
religion of Christ is in harmony with the reason and
moral nature of all nations,” then the men who have
rejected it are unnatural, and these men have gone
against the stream. How then can it be said that
Christianity has been in changeless opposition to nature
as man has marred it? To what extent has man
marred it ? In spite of the marring by man, we are
told that the reason and moral nature of all nations in all
aqres to this day is ip harmony with, the religion of Jesus
Christ.
J
Are we justified in saying that the Catholic Church is
of divine origin because the Pagans failed to destroy it
by persecution ?
We will put the Cardinal’s statement in form :
Paganism failed to destroy Catholicism by persecution,
therefore Catholicism is of divine origin.
Let us make an application of this logic:
Paganism failed to destroy Catholicism by persecution;
therefore, Catholicism is of divine origin.
Catholicism failed to destroy Protestantism by per
secution ; therefore, Protestantism is of divine origin.
Catholicism and Protestantism combined failed to
destroy Infidelity ; therefore, Infidelity is of divine
origin.
Let us make another application :
Paganism did not succeed in destroying Catholicism ;
therefore, Paganism was a false religion.
Catholicism did not succeed in destroying Protestant
ism ; therefore, Catholicism is a false religton.
Catholicism and Protestantism combined failed to
destroy Infidelity ; therefore, both Catholicism and Pro
testantism are false religions.
The Cardinal has another reason for believing the
Catholic Church of divine origin. He declares that the
“ Canon Law is a creation of wisdom and justice to
which no statutes at large or imperial pandects can
�ROME OR REASON ?
43
bear comparison ” ; that “ the world-wide and secular
legislation of the -Church was of a higher character, and
that as water cannot rise above its source, the Church
could not, by mere human wisdom, have corrected and
perfected the imperial law, and therefore its source must
have been higher than the sources of the world.”
When Europe was the most ignorant, the Canon Law
was supreme. As a matter of fact, the good in the
Canon Law was borrowed—the bad was, for the most
part, original. In my judgment, the legislation of the
Republic of the United States is in many respects
superior to that of Rome, and yet we are greatly indebted
to the Common Law; but it never occurred to me that
our Statutes at Large are divinely inspired.
If the Canon Law is, in fact, the legislation of infinite
wisdom, then it should be a perfect code. Yet the
Canon Law made it a crime next to robbery and theft
to take interest for money. Without the right to take
interest the business of the world would, to a large
extent, cease and the prosperity of mankind end. There
are railways enough in the United States to make six
tracks around the globe, and every mile was built with
borrowed money on which interest was paid or promised.
In no other way could the savings of many thousands
have been brought together and a capital great enough
formed to construct works of such vast and continental
importance.
It was provided in this same wonderful Canon Law
that a heretic could not be a witness against a Catholic.
The Catholic was at liberty to rob and wrong his fellow
man, provided the fellow man was not a fellow Catholic,
and in a court established by the Vicar of Christ, the
man who had been robbed was not allowed to open his
mouth. A Catholic could enter the house of an un
believer, of a Jew, of a heretic, of a Moor, and before
the eyes of the husband and father murder his wife and
children and the father could not pronounce in the hear
ing of a judge the name of the murderer. The world is
wiser now, and the Canon Law, given to us by infinite
wisdom, has been repealed by the common sense of man.
In this divine code it was provided that to convict a
�44
ROME OR REASON ?
cardinal bishop, seventy-two witnesses were required ; a
cardinal presbyter, forty-four; a cardinal deacon, twentyfour . a sub-deacon, acolyth, exorcist, reader, ostiarus,
seven ; and in the purgation of a bishop, twelve wit
nesses were invariably required; of a presbyter, seven ;
of a deacon, three. These laws, in my judgment, were
made, not by God, but by the clergy.
So, too, in this cruel code it was provided that those
who gave aid, favor, or counsel to excommunicated
persons should be anathema, and that those who talked
with, consulted, or sat at the same table with, or gave
anything in charity to the excommunicated, should be
anathema.
Is it possible that a being of infinite wisdom made
hospitality a crime ? Did he say: “Whoso giveth a cup
of cold water to the excommunicated shall wear forever
a garment of fire ? ” Were not the laws of the Romans
much better ? Besides all this, under the Canon Law
the dead could be tried for heresy, and their estates con
fiscated that is to say, their widowsand orphans robbed.
The most brutal part of the common law of England is
that in relation to the right of woman—all of which was
taken from the Corpus Juris Canonici, “ the law that
came from a higher source than man.”
The only cause of absolute divorce as laid down by
the pious canonists was propter infidelitatem, which was
when one of the parties became Catholic, and would
not live with the other who continued still an unbe
liever. Under this divine statute, a pagan wishing to be
rid of his wife had only to join the Catholic Church,
provided she remained faithful to the religion of her
fathers. Under this divine law, a man marrying a
widow was declared to be a bigamist.
It would require volumes to point out the cruelties,
absurdities, and inconsistencies of the Canon Law. It
has. been thrown away by the world. Every civilised
nation has a code of its own, and the Canon Law is of
interest only to the historian, the antiquary, and the
enemy of theological government.
Under the Canon Law, people were convicted of
being witches and wizards, of holding intercourse with
�ROME OR REASON ?
45
devils. Thousands perished at the stake, having been
convicted of these impossible crimes. Under the Canon
Law, there was such a crime as the suspicion of heresy.
A man or woman could be arrested, charged with being
suspected, and under this Canon Law, flowing from the
intellect of infinite wisdom, the presumption was in favor
of guilt. The suspected had to prove themselves inno
cent. In all civilised courts, the presumption of inno
cence is the shield of the indicted ; but the Canon Law
took away this shield, and put in the hand of the priest
the sword of presumptive guilt.
If the real Pope is the Vicar of Christ, the true
shepherd of the sheep, this fact should be known not
only to the vicar, but to the sheep. A divinely-founded
and guarded church ought to know its own shepherd,
and yet the Catholic sheep have not always been certain
who the shepherd was.
The Council of Pisa, held in 1409, deposed two popes
—rivals—Gregory and Benedict—that is to say, deposed
the actual Vicar of Christ and the pretended. This
action was taken because a council, enlightened by the
Holy Ghost, could not tell the genuine from the counter
feit. The council then elected another Vicar, whose
authority was afterwards denied. Alexander V. died,
and John XXIII. took his place; Gregory XII. insisted
that he was the lawful pope ; John resigned, then he
was deposed, and afterwards imprisoned ; then Gregory
XII. resigned, and Martin V. was elected. The whole
thing reads like the annals of a South American Revo
lution.
The Council of Constance restored, as the Cardinal
declares, the unity of the Church, and brought back the
consolation of the Holy Ghost. Before this great
council John Huss appeared and maintained his own
tenets. The council declared that the Church was not
bound to keep its promise with a heretic. Huss was
condemned and executed on the 6th of July, 1415. His
disciple, Jerome of Prague, recanted; but, having
relapsed, was put to death, May 30, 1416. This cursed
council shed the blood of Huss and Jerome.
The Cardinal appeals to the author of Eccc Homo for
�46
ROME OR REASON ?
the purpose of showing that Christianity is above nature,
and the following passages, among others, are quoted
“ Who can describe that which unites men ? Who
has entered into the formation of speech, which is the
symbol of their union ? Who can describe exhaustively
the origin of civil society ? He who can do these things
can explain the origin of the Christian Church.”
These passages should not have been quoted by the
Cardinal. The author of these passages simply says
that the origin of the Christian Church is no harder to
find and describe than that which unites men ; than
that which has entered into the formation of speech, the
symbol of their union ; no harder to describe than the
origin of civil society, because he says that one who can
describe these can describe the other.
Certainly none of these things are above nature. We
do not need the assistance of the Holy Ghost in these
.matters. We know that men are united by common
interests, common purposes, common dangers—by race,
climate, and education. It is no more wonderful that
people live in families, tribes, communities, and nations,
than that birds, ants, and bees live in flocks and swarms.
If we know anything, we know that language is
natural-—that it is a physical science. But if we take
the ground occupied by the Cardinal, then we insist that
everything that cannot be accounted for by man is
supernatural. Let me ask, by what man ? What
man must we take as the standard ?
Cosmos or
Humboldt, St. Irenaeus or Darwin ? If everything that
we cannot account for is above nature, then ignorance is
the test of the supernatural. The man who is mentally
honest stops where his knowledge stops. At that point
he says that he does not know. Such a man is a philo
sopher. Then the theologian steps forward, denounces
the modesty of the philosopher as blasphemy, and pro
ceeds to tell what is beyond the horizon of the human
intellect.
Could a savage account for the telegraph or the tele
phone by natural causes ? How would he account for
these wonders ? He would account for them precisely
as the Cardinal accounts for the Catholic Church.
�ROME OR REASON ?
47
Bek nping to no rival Church, I have not the slightest
interest in the primacy of Leo XIII., and yet it is to be
regretted that this primacy rests upon such a narrow
■and insecure foundation.
The Cardinal says that “ it will appear almost certain
that the original Greek of St. Irenaeus, which is unfortu
nately lost, contained either rd —pun-eca, or some inflection
of 7rpwT€t'w, which signifies primacy.”
From this it appears that the primacy of the Bishop
of Rome rests on some “inflection” of a Greek word,
and that this supposed inflection was in a letter supposed
to have been written by St. Irenaeus, which has certainly
been lost. Is it possible that the vast fabric of papal
power has this, and only this, for its foundation ? To
this “ inflection ” has it come at last ?
The Cardinal’s case depends upon the intelligence and
veracity of his witnesses. The Fathers of the Church
were utterly incapable of examining a question of fact.
They were all believers in the miraculous. The same is
true of the apostles. If St. John was the author of the
Apocalypse, he was undoubtedly insane. If Polycarp
said the things attributed to him by Catholic writers, he
was certainly in the condition of his master. What is
the testimony of St. John worth in the light of the fol
lowing ? “ Cerinthus, the heretic, was in a bath-house.
St. John and another Christian were about to enter. St.
John cried out : ‘ Let us run away, lest the house fall
upon us while the enemy of truth is in it.’ ” Is it pos
sible that St. John thought that God would kill two
eminent Christians for the purpose of getting even with
one heretic ?
Let us see who Polycarp was. He seems to have
been a prototype of the Catholic Church, as will be seen
from the following statement concerning this Father :
“When any heretical doctrine was spoken in his
presence he would stop his ears.” After this, there can
be no question of his orthodoxy. It is claimed that
Polycarp was a martyr—that a spear was run through
his body, and that from the wound his soul, in the shape
of a bird, flew away. The history of his death is just
as true as the history of his life.
Irenaeus, another witness, took the ground that there
�48
ROME OR REASON’ ?
was to be a millennium, a thousand years of enjoyment
in which celibacy would not be the highest form of
virtue. If he is called as a witness for the purpose of
establishing the divine origin of the Church, and if one
of his “ inflections ” is the basis of papal supremacy, is
the Cardinal also willing to take his testimony as to the
nature of the millennium ?
All the Fathers were infinitely credulous. Every one
of them believed, not only in the miracles said to have
been wrought by Christ, by the apostles, and by other
Christians, but every one of them believed in the Pagan
miracles. All of these Fathers were familiar with
wonders and impossibilities. N othing was so common
with them as to work miracles-, and on many occasions
they not only cured diseases, not only reversed the order
of nature, but succeeded in raising the dead.
It is very hard, indeed, to prove what the apostles
said, or what the Fathers of the Church wrote. There
were many centuries filled with forgeries, many genera
tions in which the cunning hands of ecclesiastics erased,
obliterated, and interpolated the records of the past,
during which they invented books, invented authors, and
quoted from works that never existed.
The testimony of the “Fathers” is without the
slightest value. They believed everything, they examined
nothing. They received as a waste-basket receives.
Whoever accepts their testimony will exclaim with the
Cardinal: “ Happily, men are not saved by logic.”
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Rome or reason? : a reply to Cardinal Manning
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Ingersoll, Robert Green [1833-1899]
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Place of publication: London
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Notes: Reprinted from the North American Review, Oct. and Nov. 1888. First published: London: Progressive Publishing Company, 1888. No. 65b in Stein checklist. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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Catholic Church
Rationalism
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Catholic Church-Controversial Literature
Henry Edward Manning
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The Evolution
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THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
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�THE
EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA
OF GOD '
AN INQUIRY INTO THE ORIGINS OF RELIGIONS
BY
GRANT ALLEN
(AUTHOR OF “PHYSIOLOGICAL AESTHETICS,” “ THE COLOURS OF FLOWERS,” “FORCE AND
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��PREFACE
Two main schools of religious thinking
exist in our midst at the present day:
the school of humanists and the school
of animists. This work is to some
extent an attempt to reconcile them. It
contains, I believe, the first extended
effort that has yet been made to trace
the genesis of the belief in a God from
its earliest origin in the mind of primitive
man up to its fullest development in
advanced and etherealised Christian
theology. My method is therefore con
structive, not destructive. Instead of
setting out to argue away or demolish a
deep-seated and ancestral element in our
complex nature, this book merely posits
for itself the psychological question; “ By
what successive steps did men come to
frame for themselves the conception of a
deity ?”—or, if the reader so prefers it,
“ How did we arrive at our knowledge
of God ?” It seeks provisionally to
answer these profound and important
questions by reference to the' earliest
beliefs of savages, past or present, and
to the testimony of historical documents
and ancient monuments. It does not
concern itself at all with the validity or
invalidity of the ideas in themselves ; it
does but endeavour to show how
inevitable they were, and how man’s
relation with the external universe was
certain a priori to beget them as of
necessity.
-In so vast a synthesis, it would be
absurd to pretend at the present day
that one approached one’s subject
entirely de novo. Every inquirer must
needs depend much upon the various
researches of his predecessors in various
parts of his field of inquiry. The
problem before us divides itself into
three main portions: first, how did men
come to believe in many gods—the
origin of polytheism; second, how, by
elimination of most of these gods, did
certain races of men come to believe in
one single supreme and omnipotent
God—the origin of monotheism; third,
how, having arrived at that concept, did
the most advanced races and civilisations
come to conceive of that God as Triune,
and to identify one of his Persons with
a particular divine and human incarna
tion-—the origin of Christianity. In
considering each of these three main
problems I have been greatly guided
and assisted by three previous inquirers
or sets of inquirers.
As to the origin of polytheism, I have
adopted in the main Mr. Herbert
Spencer’s remarkable ghost theory,
though with certain important modifica
tions and additions. In this part of my
work I have also been largely aided
by materials derived from Mr. Duff
Macdonald, the able author of Africana;
from Mr. Turner, the well-known Samoan
missionary; and from several other
writers, supplemented as they are by my
own researches among the works of
explorers and ethnologists in general.
�- 6
PREFACE
On the whole, I have here accepted the
theory which traces the origin of the'
belief in gods to primeval ancestor
worship, or rather corpse-worship, as
. against the rival theory which traces its
origin to a supposed primitive animism.
As to the rise of monotheism,,I have
been influenced in no small degree by
Kuenen and the Teutonic school of Old
Testament criticism, whose ideas have
been supplemented by later concepts
derived from Professor Robertson Smith’s
admirable work, The Religion of the
Semites. But here, on the whole, the
central explanation I have to offer is, I
venture to think, new and original: the
theory, good or bad, of the circumstances
which led to the elevation of the ethnical
Hebrew God, Jahweh, above all his rivals,
and his final recognition as the only true
and living god, is my own and no one
else’s.
As to the origin of Christianity, and
its relations to the preceding cults of
corn and wine gods, I have been guided
to a great extent by Mr. J. G. Frazer
and Mannhardt, though I do not suppose
that either the living or the dead
anthropologist would wholly acquiesce
in the use I have made of their splendid
materials. Mr. Frazer, the author of
that learned work, The Golden Bough,
has profoundly influenced the opinions
of all serious workers at anthropology
and the science of religion, and I cannot
too often acknowledge the deep obliga
tions under which I lie to his profound
and able treatises. At the same time,
I have so transformed the material
derived from him and from Dr. Robertson
Smith as to have made it in many ways
practically my own; and I have sup
plemented it by several new examples
and ideas, suggested in the course of my
own tolerably wide reading.
Throughout the book, as a whole, I
also owe a considerable debt to Dr.
E. B. Tylor, from whom I have borrowed
much valuable matter; to Mr. Sidney
Hartland’s Legend of Perseus ; to Mr.
Laurence Gomme, who has come nearer
at times than anyone else to the special
views and theories here promulgated ;
and to Mr. William Simpson, of the
Illustrated London News, an unobtrusive
scholar whose excellent monographs on
The Worship of Death and kindred
subjects have never yet received the
attention they deserve. My other obliga
tions, to Dr. Mommsen, to my friends
Mr. Edward Clodd, Professor John
Rhys, and Professor York Powell, as well
as to numerous travellers, missionaries,
historians, and classicists, are too frequent
to specify.
Looking at the subject broadly, I
would presume to say once more that
my general conclusions may be regarded
as representing to some extent a recon
ciliation between the conflicting schools
of humanists and animists, headed
respectively by Mr. Spencer and Mr.
Frazer, though with a leaning rather to
the former than the latter.
At the same time, it would be a great
mistake to look upon my book as in any
sense a mère eirenicon or compromise.
On the contrary, it is in every part a new
and personal work, containing, whatever
its value, a fresh and original synthesis
of the subject I would venture to point
out as especially novel the two following
points : the complete demarcation of
religion from mythology, as practice
from mere explanatory gloss or guess
work ; and the important share assigned
in the genesis of most existing religious
systems to the deliberate manufacture of
gods by killing. This doctrine of the
manufactured god, to which nearly half
�PREFACE
my book is devoted, seems to me to be
a notion of cardinal value. Among
other new ideas of secondary rank, I
would be bold enough to enumerate the
following: the establishment of three
successive stages in the conception of
the Life of the Dead, which might be
summed up as Corpse-worship, Ghost
worship, and Shade-worship, and which
answer to the three stages of preservation
or mummification, burial, and crema
tion ; the recognition of the high place
to be assigned to the safe-keeping of the
oracular head in the growth of idol
worship ; the importance attached to the
sacred stone, the sacred stake, and the
sacred tree, and the provisional proof of
their close connection with the graves of
the dead; the entirely new conception of
the development of monotheism among
the Jews from the exclusive cult of the
jealous god; the hypothesis of the origin
of cultivation from tumulus-offerings,
and its connection with the growth of
gods of cultivation ; the wide expansion
given to the ancient notion of the divine
human victim; the recognition of the
world-wide prevalence of the five-day
festival of the corn- or wine-god, and of
the close similarity which marks its rites
throughout all the continents, including
America; the suggested evolution of the
god-eating sacraments of lower religions
from the cannibal practice of honorifically
eating one’s dead relations;1 and the
evidence of the wide survival of primitive
corpse-worship down to our own times
in civilised Europe. I think it will be
1 While this work was passing through the
press a similar theory has been propounded by
Mr. Flinders Petrie in an article on “ Eaten
with Honour,” in which he reviews briefly the
evidence for the custom in Egypt and elsewhere.
allowed that, if even a few of these ideas
turn out on examination to be both new
and true, my book will have succeeded
in justifying its existence.
I put forth this work with the utmost
diffidence. The harvest is vast and the
labourers are few. I have been engaged
upon collecting and comparing materials
for more than twenty years. I have
been engaged in writing my book for
more than ten. As I explain in the last
chapter, the present first sketch of the
conclusions at which I have at last
arrived is little more than provisional.
I should also like to add here, what I
point out at greater length in the body
of the work, that I do not hold
dogmatically to all or to a single one of
the ideas I have now expressed. They
are merely conceptions forced upon my
mind by the present state of the evidence;
and I recognise the fact that in so vast and
varied a province, where almost encyclo
paedic knowledge would be necessary in
order to enable one to reach a decided
conclusion, every single one or all
together of these conceptions are liable
to be upset by further research.
I have endeavoured to write without
favour or prejudice, animated by a single
desire to discover the truth. Whether
I have succeeded in that attempt or not,
I trust my book may be received in the
same spirit in which it has been written
—a spirit of earnest anxiety to learn all
that can be learnt by inquiry and
investigation of man’s connection with
his God, in the past and the present.
In this hope I commit it to the kindly
consideration of that small section of the
reading public which takes a living
interest in religious questions.
�CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. Christianity as a Religious Standard
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II. Religion and Mythology
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III. The Life of the Dead ...
IV. The Origin of Gods
V. Sacred Stones
VI. Sacred Stakes
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32
40
50
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VII. Sacred Trees
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54
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VIII. The Gods of Egypt
59
68
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IX. The Gods of Israel
X. The Rise of Monotheism
XII. The Manufacture of Gods
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77
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XI. Human Gods
«4
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XIII. Gods of Cultivation
XIV. Corn- and Wine-Gods
XV. Sacrifice and Sacrament
XVII. The World before Christ
XVIII. The Growth of Christianity
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115
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129
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XIX. Survivals in Christendom
_
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XVI. The Doctrine of the Atonement
XX. Conclusion
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�THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
CHAPTER I.
CHRISTIANITY AS A RELIGIOUS
STANDARD
I PROPOSE in this work to trace out in
rough outline the evolution of the idea of
God from its earliest and crudest beginnings
in the savage mind of primitive man to
that highly evolved and abstract form
which it finally assumes in contemporary
philosophical- and theological thinking.
In the eyes of the modern evolutionary
inquirer the interest of the origin and
history of this widespread idea is mainly
psychological. We have before us a vast
group of human opinions, true or false,
which have exercised and still exercise an
immense influence upon the development
of mankind and of civilisation: the question
arises, Why did human beings ever come
to hold these opinions at all ? What was
there in the conditions of early man which
led him to frame to himself such abstract
notions of one or more great supernatural
agents, of whose objective existence he had
certainly in nature no clear or obvious
evidence ? Regarding the problem in this
light, as essentially a problem of the
processes of the human mind, I set aside
from the outset, as foreign to my purpose,
any kind of inquiry into the objective
validity of any one among the religious
beliefs thus set before us as subject-matter.
The question whether there may be a God
or gods, and, if so, what may be his or
their substance and attributes, do not here
concern us. All we have to do in our
present capacity is to ask ourselves strictly,
What first suggested to the mind of man
the notion of deity in the abstract at all ?
And how, from the early multiplicity of
deities which we find to have prevailed in
all primitive times among all human races,
did the conception of a single great and
unlimited deity first take its rise ?
To put the question in this form is to
leave entirely out of consideration the
objective reality or otherwise of the idea
itself. To analyse the origin of a concept
is not to attack the validity of the belief it
encloses. The idea of gravitation, for
example, arose by slow degrees in human
minds, and reached at last its final ex
pression in Newton’s law. But to trace
the steps by which that idea was gradually
reached is not in any way to disprove or to
discredit it. The Christian believer may
similarly hold that men arrived by natural
stages at the knowledge of the one true
God ; he is not bound to reject the final
conception as false merely because of the
steps by which it was slowly evolved. A
creative God, it is true, might prefer to
make a sudden revelation of himself to
some chosen body of men ; but an evolu
tionary God, we may well believe, might
prefer in his inscrutable wisdom to reveal
his own existence and qualities to his crea
tures by m eans of the sam e slow and tentative
intellectual gropings as those by which he
revealed to them the physical truths of
nature. I wish my inquiry, therefore, to be
regarded, not as destructive, but as recon
structive. It attempts to recover and
follow out the various planes in the evolution
of the idea of God, rather than to cast
doubt upon the truth of the evolved
concept.
In investigating any abstruse subject,
it is often best to proceed from the known
to the unknown, even although the unknown
itself may happen to come first in the order
of nature and of logical development. For
this reason, it may be advisable to begin
here with a brief preliminary examination
of Christianity, which is not only the most
familiar of all religions to us Christian
nations, but also the best known in its
origins : and then to show how far we may
safely use it as a standard of reference in
explaining the less obvious and certain
features of earlier or collateral cults.
Christianity, then, viewed as a religious
standard, has this clear and undeniable
�io
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
advantage over almost every other known
form of faith—that it quite frankly and
confessedly sets out in its development
with the worship of a particular Deified
Man.
This point in its history cannot, I think,
be overrated in importance, because in that
single indubitable central fact it gives us
the key to much that is cardinal in all other
religions ; every one of which, as I hope
hereafter to show, equally springs, directly
or indirectly, from the worship of a single
Deified Man, or of many Deified Men,
more or less etherealised. Whatever else may be said about the
origin of Christianity, it is at least fairly
agreed on either side, both by friends and
foes, that this great religion took its rise
around the personality of a certain par
ticular Galilean teacher, by name Jesus,
concerning whom, if we know anything at
all with any approach to certainty, we know
at least that he was a man of the people,
hung on a cross in Jerusalem under the
procuratorship of Caius Pontius Pilatus.
From the very beginning, however, a
legend, true or false (but whose truth or
falsity has no relation whatever to our
present subject), gathered about the per
sonality of this particular Galilean peasant
reformer. Reverenced at first by a small
body of disciples of his own race and caste,
he grew gradually in their minds into a
divine personage, of whom strange stories
were told, and a strange history believed
by a group of ever-increasing adherents in
all parts of the Graeco-Roman Mediterra
nean civilisation. The earliest of these
stories, in all probability—certainly the one
to which most importance was attached by
the pioneers of the faith—clustered about
his death and its immediate sequence.
Jesus, we are told, was crucified, dead, and
buried. But at the end of three days, if
we may credit the early documents of our
Christian faith, his body was no longer to
be found in the sepulchre where it had been
laid by friendly hands : and the report
spread abroad that he had risen again from
the dead. Supernatural messengers an
nounced his resurrection to the women
who had loved him : he was seen in the
flesh from time to time for very short
periods by one or other among the faithful
who still revered his memory. At last,
after many such appearances, he was
suddenly carried up to the sky before the
eyes of his followers, where, as one of the
versions authoritatively remarks, he was
“received into heaven, and sat on the
right hand of God”—that is to say, of
Jahweh, the ethnical deity of the Hebrew
people.
Such in its kernel was the original Chris
tian doctrine as handed down to us amid
a mist of miracle, in four or five documents
of doubtful age and uncertain authenticity.
Even this central idea does not fully
appear in the Pauline epistles, believed to
be the oldest in date of all our Christian
writings : it first takes full shape in the
somewhat later Gospels and Acts of the
Apostles. In the simplest and perhaps
the earliest of these definite accounts we
are merely told the story of the death and
resurrection, the latter fact being vouched
for on the dubious testimony of “ a young
man clothed in a long white garment,”
supplemented (apparently at a later period)
by subsequent “appearances” to various
believers. With the controversies which
have raged about these different stories,
however, the broad anthropological inquiry
into the evolution of God has no concern.
It is enough for us here to admit, what the
evidence probably warrants us in concluding,
that a real historical man of the name of
Jesus did once exist in Lower Syria, and
that his disciples at a period very shortly
after his execution believed him to have
actually risen from the dead, and in due
time to have ascended into heaven.
At a very early date, too, it was further
asserted that Jesus was in some unnatural
or supernatural sense “ the son of God ”—
that is to say, once more, the son of
Jahweh, the local and national deity of the
J ewish people. In other words, his worship
was affiliated upon the earlier historical
worship of the people in whose midst he
lived, and from whom his first disciples
were exclusively gathered. It was not, as
we shall more fully see hereafter, a
revolutionary or purely destructive system.
It based itself upon the common concep
tions of the Semitic community. The
handful of Jews and Galileans who accepted
Jesus as a divine figure did not think it
necessary, in adopting him as a god, to get
rid of their own preconceived religious
opinions. They believed rather in his
prior existence, as a part of Jahweh, and
in his incarnation in a human body for the
purpose of redemption. And when his cult
spread around into neighbouring countries
(chiefly, it would seem, through the instru
mentality of one Paul of Tarsus, who had
never seen him, or had beheld him only in
what is vaguely called “a vision”) the cult
of Jahweh went hand in hand with it, so
�CHRISTIANITY AS A RELIGIOUS STANDARD
ii
that a sort of modified mystic monotheism,
connected with the personality of pre
based on Judaism, became the early creed
existent deities.
of the new cosmopolitan Christian Church.
In the earlier stages, it seems pretty clear
Other legends, of a sort familiar in the
that the relations of nascent Christianity to
lives of the founders of creeds and churches
Judaism were vague and undefined : the
elsewhere, grew up about the life of the
Christians regarded themselves as a mere
Christian leader ; or, at any rate, incidents sect of the Jews, who paid special reverence
of a typical kind were narrated by his
to a particular dead teacher, now raised to
disciples as part of his history. That a heaven by a special apotheosis of a kind
god or a godlike person should be born of with which everyone was then familiar.
a woman by the ordinary physiological But as the Christian Church spread to
processes of humanity seems derogatory to other lands, by the great seaports, it
his dignity—perhaps fatal to the godhead :x became on the one hand more distinct and
therefore it was asserted—we know not exclusive, while on the other hand it
whether truly or otherwise—that the
became more definitely dogmatic and
founder of Christianity, by some mysterious theological. It was in Egypt, it would
afflatus, was born of a virgin. Though seem, that the Christian pantheon first took
described at times as the son of one Joseph, its definite Trinitarian shape. Under the
a carpenter, of Nazareth, and of Mary, his
influence of the old Egyptian love for
betrothed wife, he was also regarded in an Triads of Trinities of gods, a sort of
alternative way as the son of the Hebrew mystical triune deity was at last erected out
god Jahweh, just as Alexander, though of the Hebrew Jahweh and the man Jesus,
known to be the son of Philip, was also with the aid of the Holy Spirit or Wisdom
considered to be the offspring of Amon-Ra of Jahweh. How far the familiar Egyptian
or Zeus Ammon. We are told, in order to Trinity of Osiris, Isis, and Horus may
lessen this discrepancy (on the slender have influenced the conception of the
authority of a dream of Joseph’s), how
Christian Trinity, thus finally made up of
Jesus was miraculously conceived by the
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, we shall
Holy Spirit of Jahweh in Mary’s womb.
discuss later; for the present, it may
He was further provided with a royal
suffice to point out that the Graeco
pedigree from the house of David, a real or Egyptian Athanasius was the great upholder
mythical early Hebrew king ; and prophe of the definite dogma of the Trinity against
cies from the Hebrew sacred books were opposing (heretical) Christian thinkers; and
found to be fulfilled in his most childish
that the hymn or so-called creed known by
adventures.
In one of the existing his name bears the impress of the mystical
biographies, commonly ascribed to Luke,
Egyptian spirit, tempered by the Alexan
the companion of Paul, but supposed to drian Greek delight in definiteness and
bear traces of much later authorship, minuteness of philosophical distinction.
many such marvellous stories are recounted
In this respect, too, we shall observe in
of his infantile adventures: and in all our the sequel that the history of Christianity,
documents miracles attest his supernatural
the most known among the religions, was
powers, while appeal is constantly made to
exactly parallel to that of earlier and
the fulfilment of supposed predictions (all
obscurer creeds. At first, the relations of
of old Hebrew origin) as a test and the gods to one another are vague and
credential of the reality of his divine undetermined ; their pedigree is often
mission.
confused and even contradictory ; and the
We shall see hereafter that these two pantheon lacks anything like due hier
points—the gradual growth of a myth or archical system or subordination of persons.
legend, and affiliation upon earlier local
But as time goes on, the questions of
religious ideas—are common features in
theology or mythology are debated among
the evolution of gods in general, and of the
the priests and other interested parties,
God of monotheism in particular. In
details of this sort get settled in the form
almost every case where we can definitely of rigid dogmas, while subtle distinctions
track him to his rise, the deity thus begins of a, philosophical or metaphysical sort
with a Deified Man, elevated by his
tend to be imported by more civilised men
worshippers to divine rank, and provided
into the crude primitive faith.
with a history of miraculous incident, often
It was largely in other countries than
Judaea, and especially in Gaul, Rome, and
1 On this subject see Mr. Sidney Hartland’s
Egypt, that symbolism came to the aid of
Legend af Perseus, voL i. passim.
mysticism : that the cross, the tau, the
�12
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
labarum, the fish, the Alpha and Omega,
and all the other early Christian emblems,
were evolved and perfected; and that the
beginnings of Christian art took their first
definite forms.
Christianity, being a
universal, not a local or national, religion,
has adopted in its course many diverse
elements from most varied sources.
Originally, it would seem, the Christian
pantheon was almost exclusively filled by
the triune. God, in his three developments
or “ persons.” But from a very early time,
if not from the first dawn of the Christian
cult, it was customary to reverence the
remains of those who had suffered for the
faith, and perhaps even to invoke their aid
with Christ and the Father. The Roman
branch of the church, especially, accustomed
to the Roman worship of ancestors and the
Dii Manes, had its chief places of prayer
in the catacombs, where its dead were laid.
Thus arose the practice of the invocation
of saints, at whose graves or relics prayers
were offered both to the supreme deity and
to the faithful dead themselves as inter
cessors with Christ and the Father. The
early Christians, accustomed in their
heathen stage to pay worship to the
spirits of their deceased friends, could not
immediately give up this pious custom after
their conversion to the new creed, and so
grafted it on to their adopted religion.
Thus the subsidiary founders of Chris
tianity, Paul, Peter, the Apostles, the Evan
gelists, the martyrs, the confessors, came
to rank almost as an inferior order of
deities.
Among the persons who thus shared in
the honours of the new faith, the mother of
Jesus early assumed a peculiar prominence.
Goddesses had filled a very large part in
the devotional spirit of the older religions :
it was but natural that the devotees of Isis
and Pasht, of Artemis and Aphrodite,
should look for some corresponding feminine
object of worship in the younger faith.
The Theotokos, the mother of God, the
blessed Madonna, soon came to possess a
practical importance in Christian worship
scarcely inferior to that enjoyed by the
persons of the Trinity themselves—in cer
tain southern countries, indeed, actually
superior to it. The Virgin and Child, in
pictorial representation, grew to be the
favourite subject of Christian art. How
far this particular development of the
Christian spirit had its origin in Egypt,
and was related to the well-known Egyptian
figures of the goddess Isis with the child
Horus in her lap, is a question which may
demand consideration hereafter. For the
present, it will be enough to call attention
in passing to the fact that in this secondary
rank of deities or semi-divine persons, the
saints and martyrs, all alike, were at one
time or another Living Men and Women.
In other words, besides the one Deified
Man, Jesus, round whom the entire system
of Christianity centres, the Church now
worships also in the second degree a whole
host of minor Dead Men and Women,
bishops, priests, virgins, and confessors.
From the earliest to the latest ages of
the Church, the complexity thus long ago
introduced into her practice has gone on
increasing with every generation. Nomi
nally from the very outset a monotheistic
religion, Christianity gave up its strict
monotheism almost at the first start by
admitting the existence of three persons in
the godhead, whom it vainly endeavoured
to unify by its mystic but confessedly
incomprehensible Athanasian dogma. The
Madonna (with the Child) rose in time
practically to the rank of an independent
goddess (in all but esoteric Catholic theory):
while St. Sebastian, St. George, St. John
Baptist, St. Catherine, and even St. Thomas
of Canterbury himself, became as important
objects of worship in certain places as the
deity in person. As more and more saints
died in each generation, while the cult of
the older saints still lingered on everywhere
more or less locally, the secondary pantheon
grew ever fuller and fuller.
Obscure
personages, like St. Crispin and St. Cosmas,
St. Chad and St. Cuthbert, rose to the rank
of departmental or local patrons, like the
departmental and local gods of earlier
religions. Every trade, every guild, every
nation, every province, had its peculiar
saint. And at the same time the theory
of the Church underwent a constant
evolution. Creed was added to creed—
Apostles’, Nicene, Athanasian, and so forth,
each embodying some new and often
subtle increment to the whole mass of
accepted dogma. Council after council
made fresh additions of articles of faith—
the Unity of Substance, the Doctrine of
the Atonement, the Immaculate Concep
tion, the Authority of the Church, the
Infallibility of the Pope in his spiritual
capacity. And all these also are wellknown incidents of every evolving cult:
constant increase in the number of divine
beings ; constant refinements in the articles
of religion, under the influence of priestly
or scholastic metaphysics.
Two or three other points must still be
�CHRISTIANITY AS A RELIGIOUS STANDARD
noted in this hasty review of the evolution
of Christianity, regarded as a standard of
religion.
In the matter of ceremonial and certain
other important accessories of religion it
must frankly be admitted that Christianity
rather borrowed from the older cults than
underwent a natural and original develop
ment on its own account. A priesthood,
as such, does not seem to have formed any
integral or necessary part of the earliest
Christendom: and when the orders of
bishops, priests, and deacons were intro
duced into the new creed, the idea seems
to have been derived rather from the
existing priesthoods of anterior religions
than from any organic connection with the
central facts of the new worship. From
the very nature of the circumstances this
would inevitably result. For the primitive
temple (as we shall see hereafter) was the
Dead Man’s tomb; the altar was his
gravestone ; and the priest was the relative
or representative who continued the
customary gifts to the ghost at the grave.
But the case of Jesus differs from almost
every other case on record of a Deified
Man in this—that his body seems to have
disappeared at an early date; and that,
inasmuch as his resurrection and ascension
into heaven were made the corner-stone of
the new faith, it was impossible for worship
of his remains to take the same form as
had been taken in the instances of almost
all previously deified Dead Persons. Thus,
the materials out of which the Temple, the
Altar, Sacrifices, Priesthood, are usually
evolved, were here to a very large extent
necessarily wanting.
Nevertheless, so essential to religion in
the minds of its followers are all these
imposing and wonted accessories that our
cult did actually manage to borrow them
ready-made from the great religions that
went before it, and to bring them into
some sort of artificial relation with its own
system. You cannot revolutionise the
human mind at one blow. The pagans
had been accustomed to all these ideas as
integral parts of religion as they understood
it : and they proceeded as Christians to
accommodate them by side-issues to the
new faith, in which these elements had no
such natural place as in the older creeds.
Not only did sacred places arise at the
graves or places of martyrdom of the
saints ; not only was worship performed
beside the bones of the holy dead, in the
catacombs and elsewhere ; but even a
mode of sacrifice and of sacrificial com
IS
munion was invented in the mass—a
somewhat artificial development from the
possibly unsacerdotal Agape-feasts of the
primitive Christians. Gradually, churches
gathered around the relics of the martyr
saints : and in time it became a principle
of usage that every church must contain
an altar—made of stones on the analogy
of the old sacred stones ; containing the
bones or other relics of a saint, like all
earlier shrines ; consecrated by the pouring
on of oil after the antique fashion ; and
devoted to the celebration of the sacrifice
of the mass, which became by degrees
more and more expiatory and sacerdotal
in character. As the saints increased in
importance, new holy places sprang up
around their bodies ; and some of these
holy places, containing their tombs, became
centres of pilgrimage for the most distant
parts of Christendom; as did also in
particular the empty tomb of Christ him
self, the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem.
The growth of the priesthood kept pace
with the growth of ceremonial in general,
till at last it culminated in the mediaeval
papacy, with its hierarchy of cardinals, arch
bishops, bishops, priests, and other endless
functionaries.
Vestments, incense, and
like accompaniments of sacerdotalism also
rapidly gained ground. All this, too, is a
common trait of higher religious evolution
everywhere. So likewise are fasting, vigils,
and the ecstatic condition. But asceticism,
monasticism, celibacy, and other forms of
morbid abstinence are peculiarly rife in the
east, and found their highest expression
in the life of the Syrian and Egyptian
hermits.
Lastly, a few words must be devoted in
passing to the rise and development of the
Sacred Books, now excessively venerated
in North-western Christendom. These
consisted in the first instance of genuine or
spurious letters of the apostles to the
various local churches (the so-called
Epistles), some of which would no doubt
be preserved with considerable reverence ;
and later of lives or legends of Jesus and
his immediate successors (the so-called
Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles).
Furthermore, as Christianity adopted from
Judaism the cult of its one supreme divine
figure, now no longer envisaged as Jahweh,
the national deity of the Hebrews, but as a
universal cosmopolitan God and Father, it
followed naturally that the sacred books
of the Jewish people, the literature of
J ahweh-worship, should also receive con
siderable attention at the hands of the new
�14
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
priesthood. By a gradual process of selec
tion and elimination, the canon of scripture
was evolved from these heterogeneous
materials : the historical or quasi-historical
and prophetic Hebrew tracts were adopted
by the Church, with a few additions of later
date, such as the Book of Daniel, under
the style and title of the Old Testament.
The more generally accepted lives of Christ,
again, known as Evangels or Gospels ; the
Acts of the Apostles ; the epistles to the
churches ; and that curious mystical alle
gory of the Neronian persecution known
as the Apocalypse, were chosen out of the
mass of early Christian literature to form
the authoritative collection of inspired
writing which we call the New Testament.
The importance of this heterogeneous
anthology of works belonging to all ages
and systems, but confounded together in
popular fancy under the name of the Books,
or more recently still as a singular noun,
the Bible, grew apace with the growth of
the Church : though the extreme and
superstitious adoration of their mere verbal
contents has only been reached in the
debased and reactionary forms of Chris
tianity followed at the present day by our
half-educated English and American Pro
testant dissenters.
From this very brief review of the most
essential factors in the development of the
Christian religion as a system, strung
loosely together with a single eye to the
requirements of our present investigation,
it will be obvious at once to every intelligent
reader that Christianity cannot possibly
throw for us any direct or immediate light
on the problem of the evolution of the idea
of God. Not only did the concept of a
god and gods exist full-fledged long before
Christianity took its rise at all, but also the
purely monotheistic conception of a single
supreme God, the creator and upholder of
all things, had been reached in all its
sublime simplicity by the Jewish teachers
centuries before the birth of the man Jesus.
Christianity borrowed from Judaism this
magnificent concept, and, humanly speak
ing, proceeded to spoil it by its addition of
the Son and the Holy Ghost, who mar the
complete unity of the grand Hebrew ideal.
Even outside Judaism the self-same notion
had already been arrived at in a certain
mystical form as the “ esoteric doctrine ” of
the Egyptian priesthood ; from whom, with
their peculiar views as to emanations and
Triads, the Christian dogmas of the Trinity,
the Logos, the Incarnation, and the Holy
Ghost were in large part borrowed. The
Jews of Alexandria formed the connecting
link between Egyptian heathenism, Hellenic
philosophy, and early Christianity; and
their half-philosophical, half-religious idea's
may be found permeating the first writings
and the first systematic thought of the
nascent church. In none of these ways,
therefore, can we regard Christianity as
affording us any direct or immediate gui
dance in our search for the origin and evolu
tion of the coricepts of many gods, and of
one God the creator.
Still, in a certain secondary and illustra
tive sense, I think we are fully justified in
saying that the history of Christianity, the
religion whose beginnings are most surely
known to us, forms a standard of reference
for all the other religions of the world.
Its value in this respect may best be
understood if I point out briefly in two
contrasted statements the points in which
it may and the points in which it may
not be fairly accepted as a typical reli
gion.
Let us begin first with the points in
which it may.
In the first place, Christianity is tho
roughly typical in the fact that beyond all
doubt its most central divine figure was at
first nothing other than a particular Deified
Man. All else that has been asserted
about this particular Man—that he was
the Son of God, that he was the incarna
tion of the Logos, that he existed previously
from all eternity, that he sits now on the
right hand of the Father—all the rest of
these theological stories do nothing in any
way to obscure the plain and universally
admitted historical fact that this Divine
Person, the Very God of Very God, being
of one substance with the Father, begotten
of the Father before all worlds, was yet, at
the moment when we first catch a glimpse
of him in the writings of his followers, a
Man recently deceased, respected, rever
enced, and perhaps worshipped by a little
group of fellow-peasants who had once
known him as Jesus, the son of the
carpenter. Jesus and his saints—Dominic,
Francis, Catherine of Siena—are no mere
verbal myths, no allegorical concepts, no
personifications of the Sun, the Dawn, the
Storm-cloud. Leaving aside for the present
from our purview of the Faith that one
element of the older supreme God—the
Hebrew Jahweh—whom Christianity bor
rowed from the earlier Jewish religion, we
can say at least with perfect certainty that
every single member of the Christian pan
theon—Jesus, the Madonna, St. John
�CHRISTIANITY AS A RELIGIOUS STANDARD
Baptist, St. Peter, the Apostles, the Evan
gelists—were, just as much as San Carlo
Borromeo or St. Thomas of Canterbury or
St. Theresa, Dead Men or Women, wor
shipped after their death with divine or
quasi-divine honours. In this the best-known
of all human religions, the one that has
grown up under the full eye of history, the
one whose gods and saints are most dis
tinctly traceable, every object of worship,
save only the single early and as yet
unresolved deity of the Hebrew cult, whose
origin is lost for us in the midst of ages,
turns out on inquiry to be, in ultimate
analysis, a Real Man or Woman.
That point alone I hold to be of cardinal
importance, and of immense or almost in
estimable illustrative value, in seeking for
the origin of the idea of a god in earlier
epochs.
In the second place, Christianity is
thoroughly typical in all that concerns its
subsequent course of evolution ; the gradual
elevation of its central Venerated Man into
a God of the highest might and power ;
the multiplication of secondary deities or
saints by worship or adoration of other
Dead Men and Women ; the growth of a
graduated and duly-subordinated hierarchy
of divine personages ; the rise of a legend,
with its miracles; the formation of a
definite theology, philosophy, and syste
matic dogmatism; the development of
special artistic forms, and the growth or
adoption of appropriate symbolism ; the
production of sacred books, rituals, and
formularies ; the rise of ceremonies,
mysteries, initiations, and sacraments ; the
reverence paid to relics, sacred sites, tombs,
and dead bodies ; and the close connection
of the religion as a whole with the ideas of
death, the soul, the ghost, the spirit, the
resurrection of the body, the last judgment,
hell, heaven, the life everlasting, and all
the other vast group of concepts which sur
round the simple fact of death in theprimitive human mind generally.
Now, on the other side, let us look
wherein Christianity to a certain small
extent fails to be typical.
It fails to be typical because it borrows
largely a whole ready-made theology, and
above all a single supreme God, from a
pre-existent religion. In so far as it takes
certain minor features from other cults, we
can hardly say with truth that it does not
represent the average run of religious
systems; for almost every particular new
Creed so bases itself upon elements of still
earlier faiths ; and it is perhaps impossible
B
for us at the present day to get back to
anything like a really primitive or original
form of cult. But Christianity is very far
removed indeed from all primitive cults in
that it accepts ready-made the monotheistic
conception, the high-water mark, so to
speak, of religious philosophising. While
in the frankness with which it exhibits to
us what is practically one-half of its supreme
deity as a Galilean peasant of undoubted
humanity, subsequently deified and etherealised, it allows us to get down at a single
step to the very origin of godhead ; yet in
the strength with which it asserts for the
other half of its supreme deity (the Father,
with his shadowy satellite the Holy Ghost)
an immemorial antiquity and a complete
severance from, human life, it is the least
anthropomorphic and the most abstract of
creeds. In order to track the idea of God
to its very source, then, we must apply in
the last resort to this unresolved element of
Christianity—the Hebrew Jahweh—the
same sort of treatment which we apply to
the conception of Jesus or Buddha—we
must show it to be also the immensely
transfigured and magnified ghost of a
Human Being.
Furthermore, Christianity fails to be
typical in that it borrows also from pre
existing religions to a great extent the
ideas of priesthood, sacrifice, the temple,
the altar, which, owing to the curious dis
appearance or at least unrecognisability of
the body of its founder (or, rather, its
central object of worship), have a less
natural place in our Christian system than
in any other known form of religious prac
tice.
Magnificent churches, a highlyevolved sacerdotalism, the sacrifice of the
mass, the altar, and the relics, have all
been imported in their fullest shape into
developed Christianity. But every one of
these things is partly borrowed from earlier
religions, and partly grew up about the
secondary worship of saints and martyrs,
their bones, their tombs, their catacombs,
and theii reliquaries.
I propose, in subsequent chapters, to
trace the growth of the idea of a God from
the most primitive origins to the most
highly evolved forms ; beginning with the
ghost, and the early undeveloped deity :
continuing through polytheism to the. rise
of monotheism ; and then returning at last
once more to the full Christian conception.
I shall try to show, in short, the evolution
of God, by starting with the evolution of
gods in .general, and coming down by
gradual stages through various races to the
�i6
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
evolution of the Hebrew, Christian, and
Moslem God in particular. And the goal
towards which I shall move will be the
one already foreshadowed in this introduc
tory chapter—the proof that in its origin
the concept of a god is nothing more than
that of a Dead Man, regarded as a still
surviving ghost or spirit, and endowed
with increased or supernatural powers and
qualities.
CHAPTER II.
RELIGION AND MYTHOLOGY
At the very outset of the profound inquiry
on which we are now about to embark, we
are met by a difficulty of considerable
magnitude. I n the opinion of most modern
mythologists mythology is the result of “ a
disease of language.” We are assured by
many eminent men that the origin of
religion is to be sought, not in savage
ideas about ghosts and spirits, the Dead
Man and his body or his surviving double,
but in primitive misconceptions of the
meaning of words which had reference to
the appearance of the Sun and the Clouds,
the Wind and the Rain, the Dawn and the
Dusk, the various phenomena of meteor
ology in general. If this be so, then our
attempt to derive the evolution of gods
from the crude ideas of early men about
their dead is clearly incorrect.
I do not believe these suggestions are
correct. It seems to me that the worship
of the sun, moon, and stars, instead of
being an element in primitive religion, is
really a late and derivative type of adora
tion ; and that mythology is mistaken in
the claims it makes for its own importance
in the genesis of the idea of a God or gods.
In order, however, to clear the ground for
a fair start in this direction, we ought to
begin by inquiring into the relative posi
tions of mythology and religion.
Religion, says another group of modern
thinkers, of whom Mr. Edward Clodd is
perhaps the most able English exponent,
“ grew out of fear.” It is born of man’s
terror of the great and mysterious natural
agencies by which he is surrounded. Now,
I am not concerned to deny that many
mythological beings of various terrible
forms do really so originate. I would
readily accept some such vague genesis for
many of the dragons and monsters which
abound in all savage or barbaric imaginings.
I would give up to Mr. Clodd the Etruscan
devils and the Hebrew Satan, the Grendels
and the Fire-drakes, the whole brood of
Cerberus, Briareus, the Cyclops, the Cen
taurs. None of these, however, is a god or
anything like one. A god, as I understand
the word, and as the vast mass of mankind
has always understood it, is a supernatural
being to be revered and worshipped. He
stands to his votaries, on the whole, as Dr.
Robertson Smith has well pointed out, in a
kindly and protecting relation. He may
be angry with them at times, to be sure;
but his anger is temporary and paternal
alone : his permanent attitude towards
his people is one of friendly concern; he
is worshipped as a beneficent and generous
Father. It is the origin of gods in this
strictest sense that concerns us here.
Bearing this distinction carefully in mind,
let us proceed to consider the essentials of
religion. If you were to ask almost any
intelligent and unsophisticated child,
“ What is religion ?” he would answer
off-hand, with the clear vision of youth,
“ Oh, it’s saying your prayers, and reading
your Bible, and singing hymns, and going
to church or to chapel on Sundays.” If
you were to ask any intelligent and
unsophisticated Hindu peasant the same
question, he would answer in almost the
self-same spirit, “ Oh, it is doing poojah
regularly, and paying your dues every, day
to Mahadeo.” If you were to ask any
simple-minded African savage, he would
similarly reply, “It is giving the gods flour,
and oil, and native beer, and goat-mutton.”
And finally, if you were to ask a devout
Italian contadino, he would instantly say,
“It is offering up candles and prayers to
the Madonna, attending mass, and remem
bering the saints on every festa.”
And they would all be quite right. This,
in its essence, is precisely what we call
religion. Apart from the special refine
ments of the higher minds in particular
creeds, which strive to import into it all,
according to their special tastes or fancies,
a larger or smaller dose of philosophy, or
of metaphysics, or of ethics, or of mysti
cism, this is just what religion means and
has always meant to the vast majority of
the human species. What is common to
it throughout is Custom or Practice : a
certain set of more or less similar Obser
vances : propitiation, prayer, praise, offer
ings : the request for divine favours, the
deprecation of divine anger, or other
misfortunes: and as the outward and
�RELIGION AND MYTHOLOGY
visible adjuncts of all these, the altar, the
sacrifice, the temple, the church ; priest
hood, services, vestments, ceremonial.
What is not at all essential to religion in
its wider aspect—taking the world round,
both past and present, Pagan, Buddhist,
Mohammedan, Christian, savage, and
civilised—is the ethical element, properly
so called. And what is very little essential
indeed is the philosophical element, theo
logy or mythology, the abstract theory of
spiritual existences. This theory, to be
sure, is in each country or race closely
related with religion under certain aspects;
and the stories told about the gods or God
are much mixed up with the cult itself in
the minds of worshippers ; but they are no
proper part of religion, strictly so called.
In a single word, I contend that religion,
as such, is essentially practical : theology
or mythology, as such, is essentially
theoretical.
Moreover, I also believe, and shall
attempt to show, that the two have to a
large extent distinct origins and roots:
that the union between them is in great
part adventitious : and that, therefore, to
account for or explain the one is by no
means equivalent to accounting for and
explaining the other.
Frank recognition of this difference of
origin between religion and _ mythology
would, I imagine, largely reconcile the two
conflicting schools of thought which at
present divide opinion between them on
this interesting problem in the evolution of
human ideas. On the one side, we have
the mythological school of interpreters,
whether narrowly linguistic, like Professor
Max Müller, or broadly anthropological,
like Mr. Andrew Lang, attacking the
problem from the point of view of myth or
theory alone. On the other side, we have
the truly religious school of interpreters,
like Mr. Herbert Spencer, and to some
extent Mr. Tylor, attacking the problem
from the point of view of practice or real
religion. The former school, it seems to
me, has failed to perceive that what it is
accounting for is not the origin of religion
at all—of worship, which is the central-root
idea of all religious observance, or of the
temple, the altar, the priest, and the
offering, which are its outer expression—
but merely the origin of myth or fable.
The latter school, on the other hand, tvhile
correctly interpreting the origin of all that
is essential and central in religion, have
perhaps under-estimated the value of their
opponents’ work through regarding it as
really opposed to their own, instead of
accepting what part of it may be true in
the light of a contribution to an indepen
dent but allied branch of the same inquiry.
In short, if the view here suggested be
correct, Spencer and Tylor have paved
the way to a true theory of the Origin of
Religion: Max Muller, Lang, and the
other mythologists have thrown out hints
of varying value towards a true theory of
the Origin of Mythology, or of its more
modern equivalent and successor, Theo
logy.
A brief outline of facts will serve to
bring into clearer relief this view of
religion as essentially practical—a set of
observances, rendered inevitable by the
primitive data of human psychology. It
will then be seen that what is fundamental
and essential in religion is the body of
practices, remaining throughout all stages
of human development the same, or nearly
the same, in spite of changes of mytho
logical or theological theory; and that
what is accidental and variable is the
particular verbal explanation or philoso
phical reason assigned for the diverse rites
and ceremonies.
In its simplest surviving savage type,
religion consists wholly and solely in
certain acts of deference paid by the living
to the persons of the dead. I shall try to
show in the sequel that down to its most
highly evolved modern type in the most
cultivated societies, precisely similar acts
of deference, either directly to corpses or
ghosts as such, or indirectly to gods who
were once ghosts, or were developed from
ghosts, form its essence still. But to begin
with I will try to bring a few simple
instances of the precise nature of religion
in its lowest existing savage mode.
Here in outline, but in Mr. Macdonald’s1
own words, are the ideas and observances
which this careful and accurate investigator
found current among the tribes of die heart
of Africa.
4 L Cu
The tribes he-¡wed-amongi“ are unani
mous in saying that there is something be
yond the body which they call spirit. Every
human body at death is forsaken by this
spirit.” That is the almost universal though
not quite primitive belief, whose necessary
genesis has been well traced out by Mr.
Herbert Spencer and Mr. Lester Ward.
“ Do these spirits ever die ?” Mr. Mac
donald asks. “ Some,” he answers, “ I
have heard affirm that it is possible for a
’The Rev. Duff Macdonald, author vtAfricana.
C
�i8
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
troublesome spirit to be killed. Others
give this a direct denial. Many, like
Kumpama, or Cherasulo, say, ‘You ask
me whether a man’s spirit ever dies. I
cannot tell. I have never been in the
spirit-world ; but this I am certain of, that
spirits live for a very long time.’”
On the question, “ Who the gods are ?”
Mr. Macdonald says :—
“In all our translations of Scripture where
we found the word God we used Mulungu;
but this word is chiefly used by the natives
as a general name for spirit. The spirit of
a deceased man is called his Mulungu, and
all the prayers and offerings of the living
are presented to such spirits of the dead.
It is here that we find the great centre of
the native religion. The spirits of the dead
are the gods of the living.
“ Where are these gods found ? At the
grave? No........Their god is not the body in
the grave, but the spirit, and they seek this
spirit at the place where their departed
kinsman last lived among them. It is the
great tree at the verandah of the dead man’s
house that is their temple ; and if no tree
grow here, they erect a little shade, and
there perform their simple rites. If this
spot becomes too public, the offerings may
be defiled, and the sanctuary will be removed
to a carefully-selected spot under some
beautiful tree. Very frequently a man
presents an offering at the top of his own
bed beside his head. He wishes his god
to come to him and whisper in his ear as he
sleeps.”
And here, again, we get the origin of
nature-worship :—
“ The spirit of an old chief may have a
whole mountain for his residence, but he
dwells chiefly on the cloudy summit. There
he sits to receive the worship of his votaries,
and to send down the refreshing showers in
answer to their prayers.”
Almost as essential to religion as these
prime factors in its evolution—the god,
worship, offerings, presents, holy places,
temples—is the existence of a priesthood.
Here is how the Central Africans arrive at
that special function :—
“A certain amount of etiquette is ob
served in approaching the gods. I n no case
can a little boy or girl approach these deities,
neither can anyone that has not been at the
mysteries. The common qualification is
that a person has attained a certain age,
about twelve or fourteen years, and has a
house of his own. Slaves seldom pray,
except when they have had a dream..
Children that have had a dream tell their
mother, who approaches the deity on their
behalf. (A present for the god is necessary,
and the slave or child may not have it.)
“ Apart from the case of dreams and a
few such private matters, it is not usual for
anyone to approach the gods except the
chief of the village. He is the recognised
high priest who presents prayers and offer
ings on behalf of all that live in his village.
...... The natives worship not so much in
dividually as in villages or communities.
Their religion is more a public than a private
matter.”
But there are also further reasons why
priests are necessary. Relationship forms
always a good ground for intercession. A
mediator is needed.
“ The chief of a village,” says Mr. Mac
donald, “ has another title to the priesthood.
It is his relatives that are the village gods.
Everyone that lives in the village recognises
these gods; but if anyone remove to another
village, he changes his gods. He recognises
now the gods of his new chief. One wish
ing to pray to the god (or gods) of any vil
lage naturally desires to have his prayers
presented through the village chief, because
the latter is nearly related to the village god,
and may be expected to be better listened
to than a stranger.”
Elimination and natural selection next
give one the transition from the ghost to the
god, properly so called.
“The gods of the natives then are» nearly
as numerous as their dead. It is impossible
to worship all ; a selection must be made,
and, as we have indicated, each worshipper
turns most naturally to the spirits of his own
departed relatives; but his gods are too many
still, and in farther selecting he turns to those
that have lived nearest his own time. Thus
the chief of a village will not trouble himself
about his great-great-grandfather: he will
present his offering to his own immediate
predecessor, and say, ‘ O father, I do not
know all your relatives, you know them all,
invite them to feast with you.’ The offer
ing is not simply for himself, but for him
self and all his relatives.”
Ordinary ghosts are soon forgotten with
the generation that knew them. Not so a
few select spirits, the Caesars and Napo
leons, the Charlemagnes and Timurs of
savage empires.
“A great chief that has been successful
in his wars does not pass out of memory so
soon. He may become the god of a moun
tain or a lake, and may receive homage as
a local deity long after his own descen
dants have been driven from the spot.
�RELIGION AND MYTHOLOGY
When there is a supplication for rain the
inhabitants of the country pray not so much
to their own forefathers as to the god of
yonder mountain on whose shoulders the
great rain-clouds repose. (Smaller hills are
seldom honoured with a deity.) ”
Well, in all this we get, it seems to me,
the very essentials and universals of religion
generally. In the presents brought to the
dead man’s grave to appease the ghost we
have the central element of all worship,
the practical key of all cults, past or
present. On the other hand, mythologists
tell us nothing about the origin of prayer
and sacrifice : they put us off with stories
of particular gods, without explaining to us
how those gods ever came to be worshipped.
Now, mythology is a very interesting study
in its own way : but to treat as religion a
mass of stories and legends about gods or
saints, with hardly a single living element
of practice or sacrifice, seems to me simply
to confuse two totally distinct branches of
human inquiry. The Origin of Tales has
nothing at all to do with the Origin of
Worship.
When we come to read Mr. Macdonald’s
account of a native funeral, on the other
hand, we are at once on a totally different
tack ; we see the genesis of the primitive
acts of sacrifice and religion.
“Along with the deceased is buried a con
siderable part of his property. We have
already seen that his bed is buried with him;
so also are all his clothes. If he possesses
several tusks of ivory, one tusk or more is
ground to a powder between two stones and
put beside him. Beads are also ground
down in the same way. These precautions
are taken to prevent the witch (who is
supposed to be answerable for his death)
from making any use of the ivory or
beads.
“ If the deceased owned several slaves,
an enormous hole is dug for a grave. The
slaves are now brought forward. They
may be either cast into the pit alive, or the
undertakers may cut all their throats. The
body of their master or their mistress is
then laid down to rest above theirs, and the
grave is covered in.
“After this the women come forward
with the offerings of food, and place them
at the head of the grave. The dishes in
which the food was brought are left behind.
The pot that held the drinking-water of the
deceased and his drinking-cup are also left
with him. These, too, might be coveted by
the witch, but a hole is pierced in the pot,
and the drinking calabash is broken.”
19
Sometimes the man may be buried in his
own hut.
“In this case the house is not taken
down, but is generally covered with cloth,
and the verandah becomes the place for
presenting offerings. His old house thus
becomes a kind of temple........The de
ceased is now in the spirit-world, and
receives offerings and adoration. He is
addressed as ‘ Our great spirit that has gone
before.’ If anyone dream of him, it is at
once concluded that the spirit is ‘up to
something.’ Very likely he wants to have
some of the survivors for his companions.
The dreamer hastens to appease the spirit
by an offering.”
So real is this society of the dead that
Mr. Macdonald says :—
“ The practice of sending messengers to
the world beyond the grave is found on the
West Coast. A chief summons a slave,
delivers to him a message, and then cuts
off his head. If the. chief forget anything
that he wanted to say, he sends another
slave as a postscript.”
I have quoted at such length from this
recent and extremely able work because I
want to bring into strong relief the fact
that we have here going on under our very
eyes, from day to day, de novo, the entire
genesis of new gods and goddesses, and of
all that is most central and essential to
religion—worship, prayer, the temple, the
altar, priesthood, sacrifice. Nothing that
the mythologists can tell us about the Sun
or the Moon, the Dawn or the Storm-cloud,
Little Red Riding Hood or Cinderella and
the Glass Slipper, comes anywhere near the
Origin of Religion in these its central and
universal elements. Those stories or
guesses may be of immense interest and
importance as contributions to the history
of ideas in our race ; but nothing we can
learn about the savage survival in the myth
of Cupid or Psyche, or about the primitive
cosmology in the myth of the children of
Kronos, helps us to get one inch nearer
the origin of God or of prayer, of worship,
of religious ceremonial, of the temple, the
church, the sacrifice, the mass, or any other
component part of what we really know as
religion in the concrete. These myths
may be sometimes philosophic guesses,
sometimes primitive folk-tales, but they
certainly are not the truths of religion.
On the other hand, the living facts, here
so simply detailed by a careful, accurate,
and unassuming observer, strengthened by
the hundreds of similar facts collected by
Tylor, Spencer, and others, do help us at
�20
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
once to understand the origin of the central
core and kernel of religion as universally
practised all the world over.
For, omitting for the present the mytho
logical and cosmological factor, which so
often comes in to obscure the plain reli
gious facts in missionary narrative or highlycoloured European accounts of native be
liefs, what do we really find as the under
lying truths of all religion ? That all the
world over practices essentially similar to
those of these savage Central Africans pre
vail among mankind; practices whose affi
liation upon the same primitive ideas has
been abundantly proved by Mr. Herbert
Spencer; practices which have for their
essence the propitiation or adulation of a
spiritual being or beings, derived from
ghosts, and conceived of as similar, in all
except the greatness of the connoted attri
butes, to the souls of men. “Whenever
the [Indian] villagers are questioned about
their creed,” says Sir William Hunter,
“ the same answer is invariably given :
‘ The common people have no idea of
religion, but to do right [ceremonially] and
to worship the village god.’ ”
In short, I maintain that religion is not
mainly, as the mistaken analogy of Chris
tian usage makes us erroneously call it,
Faith or Creed, but simply and solely
Ceremony, Custom, or Practice. And I
am glad to say that, for early Semitic
times at least, Professor Robertson Smith
is of the same opinion.
The Roman religion separates itself at
once into a civic or national and a private
or family cult. There were the great gods,
native or adopted, whom the State wor
shipped publicly, as the Central African
tribes worship the chief’s ancestors ; and
there were the Lares and Penates, whom
the family worshipped at its own hearth,
and whose very name shows them to have
been in origin and essence ancestral spirits.
And as the real or practical Hindu religion
consists mainly of offering up rice, millet,
and ghee to the little local and family
deities or to the chosen patron god in the
Brahmanist pantheon, so, too, the real or
practical Roman religion consisted mainly
of sacrifice done at the domestic altar to
the special Penates, farre pio et salients
mica.
I will not go on to point out in detail at
the present stage of our argument how
Professor Sayce similarly finds ancestor
worship and Shamanism (a low form of
ghost-propitiation) at the root of the
religion of the ancient Accadians; how
other observers have performed the same
task for the Egyptians and Japanese;
and how like customs have been traced
among Greeks and Amazulu, among
Hebrews and Nicaraguans, among early
English and Digger Indians, among our
Aryan ancestors themselves and Andaman
Islanders. Every recent narrative of travel
abounds with examples. Those who wish
to see the whole of the evidence on this
matter marshalled in battle array have
only to turn to the first volume of Mr.
Herbert Spencer’s Principles of Sociology.
What concerns us in this chapter a little
more is to call attention by anticipation to
the fact that even in Christianity itself the
same primitive element survives as the
centre of all that is most distinctively
religious, as opposed to theological. I
make these remarks provisionally here in
order that the reader may the better under
stand to what ultimate goal our investiga
tion will lead him.
It is the universal Catholic custom to
place the relics of saints or martyrs under
the altars in churches. Thus the body of
St. Mark the Evangelist lies under the
high altar of St. Mark’s, at Venice; and in
every other Italian cathedral, or chapel, a
reliquary is deposited within the altar
itself. So well understood is this principle
in the Latin Church that it has hardened
into the saying, “No relic, no altar.” The
sacrifice of the mass takes place at such
an altar, and is performed by a priest in
sacrificial robes.. The entire Roman
Catholic ritual is a ritual derived from the
earlier sacerdotal ideas of ministry at an
altar, and its connection with the primitive
form is still kept up by the necessary
presence of human remains in its holy
places.
Furthermore, the very idea of a church
itself is descended from the early Christian
meeting-places in the catacombs or at the
tombs of the martyrs, which are universally
allowed to have been the primitive
Christian altars. We know now that the
cruciform dome-covered plan of Christian
churches is derived from these early
meeting-places at- the junction of lanes or
alleys in the catacombs ; that the nave,
chancel, and transepts indicate the crossing
of the alleys, while the dome represents
the hollowed-out portion or rudely circular
vault where the two lines of archway
intersect. The earliest dome-covered
churches were attempts, as it were, to
construct a catacomb above ground for the
reception of the altar-tomb of a saint or
�RELIGION AND MYTHOLOGY.
martyr. Similarly with the chapels that
open out at the side from the aisles or
transepts. Etymologically, the word chapel
is the modernised- form of capella, the
arched sepulchre excavated in the walls of
the catacombs, before the tomb at which it
was usual to offer up prayer and praise.
The chapels built out from the aisles in
Roman churches, each with its own altar
and its own saintly relics, are attempts to
reproduce above ground in the same way
the original sacred places in the early
Christian excavated cemeteries.
Thus Christianity itself is linked on to
the very antique custom of worship at
tombs, and the habit of ancestor-worship
by altars, relics, and invocation of saints,
even revolutionary Protestantism still re
taining some last faint marks of its origin
in the dedication of churches to particular
evangelists or martyrs, and in the more or
less disguised survival of altar, priesthood,
sacrifice, and vestments.
Now, I do not say ancestor-worship
gives us the whole origin of everything
that is included in Christian English minds
in the idea of religion. I do not say it
accounts for all the cosmologies and
cosmogonies of savage, barbaric, or civilised
tribes. Those, for the most part, are pure
mythological products, explicable mainly, I
believe, by means of the key with which
mythology supplies us ; and one of them,
adopted into Genesis from an alien source,
has come to be accepted by modern
Christendom as part of that organised
body of belief which forms the Christian
creed, though not in any true sense the
Christian religion. Nor do I say that
ancestor-worship gives us the origin of
those ontological, metaphysical, or mys
tical conceptions which form part of the
philosophy or theology of many priest
hoods. Religions, as we generally get
them envisaged for us nowadays, are held
to include the mythology, the cosmogony,
the ontology, and even the ethics of the
race that practises them. These extra
neous developments, however, I hold to
spring from different roots and to have
nothing necessarily in common with
religion proper. The god is the true crux.
If we have once accounted for the origin of
ghosts, gods, tombs, altars, temples,
churches, worship, sacrifice, priesthoods,
and ceremonies, then we have accounted
for all that is essential and central in
religion.
Once more, I do not wish to insist, either,
that every particular and individual god,
2L
national or naturalistic, must necessarily
represent a particular ghost—the dead
spirit of a single definite once-living
person. It is enough to show, as Mr.
Spencer has shown, that the idea of the
god, and the worship paid to a god, are
directly derived from the idea of the ghost,
and the offerings made to the ghost,
without necessarily holding, as Mr. Spencer
seems to hold, that every god is and must
be in ultimate analysis the ghost of a
particular human being. Once the con
ception of gods had been evolved by
humanity, and had become a common part
of every man’s imagined universe, then it
was natural enough that new gods should
be made from time to time out of
abstractions or special aspects and powers
of nature, and that the same worship should
be paid to such new-made and purely
imaginary gods as had previously been
paid to the whole host of gods evolved
from personal and tribal ancestors. It is
the first step that costs : once you have
got the idea of a god fairly evolved, any
number of extra gods may be invented or
introduced from all quarters. A great
pantheon readily admits new members to
its ranks from many strange sources.
Familiar instances in one of the bestknown pantheons are those of Concordia,
Pecunia,Aius Locutius, Rediculus Tutanus.
The Romans, indeed, deified every con
ceivable operation of nature or of human
life ; they had gods or goddesses for the
minutest details of agriculture, of social
relations, of the first years of childhood, of
marriage and domestic arrangements
generally. Many of their deities, as we
shall see hereafter, were obviously manu
factured to meet a special demand on
special occasions. But, at the same time,
none of these gods, so far as we can judge,
could ever have come to exist at all if the
ghost-theory and ancestor-worship had not
already made familiar to the human mind
the principles and practice, of religion
generally.
Still, to admit that other elements have
afterwards come in to confuse religion is
quite a different thing from admitting that
religion itself has more than one origin.
Whatever gives us the key to the practice
of worship gives us the key to all real
religion. Now, one may read through
almost any books of the mythological school
without ever coming upon a single word
that throws one ray of light upon the origin
of religion itself thus properly called. To
trace the development of this, that, or the
�22
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
other story or episode in a religious myth
is in itself a very valuable study in human
evolution : but no amount of tracing such
stories ever gives us the faintest clue to the
question why men worshipped Osiris, Zeus,
Siva, or Venus; why they offered up prayer
and praise to Isis, or to Artemis ; why they
made sacrifices of oxen to Capitolian Jove
at Rome, or slew turtle-doves on the altar
of Jahweh, god of Israel, at Jerusalem.
The ghost - theory and the practice of
ancestor-worship show us a natural basis
and genesis for all these customs, and
explain them in a way to which no mytho
logical inquiry can add a single item of
fundamental interest.
It may be well at this point to attempt
beforehand some slight provisional dis
entanglement of the various extraneous
elements which interweave themselves at
last with the simple primitive fabric of
practical religion.
In the first place, there is the mytho
logical element. The mythopoeic faculty is
a reality in mankind. Stories arise, grow,
gather episodes with movement, transform
and transmute themselves, wander far in
space, get corrupted by time, in ten thousand
ways suffer change and modification. Now,
such stories sometimes connect themselves
with living men and women. Everybody
knows how many myths exist even in our
own day about every prominent or peculiar
person. They also gather more particularly
round the memory of the dead, and espe
cially of any very distinguished dead man
or woman. Sometimes they take their rise
in genuine tradition, sometimes they are
pure fetches of fancy or of the romancing
faculty. The ghosts or the gods are no less
exempt from these mythopceic freaks than
other people; and as gods go on living
indefinitely, they have plenty of time for
myths to gather about them. Most often,
a myth is invented to account for some
particular religious ceremony.
Again,
myths demonstrably older than a parti
cular human being—say Caesar, Virgil,
Arthur, Charlemagne—may get fitted by
later ages to those special personalities.
The same thing often happens also with
gods.
Again, myths about the gods come in the
long run, in many cases, to be written
down, especially by the priests, and them
selves acquire a considerable degree of
adventitious holiness. Thus we get Sacred
Books ; and in most advanced races, the
sacred books tend to become an important
integral part of religion, and a test of the
purity of tenets or ceremonial. But sacred
books almost always contain rude cosmo
logical guesses and a supernatural cosmo
gony, as well as tales about the doings,
relationships, and prerogatives of the gods.
Such early philosophical conjectures come
then to be intimately bound up with the
idea of religion, and in many cases even
to supersede in certain minds its true,
practical, central kernel. The extreme of
this tendency is seen in English Protestant
Dissenting Bibliolatry.
Rationalistic and reconciliatory glosses
tend to arise with advancing culture. At
tempts are made to trace the pedigree and
mutual relations of the gods, and to get
rid of discrepancies in earlier legends. The
Theogeny of Hesiod is a definite effort
undertaken in this direction for the Greek
pantheon. Often the attempt is made by
the most learned and philosophicallyminded among the priests, and results in
a quasi-philosophical mythology like that
of the Brahmans. In the monotheistic or
half-monotheistic religions this becomes
theology. In proportion as it grows more
and more laboured and definite, the atten
tion of the learned and the priestly class is
more and more directed to dogma, creed,
faith, abstract formulae of philosophical or
intellectual belief, while insisting also upon
ritual or practice. But the popular religion
remains usually, as in India, a religion of
practical custom and observances alone,
having very little relation to the highly
abstract theological ideas of the learned or
the priestly.
Lastly, in the highest religions, a large
element of ethics, of sentiment, of broad
humanitarianism, of adventitious emotion,
is allowed to come in, often to the extent of
obscuring the original factors of practice
and observance. We are constantly taught
that “ real religion ” means many things
which have nothing on earth to do with
religion proper, in any sense, but are
merely high morality, tinctured by emo
tional devotion towards a spiritual being or
set of beings.
What I want to suggest then in the
present chapter sums itself up in a few
sentences thus : Religion is practice, my
thology is story-telling. Every religion has
myths that accompany it: but the myths
do not give rise to the religion : on the
contrary, the religion gives rise to the
myths. And I shall attempt in this book
to account for the origin of religion alone,
omitting altogether both mythology as a
whole, and all mythical persons or beings
�THE LIFE OF THE DEAD
other than gods in the sense here illus
trated.
CHAPTER III.
THE LIFE OF THE DEAD
Religion has one element within it still
older, more fundamental, and more per
sistent than any mere belief in a god or
gods—nay, even than the custom or prac
tice of supplicating and appeasing ghosts
or gods by gifts and observances. That
element is the conception of the Life of the
Dead. On the primitive belief in such
life all religion ultimately bases itself.
The belief is, in fact, the earliest thing to
appear in religion, for there are savage
tribes who have nothing worth calling gods,
but have still a religion or cult of their dead
relatives.
But the belief in continued life, like all
other human ideas, has naturally undergone
various stages of evolution. The stages
glide imperceptibly into one another, of
course ; but I think we can on the whole
distinguish with tolerable accuracy between
three main layers or strata of opinion with
regard to the continued existence of the
dead. In the first or lowest stratum, the
difference between life and death them
selves is but ill or inadequately perceived ;
the dead are thought of as yet bodily living.
In the second stratum, death is recognised
as a physical fact, but is regarded as only
temporary; at this stage, men look forward
to the Resurrection of the body, and expect
the Life of the World to Come. In the
third stratum, the soul is regarded as a
distinct entity from the body; it survives it
in a separate and somewhat shadowy form:
so that the opinion as to the future proper
to this stage is not a belief in the Resur
rection of the body, but a belief in the
Immortality of the Soul. These two con
cepts have often been confounded together
by loose and semi-philosophical Christian
thinkers; but in their essence they are
wholly distinct and irreconcilable.
I shall examine each of these three strata
separately.
And first as to that early savage level of
thought where the ideas of life and death
are very ill demarcated. To us at the
present day it seems a curious notion that
people should not possess the conception
23
of death as a necessary event in every
individual human history. But that is
because we cannot easily unread all our
previous thinking, cannot throw ourselves
frankly back into the state of the savage.
We are accustomed to living in large
and -populous communities, where deaths
are frequent, and where natural death in
particular is an every-day occurrence. We
have behind us a vast and long history of
previous ages; and we know that historical
time was occupied by the lives of many
successive generations, all of which are now
dead, and none of which on the average
exceeded a certain fixed limit of seventy or
eighty odd years. To us, the conception
of human life as a relatively short period
is a common and familiar one.
We forget, however, that to the savage
all this is quite otherwise. He lives in a
small and scattered community, where
deaths are rare, and where natural death
in particular is comparatively infrequent.
Most of his people are killed in war, or
devoured by wild beasts, or destroyed by
accidents in the chase, or by thirst or starva
tion. Death by disease is comparatively
rare; death by natural decay almost un
known or unrecognised.
Nor has the savage a great historic past
behind him. He knows few but his tribes
men, and little of their ancestors save
those whom his parents can remember
before them. His perspective of the past
is extremely limited. That “all men are
mortal ” is to civilised man a truism ; to
very early savages it would necessarily
have seemed a startling paradox. No man
ever dies within his own- experience ; ever
since he can remember, he has continued
to exist as a permanent part of all his
adventures. Most of the savage’s family
have gone on continuously living with him.
A death has been a rare and startling occur
rence. Thus the notion of death as an
inevitable end never arises at all ; the
notion of death as due to natural causes
seems quite untenable. When a savage
dies, the first question that arises is, “ Who
has killed him ?” If he is slain in war, or
devoured by a tiger, or ripped up by an
elephant, or drowned by a stream in spate,
or murdered by a tribesman, the cause is
obvious. If none of these, then the death
is usually set down to witchcraft.
Furthermore, the mere fact of death is
much less certain among primitive or savage
men than in civilised communities. We
know as a rule with almost absolute cer
tainty whether at a given moment a sick or
�24
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
wounded man is dead or living. Never
theless, even among ourselves, cases of
doubt not infrequently occur. At times
we hesitate whether a man or woman is
dead or has fainted. If the heart continues
to beat, we consider them still living ; if
not the slightest flutter of the pulse can be
perceived, we consider them dead. Even
our advanced medical science, however, is
often perplexed in very obscure cases of
catalepsy; and mistakes have occurred
from time to time, resulting in occasional
premature burials. Naturally, among sav
ages, such cases of doubt are far more likely
to occur than among civilised people ; or
rather, to put it as the savage would think
of it, there is often no knowing when a
person who is lying stiff and lifeless may
happen to get up again and resume his
usual activity. The savage is accustomed
to seeing his fellows stunned or rendered
unconscious by blows, wounds, and other
accidents, inflicted either by the enemy, by
wild beasts, by natural agencies, or by the
wrath of his tribesmen; and he never
knows how soon the effect of such accidents
may pass away, and the man may recover
his ordinary vitality. As a rule, he keeps
and tends the bodies of his friends as long
as any chance remains of their ultimate
recovery, and often (as we shall see in the
sequel) much longer.
Again, in order to understand this atti
tude of early man towards his wounded, his
stricken, and his dead, we must glance aside
for a moment at the primitive psychology.
Very early indeed in the history of the
human mind, I believe, some vague adum
bration of the notion of a soul began to per
vade humanity. We now know that con
sciousness is a function of the brain ; that
it is intermitted during sleep, when the
brain rests, and also during times of grave
derangement of the nervous or circulatory
systems, as when we faint or assume the
comatose condition, or are stunned by a
blow, or fall into catalepsy or epilepsy. We
also know that consciousness ceases alto
gether at death, when the brain no longer
functions ; and that the possibility of its
further continuance is absolutely cut off by
the fact of decomposition. - But these
truths, still imperfectly understood or rashly
rejected by many among ourselves, were
wholly unknown to early men. They had
to frame for themselves as best they could
some vague working hypothesis of thehuman mind, from data which suggested
themselves in the ordinary course of life ;
and the hypothesis which they framed was
more or less roughly that of the soul or
spirit, still implicitly accepted by a large
majority of the human species.
According to this hypothesis, every man
consists of two halves or parts, one mate
rial or bodily, the other immaterial or spiri
tual. The first half, called the body, is
visible and tangible; the second half,
called the soul, dwells within it, and is
more or less invisible or shadowy. It is to
a large extent identified with the breath ;
and like the breath it is often believed to
quit the body at death, and even to go off
in a free form and live its own life else
where. As this supposed independence of
the soul from the body lies at the very basis
of all ghosts and gods, and therefore of
religion itself, I may be excused for going at
some length into the question of its origin.
Actually, so far as we know by direct
and trustworthy evidence, the existence of
a mind, consciousness, or “soul,” apart
from a body, has never yet been satisfac
torily demonstrated. But the savage de
rived the belief, apparently, from a large
number of concurrent hints and sugges
tions, of which such a hypothesis seemed
to him the inevitable result. During the
daytime he was awake ; at night he slept :
yet even in his sleep, while his body lay
curled on the ground beside the camp-fire,
he seemed to hunt or to fight, to make love
or to feast, in some other region. What
was this part of him that wandered from
the body in dreams ?—what, if not the soul
or breath which he naturally regarded as
something distinct and separate ? And
when a man died, did not the soul or breath
go from him? When he was badly wounded,
did it not disappear for a time, and then re
turn again? In fainting fits, in catalepsy,
and in other abnormal states, did it not
leave the body, or even play strange tricks
with it? I need not pursue this line of
thought, already fully worked out by Mr.
Herbert Spencer and Dr. Tylor. It is
enough to say that from a very early date
primitive man began to regard the soul or
life as something bound up with the breath,
something which could go away from the
body at will and return to it again, some
thing separable and distinct, yet essential
to the person, very vaguely conceived as
immaterial or shadowy, but more so at a
later than at an earlier period.1
1 The question of the Separate Soul has re
cently received very full treatment from Mr,
Frazer in The Golden Bough, and Mr. Sidney
Hartland in The Legend of Perseus.
�THE LIFE OF THE DEAD
Moreover, these souls or spirits (which
quitted the body in sleep or trance) out
lived death, and appeared again to sur
vivors. In dreams we often see the shapes
of living men; but we also see with peculiar
vividness the images of the departed. Ev erybody is familiar with the frequent reappear
ance in sleep of intimate friends or rela
tions lately deceased. The savage accepts
this dream-world as almost equally real
with the world of sense-presentation. As
he envisages the matter to himself, his
soul has been away on its travels
without its body, and there has met
and conversed with the souls of dead
friends or relations.
We must remember also that in savage
life occasions for trance, for fainting, and
for other abnormal or comatose nervous
conditions occur far more frequently than
in civilised life. The savage is often
wounded and fails from loss of blood ; he
cuts his foot against a stone, or is half
killed by a wild beast; he fasts long and
often, perforce, or is reduced to the very
verge of starvation ; and he is therefore
familiar, both in his own case and in the
case of others, with every variety of uncon
sciousness and of delirium or delusion. All
these facts figure themselves to his mind as
absences of the soul from the body, which
is thus to him a familiar and almost every
day experience.
Moreover, it will hence result that the
savage can hardly gain any clear concep
tion of Death, and especially of death from
natural causes. When a tribesman is
brought home severely wounded and un
conscious, the spectator’s immediate idea
must necessarily be that the soul has gone
away and deserted the body. For how
long it has gone, he cannot tell; but his
first attempts are directed towards inducing
or compelling it to return again. For this
purpose, he often addresses it with prayers
and adjurations, or begs it to come back
with loud cries and persuasions. And he
cannot possibly discriminate between its
temporary absence and its final departure.
As Mr. Herbert Spencer well says, the con
sequences of blows or wounds merge into
death by imperceptible stages. “ Now the
injured man shortly ‘returned to himself,’
and did not go away again ; and now, re
turning to himself only after a long absence,
he presently deserted his body for an in
definite time. Lastly, instead of these
temporary returns, followed by final ab
sence, there sometimes occurred cases in
which a violent blow caused continuous
«5
absence from the very first; the other self
never came back at all.”
In point of fact, during these earlier
stages, the idea of Death as we know it did
not and does not occur in any form. There
are still savages who do not seem to recog
nise the universality and necessity of death
—who regard it, on the contrary, as some
thing strange and unnatural, something
due to the machination of enemies or of
witchcraft. With the earliest men, it is a
foregone conclusion, psychologically speak
ing, that they should so regard it. To
them, a Dead Man must always have
seemed a man whose soul or breath or
other self had left him, but might possibly
return again to the body at any time.
Each of the three stages of thought above
discriminated has its appropriate mode of
disposing of its dead. The appropriate
mode for this earliest stage is Preservation
of the Corpse, which eventuates at last in
Mummification.
The simplest form of this mode of dis
posal of the corpse consists in keeping it in
the hut or cave where the family dwell,
together with the living. A N ew Guinea
woman thus kept her husband’s body in her
hut till it dried up of itself, and she kissed
it and offered it food every day, as though
it were living. Many similar cases are re
ported from elsewhere. Hut preservation _
is common in the very lowest races. More
frequently, however, owing to the obvious
discomfort of living in too close proximity
to a dead body, the corpse at this stage of
thought is exposed openly in a tree or on a
platform or under some other circumstances
where no harm can come to it. Among
the Australians and Andaman Islanders,
who, like the Negritoes of New Guinea,
preserve for us a very early type of human
customs, the corpse is often exposed on a
rough raised scaffold. Some of the Poly
nesian and Melanesian peoples follow the
same practice. The Dyaks and Kyans
expose their dead in trees. “ But it is in
America,” says Mr. Herbert Spencer, “that
exposure on raised stages is commonest.”
A slight variant on this method, peculiar
to a very maritime race, is that described
by Mr. H. O. Forbes among the natives of
Timurlaut:—
“ The dead body is placed in a portion
of a ■prau fitted to the length of the indi
vidual, or within strips of gaba-gaba, or
stems of the sago-palm pinned together.
If it is a person of some consequence, such
as an Orang Kaya, an ornate and decorated
/raw-shaped coffin is specially made. This
�26
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
Is then enveloped in calico, and placed
either on the top of a rock by the margin
of the sea at a short distance from the
village, or on a high pile-platform erected
on the shore about low-tide mark. On the
top of the coffin-lid are erected tall flags,
and the figures of men playing gongs,
shooting guns, and gesticulating wildly to
frighten away evil influences from the
sleeper. Sometimes the platform is erected
on the shore above high-water mark, and
near it is stuck in the ground a tall bamboo
full of palm-wine; and suspended over a
bamboo rail are bunches of sweet pota
toes for the use of the dead man’s Nitu.
When the body is quite decomposed, his
son or one of the family disinters the skull
and deposits it on a little platform in his
house, in the gable opposite the fireplace,
while to ward off evil from himself he
carries about with him the atlas and axis
bones of its neck in his luon, or siriholder.”
This interesting account is full of impli
cations whose fuller meaning we will
perceive hereafter. The use of the skull
and the talisman bone should especially be
noted for their later importance.
For
skulls are fundamental in the history of
religion.
Cases like these readily pass into the
practice of Mummifying, more especially
m dry or desert climates. Even in so
damp a tropical country as New Guinea,
however, D’Albertis found in a shed on the
banks of the Fly River two mummies,
artificially prepared, as he thought, by
removal of the flesh, the bones alone being
preserved with the skin to cover them.
Here we have evidently a clear conception
of death as a serious change, of a different
character from a mere temporary absence.
But mummification for the most part is
confined to drier climates, where it is
artificially performed down to a very
evolved stage of civilisation, as we know
well in Peru and Egypt.
One word must be said in passing as to
the frequent habit of specially preserving,
and even carrying about the person, the
head or hand of a deceased relative. This
has been already mentioned in the case of
Timurlaut; and it occurs frequently else
where. Thus Mr. Chalmers says of a New
Guinea baby : “ It will be covered with
two inches of soil, the friends watching
beside the grave ; but eventually the skull
and smaller bones will be preserved and
worn by the mother.” Similarly, in the
Andaman Islands, where we touch perhaps
the lowest existing stratum of savage
feeling, “ widows may be seen with the
skulls of their deceased partners suspended
round their necks.” The special preserva
tion of the head, even when the rest of the
body is eaten or buried, will engage our
attention at a later period : heads so pre
served are usually resorted to as oracles,
and are often treated as the home of the
spirit. Mr. Herbert Spencer has collected
many similar instances, such as that of the
Tasmanians who wore a bone from the
skull or arm of a dead relation.
At this stage of thought, it seems to me,
it is the actual corpse that is still thought
to be alive ; the actual corpse that appears
in dreams ; and the actual corpse that is
fed and worshipped and propitiated with
presents.
Ceremonial cannibalism appears in this
stratum, and survives from it into higher
levels. The body is eaten entire, and the
bones preserved ; or the flesh and fat are
removed, and the skin left; or a portion
only is sacramentally and reverently eaten
by the surviving relations. These pro
cesses will be more minutely described in
the sequel.
The first stage merges by gradual
degrees into the second, which is that of
Burial or its equivalent. Cave-burial of
mummies or of corpses forms . the tran
sitional link. Indeed, inasmuch as many
races of primitive men lived habitually in
caves, the placing or leaving the corpse in
a cave seems much the same thing as the
placing or leaving it in a shed, hut, or
shelter. The cave-dwelling Veddahs simply
left the dead man in the cave where he
died, and themselves migrated to some
other cavern. Still, cave-burial lingered
on late with many tribes or nations which
had for ages outlived the habit of cave
dwelling. Among the South American
Indians, cave-burial was common ; and in
Peru it assumed high developments of
mummification. The making of an artificial
cave or vault for the dead is but a slight
variant on this custom ; it was frequent in
Egypt, the other dry country where the
making of mummies was carried to a high
pitch of perfection. The Tombs of the
Kings at Thebes are splendid instances of
such artificial caves, elaborated into stately
palaces with painted walls, where the dead
monarchs might pass their underground
life in state and dignity. Cave-tombs,
natural or artificial, are also common in
Asia Minor, Italy, and elsewhere.
During the first stage, it may be noted-
�THE LIFE OF THE DEAD
the attitude of man towards his dead is
chiefly one of affectionate regard. The
corpse is kept at home, and fed or tended ;
the skull is carried about as a beloved
object. But in the second stage, which
induces the practice of burial, a certain
Fear of the Dead becomes more obviously
apparent. Men dread the return of the
corpse or the ghost, and strive to keep it
within prescribed limits. In this stage, the
belief in the Resurrection of the Body is
the appropriate creed ; and though at first
the actual corpse is regarded as likely to
return to plague survivors, that idea gives
place a little later, I believe, to the con
ception of a less material double or spirit.
And here let us begin by discriminating
carefully between the Resurrection of the
Body and the Immortality of the Soul.
The idea of Resurrection arose from and
is closely bound up with the practice of
burial, the second and simpler mode of
disposing of the remains of the dead. The
idea of Immortality arose from and is
closely bound up with the practice of
burning invented at the third stage of
human culture. During the early his
torical period all the most advanced and
cultivated nations burnt their dead, and, in
consequence, accepted the more ideal and
refined notion of Immortality. But modern
European nations bury their dead, and, in
consequence, accept, nominally at least,
the cruder and grosser notion of Resur
rection. Nominally, I say, because, in
spite of creeds and formularies, the
influence of Plato and other ancient
thinkers, as well as of surviving ancestral
ideas, has made most educated Europeans
really believe in Immortality, even when
they imagine themselves to be believing in
Resurrection. Nevertheless, the belief in
Resurrection is the avowed and authorita
tive belief of the Christian world, which
thus proclaims itself as on a lower level in
this respect than the civilised peoples of
antiquity.
The earlier of these two ways of dis
posing of the bodies of the dead is
certainly by burial. As this fact has
recently been called in question, I will
venture to enlarge a little upon the evidence
in its favour. In point of time, burial goes
back with certainty to the neolithic age,
and with some probability to the palaeolithic.
Several true interments in caves have been
attributed by competent geologists to the
earlier of these two periods, the first for
which we have any sure warranty of man’s
existence on earth. But, as I do not desire
n
to introduce controversial matter of any
sort into this exposition, I will waive the
evidence for burial in the palaeolithic age
as doubtful, and will merely mention that
in the Mentone caves, according to Mr.
Arthur Evans, a most competent authority,
we have a case of true burial accompanied
by neolithic remains of a grade of culture
earlier and simpler than any known to us
elsewhere. In other words, from the very
earliest beginning of the neolithic age men
buried their dead ; and they continued to
bury them, in caves or tumuli, down to the
end of neolithic culture. They buried
them in the Long Barrows in England ;
they buried them in the Ohio mounds ;
they buried them in the shadowy forests of
New Zealand ; they buried them in the
heart of darkest Africa. I know of no
case of burning or any means of disposal
of the dead, otherwise than by burial or its
earlier equivalent, mummification, among
people in the stone age of culture in
Europe. It is only when bronze and other
metals are introduced that races advance
to the third stage, the stage of cremation.
In America, however, the Mexicans were
cremationists.
The wide diffusal of burial over the globe
is also a strong argument for its relatively
primitive origin. In all parts of the world
men now bury their dead, or did once bury
them. Burial is the common, and universal
mode ; burning, exposure, throwing into a
sacred river, and so forth, are sporadic and
exceptional, and in many cases, as among
the Hindus, are demonstrably of late origin,
and connected with certain relatively
modern refinements of religion.
Once more, in many or most cases, we
have positive evidence that where a race
now burns its dead, it used once to bury
them. Burial preceded burning in preheroic
Greece, as it also did in Etruria and in
early Latium. The people of the Long
Barrows, in Western Europe generally,
buried their dead ; the people of the Round
Barrows who succeeded them, and who
possessed a far higher grade of culture,
almost always cremated. It has been
assumed that burning is primordial in India;
but Mr. William Simpson, the well-known
artist of the Illustrated London Nevus, calls
my attention to the fact that the Vedas
speak with great clearness of burial as the
usual mode of disposing of the corpse, and
even allude to the tumulus, the circle of
stones around it, and the sacred temenos
which they enclose. According to Rajendralala Mitra, whose high authority on the
�28
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
subject is universally acknowledged, burial
was the rule in India till about the thirteenth
or fourteenth century before the Christian
era ; then came in cremation, with burial of
the ashes, and this continued till about the
time of Christ, when burial was dispensed
with, and the ashes were thrown into some
sacred river. I think, therefore, until some
more positive evidence is adduced on the
other side, we may rest content with our
general conclusion that burial is the oldest,
most universal, and most savage mode of
disposing of the remains of the dead among
humanity after the general recognition of
death as a positive condition.
What is the origin of this barbaric and
disgusting custom, so repugnant to all the
more delicate sentiments of human nature ?
I think Mr. Frazer is right in attributing it
to the terror felt by the living for the ghosts
(or, rather, at first the corpses) of the
dead, and the fear that they may return
to plague or alarm their surviving fellow
tribesmen.
In his admirable paper on “Certain
Burial Customs as Illustrative of the Primi
tive Theory of the Soul,” Mr. Frazer points
out that certain tribes of early men paid
great attention to the dead, not so much
from affection as from selfish terror. Ghosts
or bodies of the dead haunt the earth every
where, unless artificially confined to bounds,
and make themselves exceedingly disagree
able to their surviving relatives. To prevent
this, simple primitive philosophy in its
second stage has hit upon many devices.
The most universal is to bury the dead—
that is to say, to put them in a deep-dug
hole, and to cover them with a mighty
mound of earth, which has now sadly de
generated in civilised countries into a mere
formal heap, but which had originally the
size and dignity of a tumulus. The object
of piling up this great heap of earth was to
confine the ghost (or corpse), who could not
easily move so large a superincumbent
mass of matter. In point of fact, men
buried their dead in order to get well rid of
them, and to effectually prevent their return
to light to disturb the survivors.
For the same reason heavy stones were
often piled on the top of the dead. In one
form, these became at last the cairn ; and,
as the ghosts of murderers and their victims
tend to be especially restless, everybody
who passes their graves in Arabia, Ger
many, and Spain is bound to add a stone to
the growing pile in order to confine them.
In another form, that of the single big stone
rolled just on top of the body to keep it
down by its mass, the makeweight has de
veloped into the modern tombstone.
Again, certain nations go further still in
their endeavours to keep the ghost (or
corpse) from roaming. The corpse of a
Damara, says Galton, having been sewn up
in an old ox-hide, is buried in a hole, and
the spectators jump backwards and forwards
over the grave to keep the deceased from
rising out of it. In America, the Tupis tied
fast all the limbs of the corpse, “ that the
dead man might not be able to get up, and
infest his friends with his visits.” You may
even divert a river from its course, as Mr.
Frazer notes, bury your dead man securely
in its bed, and then allow the stream to
return to its channel. It was thus that
Alaric was kept in his grave from further
plaguing humanity; and thus Captain
Cameron found a tribe of Central Africans
compelled their deceased chiefs to “ cease
from troubling.” Sometimes, again, the
grave is enclosed by a fence too high for
the dead man to clear even with a running
jump ; and sometimes the survivors take
the prudent precaution of nailing the body
securely to the coffin, or of breaking their
friend’s spine, or even—but this is an ex
treme case—of hacking him to pieces. In
Christian England the poor wretch whom
misery had driven to suicide was prevented
from roaming about to the discomfort of
the lieges by being buried with a stake
driven barbarously through him. The
Australians, in like manner, used to cut off
the thumb of a slain enemy that he might
be unable to draw the bow ; and the Greeks
were wont to hack off the . extremities of
their victims in order to incapacitate them
for further fighting. These cases will be
seen to be very luminiferous when we come
to examine the origin and meaning of cre
mation.
Burial, then, I take it, is simply by origin
a means adopted by the living to protect
themselves against the vagrant tendencies
of the actual dead. For some occult reason,
the vast majority of men in all ages have
been foolishly afraid of meeting with the
spirits of the departed. Their great desire
has been, not to see, but to avoid seeing
these singular visitants ; and for that pur
pose they invented, first of all, burial, and
afterwards cremation.
The common modern conception of the
ghost is certainly that of an immaterial or
shadowy form, which can be seen but not
touched, and which preserves an outer sem
blance of the human figure. But that idea
itself, which has been imported Into all our
�THE LIFE OF THE DEAD
descriptions and reasonings about the ghost
beliefs of primitive man, is, I incline to
think, very far from primitive, and has been
largely influenced by quite late conceptions
derived from the cremational rather than
the burial level of religious philosophy. In
other words, though, in accordance with
universal usage and Mr. Frazer’s precedent,
I have used the word “ ghost ” above in re
ferring to these superstitious terrors of
early man, I believe it is far less the spirit
than the actual corpse itself that early men
even in this second stage were really afraid
of. It is the corpse that may come back
and do harm to survivors. It is the corpse
that must be kept down by physical means,
that must be covered with earth, pressed
flat beneath a big and ponderous stone,
deprived of its thumbs, its hands, its eyes,
its members. True, I believe the savage
also thinks of the ghost or double as
returning to earth ; but his psychology,
I fancy, is not so definite as to distin
guish very accurately between corpse and
spirit.
If we look at the means taken to preserve
the body after death among the majority
of primitive peoples, above the Tasmanian
level, this truth of the corpse being itself
immortal becomes clearer and clearer. We
are still, in fact, at a level where ghost and
dead man are insufficiently differentiated.
In all these cases it is believed that the
dead body continues to live in the grave
the same sort of life that it led above
ground; and for this purpose it is provided
with weapons, implements, utensils, food,
. vessels, and all the necessaries of life for
its new mansion.
Continued sentient
existence of the body after death is the
keynote of the earliest level of psychical
philosophy. First, the corpse lives in the
hut with its family : later, it lives in the
grave with its forefathers.
But side by side with this naïve belief in
the continued existence of the body after
death, which survives into the inhumational
stage of evolution, goes another and appa
rently irreconcilable belief in a future
resurrection.. Strictly speaking, of course,
if the body is still alive, there is no need
for any special revivification. But religious
thought, as we all know, does not always
pride itself upon the temporal virtues of logic
or consistency; and the savage in particular
is not in the least staggered at being asked
to conceive of one and the same subject in
two opposite and contradictory manners.
He does not bring the two incongruities
into thought together ; he thinks them
29
alternately, sometimes one, sometimes the
other. Even Christian systematists are
quite accustomed to combine the incon
gruous beliefs in a future resurrection and
in the continued existence of the soul after
death, by supposing that the soul remains
meanwhile in some nondescript limbo,
apart from its body—some uncertain Sheol,
some dim hades or purgatory or “place of
departed spirits.”
It is the common belief of the second or
inhumational stage, then, that there will be
at some time or other a “ General Resur
rection.” No doubt this General Resurrec
tion has been slowly developed out of the
belief in and expectation of many partial
resurrections. It is understood that each
individual corpse will, or may, resurge at
some time : therefore it is believed that all
corpses together will resurge at a single
particular moment. So long as burial
persists, the belief in the Resurrection
persists beside it, and forms a main feature
in the current conception of the future
life among the people who practise it.
How, then, do we progress from this
second or inhumational stage to the third
stage with its practice of burning, and its
correlated dogma of the Immortality of the
Soul ?
In this way, as it seems to me. Besides
keeping down the ghost (or corpse) with
clods and stones, it was usual in many cases
to adopt other still stronger persuasives
and dissuasives in the same direction.
Sometimes the persuasives were of the
gentlest type ; for example, the dead man
was often politely requested and adjured
to remain quiet in the grave and to give no
trouble. But sometimes they were less
bland; the corpse was often pelted with
sticks, stones, and hot coals, in order to
show him that his visits at home would not
in future be appreciated. Now burning, I
take it, belonged originally to the same
category of strong measures against re
fractory ghosts or corpses ; and this is the
more probable owing to the fact that it
is mentioned by Mr. Frazer among the
remedies recommended for use in the
extreme case of vampires. Its original
object was, no doubt, to prevent the corpse
from returning in any way to the homes of
the living.
Once any people adopted burning as a
regular custom, however, the chances are
that, coeteris paribus, it would continue and
spread. For the practice of cremation is
so much more wholesome and sanitary than
the practice of burial that it would give a
�3o
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
double advantage in the struggle for exist
ence to any race that adopted it, in peace
and in war. Hence it is quite natural that
when at a certain grade of culture certain
races happened to light upon it in this
superstitious way, those races would be
likely to thrive and to take the lead in
culture as long as no adverse circumstances
counteracted the advantage.
But the superstitions and the false psy
chology which gave rise at first to the
notion of a continued life after death would
not, of course, disappear with the intro
duction of burning. The primitive cremationists may have hoped, by reducing to
ashes the bodies of their dead, to prevent
the recurrence of the corpse to the presence
of the living ; but they could not prevent
the recurrence of the ghost in the dreams
of the survivors ; they could not prevent
the wind that sighed about the dead man’s
grave, the bate that flitted, the vague noises
that terrified, the abiding sense of the
corpse’s presence. All the factors that go
to make up the ghost or the revenant (to
use a safe word, less liable to misinterpre
tation) still remained as active as ever.
Hence, I believe, with the introduction of
cremation the conception of the ghost
merely suffered an airy change. He grew
more shadowy, more immaterial, more
light, more spiritual. In one word, he
became, strictly speaking, a ghost as we
now understand the word, not a returning
dead man. This conception of the ghost
as essentially a shade or shadow belongs
peculiarly, it seems to me, to the cremating
peoples. I can answer for it that among
negroes, for example, the “ duppy” is conr
ceived as quite a material object. It is
classical literature, the literature of the
cremating Greeks and Romans, that has
familiarised us most with the idea of the
ghost as shadowy and intangible. Burying
races have more solid doubles. When
Peter escaped from prison in Jerusalem,
the assembled brethren were of opinion
that it must be “his angel.” The white
woman who lived for years in a native
Australian tribe was always spoken of by
her hosts as a ghost. In one word, at a
low stage of culture the revenant is con
ceived of as material and earthly; at a
higher stage, he is conceived of as imma
terial and shadowy.
Now, when people take to burning their
dead, it is clear that they will no longer be
able to believe in the Resurrection of the
Body. Indeed, if I am right in the theory
here set forth, it is just in order to prevent
the Resurrection of the Body at incon
venient moments that they take to burning.
To be sure, civilised nations, with their
developed power of believing in miracles,
are capable of supposing, not only that the
sea will yield up its dead, but also that
burnt, mangled, or dispersed bodies will be
collected from all parts to be put together
again at the Resurrection. This, however,
is not the naïve belief of simple and natural
men. To them, when you have burnt a
body you have utterly destroyed it, here
and hereafter.
Naturally, therefore, among cremating
peoples, the doctrine of the Resurrection of
the Body tended to go out, and what re
placed it was the doctrine of the immortality
of the Soul. You may burn the body, but
the spirit still survives ; and the survival
gives origin to a new philosophy of ghosts
and revenants. Gradually the spirit gets to
be conceived as diviner essence, entangled
and imprisoned, as it were, in the meshes
of the flesh, and only to be set free by
means of fire, which thus becomes envisaged
at last as friendly rather than destructive
in its action on the dead body. What was
at first a precaution against the return of
the corpse becomes in the end a pious duty;
just as burial itself, originally a selfish pre
caution against the pranks and tricks of
returning corpses, becomes in the end so
sacred and imperative that unburied ghosts
are conceived as wandering about, Archytaswise, begging for the favour of a handful of
sand to prevent them from homeless vaga
bondage for ever. Nations who bum come
to regard the act of burning as the appointed,
means for freeing the ghost from the con
fining meshes of the body, and regard it
rather as a solemn duty to the dead than
as a personal precaution.
Not only so, but there arises among them
a vague and fanciful conception of the
world of shades very different indeed from
the definite and material conception of the
two earlier stages. The mummy was
looked upon as inhabiting the tomb, which
was furnished and decorated for its recep
tion like a house ; and it was provided with
every needful article for use and comfort.
Even the buried body was supplied with
tools and implements for the ghost. The
necessities of the shade are quite different
and more shadowy. He has no need of
earthly tools or implements. The objects
found in the Long Barrows of the burying
folk and the Round Barrows of the cremationists well illustrate this primordial and
far-reaching difference. The Long Barrows
�THE LIFE OF THE DEAD
of the Stone Age people are piled above an
interment; they contain a chambered tomb,
which is really the subterranean home or
palace of the body buried in it. The wives
and slaves of the deceased were killed and
interred with him to keep him company in
his new life in the grave ; and implements,
weapons, drinking-cups, games, trinkets,
and ornaments were buried with their
owners. The life in the grave was all as
material and real as this one; the same
objects that served the warrior in this world
would equally serve him in the same form
in the next. It is quite different with the
Round Barrows of the Bronze Age cremationists. These barrows are piled round
an urn, which determines the shape of the
tumulus, as the chambered tomb and the
corpse determine the shape of the earlier
Stone Age interments. They contain ashes
alone; and the implements and weapons
placed in them are all broken or charred
with fire. Why ? Because the ghost,
immaterial as he has now become, can no
longer make use of solid earthly weapons
or utensils. It is only their ghosts or
shadows that can be of any use to the
ghostly possessor in the land of shades.
Hence everything he needs is burnt or
broken, in order that its ghost may be
released and liberated; and all material
objects are now conceived as possessing
such ghosts, which can be utilised accord
ingly in the world of spirits.
Note also that with this advance from
the surviving or revivable Corpse to the
immortal Soul or Spirit, there goes almost
naturally and necessarily a correlative
advance from continued but solitary life
in the tomb to a freer and wider life in an
underground world of shades and spirits.
The ghost gets greatly liberated and eman
cipated. He has more freedom of move
ment, and becomes a citizen of an organised
community, often envisaged as ruled over
by a King of the Dead, and as divided into
places of reward and punishment. But
while we modem Europeans pretend to be
resurrectionists, it is a fact that our current
ghostly and eschatological conceptions (I
speak of the world at large, not of mere
scholastic theologians) have been largely
influenced by ideas derived from this
opposite doctrine—a doctrine once held by
many or most of our own ancestors, and
familiarised to us from childhood in classical
literature. In fact, while most Englishmen
of the present day believe they believe in the
Resurrection of the Body, what they really
believe in is the Immortality of the Soul.
31
It might seem at first sight as though a
grave discrepancy existed between the two
incongruous ideas, first of burying or burn
ing your dead so that they may not be
able to return or to molest you, and second of
worshipping at their graves or making
offerings to their disembodied spirits. But
to the savage mind these two conceptions
are by no means irreconcilable. While he
jumps upon the corpse of his friend or his
father to keep it in the narrow pit he has
digged for it, he yet brings it presents of
food and drink, or slays animals at the
tomb, that the ghost may be refreshed by
the blood that trickles down to it. Indeed,
several intermediate customs occur, which
help us to bridge over the apparent gulf
between reverential preservation of the
mummified body and the coarse precau
tions of burial or burning. Thus, in many
cases, some of which we shall examine
in the next chapter, after the body has
been for some time buried, the head is
disinterred, and treasured with care in the
family oratory, where it is worshipped and
tended, and where it often gives oracles to
the members of the household. A cere
monial washing is almost always a feature
in this reception of the head; it recurs
again and again in various cases, down to
the enshrinement of the head of Hoseyn at
Cairo, and that of St. Denis at the abbey
of the same name.
I ought also to add that between com
plete preservation of the corpse and the
practice of burial there seems to have gone
another intermediate stage, now compara
tively rare, but once very general, if we
may judge from the traces it has left behind
it—a stage when all the body or part of it
was sacramentally eaten by the survivors
as an act of devotion. We will consider
this curious and revolting practice more
fully when we reach the abstruse problem
of sacrifice and sacrament; for the present
it will suffice to say that in many instances,
in Australia, South America, and elsewhere,
the body is eaten, while only the bones are
burned or buried. Among these savages,
again, it usually happens that the head is
cleaned of its flesh by cooking, while the
skull is ceremonially washed, and preserved
as an object of household veneration and
an oracular deity. Instances will be quoted
in succeeding chapters.
Thus, between the care taken to prevent
returns of the corpse, and the worship paid
to the ghost or shade, primitive races feel
no such sense of discrepancy or incongruity
as would instantly occur to civilised people.
�32
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
The three stages in human ideas with
which this chapter deals may be shortly
summed up as corpse-worship, ghost
worship, and shade-worship.
CHAPTER IV.
THE ORIGIN OF GODS
Mr. Herbert Spencer has traced so
admirably in his Principles of Sociology
the progress of development from the
Ghost to the God that I do not propose in
this chapter to attempt much more than a
brief recapitulation of his main propositions,
which, however, I shall supplement with
fresh examples, and adapt at the same time
to the conception of three successive stages
in human ideas about the Life of the Dead,
as set forth in the preceding argument.
In the earliest stage of all—the stage
where the actual bodies of the dead are
preserved—Gods as such are for the most
part unknown : it is the corpses of friends
and ancestors that are worshipped and
reverenced. For example, Ellis says of the
corpse of a Tahitian chief that it was placed
in a sitting posture under a protecting
shed ; u a small altar was erected before it,
and offerings of fruit, food, and flowers
were daily presented by the relatives, or
the priest appointed to attend the body.”
(This point about the priest is of essential
importance.) The Central Americans, again,
as Mr. Spencer notes, performed similar
rites before bodies dried by artificial heat.
The New Guinea people, as D’Albertis
found, worship the dried mummies of their
fathers and husbands. A little higher in
the scale, we get the developed mummy
worship of Egypt and Peru, which survives
even after the evolution of greater gods,
from powerful kings or chieftains. Wher
ever the actual bodies of the dead are pre
served, there also worship and offerings
are paid to them.
Often, however, as already noted, it is
not the whole body but the head alone
that is specially kept and worshipped.
Thus Mr. H. O. Forbes says of the people
of Buru : “ The dead are buried in the
forest in some secluded spot, marked often
by a merang, or grave-pole, over which at
certain intervals the relatives place tobacco,
cigarettes, and various offerings. When
the body is decomposed, the son or nearest
relative disinters the head, wraps a new
cloth about it, and places it in the Matakau
at the back of his house or in a little hut
erected for it near the grave. It is the
representative of his forefathers, whose
behests he holds in the greatest respect.”
Two points are worthy of notice in this
interesting account, as giving us an antici
patory hint of two further accessories whose
evolution we must trace hereafter : first the
grave-stake, which is probably the origin
of the wooden idol; and second, the little
hut erected over the head by the side of the
grave, which is undoubtedly one of the
origins of the temple or praying-house.
Observe also the ceremonial wrapping of
the skull in cloth and its oracular functions.
Similarly, Mr. Wyatt Gill, the wellknown missionary, writes of a dead baby at
Boera, in New Guinea : “ It will be covered
with two inches of soil, the friends watching
beside the grave ; but eventually the skull
and smaller bones will be preserved and
worn by the mother.” And of the Suau
people he says: “Inquiring the use of
several small houses, I learned that it is
to cover grave-pits. All the members of a
family at death occupy the same grave,
the earth that thinly covered the last
occupant being scooped out to admit the
newcomer. These graves are shallow; the
dead are buried in a sitting posture, hands
folded. The earth is thrown in up to the
mouth only. An earthen pot covers the
head. After a time the pot is taken off,
the perfect skull removed and cleansed—
eventually to be hung up in a basket or
net inside the dwelling of the deceased
over the fire to blacken in the smoke.” In
Africa, again, the skull is frequently pre
served in such a pot and prayed to. In
America, earthenware pots have been
found moulded round human skulls in
mounds at New Madrid and elsewhere;
the skull cannot be removed without
breaking the vessel.
The special selection and preservation
of the head as an object of worship thus
noted in New Guinea and the Malay
Archipelago is also still found among
many other primitive peoples.
Mr.
Spencer quotes several examples, a few
of which alone I extract from his pages :—
“ ‘ In the private fetish-hut of King
Adolee, at Badagry, the skull of that
monarch’s father is preserved in a clay
vessel placed in the earth.’ He ‘gently
rebukes it if his success does not happen
to answer his expectations.’ Similarly
among the Mandans, who place the skulls
�THE ORIGIN OF GODS
of their dead in a circle, each wife knows
the skull of her former husband or child,
‘and there seldom passes a day that she
does not visit it, with a dish of the best
cooked food...... There is scarcely an hour
in a pleasant day but more or less of these
women may be seen sitting or lying by the
skull of their child or husband—talking to
it in the most pleasant and endearing
language that they can use (as they were
wont to do in former days), and seem
ingly getting an answer back.’ ”
This affectionate type of converse with
the dead, almost free from fear, is especially
characteristic of the first or corpse
preserving stage of human death-con
ceptions. It seldom survives where burial
has made the feeling towards the corpse a
painful or loathsome one, and it is then
confined to the head alone, while the grave
itself with the body it encloses is rather
shunned and dreaded.
A little above this level, Mr. Du Chaillu
notes that some of his West African
followers, when going on an expedition,
brought out the skulls of their ancestors
(which they religiously preserved) and
scraped off small portions of the bone,
which they mixed with water and drank ;
giving as a reason for this conduct that
their ancestors were brave, and that by
drinking a portion of them they too
became brave and fearless like their
ancestors. Here we have a simple and
early case of that habit of “ eating the
god ” to whose universality and importance
Mr. Frazer has called attention.
Throughout the earlier and ruder phases
of human evolution, this primitive concep
tion of ancestors or dead relatives as the
chief known objects of worship survives
undiluted : and ancestor-worship remains
to this day .the principal religion of the
Chinese, and of several other peoples.
Godsj as such, are practically unknown in
China. Ancestor-worship also survives in
many other races as one of the main cults,
even after other elements of later religion
have been superimposed upon it. In
Greece and Rome it remained to the last
an important part of domestic ritual. But
in most cases a gradual differentiation is
set up in time between various classes of
ghosts or dead persons, some ghosts being
considered of more importance and power
than others ; and out of these last it is that
gods as a rule are finally developed. A
god, in fact, is in the beginning at least an
exceptionally powerful and friendly ghost
—a ghost able to help, and from whose
33
help great things may reasonably be
expected.
Again, the rise of chieftainship and
kingship has much to do with the growth
of a higher conception of godhead ; a dead
king of any great power or authority is
sure to be thought of in time as a god of
considerable importance. We shall trace
out this idea more fully hereafter in the
religion of Egypt; for the present it must
suffice to say that the supposed power of
the gods in each pantheon has regularly
increased in proportion to the increased
power of kings or emperors.
When we pass from the first plane of
corpse-preservation and mummification to
the second plane where burial is habitual,*
it might seem at a hasty glance as though*
continued worship of the dead, and their
elevation into gods, would no longer be
possible. For we saw that burial is
prompted by a deadly fear lest the corpse
or ghost should return to plague the
living. Nevertheless, natural affection for
parents or friends, and the desire to ensure
their goodwill and aid, make these seem
ingly contrary ideas reconcilable. As a
matter of fact, we find that even when men
bury or burn their dead, they continue to
worship them : while, as we shall show in
the sequel, even the great stones which
they roll on top of the grave to prevent the
dead from rising again become in time
altars on which sacrifices are offered to
the spirit.
In these two later stages of thought with
regard to the dead which accompany burial
and cremation, the gods, indeed, grow
more and more distinct from minor ghosts
with an accelerated rapidity of evolution.
They grow greater in proportion to the
rise of temples and hierarchies. Further
more, the very indefiniteness of the bodiless
ghost tells in favour of an enlarged
godship. The gods are thought of as
more and more aerial and immaterial, less
definitely human in form and nature ; they
are clothed with mighty attributes ; they
assume colossal size ; they are even identi
fied with the sun, the moon, the great
powers of nature. But they are never
quite omnipotent during the polytheistic
stage, because in a pantheon they are
necessarily mutually limiting. Even in the
Greek and Roman civilisation it is clear
that the gods were not commonly envisaged
by ordinary minds as much more than
human. It is only quite late, under the in
fluence of monotheism, that the exalted
conceptions of deity now prevalent began
D
�34
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
to form themselves in Judaism and Chris
tianity.
Mere domestic ancestor-worship, once
more, could scarcely give us the origin of
anything more than domestic religion—the
cult of the manes, the household gods, as
distinct from that of the tribal and national
deities. But kingship supplies us with the
missing link. We have seen in Mr. Duff
Macdonald’s account of the Central African
god-making how the worship of the chief s
ancestors gives rise to tribal or village gods;
and it is clear how, as chieftainship and
kingship widen, national gods of far higher
types may gradually evolve from these early
monarchs. Especially must we take the
time-element into account, remembering
that the earlier ancestors get at last to be
individually forgotten as men, and remain
in memory only as supernatural beings.
Thus kingship rapidly reacts upon godship.
If the living king himself is great, how
much greater must be the ancestor whom
even the king himself fears and worships ;
and how infinitely greater still that yet
earlier god, the ancestor’s ancestor, whom
the ancestor himself revered and propiti
ated ! In some such way there grows up
gradually a hierarchy of gods, among whom
the oldest, and therefore the least known,
are usually in the end the greatest of any.
The consolidation of kingdoms and
empires, and the advance of the arts, tell
strongly with concurrent force in these
directions ; while the invention of written
language sets a final seal on the godhead
and might of great early ancestors. Among
very primitive tribes, indeed, we find as a
rule only very domestic and recent objects
of worship. The chief prays for the most
part to his own father and his immediate
predecessors. The more ancient ancestors,
as Mr. Duff Macdonald has so well pointed
out, grow rapidly into oblivion. But with
more advanced races various agencies arise
which help to keep in mind the early dead ;
and in very evolved communities these
agencies, reaching a high pitch of evolu
tion, make the recent gods or kings or
ghosts seem comparatively unimportant by
the side of the very ancient and very longworshipped ones. More than of any other
thing, it may be said of a god, vires acquirit
eundo. Thus, in advanced types of society
saints or gods of recent origin assume but
secondary or minor importance ; while the
highest and greatest gods of all are those of
the remotest antiquity, whose human history
is lost from our view in the dim mist of ages.
Three such agencies of prime importance
in the transition from the mere ghost to the
fully-developed god must here be men
tioned. They are the rise of temples, of
idols, and, above all, of priesthoods. Each
of these we must now consider briefly but
separately.
The origin of the Temple is various ; but
all temples may nevertheless be reduced in
the last resort either into graves of the dead,
or into places where worship is specially
offered up to them. This truth, which Mr.
Herbert Spencer arrived at by examination
of the reports of travellers or historians,
and worked up in connection with his
Principles of Sociology, was independently
arrived at through quite a different line of
observation and reasoning by Mr. William
Simpson. Mr. Simpson has probably
visited a larger number of places of wor
ship all over the world than any other
traveller of any generation ; and he was
early impressed by the fact which forced
itself upon his eyes, that almost every one
of them, where its origin could be traced,
turned out to be a tomb in one form or
another. He has set forth the results of his
researches in this direction in several
admirable papers, all of which, but especi
ally the one entitled The Worship of Death,
I can confidently recommend to the serious
attention of students of religion.
The cave is probably the first form of the
Temple. Sometimes the dead man is left
in the cave which he inhabited when
living; an instance of which we have
already noticed among the Veddahs of
Ceylon. In other cases, where races have
outgrown the custom of cave-dwelling, the
habit of cave-burial, or rather of laying the
dead in caves or in artificial grottoes, still
continues through the usual conservatism
of religious feeling. Offerings are made to
the dead in all these various caves : and
here we get the beginnings of cave-temples.
Such temples are at first of course either
natural or extremely rude ; but they soon
begin to be decorated with rough frescoes,
as is done, for example, by the South
African Bushmen. These frescoes again
give rise in time by slow degrees to such
gorgeous works as those of the Tombs of
the Kings at Thebes ; each of which has
attached to it a magnificent temple as its
mortuary chapel. Sculpture is similarly
employed on the decoration of cave-tem
ples ; and we get the final result of such
artistic ornament in splendid cave-temples
like those of Ellora. Both arts were em
ployed together in the beautiful and in
teresting Etruscan tomb-temples.
�THE ORIGIN OF GODS
In another class of cases, the hut where
the dead man lived is abandoned at his
death by his living relations, and thus be
comes a rudimentary Temple where offerings
are made to him. This is the case with the
Hottentots. Of a New Guinea hut-burial,
Mr. Chalmers says : “ The chief is buried
in the centre ; a mat was spread over the
grave, on which I was asked to sit until
they had a weeping.” This weeping is
generally performed by women—a touch
which leads us on to Adonis and Osiris
rites, and to the Christian Pietà. Mr.
Spencer has collected several other ex
cellent examples. “As repeated supplies
of food are taken to the abandoned house,”
he says, “and as along with making offerings
there go other propitiatory acts, the deserted
dwelling house, turned into a mortuary
house, acquires the attributes of a temple.”
A third origin for Temples is found in
the shed, hut, or shelter, erected over the
grave, either for the protection of the dead
or for the convenience of the living who
bring their offerings. Thus, in parts of
New Guinea, according to Mr. Chalmers,
“ The natives bury their dead in the front
of their dwellings, and cover the grave with
a small house, in which the near relatives
sleep for several months.”
On the other hand, we saw in Mr. Duff
Macdonald’s account of the Central African
natives that those savages do not worship
at the actual grave itself. In this case,
terror of the revenant seems to prevent the
usual forms of homage at the tomb of the
deceased. Moreover, the ghost being now
conceived as more or less freely separable
from the corpse, it will be possible to worship
it in some place remote from the dreaded
cemetery. Hence these Africans “ seek
the spirit at the place where their departed
kinsman last lived among them. It is the
great tree at the verandah of the dead
man’s house that is their temple : and if
no tree grow here, they erect a little shade,
and there perform their simple rites.” We
have in this case yet another possible
origin for certain temples, and also for the
sacred tree, which is so common an object
of pious adoration in many countries.
Beginning with such natural caves or
such humble huts, the Temple assumes
larger proportions and more beautiful
decorations with the increase of art and
the growth of kingdoms. Especially, as
we see in the tomb-temples and pyramids
of Egypt and Peru, does it assume great
size and acquire costly ornaments when it
is built by a powerful king for himself
35
during his own lifetime. Temple-tombs of
this description reach a high point of
artistic development in such a building as
the so-called Treasury of Atreus at Mycenae,
which is really the sepulchre of some name
less prehistoric monarch. (It is admirably ■
reconstructed in Perrot and Chipiez.)
Obviously, the importance and magnifi- ■
cence of the temple will react upon the popu
lar conception of the importance and mag
nificence of the God who inhabits it. And
conversely, as the gods grow greater and
greater, more art and more constructive
skill will constantly be devoted to the building
and decoration of their permanent homes.
To the very end, the god depends largely
on his house for impressiveness.
How
much did not Hellenic religion itself owe to
the Parthenon and the temple of Olympian
Zeus ! How much does not Christianity
itself owe to Lincoln and Durham, to
Amiens and Chartres, to Milan and Pisa,
to St. Mark’s and St. Peter’s! Men cannot
believe that deities worshipped in such
noble and dimly religious shrines were
once human like themselves, compact of
the same bodies, parts, and passions Yet
in the last instance at least we know the
great works to be raised in honour of a
single Lower Syrian peasant.
With this brief and imperfect notice of
the origin of temples, I pass on from the
consideration of the sacred building itself
to that of the Idol who usually dwells
within it.
Where burial prevails, and where arts
are at a low stage of development, the
memory of the dead is not likely to survive
beyond two or three generations.
But
where mummification is the rule, there is
no reason why deceased persons should not
be preserved and worshipped for an
indefinite period ; and we know that in
Egypt at least the cult of kings who died in
the most remote times of the Early Empire
was carried on regularly down to the days
of the Ptolemies. In such a case as this
there is absolutely no need for idols to
arise ; the corpse itself is the chief object
of worship. We do find accordingly that
both in Egypt and in Peru the worship of
the mummy played a large part in the local
religions ; though sometimes it alternated
with the worship of other holy objects, such
as the image or the sacred stone, which we
shall see hereafter to have had a like origin.
But in many other countries, where bodies
were less visibly and obviously preserved,
the worship due to the ghost or god was
often paid to a simulacrum or idol; so
�36
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
much so that “idolatry” has become m
Christian parlance the common term for
most forms of worship other than mono
theistic.
Now, what is the origin and meaning of
Idols, and how can they be affiliated upon
primitive corpse or ghost worship ?
Like the temple, the Idol, I believe, has
many separate origins, several of which
have been noted by Mr. Herbert Spencer,
while others, it seems to me, have escaped
the notice even of that profound and acute
observer.
The earliest Idols, if I may be allowed
the contradictory expression, are not idols
at all—not images or representations of
the dead person, but actual bodies, pre
served and mummified. These pass readily,
however, into various types of representa
tive figures. For in the first place the
mummy itself is usually wrapped round in
swathing-cloths which obscure its features ;
and in the second place it is frequently
enclosed in a wooden mummy-case, which
is itself most often rudely human in form, and
which has undoubtedly given rise to certain
forms of idols. Thus, the images of Amun,
Khem, Osiris, and Ptah among Egyptian
gods are frequently or habitually those of a
mummy in a mummy-case. But further
more, the mummy itself is seldom or never
the entire man; the intestines at least have
been removed, or even, as in New Guinea,
the entire mass of flesh, leaving only the
skin and the skeleton. The eyes, again,
are often replaced, as in Peru, by some
other imitative object, so as to keep up the
life-like appearance. Cases like these lead
on to others, where the image or idol
gradually supersedes altogether the corpse
or mummy.
Mr. H. O. Forbes gives an interesting
instance of such a transitional stage in
Timor-laut. “ The bodies of those who die
in war or by violent death are buried,” he
says ; “ and if the head has been captured
[by the enemy], a cocoanut is placed in the
grave to represent the missing member, and
to deceive and satisfy his spirit.” There is
abundant evidence that such makeshift
limbs or bodies amply suffice for the use of
the soul, when the actual corpse has been
destroyed or mutilated. The Yucatanese
made for their fathers wooden statues, put
in the ashes of the burnt body, and attached
the skin of the occiput taken off the corpse.
These images, half mummy, half idol, were
kept in the oratories of their houses, and
were greatly reverenced and assiduously
cared for. On all the festivals food and
drink were offered to them. It is clear
that cremation specially lends itself to such
substitution of an image for the actual dead
body. Among burying races it is the
severed skull, on the contrary, that is
oftenest preserved and worshipped.
The transition from such images to small
stone sarcophagi, like those of the Etruscan
tombs, is by no means a great one. These
sarcophagi contained the burnt ashes of .
the dead, but were covered by a lid which
usually represented the deceased, reclining,
as if at a banquet, with a beaker in his
hands. The tombs in which the sarcophagi
were placed were of two types : one, the
stone pyramid or cone, which, says Dr.
Isaac Taylor, “is manifestly a survival of
the tumulus”; the other, the rock-cut
chamber, “ which is a survival of the cave.”
These lordly graves are no mere cheerless
sepulchres ; they are abodes for the dead,
constructed on the model of the homes of
the living. They contain furniture and
pottery; and their walls are decorated
with costly mural paintings. They are also
usually provided with an antechamber,
where the family could assemble at the
annual feast to do homage to the spirits of
departed ancestors, who shared in the meal
from their sculptured sarcophagus lids.
At a further stage of distance from the
primitive mummy-idol we come upon the
image pure and simple. The Mexicans,
for example, as we have seen, were cremationists ; and when men killed in battle
were missing, they made wooden figures of
them, which they honoured, and then burnt
them in place of the bodies. In somewhat
the same spirit the Egyptians used to place
beside the mummy itself an image of the
dead, to act as a refuge or receptacle for
the soul, “in case of the accidental destruc
tion of the actual body.” Mr. Spencer has
collected several similar instances of idols
substituted for the bodies of the dead.
The Roman imagines were masks of wax,
which preserved in like manner the features
of ancestors. Perhaps the most curious
modern survival of this custom of double
representations is to be found in the effigies
of our kings and queens still preserved in
Westminster Abbey.
There are two other sources of idol- '
worship, however, which, as it seems to
me, have hardly received sufficient atten
tion at Mr. Spencer’s hands. Those two
are the stake which marks the grave, and
the standing stone or tombstone. By far
the larger number of idols, I venture to
believe, are descended from one or other
�THE ORIGIN OF GODS
of these two originals, both of which I
shall examine hereafter in far greater
detail. For the present it will suffice to
remark that the wooden stake seems often
to form the origin or point of departure for
the carved wooden image, as well as for
such ruder objects of reverence as the
cones and wooden pillars so widely
reverenced among the Semitic tribes ;
while the rough boulder, standing stone, or
tombstone, seems to form the origin or
point of departure for the stone or marble
statue, the commonest type of idol the
whole world over in all advanced and
cultivated communities. Such stones were
at first mere rude blocks or unhewn masses,
the descendants of those which were rolled
over the grave in primitive times in order
to keep down the corpse of the dead man
and prevent him from returning to disturb
the living. But in time they grew to be
roughly dressed into slabs or squares, and
finally to be decorated with a rude repre
sentation of a human head and shoulders.
From this stage they readily progressed to
that of the Greek Hermse. We now know
that this was the early shape of most
Hellenic gods and goddesses ; and we can
trace their evolution onward from this point
to the wholly anthropomorphic Aphrodite
or Here. The well-known figure of the
Ephesian Artemis is an intermediate case
which will occur at once to every classical
reader.
Starting from such shapeless
beginnings, we progress at last to the
artistic and splendid bronze and marble
statues of Hellas, Etruria, and Rome, to
the many-handed deities of modern India,
and to the sculptured Madonnas and
Pieths of Renaissance Italy.
Naturally, as the gods grow more
beautiful and more artistically finished in
workmanship, the popular idea of their
power and dignity must increase paripassu.
In Egypt, that growth took chiefly the
form of colossal size and fine manipulation
of hard granitic materials. The so-called
Memnon and the Sphinx are familiar
instances of the first; the Pashts of Syenite,
the black basalt gods, so well known at the
Louvre and the British Museum, are
examples of the second. In Greece, effect
was sought rather by ideal beauty, as in
the Aphrodites and Apollos, or by cost
liness of material, as in the chryselephantine
Zeus and the Athene of the Parthenon.
But we must always remember that in
Hellas itself these glorious gods were
developed in a comparatively short space
of time from the shapeless blocks or
37
standing stones of the ruder religion;
indeed, we have still many curious inter
mediate forms between the extremely
grotesque and hardly human Mycenaean
types and the exquisite imaginings of
Myron or Phidias. The earliest Hellenic
idols engraved by Messrs. Perrot and
Chipiez in their great work on Art in
Primitive Greece do not rise in any respect
superior to the Polynesian level ; while the
so-called Apollos of later archaic work
manship, rigidly erect with their arms at
their sides, recall in many respects the
straight up-and-down outline of the
standing stone from which they are
developed.
I should add that in an immense number
of instances the rude stone image or idol,
and at a still lower grade the unwrought
sacred stone, stands as the central object
under a shed or shelter, which developes by
degrees into the stately temple. The
advance in both is generally more or less
parallel; though sometimes, as in historical
Greece, a temple of the noblest architecture
encloses as its central and principal object
of veneration the rough unhewn stone of
early barbaric worship. So even in Chris
tendom, great churches and cathedrals
often hold as their most precious possession
some rude and antique image like the
sacred Bambino of Santa Maria in Ara
Coeli at Rome, or the “ Black Madonnas ”
which are revered by the people at so many
famous Italian places of pilgrimage.
I do not mean to say that every idol is
necessarily itself a funereal relic. When
once the idea of godship has been tho
roughly developed, and when men have
grown accustomed to regard an image or
idol as the representative or dwelling-place
of their god, it is easy to multiply such
images indefinitely. Hundreds of repre
sentations may exist of the self-same Apollo
or Aphrodite or Madonna or St. Sebastian.
At the same time, it is quite clear that for
most worshippers the divine being is more
or less actually confused with the image; a
particular Artemis or a particular Notre
Dame is thought of as more powerful or
more friendly than another. I have known
women in Southern Europe go to pray at
the shrine of a distant Madonna, “because
she is greater than our own Madonna.”
Moreover, it is probable that in many cases
images or sacred stones once funereal in
origin, and representing particular gods or
ghosts, have been swallowed up at last by
other and more powerful deities, so as to
lose in the end their primitive distinctness.
�3«
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
Thus, there were many Baals and many
Ashteroths; probably there were many
Apollos, many Artemises, many Aphrodites.
It is almost certain that there were many
distinct Hermae. The progress of research
tends to make us realise that numberless
deities, once considered unique and indi
vidual, may be resolved into a whole host
of local gods, afterwards identified with
some powerful deity on the merest external
resemblances of image, name, or attribute.
In Egypt at least this process of identifi
cation and centralisation was common.
Furthermore, we know that each new reli
gion tends to swallow up and assimilate to
itself all possible elements of older cults ;
just as Hebrew Jahwehism tried to adopt
the sacred stones of early Semitic heathenism
by associating them with episodes in the
history of the patriarchs ; and just as Chris
tianity has sanctified such stones in its own
area by using them sometimes as the base
of a cross, or by congecrating them at
others with the name of some saint or
martyr.
But even more than the evolution of the
Temple and the Idol, the evolution of the
Priesthood has given dignity, importance,
and power to the gods. For the priests are
a class whose direct interest it is to make
the most of the greatness and majesty of
the deities they tend or worship.
Priesthood, again, has probably at least
two distinct origins. The one is quasi
royal ; the other is quasi-servile.
I begin with the first. We saw that the
chief of an African village, as the son and
representative of the chief ghosts, who are
the tribal gods, has alone the right to
approach them directly with offerings. The
inferior villager, who desires to ask any
thing of the gods, asks through the chief,
who is a kinsman and friend of the divine
spirits, and who therefore naturally under
stands their ideas and habits. Such chiefs
are thus also naturally priests. They are
sacred by family ; they and their children
stand in a special relation to the gods of the
tribe, quite different from the relation in
’ which the common people stand ; they are
of the blood of the deities. This type of
relation is common in many countries ; the
chiefs in such instances are “kings and
priests, after the order of Melchizedek.”
To put it briefly, in the earliest or
domestic form of religion the gods of each
little group or family are its own dead
ancestors, and especially (while the historic
memory is still but weak) its immediate
predecessors. In this stage, the head of the
household naturally discharges the func
tions of priest; it is he who approaches the
family ghosts or gods on behalf of his
wives, his sons, his dependants. To the
last, indeed, the father of each family
retains this priestly function as regards the
more restricted family rites ; he is priest of
the worship of the lares and Senateshe
offers the family sacrifice to the family gods ;
he reads family prayers in the Christian
household. But as the tribe or nation
arises, and chieftainship grows greater, it
is the ghosts or ancestors of the chiefly or
kingly family who develop most into gods ;
and the living chief and his kin are their
natural representatives. Thus, in most
cases, the priestly office comes to be asso
ciated with that of king or chief.
“ The union of a royal title with priestly
duties,” says Mr. Frazer in The Golden
Bough, “was common in ancient Italy and
Greece. At Rome and in other Italian
cities there was a priest called the Sacri
ficial King or King of the sacred rites {Rex
Sacrificulus or Rex Sacrorum), and his wife
bore the title of Queen of the Sacred Rites.
In republican Athens, the second magistrate
of the State was called the King, and his
wife the Queen ; the functions of both were
religious. Many other Greek democracies
had titular kings, whose duties, so far as
they are known, seem to have been priestly.
At Rome the tradition was that the Sacri
ficial King had been appointed after the
expulsion of the kings in order to offer the
sacrifices which had been previously offered
by the kings. In Greece a similar view
appears to have prevailed as to the origin
of the priestly kings. In itself the view is
not improbable, and it is borne out by the
example of Sparta, the only purely Greek
State which retained the kingly form of
government in historical times. For in
Sparta all State sacrifices were offered by
the kings as descendants of the god. This
combination of priestly functions with royal
authority is familiar to every one. Asia
Minor, for example, was the seat of various
great religious capitals, peopled by thousands
of ‘Sacred Slaves,’ and ruled by pontiffs
who wielded at once temporal and spiritual
authority, like the popes of mediaeval Rome.
Such priest-ridden cities were Zela and
Pessinus. Teutonic Kings, again, in the
old heathen days seem to have stood in
the position and exercised the powers of
high priests. The Emperors of China offer
public sacrifices, the details of which are
regulated by the ritual books. It is need
less, however, to multiply examples of what
�THE ORIGIN OF GODS
is the rule rather than the exception in the
early history of the kingship.” •
Where priesthood originates in this parti
cular way, little differentiation is likely to
occur between the temporal and the eccle
siastical power. But there is a second and
far more potent origin of priesthood, less
distinguished in its beginnings, yet more
really pregnant of great results in the end.
For where the king is a priest, and the
descendant of the gods, as in Peru and
Egypt, his immediate and human power
seems to overshadow and as it were to
belittle the power of his divine ancestors.
No statue of Osiris, for example, is half so
big in size as the colossal figure of Rameses
II. among the ruins of Thebes. But where
a separate and distinct priesthood gets the
management of sacred rites entirely into
its own hands, we find the authority of the
gods often rising superior to that of the
kings, who are only their vicegerents : till
at last we get Popes dictating to emperors,
and powerful monarchs doing humble
penance before the costly shrines of mur
dered archbishops.
The origin of such independent, or quasiservile, priesthood is to be found in the
institution of “temple slaves”—the atten
dants told off, as we have already seen, to
do duty at the grave of the chief or -dead
warrior. Egypt again affords us, on the
domestic side, an admirable example of the
origin of such priesthoods. Over the lintel
of each of the cave-like tombs at Beni
Hassan and Sakkarah is usually placed an
inscription setting forth the name and titles
of its occupant. Then follows a pious hope
that the spirit may enjoy for all eternity the
proper payment of funereal offerings, a list
of which is ordinarily appended. But the
point which specially concerns us here is
this : Priests or servants were appointed to
see that these offerings were duly made ;
and the tomb was endowed with property
for the purpose both of keeping up the offer
ings in question, end of providing a stipend
or living-wage for the priest. As we shall
see hereafter, such priesthoods were gene
rally made hereditary, so as to ensure their
continuance throughout all time : and so
successful were they that in many cases
worship continued to be performed for
several hundred years at the tomb ; so that
a person who died under the Early Empire
was still being made the recipient of
funeral dues under kings of the Eighteenth
and Nineteenth Dynasties.
I give this interesting historical instance
at some length because it is one of the best
39
known, and also one of the most persistent.
But everywhere, all the world over, similar
evolutions have occurred on a shorter scale.
The temple attendants, endowed for the
purpose of performing sacred rites for the
ghost or god, have grown into priests, who
knew the habits of the unseen denizen of
the shrine. Bit by bit prescriptions have
arisen; customs and rituals have developed;
and the priests have become the deposi
taries of the divine traditions. They alone
know how to approach the god ; they alone
can read the hidden signs of his pleasure
or displeasure. As intermediaries between
worshipper and deity, they are themselves
half sacred. Without them, no votary can
rightly approach the shrine of his patron.
Thus at last they rise into importance far
above their origin ; priestcraft comes into
being; and by magnifying their god the
members of the hierarchy magnify at the
same time their own office and function.
Yet another contributing cause must be
briefly noted. Picture-writing and hiero
glyphics take their rise more especially in
connection with tombs and temples. The
priests in particular hold as a rule the key
to this knowledge. In ancient Egypt, to
take a well-known instance, they were the
learned class ; they became the learned
class again under other circumstances in
mediaeval Europe. Everywhere we come
upon sacred mysteries that the priests alone
know; and where hieroglyphics exist these
mysteries, committed to writing, become
the peculiar property of the priests in a
more special sense. Where writing is
further differentiated into hieratic and de
motic, the gulf between laity and priesthood
grows still wider; the priests possess a
special key to knowledge, denied to the
commonalty. The recognition of Sacred
Books has often the same result; of these,
the priests are naturally the guardians and
exponents. I need hardly add that side by
side with the increase of architectural
grandeur in the temple, and the increase of
artistic beauty and costliness in the idols or
statues and pictures of the gods, goes
increase in the stateliness of the priestly
robes, the priestly surroundings, the priestly
ritual. Finally, we get ceremonies of the
most dignified character, adorned with all
the accessories of painting and sculpture, of
candles and flowers, of incense and music,
of rich mitres and jewelled palls—cere
monies performed in the dim shade of lofty
temples, or mosques, or churches, in honour
of god or gods of infinite might, power, and
majesty, who must yet in the last resort be
�40
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
traced back to some historic or prehistoric
Dead Man, or at least to some sacred
CHAPTER V.
stone or stake or image, his relic and repre
sentative.
K
SACRED STONES
■ Thus, by convergence of all these streams,
the primitive mummy or ghost or spirit
I MENTIONED in the last chapter two origins
passes gradually into a deity of unbounded
of Idols to which, as I believed, an insuffi
glory and greatness and sanctity. The
cient amount of attention had been directed
bodiless soul, released from necessary limits
by Mr. Herbert Spencer. These were the
of space and time, envisaged as a god, is
pictured as ever more and more super Sacred Stone and the Wooden Stake which
mark the grave. To these two I will now
human, till all memory of its origin is
add a third common object of worship,
entirely forgotten. But to the last observe
which does not indeed enter into the genesis
this curipus point : all new gods or saints or
of idols, but which is of very high impor
divine persons are, each ; as they crop up
first, of démonstrably human origin. When tance. in early religion—the sacred tree,
with its collective form, the sacred grove.
ever we find a new god added from known
All the objects thus enumerated demand
sources to a familiar pantheon, we find
without exception that he turns out to be a further attention at our hands, both from
human being. Whenever we. go back to their general significance in the history of
very primitive religions, we find all men’s religion, and also from their special interest
gods are the corpses or ghosts of their in connection with the evolution of the God
ancestors. It is only when we take rela of Israel, who became in due time the God
tively advanced races with unknown early of Christianity and of Islam, as well as the
God of modern idealised and sublimated
histories that we find them worshipping a
theism.
certain number of gods who cannot be
I will begin with the consideration of the
easily and immediately resolved into dead
men or spirits. Unfortunately, students of Sacred Stone, not only because it is by far
religion have oftenest paid the closest the most important of the three, but also
because, as we shall shortly see, it stands
attention to those historical religions which
in the direct line cf parentage of the God
lie furthest away from the primitive type,
and in which at their first appearance before of Israel.
All the world over, and at all periods of
us we come upon the complex idea of god
head already fully developed. Hence they history, we find among the most common
aré too much inclined, like Professor objects of human worship certain blocks of
stone, either rudely shaped and dressed by
Robertson Smith, and even sometimes Mr.
Frazer (whose name, however, I cannot the hand, or else more often standing alone
mention in passing without the profoundest on the soil in all their native and natural
roughness. The downs of England are
respect), to regard the idea of a godship as
primordial, not derivative ; and to neglect everywhere studded with cromlechs, dol
the obvious derivation of godhead as a whole mens, and other antique magalithic struc
tures (of which the gigantic trilithons of
from the cult and reverence of the deified
Stonehenge and Avebury are the bestancestor. Yet the moment we get away
from these advanced and too overlaid his known examples), long described by anti
torical religions to the early conceptions of quaries as “ D ruidical remains,” and certainly
simple savages, we see at once that no gods regarded by the ancient inhabitants of
Britain with an immense amount of respect
exist for them save the ancestral corpses or
ghosts ; that religion means the perform and reverence. In France we have the
endless avenues of Carnac and Locmariaker;
ance of certain rites and offerings to these
corpses or ghosts ; and that higher ele in Sardinia, the curious conical shafts
mental or departmental deities are wholly known to the local peasants as sepolture dei
giganti—the tombs of the giants. In Syria,
wanting.
Major Conder has described similar monu
ments in Heth and Moab, at Gilboa and
at Heshbon. In India, five stones are set
up at the corner of a field, painted red, and
worshipped by the natives as the Five
Pandavas. Theophrastus tells us as one
of the characteristics of the superstitious
man that he anoints with oil the sacred
�SACRED STONES
stones at the street corners ; and from an
ancient tradition embedded in the Hebrew
scriptures we learn how the patriarch Jacob
set up a stone at Bethel “ for a pillar,” and
“ poured oil upon the top of it,” ^s a like
act of worship. Even in our own day there
is a certain English hundred where the old
open-air court of the manor is inaugurated
by the ceremony of breaking a bottle of
wine over a standing stone which tops a
tumulus ; and the sovereigns of the United
Kingdom are still crowned in a chair which
encloses under its seat the ancestral sacred
stone of their heathen Scottish and Irish
predecessors.
Now, what is the share of such sacred
stones in the rise and growth of the religious
habit ?
It is hardly necessary, I suppose, to give
formal proof of the familiar fact that an
upright slab is one of the commonest modes
of marking the place ^where a person is
buried. From the ancient pillar that pre
historic savages set up over the tumulus of
their dead chief, to the -headstone that
marks the dwarfed and stunted barrow in
our own English cemeteries, the practice
of mankind has been one and continuous.
Sometimes the stone is a rough boulder
from the fields ; a representative of the big
block which savages place on the grave to
keep the corpse from rising : sometimes it
is an oblong slab of slate or marble; some
times, and especially among the more
advanced races, it is a shapely cross or
sculptured monument. But wherever on
earth interment is practised, there stones of
some sort, solitary or in heaps, almost
invariably mark the place of burial.
Again, as presents and sacrifices are
offered at graves to the spirits of the dead,
it is at the stone which records the last rest
ing-place of the deceased that they will
oftenest be presented. As a matter of fact,
we know that, all the world over, offerings
of wine, oil, rice, ghee, corn, and meat are
continually made at the graves of chiefs or
relations. Victims, both human and other
wise, are sacrificed at the tomb, and their
blood is constantly smeared on the head
stone or boulder that marks the spot.
Four well-marked varieties of early tomb
stone are recognised in the eastern conti
nent at least, and their distribution and
nature is thus described by Major Conder :
“Rude stone monuments,bearing a strong
family resemblance in their mode of con
struction and dimensions, have been found
distributed over all parts of Europe and
Western Asia, and occur also in India......
4i
They include menhirs, or standing stones,
which were erected as memorials, and wor
shipped as deities, with libations of blood,
milk, honey, or water poured upon the
stones : dolmens, or stone tables, free stand
ing—that is, not covered by any mound or
superstructure, which may be considered
without, doubt to have been used as altars
on which victims (often human) were immo
lated : cairns, also memorial, and some
times surrounding menhirs; these were
made by the contributions of numerous
visitors or pilgrims, each adding a stone as
witness of his presence : finally cromlechs,
or stone circles., used as sacred enclosures
or early hypaethral temples, often with a
central menhir or dolmen as statue or
altar.”
There can be very little doubt that every
one of these monuments is essentially sepul
chral in character. The menhir or standing
stone is the ordinary gravestone still in use
among us: the dolmen is a chambered
tomb, once covered by a tumulus, but now
bare and open : the cairn is a heap of stones
piled above the dead body : the stone circle
is apparently a later temple built around a
tomb, whose position is marked by the men
hir or altar-stone in its centre. And each
has been the parent of a numerous offspring.
The menhir gives rise to the obelisk, the
stone cross, and the statue or idol ; the dol
men, to the sarcophagus, the altar-tomb,
and the high altar ; the cairn, to the tope
and also to the pyramid ; the cromlech', or
stone circle, to the temple or church in one
at least of its many developments.
Each of these classes of monuments,
Major Conder observes, has its distinctive
name in the Semitic languages, and is fre
quently mentioned in the early Hebrew
literature. The menhir is the “pillar” of
our Authorised Version of the Old Testa
ment ; the dolmen is the “ altar ” ; the cairn
is the “heap”; and the stone circle appears
under the names Gilgal and Hazor.
In the simplest and most primitive stage
of religion, such as that pure ancestor-cult
still surviving unmixed among the people of
New Guinea or the African tribes whose
practice Mr. Duff Macdonald has so admi
rably described for us, it is the corpse or
ghost itself, not the stone to mark its dwell
ing, which comes in for all the veneration
and all the gifts of the reverent survivors.
But we must remember that every existing
religion, however primitive in type, is now
very ancient ; and it is quite natural that in
many cases the stone should thus come
itself to be regarded as the ghost or god,
�42
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
the object to which veneration is paid by
the tribesmen. In fact, just in proportion
as the ghost evolves into the god, so does
the tombstone begin to evolve into the
fetish or idol.
At first, however, it is merely as the rude
unshapen stone that the idol in this shape
receives the worship of its votaries. This
is the stage that has been christened by
that very misleading name fetishism, and
erroneously supposed to lie at the very
basis of all religion. Mr. Turner, of the
London Missionary Society, gives many
examples of this stage of stone-worship
found in Samoa : and in these cases, and
in many others, it seems to me clear that
the original gravestone or menhir itself is
the object of worship, viewed as the
residence of the ghost or god in whose
honour it was erected. For in Samoa we
know that the grave “ was marked by a
little heap of stones, a foot or two high,”
and at De Peyster’s Island “a stone was
raised at the head of the grave, and a
human head carved on it”—a first step, as
we have already seen, towards the evolution
of one form of idol.
Similar instances abound everywhere.
Among the Khonds of India every village
has its local god, represented by an upright
stone under the big tree on the green, to
use frankly an English equivalent. (The
full importance of this common combina
tion of sacred stone and sacred tree will
only come out at a later stage of our
inquiry.) In Peru, worship was paid to
standing stones which, says Dr. Tylor,
“represented the penates of households
and the patron-deities of villages ”—in
other words, the ghosts of ancestors and
of tribal chiefs.
But when once the idea of the sacred
ness of stones had thus got firmly fixed in
the savage mind, it was natural enough
that other stones, resembling those which
were already recognised as gods, should
come to be regarded as themselves divine,
or as containing an indwelling ghost or
deity. Of this stage, Mr. Turner’s Samoa
again affords us some curious instances.
“ Smooth stones apparently picked up
out of the bed of the river were regarded
as representatives of certain gods, and
wherever the stone was, there the god was
supposed to be. One resembling a fish
would be prayed to as the fisherman’s god.
Another, resembling a yam, would be the
yam god. A third, round like a breadfruit,
the breadfruit god—and so on.”
Now, the word “ apparently ” used by
this very cautious observer in this passage
shows clearly that he had never of his own
knowledge seen a stone thus selected at
random worshipped or deified, and it is
therefore possible that in all such cases the
stone may really have been one of sepul
chral origin. Still, I agree with Mr.
Spencer that when once the idea of a ghost
or god is well developed, the notion of
such a spirit as animating any remarkable
or odd-looking object is a natural
transition.1 Hence I incline to believe
Mr. Turner is right, and that these stones
may really have been picked out and
worshipped, merely for their oddity, but
always, as he correctly infers, from the
belief in their connection with some god or
spirit.
Further instances (if fairly reported)
occur elsewhere. “ Among the lower races
of America,” says Dr. Tylor, summarising
Schoolcraft, “ the Dakotahs would pick up
a round boulder, paint it, and then,
addressing it as grandfather, make offerings
to it, and pray it to deliver them from
danger.” But here the very fact that the
stone is worshipped and treated as an
ancestor shows how derivative is the
deification—how dependent upon the prior
association of such stones with the tomb
of a forefather and its indwelling spirit.
Just in the same way we know there are
countries where a grave is more generally
marked, not by a stone, but by a wooden
stake ; and in these countries, as for
instance among the Samoyedes of Siberia,
sticks, not stones, are the most common
objects of reverence. (Thus, stick-worship
is found “ among the Damaras of South
Africa, whose ancestors are represented at
the sacrificial feasts by stakes cut from
trees or bushes consecrated to them, to
which stakes the meat is first offered.”)
But here, too, we see the clear affiliation
upon ancestor-worship; and indeed, wher
ever we find the common worship of
“ stocks and stones,” all the analogies lead
us to believe the stocks and stones either
actually mark the graves of ancestors or
else are accepted as their representatives
and embodiments.
The vast majority, however, of sacred
stones with whose history we are well ac
quainted are indubitably connected with
interments, ancient or modern. All the
European sacred stones are cromlechs,
dolmens, trilithons, or menhirs, of which
1 The whole subject is admirably worked out
in The Principles of Sociology, § 159.
�SACRED STONES
Mr. Angus Smith, a most cautious authority,
observes categorically: “We know for a
certainty that memorials of burials are the
chief object of the first one, and of nearly
all, the only object apparently.” So many
other examples will come out incidentally
in the course of the sequel that I will not
labour the point any further at present.
I have already stated that the idol is
probably in many cases derived from the
gravestone or other sacred stone. I believe
that in an immense number of cases it is
simply the original pillar, more or less
rudely carved into the semblance of a
human figure.
How this comes about we can readily
understand if we recollect that by a gradual
transference of sentiment the stone itself is
at last identified with the associated spirit.
Here, once more, is a transitional instance
from our Polynesian storehouse.
The great god of Bowditch Island “ was
supposed to be embodied in a stone, which
was carefully wrapped up with fine mats,
and never seen by anyone but the king”
(note this characteristic touch of kingly
priesthood), “and that only once a year,
when the decayed mats were stripped off
and thrown away. In sickness, offerings
of fine mats were taken and rolled round
the sacred stone, and thus it got busked up
to a prodigious size ; but as the idol was
exposed to the weather out of doors, night
and day, the mats soon rotted. No one
dared to appropriate what had been offered
to the god, and hence the old mats, as they
were taken off, were heaped in a place by
themselves and allowed to rot.”
Now, the reasonableness of all this is
immediately apparent if we remember that
the stones which stand on graves are
habitually worshipped, and anointed with
oil, milk, and blood. It is but a slight
further step to regard the stone, not only
as eating and drinking, but also as needing
warmth and clothing. As an admirable
example of the same train of thought, work
ing out the same result elsewhere, compare
this curious account of a stone idol at
Inniskea (a rocky islet off the Mayo coast),
given by the Earl of Roden, as late as 1851,
in his Progress of the Reformation in
Ireland:—
“In the south island, in the house of a
man named Monigan, a stone idol, called
in the Irish ‘Neevougi,’ has been from
time immemorial religiously preserved and
worshipped. This god resembles in appear
ance a thick roll of home-spun flannel,
which arises from the custom of dedicating
43
a dress of that material to it whenever its
aid is sought; this is sewn on by an old
woman, its priestess, whose peculiar care it
is. Of the early history of this idol no
authentic information can be procured, but
its power is believed to be immense ; they
pray to it in time of sickness ; it is invoked
when a storm is desired to dash some
hapless ship upon their coast; and, again,
the exercise of its power is solicited in
calming the angry waves, to admit of fish
ing or visiting the mainland.”
Nor is this a solitary instance in modern
Europe. “ In certain mountain districts of
Norway,” says Dr. Tylor, “ up to the end of
the last century, the peasants used to pre
serve round stones, washed them every
Thursday evening,.......smeared them with
butter before the fire, laid them in the seat
of honour on fresh straw, and at certain
times of the year steeped them in ale, that
they might bring luck and comfort to the
house.”
The first transitional step towards the
idol proper is given in some rude attempt
to make the standing stone at the grave
roughly resemble a human figure. We get
every transitional form, like the Hermae and
the archaic Apollos, till we arrive at the
perfect freedom and beauty of Hellenic
sculpture. Says Grote, in speaking 'of
Greek worship, “their primitive memorial
erected to a god did not even pretend to be
an image, but was often nothing more
than a pillar, a board, a shapeless stone, or
a post [notice the resemblance to ordinary
grave-marks] receiving care and decoration
from the neighbourhood as well as worship.”
Dr. Tylor, to whose great collection of in
stances I owe many acknowledgments, says
in comment on this passage: “ Such were
the log that stood for Artemis in Euboea ;
the stake that represented Pallas Athene
‘sine effigie rudis palus, et informe lignum’;
the unwrought stone (X/5-os a’pyds) at
Hyethos, which ‘ after the ancient manner ’
represented Heracles; the thirty such stones
which the Pharaeans in like fashion wor
shipped for the gods ; and that one which
received such honour in Boeotian festivals
as representing the Thespian Eros.” Such
also was the conical pillar of Asiatic type
which stood instead of an image of the
Paphian Aphrodite, and the conical stone
worshipped in Attica under the name of
Apollo. A sacred boulder lay in front of a
temple of the Troezenians, while another in
Argos bore the significant name of Zeus
Kappotas. “ Among all the Greeks,” says
Pausanias, “ rude stones were worshipped
�44
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
before the images of the gods.” Among
the Semites, in like manner, Melcarth was
reverenced at Tyre under the form of two
stone pillars.
Intermediate forms, in which the stone
takes successively a face, a head, arms,
legs, a shapely and well-moulded body, are
familiar to all of us in existing remains.
The well-known figures of Priapus form a
good transitional example. “ At Tabala, in
Arabia,” says Professor Robertson Smith,
“a sort of crown was sculptured on the
stone of al-Lat to mark her head.” Indeed,
to the last, the pillar or monolithic type is
constantly suggested in the erect attitude
and the proportions of the statue among all
except the highest Hellenic examples. I
may add, that even in Islam itself, which so
sternly forbids images of any sort, some
traces of such anthropomorphic gravestones
may still be found. I noticed in the mosque
of Mehemet Ali at Cairo that the head
stones of the Vice-regal family were each
adorned with a fez and tassel.
It is worth noting that the obelisk, also,
doubtless owes its origin to the monolith or
standing stone. Whatever fresh sacredness
it may later have obtained from the asso
ciations of sun-Worship, as a solar ray,
cannot mask for any wide anthropological
inquirer the fact that it is by descent a
-mere shapeless head-stone, with a new
symbolic meaning given to it (as so often
happens)in a newreligion. The two obelisks
which stand so often before Egyptian
temples are clearly the analogues of the
two pillars of Melcarth at Tyre, and the
sacred pair at Paphos, Herapolis, and Solo
mon’s temple. In the same way, the Indian
tope and the pyramid are descendants of
the cairn, as the great stone-built tombs of
the Numidian kings in Algeria seem to be
more advanced equivalents of the tumulus
or round barrow. And let me clear the
ground here for what is to follow by adding
most emphatically that the genesis of stone
worship here sketched out precludes the
possibility of phallic worship being in any
sense a primitive form of it. The standing
stone may have been, and doubtless often
was, in later stages, identified with a phallus ;
but if the theory here advocated is true,
the lingam, instead of lying at the root of
the monolith, must necessarily be a later
and derivative form of it. At the same
time, the stone being regarded as the
ancestor of the family, it is not unnatural
that early men should sometimes carve it
into a phallic shape. Having said this, I
will say no more on the subject, which has
really extremely little to do with the essen
tials of stone worship, save that on many
gravestones of early date a phallus marked
the male sex of the occupant, while breasts,
or a symbolical triangle, or a mandorla,
marked the grave of a woman.
Sometimes, both forms of god, the most
primitive and the most finished, the rude
stone and the perfect statue, exist side by
side in the same community.
“In the legendary origin of Jaganndth,”
says Sir William Hunter, “we find the
aboriginal people worshipping a blue stone
in the depths of the forest. But the deity
at length wearies of primitive jungle offer
ings, and longs for the cooked food of the
more civilised Aryans, upon whose arrival
on the scene the rude blue stone gives
place to a carved image. At the present
hour, in every hamlet of Orissa, this two
fold worship co-exists. The common people
have their shapeless stone or block, which
they adore with simple rites in the open air;
while side by side with it stands a temple to
one of the Aryan gods, with its carved idol
and elaborate rites.”
Where many sacred stones exist all
round, marking the graves of the dead, or
inhabited by their spirits, it is not surpris
ing, once more, that a general feeling of
reverence towards all stones should begin
to arise—that the stone per se, especially
if large, odd, or conspicuous, should be
credited to some extent with indwelling
divinity. Nor is it astonishing that the
idea of men being descended from stones
should be rife among people who must
often, when young, have been shown head
stones, monoliths, boulders, or cromlechs,
and been told that the offerings made upon
them were gifts to their ancestors. They
would accept the idea as readily as our own
children accept the Hebrew myth of the
creation of Adam, our prime ancestor, from
“ the dust of the ground ”—a far less pro
mising material than a block of marble or
sandstone. In this way, it seems to me, we
can most readily understand the numerous
stories of men becoming stones, and stones
becoming men, which are rife among the
myths of savage or barbarous peoples.
Classical and Hebrew literature, too, are
full of examples of stones, believed to have
been once human. Niobe and Lot’s wife
are instances that will at once occur to
every reader. In Boeotia, Pausanias tells
us, people believed Alkmene, the mother
of Herakles, was changed into a stone.
Perseus and the Gorgon’s head is another
example, paralleled by the Breton idea
�SACRED STONES
that their great stone circles were people,
who, in the modern Christianised version
of the story, were turned into stone for
dancing on a Sunday. (About this Christianisation I shall have a word to say
further on ; meanwhile, observe the similar
name of the Giant’s Dance given to the
great Stonehenge of Ireland.) In the
same way there is a Standing Rock on the
upper Missouri which parallels the story of
Niobe—it was once a woman, who became
petrified with grief when her husband took
a second wife. Some Samoan gods (or
ancestral ghosts) “ were changed into
stones,” says Mr. Turner, “ and now stand
up in a rocky part of the lagoon on the
north side of Upolu.”
On the other hand, if men become
stones, stones also become men, or at least
give birth to men. We get a good instance
of this in the legend of Deucalion. Again,
by the roadside, near the city of the
Panopoeans, lay the stones out of which
Prometheus made men. Manke, the first
man in Mitchell Island, came out of a
stone. The inhabitants of the New
Hebrides say that “the human race sprang
from stones and the earth.” On Francis
Island, says Mr. Turner, “close by the
temple there was a seven-feet-long beach
sandstone slab erected, before which offer
ings were laid as the people united for
prayer” ; and the natives here told him
that one of their gods had made stones
become men. “ In Melanesia,” says Mr.
Lang, “ matters are so mixed that it is not
easy to decide whether a worshipful stone
is the dwelling of a dead man’s soul, or is
of spiritual merit in itself, or whether the
stone is the spirit’s outward part or organ.”
And, indeed, a sort of general confusion
between the stone, the ghost, the ancestor,
and the god, at last pervades the mind of
the stone-worshipper everywhere.
An interesting side-point in this gradual
mixing up of the ghost and the stone, the
god and the image, is shown in a gradual
change of detail as to the mode of making
offerings at the tomb or shrine. On the
great trilithon in Tonga, Miss GordonCumming tells us, a bowl of kava was
placed on a horizontal stone. Here it
must have been supposed that the ghost
itself issued forth (perhaps by night) to
drink it, as the serpent which represented
the spirit of Anchises glided from the tomb
to lick up the offerings presented by zEneas.
Gradually, however, as the stone and the
ghost get more closely connected in idea
the offering is made to the monument itself;
45
though in the earlier stages the convenience
of using the flat altar-stone (wherever such
exists) as a place of sacrifice for victims
probably masks the transition even to the
worshippers themselves. Dr. Wise saw
in the Himalayas a group of stones “erected
to the memory of the petty Rajahs of
Kolam,” where “ some fifty or sixty unfor
tunate women sacrificed themselves.” The
blood, in particular, is offered up to the
ghost; and “ the cup-hollows which have
been found in menhirs and dolmens,” says
Captain Conder, “ are the indications of
the libations, often of human blood, once
poured on these stones by heathen wor
shippers.” “ Cups are often found,” says a
good Scotch observer,“on stones connected
with the monuments of the dead, such as
on the covering stones of kistvaens, par
ticularly those of the short or rarest form ;
on the flat stones of cromlechs; and on
stones of chambered graves.” On the top
of the cairn at Glen Urquhart, on Loch
Ness, is an oblong mass of slate-stone,
obviously sepulchral, and marked with
very numerous cups. When the stones are
upright the notion of offering the blood to
the upper part, which represents the face or
mouth, becomes very natural, and forms a
distinct step in the process of anthropomorphisation of the headstone into the idol.
We get two stages of this evolution side
by side in the two deities of the Samoyed
travelling ark-sledge, “ one with a stone
head, the other a mere black stone, both
dressed in green robes with red lappets,
and both smeared with sacrificial blood.”
In the Indian groups of standing stones,
representing the Five Pandavas, “it is a
usual practice,” says Dr. Tylor, “to daub
each stone with red paint, forming, as it
were, a great blood-spot where the face
would be if it were a shaped idol.” Mr.
Spencer, I think, hits the key-note of this
practice in an instructive passage. “A
Dakotah,” he says, “before praying to a
stone for succour paints it with some red
pigment, such as red ochre. Now, when
we read that along with offerings of milk,
honey, fruit, flour, etc., the Bodo and
Dhimdls offer ‘ red lead or cochineal,’ we
may suspect that these three colouring
matters, having red as their common
character, are substitutes for blood. The
supposed resident ghost was at first pro
pitiated by anointing the stone with human
blood ; and then, in default of this, red
pigment was used, ghosts and gods being
supposed by primitive men to be easily
deceived by sham..”
�46
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
In any case it is interesting to note that
the faces of many Hindu gods are habitually
painted red. And that this is the survival
of the same ancient custom we see in the
case of Shashti, protectress of children,
whose proper representative is “ a rough
stone as big as a man’s head, smeared with
red paint, and set at the foot of the sacred
vata-tree.” Like customs survived in Greece
down to the classical period. “The faces
of the ancient gilded Dionysi at Corinth,”
says Mr. Lang, quoting Pausanias, “were
smudged all over with cinnabar, like fetish
stones in India or Africa.” In early South
Italy, too, the Priapus-Hermes, who pro
tected the fields, had his face similarly
“daubed with minium.” Is it possible to
dissever these facts from the cannibal
banquets of the Aztec gods, where the
images had lumps of palpitating human
flesh thrust into their lips, and where their
faces were smeared with the warm blood of
the helpless victims ?
Another point of considerable interest
and importance in the evolution of stone
worship is connected with the migration
of sacred stones. When the Israelites left
Egypt, according to the narrative in
Exodus, they carried the bones of Joseph
with them. When Rachel left her father’s
tent she stole the family teraphim to accom
pany her on her wanderings. When ./Eneas
fled from burning Troy, he bore away to his
ships his country’s gods, his Lares and
Penates. All of these tales, no doubt, are
equally unhistorical, but they represent
what, to the people who framed the legends,
seemed perfectly natural and probable con
duct. Just in the same way, when stone
worshippers migrate from one country
to another, they are likely to carry
with them their sacred stones, or at
least the most portable or holiest of the
number.
I cannot find room here for many detailed
instances of such migrations ; but there are
two examples in Britain so exceedingly in
teresting that I cannot pass them by. The
inner or smaller stones at Stonehenge are
known to be of remote origin, belonging to
rocks not found nearer Salisbury Plain than
Cumberland in one direction or Belgium in
the other. They are surrounded by a group
of much larger stones, arranged as trilithons, but carved out of the common sarsen
blocks distributed over the neighbouring
country.
I have tried to show else
where1 that these smaller igneous rocks, un* Cornhill Magazine, Jan., 1886.
touched by the tool,1 were the ancient
sacred stones of an immigrant tribe that
came into Britain from the Continent,
probably over a broad land-belt which then
existed where the Straits of Dover now
flow; and that the strangers on their arrival
in Britain erected these their ancestral
gods on the Plain of Amesbury, and further
contributed to their importance and appear
ance by surrounding them with a circle of
the biggest and most imposing grey-wethers
that the new country in which they had
settled could easily afford.
The other case is that of the Scone stone.
This sacred block, according to the ac
credited legend, was originally the ances
tral god of the Irish Scots, on whose royal
tumulus at Tara it once stood. It was
carried by them to Argyllshire on their first
invasion, and placed in a cranny of the
wall (say modern versions) at Dunstaffnage
Castle. When the Scotch kings removed
to Scone, Kenneth II. took the stone to his
new lowland residence. Thence Edward I.
carried it off to England, where it has ever
since remained in Westminster Abbey, as
part of the chair in which the sovereigns
of Britain sit at their coronation. The
immense significance of these facts or tales
will be seen more clearly when we come to
consider the analogies of the Hebrew ark.
Meanwhile, it may help to explain the
coronation usage, and the legend that
wherever the Stone of Destiny is found
“ the Scots in place must reign,” if I add a
couple of analagous cases from the history
of the same mixed Celtic race. According
to Dr. O’Donovan, the inauguration stone
of the O’Donnells stood on a tumulus in the
midst of a large plain ; and on this sacred
stone called the Flagstone of the Kings,
the elected chief stood to receive the white
wand or sceptre of kingship. A cylindrical
obelisk, used for the same purpose, stands
to this day, according to Dr. Petrie, in the
Rath-na-Riogh. So, too, M’Donald was
crowned King of the Isles, standing on a
sacred stone, with an impression on top to
receive his feet. He based himself, as it
were, upon the gods his ancestors. The
Tara stone even cried aloud, Professor
1 So Moses in the legend commanded the
children of Israel to build “an altar of whole
stones, over which no man hath lift up any
iron”; and so of the boulders composing the
altar on Mount Ebal it was said, “Thou shalt
not lift up any iron tool upon them.” The con
servatism of religion kept up the archaic fashion
for sacred purposes.
�SACRED STONES
Rhys tells us, when the true king placed
his feet above it. The coronation stone
exists in other countries ; for example, in
Hebrew history, or half-history, we learn
that when Abimelech was made king it was
“by the plain of the pillar that was in
Shechem”; and when Jehoash was anointed
by Jehoiada, “the king stood by a pillar, as
the manner was.” Beside the church of
Sant’ Ambrogio at Milan, under the ancient
lime-trees which overshadow the piazza,
stands the stone pillar at which the Lom
bard Kings and German Emperors took
the coronation oath.
Now, it is quite true that Mr. Skene, the
best authority on Celtic Scotland, rejects
this story of the Stone of Destiny in most
parts as legendary : he believes the Scone
stone to have been merely the sacred
coronation-block of the Pictish Kings at
Scone, and never to have come from
Ireland at all. Professor Ramsay thinks it
is a piece of red sandstone broken off the
rock of that district of Scotland. Even
Professor Rhys (who gives a most interest
ing account of the Tara Stone) seems to
have doubts as to migration. But, true or
not, the story will amply serve my purpose
here ; for I use it only to illustrate the
equally dubious wanderings of a Hebrew
sacred stone, at which we shall arrive in
due time ; and one legend is surely always
the best possible parallel of another.
In the course of ages, as religions
develop, and especially as a few great gods
grow to overshadow the minor ancestral
Lares and spirits, it often comes about that
sacred stones of the older faith have a new
religious significance given them in the
later system. Thus we have seen the
Argives worshipped their old sacred stone
under the name of Zeus Kappotas ; the
Thespians identified theirs with the later
Hellenic Eros ; and the Megarians con
sidered a third as the representative of
Phoebus. The original local sacred stone
of Delos has been found on the spot where
it originally stood, beneath the feet of the
statue of the Delian Apollo. And this, I
am glad to see, is Mr. Andrew Lang’s view
also ; for he remarks of the Greek un
wrought stones : “ They were blocks which
bore the names of gods, Hera, or Apollo,
names perhaps given, as De Brosses says,
to the old fetishistic objects of worship,
after the anthropomorphic gods entered [I
should say were developed in] Hellas.”
So, too, in India the local sacred stones
have been identified with the deities of the
Hindu pantheon. Islam, in like manner,
47
has adopted the Kaaba, the great black
stone of the Holy Place at Mecca; and the
Egyptian religion gave a new meaning to
the pillar or monolith by shaping it as an ,
obelisk to represent a ray of the rising
sun-god.
Sometimes the sanctity of the antique
stones was secured in the later faith by
connecting them with some legend or
episode of the orthodox religion. Thus
the ancient sacred stone kept at Delphi—
no doubt the original oracle of that great
shrine, as the rude Delian block was the
precursor of the Delian Apollo—was ex
plained with reference to the later Hellenic
belief by the myth that it was the stone
which Kronos swallowed in mistake for
Zeus : an explanation doubtless due to the
fact that this boulder was kept, like
Monigan’s Irish idol and the Samoan god,
wrapped up in flannel; and in the myth
Rhea deceived Kronos by offering him,
instead of Zeus, a stone wrapped in
swaddling-bands. The sacred stone of the
Troezenians, in like manner, lay in front of
the temple ; but it was Hellenised, so to
speak, by the story that on it the Troezenian
elders sat when they purified Orestes from
the murder of his mother.
In modern Europe, as everybody knows,
a similar Christianisation of holy wells,
holy stones, and holy places has been
managed by connecting them with legends
of saints, or by the still simpler device of
marking a cross upon them. The cross
has a threefold value : in the first place, it
drives away from their accustomed haunts
the ancient gods or spirits, always envisaged
in early Christian and mediaeval thought
as devils or demons ; in the second place,
it asserts the supremacy of the new faith ;
and in the third place, by conferring a fresh
sanctity upon the old holy place or object,
it induces the people to worship the cross
by the mere habit of resorting to the shrine
at which their ancestors so long wor
shipped. Gregory’s well-known advice to
St. Augustine on this matter is but a single
example of what went- on over all Chris
tendom. In many cases crosses in Britain
are still found firmly fixed in bld sacred
stones, usually recognisable by their un
wrought condition. The finest example in
Europe is probably the gigantic monolith
of Plumen in Brittany, topped by an
insignificant little cross, and still resorted
to by the peasants (especially the childless)
as a great place of worship. The pre
historic monuments of Narvia in the Isle
of Man have been Christianised by having
�48
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
crosses deeply incised upon them. Other
cases, like the Black Stones of Iona, which
gave sanctity to that Holy Isle long before
the time of Columbus, will doubtless occur
at once to every reader. With many of
the Scotch sculptured stones it is difficult
to decide whether they were originally
erected as crosses, or are prehistoric
monuments externally Christianised.
I have thus endeavoured briefly to
suggest the ultimate derivation of all sacred
stones from sepulchral monuments, and to
point out the very large part which they
bear in the essential of religion—that is to
say, worship—everywhere. There is, how
ever, one particular application to which I
wish to call special attention, because of its
peculiar interest as regards the origin of
the monotheistic god of Judaism and
Christianity.
That the Semites, as well as other early
nations, were stone-worshippers we know
from a great number of positive instances.
The stone pillars of Baal and the wooden
Ashera cones were the chief objects of
adoration in the Phoenician religion. The
Stone of Bethel was apparently a menhir :
the cairn of Mizpeh was doubtless a sepul
chral monument. The Israelites under
Joshua, we are told, built a Gilgalof twelve
standing stones ; and other instances in the
early traditions of the Hebrews will be
noticed in their proper place later on.
Similarly, among the Arabs of the time of
Mohammed, two of the chief deities were
Manah and Lit, the one a rock, the other a
sacred stone or stone idol: and the Kaaba
itself, the great black stone of local worship,
even the Prophet was compelled to recog
nise and Islamise by adopting it bodily into
his monotheistic religion.
It is clear that sacred stones were common
objects of worship with the Semites in
general, and also with the Hebrew people
in particular. But after the exclusive wor
ship of Jahweh, the local Jewish god, had
grown obligatory among the Jews,it became
the policy of the “Jehovist” priest to Jehovise and to consecrate the sacred stones of
Palestine by bringing them into connection
with the Jehovistic legend and the tales of
the Patriarchs. Thus Professor Cheyne
comments as follows upon the passage in
Isaiah where the prophet mocks the par
tisan of the old polytheistic creed as a
stone-worshipper: “Among the smooth
stones of the valley is thy portion : They,
they are thy lot: Even to them hast thou
poured a drink offering : Thou hast offered
a meat offering :
“The large smooth stones referred to
above were the fetishes of the primitive
Semitic races, and anointed with oil, accord
ing to a widely spread custom. It was such
a stone which Jacob took for a pillow, and
afterwards consecrated by pouring oil upon
it. The early Semites and reactionary
idolatrous Israelites called such stones
Bethels...... z>., houses of El (the early
Semitic word for God).1...... In spite of the
efforts of the ‘Jehovist’ who desired to
convert these ancient fetishes into memo
rials of patriarchal history, the old heathenish
use of them seems to have continued, espe
cially in secluded places.”
Besides the case of the stone at Bethel,
there is the later one (in our narrative)
when Jacob and Laban made a covenant,
“ and Jacob took a stone, and set it up for
a pillar. And J acob said unto his brethren,
Gather stones ; and they took stones and
made an heap : and they did eat there upon
the heap.” So, once more, at Shalem, he
erects an altar called El-Elohe-Israel; he
sets a pillar upon the grave of Rachel, and
anothar at the place at Luz where God
appeared to him. Of like import is the
story of the twelve stones which the twelve
men take out of Jordan to commemorate
the passage of the tribes. All are clearly
attempts to Jehovise these early sacred
stones or local gods by connecting them
with incidents in the Jehovistic version of
the ancient Hebrew legends.
That such stones, however, were wor
shipped as deities in early times, before the
cult of Jahweh had become an exclusive
one among his devotees, is evident from the
Jehovistic narrative itself, which has not
wholly succeeded in blotting out all traces
of earlier religion. Samuel judged Israel
every year at Bethel, the place of Jacob’s
sacred pillar: at Gilgal, the place where
Joshua’s twelve stones were set up ; and at
Mizpeh, where stood the cairn surmounted
by the pillar of Laban’s covenant. In
other words, these were the sanctuaries of
the chief ancient gods of Israel. Samuel
himself “took a stone and set it between
Mizpeh and Shem”; and its very name,
Eben-ezer, “ the stone of help,” shows that
it was originally worshipped before proceed
ing on warlike expeditions, though the
Jehovistic gloss, “saying, Hitherto the
Lord hath helped us,” does its best, of
course, to obscure the real meaning. It
was to the stone-circle of Gilgal, once more,
that Samuel directed Saul to go, saying,
1 Say rather, “for a god.”
�SACRED STONES
“ I will come down unto thee, to offer burntofferings, and to sacrifice sacrifices of peaceofferings.” It was at the cairn of Mizpeh
that Saul was chosen king; and after the
victory over the Ammonites Saul went once
more to the great Stonehenge at Gilgal to
“renew the kingdom,” and “there they
made Saul king before Jahweh in Gilgal ;
and there they sacrificed sacrifices of peaceofferings before Jahweh.” This passage is
a very instructive and important one, be
cause here we see that in the opinion of
the writer at least Jahweh was then domi
ciled at Gilgal, amid the other sacred
stones of that holy circle.
Observe, however, that, when Saul was
directed to go to find his father’s asses, he
was sent first to Rachel’s pillar at Telzah,
and then to the plain of Tabor, where he
was to meet “ three men going up to God
[not to Jahweh] at Bethel,” evidently to
sacrifice, “one carrying three kids, and
another carrying three loaves of bread, and
another carrying a bottle of wine.” These
and many other like memorials of stone
worship lie thickly scattered through the
early books of the Hebrew Scriptures, some
times openlyavowed, andsometimes cloaked
under a thin veil of Jehovism.
On the other hand, at the present day,
the Palestine exploration has shown that no
rude stone monuments exist in Palestine
proper, though East of the Jordan they are
common in all parts of the country. How,
then, are we to explain their disappearance?
Major Conder thinks that, when pure Jeho
vism finally triumphed under Hezekiah
and Josiah, the Jehovists destroyed all
these “ idolatrous ” stones throughout the
Jewish dominions, in accordance with the
injunctions in the Book of Deuteronomy to
demolish the religious emblems of the
Canaanites. Jahweh, the god of the
Hebrews, was a jealous God, and he would
tolerate no alien sacred stones within his
own jurisdiction.
And who or what was this Jahweh him
self, this local and ethnic god of the Israel
ites, who would suffer no other god or
sacred monolith to live near him ?
I will not lay stress upon the point that
when Joshua was dying, according to the
legend, he “ took a great stone ” and set it
up by an oak that was by the sanctuary of
Jahweh, saying that it had heard all the
words of Jahweh. That document is too
doubtful in terms to afford us much authority.
But I will merely point out that at the time
when we first seem to catch clear historic
glimpses of true Jahweh worship, we find
49
Jahweh, whoever or whatever that mystic
object might have been, located with his
ark at the Twelve Stones at Gilgal. It is
quite clear that in “ the camp at Gilgal,” as
the latter compilers believed, Jahweh, god
of Israel, who had brought his people up
out of Egypt, remained till the conquest of
the land was completed. But after the end
of the conquest, the tent in which he dwelt
was removed to Shiloh ; and that Jahweh
went with it is clear from the fact that
Joshua cast lots for the land there “before
Jahweh, our God.” He was there still
when Hannah and her husband went up to
Shiloh to sacrifice unto Jahweh ; and when
Samuel ministered unto Jahweh before Eli
the priest. That Jahweh made a long stay
at Shiloh is, therefore, it would seem, a true
old tradition—a tradition of the age just
before the historical beginnings of the
Hebrew annals.
But Jahweh was an object of portable
size, for, omitting for the present the des
criptions in the Pentateuch, which seem
likely to be of late date, and not too trust
worthy, through their strenuous Jehovistic
editing, he was carried from Shiloh in his
ark to the front during the great battle
with the Philistines at Ebenezer; and the
Philistines were afraid, for they said, “A
god is come into the camp.” But when the
Philistines captured the ark, the rival god,
Dagon, fell down and broke in pieces—so
Hebrew legend declared—before the face
of Jahweh. After the Philistines restored
the sacred object, it rested for a time at
Kirjath-jearim, till David, on the capture of
Jerusalem from the Jebusites, went down
to that place to bring up from thence the
ark of the god ; and as it went, on a new
cart, they “played before Jahweh on all
manner of instruments,” and David himself
“danced before Jahweh.” Jahweh was then
placed in the tent or tabernacle that David
had prepared for him, till Solomon built
the first temple, “the house of Jahweh,”
and Jahweh’s ark was set up in it, “in the
oracle of the house, the most holy place,
even under the wings of the cherubim.”
Just so Mr. Chalmers tells us that when he
was at Peran, in New Guinea, the peculiarlyshaped holy stone, Ravai, and the two
wooden idols, Epe and Kivava, “made long
ago and considered very sacred,” were for
the moment “ located in an old house, until
all the arrangements necessary for their
removal to the splendid new dubu prepared
for them are completed.” And so, too, at
the opposite end of the scale of civilisation,
as Mr. Lang puts it, “ the fetish-stones of
E
�5°
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA 01 GOD
Greece were those which occupied the holy
of holies of the most ancient temples, the
mysterious fanes within dark cedar or
cypress groves, to which men were hardly
admitted.”
That Jahweh himself, in the most ancient
traditions of the race, was similarly con
cealed within his chest or ark in the holy
of holies, is evident, I think, to any attentive
reader. 11 is true, the later J ehovistic glosses
of Exodus and Deuteronomy, composed
after the Jehovistic worship had become
purified and spiritualised, do their best to
darken the comprehension of this matter
by making the presence of Jahweh seem
always incorporeal; and even in the earlier
traditions the phrase “ the ark of the
covenant of Jahweh” is often substituted
for the simpler and older one, “ the ark of
Jahweh.” But through all the disfigure
ments with which the priestly scribes of the
age of Josiah and the sacerdotalists of the
return from the captivity have overlaid the
primitive story, we can still see clearly in
many places that Jahweh himself was at
first personally present in the ark that
covered him. And though the scribes
(evidently ashamed of the early worship
they had outlived) protest somewhat vehe
mently more than once, “There was nothing
in the ark save the two tables of stone
which Moses put there at Horeb, when
Jahweh made a covenant with the children
of Israel, when they came out of the land
of Egypt,” yet this much at least even they
admit—that the object or objects concealed
in the ark consisted of a sculptured stone
or stones; and that to dance or sing before
this stone or these stones was equivalent
to dancing or singing before the face of
Jahweh.
Not to push the argument too far, then,
we may say this much is fairly certain.
The children of Israel in early times car
ried about with them a tribal god, Jahweh,
whose presence in their midst was inti
mately connected with a certain ark or
chest, containing a stone object or objects.
This chest was readily portable, and could
be carried to the front in case of warfare.
They did not know the origin of the object
in the ark with certainty, but they re
garded it emphatically as “Jahweh their
god, which led them out of the land of
Egypt.” Even after its true nature had
been spiritualised away into a great
national deity, the most unlimited and in
corporeal the world has ever known (as
we get him in the best and purest work
of the prophets), the imagery of later
times constantly returns to the old idea of
a stone pillar or menhir. In the embel
lished account of the exodus from Egypt,
Jahweh goes before the Israelites as a
pillar or monolith of cloud by day and of
fire by night. According to Levitical law
his altar must be built of unhewn stone
{see p. 46). It is as a' Rock that the
prophets often figuratively describe Jah
weh, using the half-forgotten language of
an earlier day to clothe their own sublimer
and more purified conceptions. It is to
the Rock of Israel—the sacred stone of
the tribe—that they look for succour.
Nay, even when Josiah accepted the
forged roll of the law and promised to
abide by it, “ the king stood by a pillar (a
menhir) and made a covenant before
Jahweh.” Even to the last we see in
vague glimpses the real original nature of
the worship of that jealous god who
caused Dagon to break in pieces before
him, and would allow no other sacred
stones to remain undemolished within his
tribal boundaries.
I do not see, therefore, how we can
easily avoid the obvious inference that
Jahweh, the god of the Hebrews, wrho
later became sublimated and etherealised
into the God of Christianity, was in his
origin nothing more nor less than the
ancestral sacred stone of the people of
Israel, however sculptured, and perhaps, in
the very last resort of all, the unhewn
monumental pillar of some early Semitic
sheikh or chieftain.
CHAPTER VI.
SACRED STAKES
Milton speaks in a famous sonnet of the
time “when all our fathers worshipped
stocks and stones.” That familiar and
briefly contemptuous phrase of the Puritan
poet does really cover the vast majority of
objects of worship for the human race at all
times and in all places. We have examined
the stones ; the stocks must now come in
for their fair share of attention. They need
not, however, delay us quite so long as
their sister deities, both because they are on
the whole less important in themselves, and
because their development from grave
marks into gods and idols is almost abso
lutely parallel to that which we have already
�SACRED STAKES
followed out in detail in the case of the
standing stone or megalithic monument.
Stakes or wooden posts are often used all
the world over as marks of an interment.
Like other grave-marks, they also share
naturally in the honours paid to the ghost
or nascent god. But they are less important
as elements in the growth of religion than
standing stones, for two distinct reasons.
In the first place, a stake or post most often
marks the interment of a person of little
social consideration ; chiefs and great men
have usually stone monuments erected in
their honour ; the commonalty have to be
satisfied with wooden marks, as one may
observe to this day at Père Lachaise, or any
other great Christian cemetery. In the
second place, the stone monument is far
more lasting and permanent than the wooden
one. Each of these points counts for some
thing. For it is chiefs and great men whose
ghosts most often grow into gods ; and it is
the oldest ghosts, the oldest gods, the oldest
monuments, that are always the most sacred.
For both these reasons, then, the stake is
less critical than the stone in the history of
religion.
Nevertheless, it has its own special im
portance. As the sacred stone derives
ultimately from the great boulder piled
above the grave to keep down the corpse,
so the stake, I believe, derives from the
sharp-pointed stick driven through the body
to pin it down as we saw in the third
chapter, and still so employed in Christian
England to prevent suicides from walking.
Such a stake or pole is usually permitted to
protrude from the ground, so as to warn
living men of the neighbourhood of a spirit.
At a very early date, however, the stake,
I fancy, became a mere grave-mark ; and
though, owing to its comparative incon
spicuousness, it obtains relatively little
notice, it is now and always has been by far
the most common mode of preserving the
memory of the spot where a person lies
buried. A good example, which will throw
light upon many subsequent modifications,
is given by Mr. Wyatt Gill from Port
Moresby in New Guinea. “The body,” he
says, “ was buried. At the side was set up
a stake, to which were tied the spear, club,
bow and arrow of the deceased, but broken,
to prevent theft. A little beyond was the
grave of a woman : her cooking utensils,
grass petticoats, etc., hung up on the stake.”
Similar customs, he adds, are almost uni
versal in Polynesia.
Though worship of stakes or wooden
posts is common all over the world, I can
5*
give but few quite unequivocal instances of
such worship being paid to a post actually
known to surmount an undoubted grave.
Almost the best direct evidence I can obtain
is the case of the gravepole in Buru, already
quoted from Mr. H. O. Forbes. But the
following account of a Samoyed place of
sacrifice, extracted from Baron Nordenskiold’s Voyage of the Vega, is certainly
suggestive. On a hillock on Vaygats
Island the Swedish explorer found a num
ber of reindeer skulls, so arranged that
they formed a close thicket of antlers.
Around lay other bones, both of bears and
reindeer; and in the midst of all “ the
mighty beings to whom all this splendour
was offered. They consisted of hundreds
of small wooden sticks, the upper portions
of which were carved very clumsily in the
form of the human countenance, most of
them from fifteen to twenty, but some of
them three hundred and seventy centi
metres in length. They were all stuck in
the ground on the south-east part of the
eminence. Near the place of sacrifice
there were to be seen pieces of driftwood
and remains of the fireplace at which the
sacrificial meal was prepared. Our guide
told us that at these meals the mouths of
the idols were besmeared with blood and
wetted with brandy ; and the former state
ment was confirmed by the large spots
of blood which were found on most of the
large idols below the holes intended to
represent the mouth.” At a far earlier
date, Stephen Burrough in 1556 writes as
follows to much the same effect in his
interesting narrative printed in Hakluyt:
“There I met againe with Loshak, and
went on shore with him, and he brought
me to a heap of Samoeds idols, which
were in number about 300, the worst and
the most unartificiall worke that ever I
saw : the eyes and mouthes of sundrie of
them were bloodie, they had the shape of
men, women, and children, very groslywrought, and that which they had made
for other parts was also sprinkled with
blood. Some of their idols were an olde
sticke with two or three notches, made
with a knife in it. There was one of
their sleds broken and lay by the heape of
idols, and there I saw a deers skinne which
the foules had spoyled : and before certaine of their idols blocks were made as
high as their mouthes ; being all bloodie,
I thought that to be the table whereon
they offered their sacrifice.”
In neither of these accounts, it is true,
is it distinctly mentioned that the place of
�52
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
sacrifice was a Samoyed cemetery: but I
believe this to be the case, partly from
analogy, and partly because Nordenskiold
mentions elsewhere that an upturned sled
is a frequent sign of a Samoyed grave.
Compare also the following account of a
graveyard among nominally Christian
Ostyak Siberians, also from Nordenskiold :
“ The corpses were placed in large coffins
above ground, at which almost always a
cross was erected.” [The accompanying
woodcut shows that these crosses were
rude wooden stakes with one or two cross
bars.] “ In one of the crosses a sacred
picture was inserted which must be con
sidered a further proof that a Christian
rested in the coffin. Notwithstanding
this, we found some clothes, which had
belonged to the departed, hanging on a
bush beside the grave, together with a
bundle containing food, principally dried
fish. At the graves of the richer natives
the survivors are even said to place along
with food some rouble notes, in order that
the departed may not be altogether with
out ready money on his entrance into the
other world.”
To complete the parallel, I ought to add
that money was also deposited on the
sacrificial place on Vaygats Island. Of
another such sacrificial place on Yalmal,
Nordenskiold says, after describing a pile
of bones, reindeer skulls, and walrus jaws :
“In the middle of the heap of bones stood
four erect pieces of wood. Two consisted
of sticks a metre in length, with notches
cut in them........The two others, which
clearly were the proper idols of this
place of sacrifice, consisted of driftwood
roots, on which some carvings had been
made to distinguish the eyes, mouth, and
nose. The parts of the pieces of wood,
intended to represent the eyes and mouth,
had recently been besmeared with blood,
and there still lay at the heap of bones the
entrails of a newly-killed reindeer.”
Indeed, I learn from another source that
“ the Samoyedes feed the wooden images
of the dead ”; while an instance from
Erman helps further to confirm the same
conclusion. According to that acute
writer, among the Ostyaks of Eastern
Siberia there is found a most interesting
custom, in which, says Dr. Tylor, “ we see
the transition from the image of the dead
man to the actual idol.” When a man
dies, they set up a rude wooden image of
him in the yurt, which receives offerings at
every meal and has honours paid to it,
while the widow continually embraces
and caresses it. As a general rule, these
images are buried at the end of three
years or so : but sometimes “ the image of
a shaman (native sorcerer),” says Tylor,
“ is set up permanently, and remains as a
saint for ever.” For “saint” I should say
“ god ” ; and we see the transformation at
once completed.
With regard to the blood smeared upon
such Siberian wooden idols, it must be
remembered that bowls of blood are
common offerings to the dead ; and Dr.
Robertson Smith himself, no friendly
witness in this matter, has compared the
blood-offerings to ghosts with those to
deities. In the eleventh book of the
Odyssey, for example, the ghosts drink
greedily of the sacrificial blood; and
libations of gore form a special feature in
Greek offerings to heroes. That blood
was offered to the sacred stones we have
already seen ; and we noticed that there as
here it was specially smeared upon the
parts representing the mouth. Offerings
of blood to gods, or pouring of blood on
altars, are too common to demand
particular notice; and we shall also recur
to that part of the subject when we come
to consider the important questions of
sacrifice and sacrament. I will only add
here that, according to Maimonides, the
Sabians looked on blood as the nourish
ment of the gods; while the Hebrew
Jahweh asks indignantly in the fiftieth
Psalm, “ Will I eat the flesh of bulls, or
drink the blood of goats ?”
To pass on to more unequivocal cases of
stake-worship, where we can hardly doubt
that the stake represents a dead man,
Captain Cook noticed that in the Society
Islands “ the carved wooden images at
burial-places were not considered mere
memorials, but abodes into which the souls
of the departed retired.” So Ellis observes
of Polynesians generally that the sacred
objects might be either mere stocks and
stones, or carved wooden imager;, from six
to eight feet long down to as many inches.
The ancient Araucanians again fixed over
a tomb an unright log, “ rudely carved to
represent the human frame.” After the
death of New Zealand chiefs, wooden
images, 20 to 40 feet high, were erected as
monuments.
Dr. Codrington notes that the large
mouths and lolling tongues of many New
Zealand and Polynesian gods are due to
the habit of smearing the mouth with
blood and other offerings.
Where men preserve the corpses of their
�SACRED STAKES
dead, images are not so likely to grow up ;
but where fear of the dead has brought
about the practice of burial or burning, it
is reasonable that the feelings of affection
which prompted gifts and endearments to
the mummy in the first stage of thought
should seek some similar material outlet
under the altered circumstances. Among
ourselves, a photograph, a portrait, the
toys of a dead child, are preserved and
cherished. Among savages, ruder repre
sentations become necessary. They bury
the actual corpse safely out of sight, but
make some rough wooden imitation to
represent it. Thus it does not surprise us
to find that while the Marianne Islanders
keep the dried bodies of their dead ances
tors in their huts as household gods, and
expect them to give oracles out of their
skulls, the New Zealanders, on the other
hand, “ set up memorial idols of deceased
persons near the burial-place, talking affec
tionately to them as if still alive, and cast
ing garments to them when they pass by,”
while they also “preserve in their houses
small carved wooden images, each dedi
cated to the spirit of an ancestor.” The
Coast Negroes “place several earthen
images on the graves.” Some Papuans,
“ after a grave is filled up, collect round
an idol, and offer provisions to it.” The
Javans dress up an image in the clothes
of the deceased. So, too, of the Caribs
of the West Indies, we learn that they
“carved little images in the shape in
which they believed spirits to have ap
peared to them; and some human figures
bore the names of ancestors in memory of
them.” From such little images, obviously
substituted for the dead body which used
once to be preserved and affectionately
tended, are derived, I believe, most of the
household gods of the world—the Lares
and Penates of the Romans, the huacas of
the Peruvians, the teraphim of the Semites.
As in the case of sacred stones, once
more, I am quite ready to admit that, when
once the sanctity of certain stakes or wooden
poles came to be generally recognised, it
would be a simple transference of feeling to
suppose that any stake, arbitrarily set up,
might become the shrine or home of an
indwelling spirit. Thus we are told that
the Brazilian tribes “ set up stakes in the
ground, and make offerings before them to
appease their deities or demons.” So also
we are assured that among the Dinkas of
the White Nile, “ the missionaries saw an
old woman in her hut offering the first of
her food before a short thick staff planted
53
in the ground.” But in neither of these
cases is there necessarily anything to show
that the spot where the staff was set up was
not a place of burial; while in the second
instance this is even probable, as hut inter
ments are extremely common in Africa. I
will quote one other instance only, for its
illustrative value in a subsequent connec
tion. In the Society Islands rude logs are
clothed in native cloth (like Monigan’s idol)
and anointed with oil, receiving adoration
and sacrifice as the dwelling-place of a
deity.
Among the Semitic peoples, always
specially interesting to us from their genetic
connection with Judaism and Christianity,
the worship of stakes usually took the form
of adoration paid to the curious log of wood
described as an ashera. What kind of
object an ashera was we learn from the
injunction in Deuteronomy, “ Thou shalt
not plant an ashera of any kind of wood
beside the altar of Jahweh.” This prohibi
tion is clearly parallel to that against any
hewn stone or “ graven image.” But the
Semites in general worshipped as a rule at
a rude stone altar, beside which stood an
ashera, under a green tree—all three of the
great sacred objects of humanity being thus
present together. A similar combination is
not uncommon in India, where sacred stone
and wooden image stand often under the
shade of the same holy peepul tree. “ The
ashera” says Professor Robertson Smith,
“ is a sacred symbol, the seat of the deity,
and perhaps the name itself, as G. Hoff
mann has suggested, means nothing more
than the ‘mark’ of the divine presence.”
Those who have followed me so far in the
present work, however, will be more likely
to conclude that it meant originally the
mark of a place where an ancestor lay
buried. “Every altar,” says Professor
Smith, again, “ had its ashera, even such
altars as in the popular preprophetic forms
of the Hebrew religion were dedicated to
J ehovah.”
I will dwell no longer upon more or less
remote derivatives of the grave-stake. I
will only say briefly that in my opinion all
wooden idols or images are directly or
indirectly descended from the wooden
headpost or still more primitive sepulchral
pole. Not of course that I suppose every
wooden image to have been necessarily
once itself a funereal monument. Dona
tello’s Magdalen in San Giovanni at
Florence, the blue-robed and star-spangled
Madonna of the wayside shrine, have cer
tainly no such immediate origin. But I
�54
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
do believe that the habit of making and
worshipping wooden images arose in the
way I have pointed out.
CHAPTER VII.
SACRED TREES
The sacred tree stands less obviously in
the direct line of ancestry of gods and of
God than the sacred stone and sacred
stake which we have just considered. I
would willingly pass it over, therefore, in
this long preliminary inquisition, could I
safely do so, in order to progress at once
to the specific consideration of the God of
Israel and the rise of Monotheism. But
the tree is nevertheless so closely linked
with the two other main objects of human
worship that I hardly see how I can
avoid considering it here in the same con
nection, especially as in the end it has
important implications with regard to the
tree of the cross, as well as to the True
Vine, and many other elements of Chris
tian faith and Christian symbolism. I
shall therefore give it a short chapter as
I pass, premising that I have already
entered into the subject at greater length
in my excursus “ On the Origin of TreeWorship,” appended to my verse transla
tion of the Attis of Catullus.
The worship of sacred trees is almost
as widely diffused over the whole world as
the worship of dead bodies, mummies,
relics, graves, sacred stones, sacred stakes,
and stone or wooden idols. The great
authorities on the subject of Tree-Worship
are Mannhardt’s Baumkultus and Mr. J.
G. Frazer’s The Golden Bough. Neither
of those learned and acute writers, how
ever, has fully seen the true origin of wor
ship from funeral practices : and therefore
it becomes necessary to go over the same
ground again briefly here from the point
of view afforded us by the corpse-theory
and ghost-theory of the basis of religion. I
shall hope to add something to their valu
able results, and also incidentally to show
that all the main objects of worship together
lead us back unanimously to the Cult of
the Dead as their common starting-point.
Let us begin in this instance (contrary to
our previous practice) by examining and
endeavouring to understand a few cases of
the behaviour of tree-spirits in various
mythologies. Virgil tells us in the Third
^Eneid how, on a certain occasion, /Eneas
was offering a sacrifice on a tumulus
crowned with dogwood and myrtle bushes.
He endeavoured to pluck up some of these
by the roots, in order to cover the altar, as
was customary, with leaf-clad branches. As
he did so, the first bush which he tore up
astonished him by exuding drops of liquid
blood, which trickled and fell upon the soil
beneath. He tried again, and again the
tree bled human gore. On the third trial,
a groan was heard proceeding from the
tumulus, and a voice assured /Eneas that
the barrow on which he stood covered the
murdered remains of his friend Polydorus.
Now, in this typical and highly illustra
tive myth—no doubt an ancient and wellknown story incorporated by Virgil in his
great poem—we see that the tree which
grows upon a barrow is itself regarded as
the representative and embodiment of the
dead man’s soul, just as elsewhere the snake
which glides from the tomb of Anchises is
regarded as the embodied spirit of the hero,
and just as the owls and bats which haunt
sepulchral caves are often identified in all
parts of the world with the souls of the
departed.
Similar stories of bleeding or speaking
trees or bushes occur abundantly elsewhere.
“When the oak is being felled,” says
Aubrey, in his Remains of Gentilisme, “ it
gives a kind of shriekes and groanes that
may be heard a mile off, as if it were the
genius of the oak lamenting. E. Wyld,
Esq., hath heared it severall times.” Certain
Indians, says Bastian, dare not cut a par
ticular plant, because there comes out of it
a red juice which they take for its blood. I
myself remember hearing as a boy in
Canada that wherever Sanguinaria Cana
densis, the common American bloodroot,
grew in the woods, an Indian had once
been buried, and that the red drops of juice
which exuded from the stem when one
picked the flowers were the dead man’s
blood. In Samoa, says Mr. Turner, the
special abode of Tuifiti, King of Fiji, was a
grove of large and durable afzelia trees.
“No one dared cut that timber. A story is
told of a party from Upolu who once
attempted it, and the consequence was that
blood flowed from the tree, and that the
sacrilegious strangers all took ill and died.”
Till 1855, says Mannhardt, there was a
sacred larch-tree at Nauders in the Tyrol,
which was thought to bleed whenever it
was cut. In some of these cases, it is true,
we do not actually know that the trees grew
�SACRED TREES
on tumuli, but this point is specially noticed
about Polydorus’s dogwood, and is probably
implied in the Samoan case, as I gather
from the title given to the spirit as king of
Fiji.
In other instances, however, such a doubt
does not exist. We are expressly told that
it is the souls of the dead which are believed
to animate the speaking or bleeding trees.
“The Dieyerie tribe of South Australia,”
says Mr. Frazer, “regard as very sacred
certain trees which are supposed to be their
fathers transformed; hence they will not
cut the trees down, and protest against
settlers doing so.”
Now, how did this connection between
the tree and the ghost or ancestor grow up ?
In much the same way, I imagine, as the
connection between the sacred stone or the
sacred stake and the dead chief who lies
buried beneath it. Whatever grows or
stands upon the grave is sure to share the
honours paid to the spirit that dwells
within it. Thus a snake or other animal
seen to glide out of a tomb is instantly
taken by savages and even by half-civilised
men as the genius or representative of the
dead inhabitant. But do trees grow out of
graves ? Undoubtedly, yes. In the first
place, they may grow by mere accident, as
they might grow anywhere else ; the more
so as the soil in such a case has been
turned and laboured. But beyond this, in
the second place, it is common all over the
world to plant trees or shrubs over the
graves of relatives or tribesmen. Though
direct evidence on this point is difficult to
obtain, a little is forthcoming. In Algeria,
I observed, the Arab women went on
Fridays to plant flowers and shrubs on the
graves of their immediate dead. I learned
from Mr. R. L. Stevenson that similar
plantings take place in Samoa and Fiji.
The Tahitians put young casuarinas on
graves. In Roman Catholic countries the
planting of shrubs in cemeteries takes
place usually on the jour des morts, a
custom which would argue for it an
immense antiquity ; for though it is a point
of honour among Catholics to explain this
jete as of comparatively recent origin,
definitely introduced by a particular saint
at a particular period, its analogy to
similar celebrations elsewhere shows us
that it is really a surviving relic of a very
ancient form of Manes-worship. In Graeco
Roman antiquity it is certain that trees
were frequently planted around the barrows
of the dead; and that leafy branches
formed part of the established ceremonial
55
of funerals. I cannot do better than quote
in this respect once more the case of
Polydorus:—
Ergo instauramus Polydoro funus, et ingens
Aggeritur tumulo tellus ; stant Manibus arse,
Cseruleis mcestse vittis atraque cupresso.
Suetonius again tells us how the tumulus
of the divine Augustus was carefully
planted. The acacia is one of the most
sacred trees of Egypt; and Egyptian
monuments, with their usual frankness,
show us a sarcophagus from which an
acacia emerges, with the naive motto,
“ Osiris springs forth.”
An incident which occurred during the
recent Sino-Japanese war shows how easily
points of this sort may be overlooked by
hasty writers in formal descriptions. One
of the London illustrated papers printed
an account of the burial of the Japanese
dead at Port Authur, and after mentioning
the simple headstone erected at each grave
volunteered the further statement that
nothing else marked the place of interment.
But the engraving which accompanied it,
taken from a photograph, showed, on the
contrary, that a little tree had also been
planted on each tiny tumulus.
I learn from Mr. William Simpson that
the Tombs of the Kings near Pekin are
conspicuous from afar by their lofty groves
of pine trees.
Evergreens, I believe, are specially
planted upon graves or tumuli because
they retain their greenness throughout the
entire winter, and thus as it were give
continuous evidence of the vitality and
activity of the indwelling spirit. Mr.
Frazer has shown in The Golden Bough
that mistletoe similarly owes its special
sanctity to the fact that it visibly holds the
soul of the tree uninjured in itself, while
all the surrounding branches stand bare
and lifeless. Accordingly, tumuli are very
frequently crowned by evergreens. Almost
all the round barrows in southern England,
for example, are topped by very ancient
Scotch firs; and as the Scotch fir is not an
indigenous tree south of the Tweed, it is
practically certain that these old pines are
the descendants of ascestors put in by
human hands when the barrows were first
raised over the cremated and buried bodies
of prehistoric chieftains. In short, the
Scotch fir is in England the sacred tree of
the barrows. As a rule, however, in
Northern Europe, the yew is the species
specially planted in graveyards, and
several such yews in various parts of
�56
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
England and Germany are held to possess
a peculiar sanctity. The great clump of
very ancient yews in Norbury Park near
Dorking, known as the Druids’ Grove, has
long been considered a holy wood of re
mote antiquity. In southern Europe the
cypress replaces the yew as the evergreen
most closely connected with tombs and
cemeteries. In Provence and Italy, how
ever, the evergreen holme-oak is almost
equally a conventional denizen of places of
interment. M. Lajard, in his able essay,
Sur le Culte du Cypres, has brought
together much evidence of this worship of
evergreens, among the Greeks, Etruscans,
Romans, Phoenicians, Arabs, Persians,
Hindus, Chinese, and American nations.
Sacred trees, especially when standing
alone, are treated in many respects with
the same ceremonial as is employed
towards dead bodies, mummies, graves,
sacred stones, sacred stakes, and carved
idols or statues. In other words, the
offerings to the ghost or god may be made
to the tree that grows on the grave just as
well as to any other of the recognised
embodiments of the indwelling spirit.
Furthermore, the sacred tree is found in
the closest possible connection with the
other indubitably ancestral monuments,
the sacred stone and the idol. “ A Bengal
village,” says Sir William Hunter, “has
usually its local god, which it adores either
in the form of a rude unhewn stone, or a
stump, or a tree marked with red lead ” ;
the last being probably a substitute for the
blood of human or animal victims with
which it was once watered. “ Sometimes
a lump of clay placed under a tree does
duty for a deity ; and the attendant priest,
when there is one, generally belongs to
one of the half-Hinduised low castes. The
rude stone represents the non-Aryan
fetish; and the tree seems to owe its
sanctity to the non-Aryan belief that it
forms the abode of the ghosts or gods of
the village.” That is to say, we have here
ancestor-worship in its undisguised early
native development.
The association of the sacred tree with
actual idols or images of deceased ances
tors is well seen in the following passage
which I quote from Dr. Tylor : “A clump
of larches on a Siberian steppe, a grove in
the recesses of a forest, is the sanctuary of
a Turanian tribe. Gaily-decked idols in
their warm fur coats, each set up beneath
its great tree swathed with cloth or tin
plate, endless reindeer-hides and peltry
hanging to the trees around, kettles and
spoons and snuff-horns and household
valuables strewn as offerings before the
gods—such is the description of a Siberian
holy grove, at the stage when the contact
of foreign civilisation has begun by orna
menting the rude old ceremonial it must
end by abolishing. A race ethnologically
allied to these tribes, though risen to
higher culture, kept up remarkable relics
of tree-worship in Northern Europe. In
Esthonian districts, within the present cen
tury, the traveller might often see the sacred
tree, generally an ancient lime, oak, or ash,
standing inviolate in a sheltered spot near
the dwelling-house ; and the old memories
are handed down of the time when the first
blood of a slaughtered beast was sprinkled
on its roots, that the cattle might prosper,
or when an offering was laid beneath the
holy linden, on the stone where the
worshipper knelt on his bare knees, moving
from east to west and back, which stone he
kissed when he had said, ‘ Receive the food
as an offering.’ ” After the evidence
already given, I do not think there can be
a reasonable doubt, in such a combination
of tree and stone, that we have here a sacri
fice to an ancestral spirit.
In some instances it is mentioned that
the trunks of sacred trees are occasionally
draped, as we saw to be also the case with
sacred stones, sacred stakes, idols, and
relics. Another example of this practice is
given in the account of the holy oak of
Romowe, venerated by the ancient Prussians,
which was hung with drapery like the ashera,
and decked with little hanging images of
the gods. The holy trees of Ireland are
still covered with rag offerings. Other
cases will be noticed in other connections
hereafter.
Once more, just as stones come to be
regarded as ancestors, so by a like process
do sacred trees. Thus Galton says in
South Africa : “ We passed a magnificent
tree. It was the parent of all the Damaras.
...... The savages danced round it in great
delight.” Several Indian tribes believe
themselves to be the sons of trees. Many
other cases are noted by Mr. Herbert
Spencer and Dr. Tylor. I do not think it
is necessary for our argument to repeat
them here.
I hope it is clear from this rapid risumt
that all the facts about the worship of sacred
trees stand exactly parallel to those with
regard to the worship of graves, mummies,
idols, sacred stones, sacred stakes, and
other signs of departed spirits. Indeed, we
have sometimes direct evidence of such
�SACRED TREES
affiliation. Thus Mr. Turner says of a
sacred tree on a certain spot in the island
of Savaii, which enjoyed rights of sanctuary
like the cities of refuge or a mediaeval
cathedral: “It is said that the king of a
division of Upolu, called Atua, once lived
at that spot. After he died, the house fell
into decay ; but the tree was fixed on as
representing the departed king, and out of
respect for his memory it was made the
substitute of a living and royal protector.”
By the light of this remark we may surely
interpret in a similar sense such other state
ments of Mr. Turner’s as that a sweetscented tree in another place “ was held to
be the habitat of a household god, and any
thing aromatic which the family happened
to get was presented to it as an offering ” ;
or again, “ a family god was supposed to
live ” in another tree ; “ and hence no one
dared to pluck a leaf or break a branch.”
For family gods, as we saw in a previous
chapter, are really family ghosts, promoted
to be deities.
In modern accounts of sacred trees much
stress is usually laid upon the fact that they
are large and well-grown, often very con
spicuous, and occupying a height, where
they serve as landmarks. Hence it has
frequently been taken for granted that they
have been selected for worship on account
of their size and commanding position.
This, however, I think, is a case of putting
the cart before the horse, as though one
were to say that St. Peter’s and Westminster
Abbey, the Temple of Karnak or the
Mosque of Omar, owed their sanctity to
their imposing dimensions. There is every
reason why a sacred tree should grow to
be exceptionally large and conspicuous.
Barrows are usually built on more or less
commanding heights, where they may
attract general attention. The ground is
laboured, piled high, freed from weeds, and
enriched by blood and other offerings. The
tree, being sacred, is tended arid cared for.
It is never cut down, and so naturally on the
average of instances grows to be a big and
well-developed specimen. Hence I hold
the tree is usually big because it is sacred,
not sacred because it is big. On the other
hand, where a tree already full-grown is
chosen for a place of burial, it would no
doubt be natural to choose a large and con
spicuous one. Thus I read of the tree
under which Dr. Livingstone’s heart was
buried by his native servant, “ It is the
largest in the neighbourhood.”
Looking at the question broadly, the case
stands thus. We know that in many in
57
stances savages inter their dead under the
shade of big trees. We know that such
trees are thereafter considered sacred, and
worshipped with blood, clothes, drapery,
offerings. We know that young shrubs or
trees are frequently planted on graves in all
countries. We know that whatever comes
up on or out of a grave is counted as repre
sentative of the ghost within it. The pre
sumption is therefore in favour of any par
ticular sacred tree being of funereal origin ;
and the onus of proving the opposite lies
with the person who asserts some more
occult and less obvious explanation.
At the same time, I am quite ready to
allow here, as in previous instances, when
once the idea of certain trees being sacred
has grown common among men, many trees
may come to possess by pure association a
sanctity of their own. This is doubtless
the case in India with the peepul, and in
various other countries with various other
trees. Exactly the same thing has happened
to stones. And so, again, though I believe
the temple to have been developed out of
the tomb or its covering, I do not deny that
churches are now built apart from tombs,
though always dedicated to the worship of
a God who is demonstrably a particular
deified personage.
Another point on which I must touch
briefly is that of the sacred grove or cluster
of trees. These often represent, I take it,
the trees planted in the temenos or sacred
tabooed space which surrounds the primi
tive tomb or temple. The koubbas or little
dome-shaped tombs of Mohammedan saints
so common in North Africa are all sur
rounded by such a walled enclosure, within
which ornamental or other trees are habit
ually planted. In many cases these are
palms—the familiar sacred tree of Meso
potamia, about which more must be said
hereafter in a later chapter. The wellknown bois sacré at Blidah is a considerable
grove, with a koubba in its midst. A similar
temenos frequently surrounded the Egyptian
and the Greek temple. I do not assert that
these were always of necessity actual tombs ;
but they were at any rate cenotaphs. When
once people had got accustomed to the idea
that certain trees were sacred to the memory
of their ancestors or their gods, it would be
but a slight step to plant such trees round
an empty temple. When Xenophon, for
example, built a shrine to Artemis, and
planted around it a grove of many kinds of
fruit trees, and placed in it an altar and
an image of the goddess, nobody would for
a moment suppose he erected it over the
�58
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
body of an actual dead Artemis. But men
would never have begun building temples
and consecrating groves at all if they had
not first built houses for the dead god
chief, and planted shrubs and trees upon
his venerated tumulus. Nay, even the
naïve inscription upon Xenophon’s shrine
—“He who lives here and enjoys the
fruits of the ground must every year offer
the tenth part of the produce to the god
dess, and out of the residue keep the
temple in repair”—does it not carry us
back implicitly to the origin of priesthood,
and of the desire for perpetuity in the due
maintenance of the religious offices ?
I shall say nothing here about the evolu
tion of the great civilised tree-gods like
Attis and Adonis, so common in the
region of the eastern Mediterranean, be
cause I have already treated them at some
length in my essay on Tree-Worship. But
a few words must be devoted in passing
to the prevalence of tree-worship among
the Semitic peoples, intimately connected
as it is with the rise of certain important
elements in the Christian cult.
“ In all parts of the Semitic area,” says
Professor Robertson Smith, “trees were
adored as divine.” Among the species
thus honoured he enumerates especially
the pines and cedars of Lebanon, the ever
green oaks of the Palestinian hills, the
tamarisks of the Syrian jungles, and the
acacias of the Arabian wadies. Most of
these, it will be noted, are evergreens. In
Arabia the most striking case on record
is that of the sacred date-plum at Nejran.
This was adored at an annual feast, when
it was “all hung with finé clothes and
women’s ornaments.” A similar tree ex
isted at Mecca, to which the people re
sorted annually, and hung upon it
weapons, garments, ostrich eggs, and other
offerings. In a sacred acacia at Nakla a
goddess was supposed to live. The modern
Arabs still hang pieces of flesh on such
sacred trees, honour them with sacrifices,
and present them with rags of calico and
coloured beads.
As regards the Phoenicians and Canaan
ites, Philo Byblius says that plants were
in ancient times revered as gods, and
honoured with libations and sacrifices. Dr.
Robertson Smith gives several instances.
Christianity has not extinguished the
veneration for sacred trees in Syria, where
they are still prayed to in sickness and
hung with rags. The Moslems of Pales
tine also venerate the sacred trees of
immemorial antiquity.
In the Hebrew scriptures tree-worship
constantly appears, and is frankly dealt
with by Professor Robertson Smith, who
does not refuse to connect with this set of
beliefs the legend of Jahweh in the burn
ing bush. The local altars of early Hebrew
cult were habitually set up “ under green
trees.” On this subject I would refer the
reader to Dr. Smith’s own interesting dis
quisition on p. 193 of The Religion of the
Semites.
With regard to the general sacredness
of vegetation, and especially of food-plants,
such as corn, the vine, and the date-palm,
I postpone that important subject for the
present, till we come to consider the gods
of cultivation, and the curious set of ideas
which gradually led up to sacramental
god-eating. In a theme so vast and so
involved as that of human religion, it
becomes necessary to take one point at a
time, and to deal with the various parts in
analytic isolation.
We have now examined briefly almost
all the principal sacred objects of the
world, according to classes—the corpse,
the mummy, the idol, the sacred stone, the
sacred stake, the sacred tree or grove ;
there remains but one other group of holy
things, very generally recognised, which I
do not propose to examine separately, but
to which a few words may yet be devoted
at the end of a chapter. I mean, the sacred
wells. It might seem at first sight as if
these could have no possible connection
with death or burial; but that expectation
is, strange to say, delusive. There appears
to be some reason for bringing wells too
into the widening category of funereal
objects. The oxen’s well .at Acre, forexample, was visited by Christian, Jewish,
and Moslem pilgrims ; it was therefore an
object of great ancient sanctity; but observe
this point: there is a mashhed or sacred
tomb beside it, “perhaps the modern repre
sentative of the ancient Memnomum.”
Every Egyptian temple had in like manner
its sacred lake. In modern Syria, “cisterns
are always found beside the grave of saints,
and are believed to be inhabited by a sort
of fairy. A pining child is thought to be a
fairy changeling, and must be lowered into
the cistern.” The similarity of the belief
about holy wells in England and Ireland,
and their frequent association with the
name of a saint, would seem to suggest for
them a like origin. Sacred rivers usually
rise from sacred springs, near which stands
a temple. The river Adonis took its origin
at the shrine of Aphaca: and the grave of
�THE GODS OF EGYPT
Adonis, about whom much more must be
said hereafter, stood near the mouth of the
holy stream that was reddened by his blood.
The sacred river Belus had also its peculiar
Memnonium or Adonis tomb. But I must
add that sacred rivers had likewise their
annual god-victims, about whom we shall
have a great deal to say at a later stage of
our inquiry, and from whom in part they
probably derived their sanctity. Still, that
their holiness was also due in part, and
originally, to tombs at their sources, I think
admits of no reasonable doubt.
The equivalence of the holy well and the
holy stone is shown by the fact that, while
a woman whose chastity was suspected had
to drink water of a sacred spring to prove
her innocence, at Mecca she had to swear
seventy oaths by the Kaaba.
Again, sacred wells and fountains were
and are worshipped with just the same acts
of sacrifice as ghosts and images. At
Aphaca, the pilgrims cast into the holy pool
jewels of gold and silver, with webs of linen
and other precious stuffs. A holy grove
was an adjunct of the holy spring : in
Greece, according to Bötticher, they were
seldom separated. At the annual fair of
the Sacred Terebinth, or tree and well of
Abraham at Mamre, the heathen visitors
offered sacrifices beside the tree, and cast
into the well libations of wine, with cakes,
coins, myrrh, and incense : all of which we
may compare with the Ostyak offerings to
ancestral grave-stakes. At the holy waters
of Karwa, bread, fruit, and other foods were
laid beside the fountain. At Mecca, and at
the Stygian Waters in the Syrian desert,
similar gifts were cast into the holy source.
In one of these instances at least we know
that the holy well was associated with an
actual burial ; for at Aphaca, the holiest
shrine of Syria, the tomb of the local Baal
or god was shown beside the sacred foun
tain. “ A buried god,” says Dr. Robertson
Smith quaintly, in commenting on this fact,
“ is a god that dwells under ground.” It
would be far truer and more philosophical
to say that a god who dwells underground
is a buried man.
I need not recall the offerings to Cornish
and Irish well-spirits, which have now de
generated for the most part into pins and
needles.
On the whole, though it is impossible to
understand the entire genesis of sacred
founts and rivers without previous con
sideration of deliberate god-making, a sub
ject which I reserve for a later portion of
our exposition, I do not think we shall go
59
far wrong in supposing that the sacred well
most often occurs in company with the
sacred tree, the sacred stone or altar, and
the sacred tomb; and that itowes its sanctity
in the last resort, originally at least, to a
burial by its side; though I do not doubt
that this sanctity was in many cases kept
up by the annual immolation of a fresh
victim-god, of a type whose genesis will
hereafter detain us.
Thus, in ultimate analysis, we see that
all the sacred objects of the world are
either dead men themselves, as corpse,
mummy, ghost, or god; or else the tomb
where such men are buried ; or else the
temple, shrine, or hut which covers the
tomb ; or else the tombstone, altar, image,
or statue, standing over it and representing
the ghost; or else the stake, idol, or
household god which is fashioned as their
deputy; or else the tree which grows
above the barrow ; or else the well, or
tank, or spring, natural or artificial, by
whose side the dead man has been laid
to rest.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE GODS OF EGYPT
We have now completed our preliminary
survey of the nature and origin of Gods in
general. We have seen how men first
came to believe in the objective existence
of these powerful and invisible beings, how
they learnt to invest ^them with majestic
attributes, and how tliey grew to worship
them under the various forms of mummies
or boulders, stone or wooden idols, trees or
stumps, wells, rivers, and fountains. In
short, we have briefly arrived at the origin
of Polytheism. We have now to go on to
our second question—How from the belief
in many gods did men progress to the
belief in one single God, the creator and
upholder of all things ? Our task is now
to reconstruct the origin of Monotheism.
But Monotheism bases itself entirely
upon the great God of the Hebrews. To
him, therefore, we must next address
ourselves. Is he too resoluble, as I hinted
before, into a Sacred Stone, the monument
and representative of some prehistoric
chieftain ? Can we trace the origin of the
Deity of Christendom till we find him at
last in a forgotten Semitic ghost of the
earliest period ?
�6o
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
The chief Hebrew god Jahweh, when
we first catch a passing glimpse of his
primitive worship by his own people, was
but one among a number of competing
deities, mostly, it would appear, embodied
by their votaries in the visible form of stone
or wooden pillars, and adored by a small
group of loosely-connected tribes among
the mountain region in the southwest of
Syria. The confederacy among whom he
dwelt knew themselves as the Sons of
Israel; they regarded Jahweh as their prin
cipal god, much as the Greeks did Zeus, or
the early Teutons their national hero
Woden. But a universal tradition among
them bore witness to the fact that they had
once lived in a subject condition in Egypt,
the house of bondage. So consistent and
so definite was this traditional belief that
we can hardly regard it otherwise than as
enclosing a kernel of truth ; and not only
do Kuenen and other Semitic scholars of
the present day admit it as genuine, but the
Egyptologists also seem generally to allow
its substantial accuracy and full accord with
hieroglyphic literature. This sojourn in
Egypt cannot have failed to influence to
some extent the Semitic strangers : there
fore I shall begin my quest of the Hebrew
god among the Egyptian monuments. Ad
mitting that he was essentially in all respects
a deity of the true Semitic pattern, I think
it will do us good to learn a little before
hand about the people among whom his
votaries dwelt so long, especially as the his
tory of the Egyptian cults affords us perhaps
the best historical example of the growth
and development of a great national reli
gion.
A peculiar interest, indeed, attaches in
the history of the human mind to the evo
lution of the gods of Egypt. Nowhere else
in the world can we trace so well such a
continuous development from the very sim
plest beginnings of religious ideas to the
very highest planes of mysticism and philo
sophic theology. There are savage cults,
it is true, which show us more clearly the
earliest stages in the process whereby the
simple ancestral ghost passes imperceptibly
into the more powerful form of a super
natural deity: there are elevated civilised
creeds which show us more grandly in its
evolved shape the final conception of a
single supreme Ruler of the Cosmos. But
there is no other religious system known to
us in which we can follow so readily, with
out a single break, the whole evolutionary
movement whereby the earlier ideas get
gradually expanded and etherealised into
the later. The origin of the other great
historical religions is lost from our eyes
among dim mists of fable : in Egypt alone,
of all civilised countries, does our record go
back to the remote period when the reli
gious conception was still at the common
savage level, and follow it forward continu
ously to the advanced point where it had
all but achieved, in its syncretic movement,
the ultimate goal of pure monotheism.
Looked at from the evolutionary point of
view then, nothing can be clearer than the
fact that the early Egyptian religion bases
itself entirely upon two main foundations,
ancestor-worship and totemism.
I will begin with the first of these, which
all analogy teaches us to consider by far
the earliest, and infinitely the most im
portant. And I may add that it is also, to
judge by the Egyptian evidence alone,
both the element which underlies the
whole religious conceptions of the Nile
valley, and likewise the element which
directly accounts, as we shall see hereafter,
for all the most important gods of the
national pantheon, including Osiris, Ptah,
Khem, and Amen, as well perhaps as
many of their correlative goddesses. There
is not, in fact, any great ethnical religion
on earth, except possibly the Chinese, in
which the basal importance of the Dead
Man is so immediately apparent as in the
ancient cult of Pharaohnic Egypt.
The Egyptian religion bases itself upon
the tomb. It is impossible for a moment
to doubt that fact as one stands under the
scanty shade of the desert date-palms
among the huge sun-smitten dust-heaps
that represent the streets of Thebes and
Memphis. The commonest object of wor
ship on all the monuments of Nile is
beyond doubt the Mummy : sometimes the
private mummy of an ancestor or kinsman,
sometimes the greater deified mummies of
immemorial antiquity, blended in the later
syncretic mysticism with the sun-god and
other allegorical deities, but represented to
the very last in all ages of art—on the
shattered Rameseum at Thebes or the
Ptolemaic pillars of still unshaken Denderah—as always unmistakeable and
obvious mummies. If ever there was a
country where the Worship of the Dead was
pushed to an extreme, that country was
distinctly and decisively Egypt.
“ The oldest sculptures show us no acts
of adoration or of sacrifice,” says Mr.
Loftie, “ except those of worship at the
shrine of a deceased ancestor or relative.”
This is fully in keeping with what we know
�THE GODS OF EGYPT
of the dawn of religion elsewhere, and
with the immense importance always at
tached to the preservation of the mummy
intact throughout the whole long course of
Egyptian history. The Egyptian, in spite
of his high civilisation, remained always at
the first or corpse-preserving stage of
custom as regards the dead. To him,
therefore, the life after death was far more
serious than the life on earth : he realised
it so fully that he made endless preparations
for it during his days above, and built
himself a tomb as an eternal mansion.
The grave was a place of abode, where the
mummy was to pass the greater part of his
existence ; and even in the case of private
persons (like that famous Tih whose
painted sepulchre at Sakkarah every
tourist to Cairo makes a point of visiting)
it was sumptuously decorated with painting
and sculpture. In the mortuary chambers
or chapels attached to the tombs, the
relations of the deceased and the priests
of the cemetery celebrated on certain fixed
dates various ceremonies in honour of the
dead, and offered appropriate gifts to the
mummy within. “ The tables of offerings,
which no doubt formed part of the furniture
of the chambers, are depicted on the
walls, covered with the gifts of meat, fruits,
bread, and wine which had to be presented
in kind.” These parentalia undoubtedly
formed the main feature of the practical
religion of early Egypt.
The Egyptian tomb was usually a survival
of the cave artificially imitated. The outer
chamber, in which the ceremonies of the
offertory took place, was the only part
accessible, after the interment had been
completed, to the feet of survivors. The
mummy itself, concealed in its sarcophagus,
lay at the bottom of a deep pit beyond, by
the end of a corridor often containing
statues or idols of the deceased. These
idols, says M. Maspero, were indefinitely
multiplied, in case the mummy itself should
be accidentally destroyed, in order that the
Ka (the ghost or double) might find a safe
dwelling-place. Compare the numerous
little images placed upon the grave by the
Coast Negroes. It was the outer chamber,
however, that sheltered the stele or pillar
which bore the epitaph, as well as the altar
or table for offerings, the smoke from which
was conveyed to the statues in the corridor
through a small aperture in the wall of
partition. Down the well beyond, the
mummy in person reposed, in its eternal
dwelling-place, free from all chance of viola
tion or outrage. “The greatest impor
61
tance,” says Mr. Renouf, “ was attached to
the permanence of the tomb, to the con
tinuance of the religious ceremonies, and to
the prayers of passers-by.” Again, “ there
is a very common formula stating that the
person who raised the tablet ‘ made it as a
memorial to his fathers who are in the nether
world, built up what he found was imperfect,
and renewed what was found out of repair.’”
In the inscription on one of the great tombs
at Beni-Hassan the founder says : “ I made
to flourish the name of my father, and I built
chapels for his ka [or ghost]. I caused
statues to be conveyed to the holy dwelling,
and distributed to them their offerings in
pure gifts. I instituted the officiating priest,
to whom I gave donations in land and
presents. I ordered funeral offerings for all
the feasts of the nether world [which are
then enumerated at considerable length].
If it happen that the priest or any other
cease to do this, may he not exist, and may
his son not sit in his seat.” All this is
highly instructive from the point of view of
the origin of priesthood.
How long these early religious endow
ments continued to be respected is shown
by Mr. Renouf in one instructive passage.
The kings who built the Pyramids in the
Early Empire endowed a priestly office for
the purpose of celebrating the periodical
rites of offering to their ghosts or mummies.
Now, a tablet in the Louvre shows that a
certain person who lived under the Twenty
sixth Dynasty was priest of Khufu, the
builder of the Great Pyramid, who had
endowed the office two thousand years
before his time. We have actually the
tombs of some of his predecessors who
filled the same office immediately after
Khufu’s death. So that in this instance at
least, the worship of the deceased monarch
continued for a couple of thousand years
without interruption. “If in the case of
private interments,” says M. Maspero, “we
find no proof of so persistent a veneration,
that is because in ordinary tombs the cere
monies were performed not by special
priests, but by the children or descendants
of the deceased person. Often, at the end
of a few generations, either through negli
gence, removals, ruin, or extinction of the
family, the cult was suspended, and the
memory of the dead died out altogether.”
For this reason, as everywhere else among
ancestor-worshippers, immense importance
was attached by the Egyptians to the be
getting of a son who should perform the
due family rites, or see that they were per
formed by others after him. The duty of
�6i
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
undertaking these ritesis thoroughly insisted
upon in all the maxims or moral texts; while,
on the other hand, the wish that a man may
not have a son to perform them for him is
the most terrible of all ancient Egyptian
imprecations.
If even the common herd were carefully
embalmed—if even the lesser functionaries
of the court or temple lay in expensive
tombs, daintily painted and exquisitely
sculptured—it might readily be believed
that the great kings of the mighty con
quering dynasties themselves would raise
for their mummies eternal habitations of
special splendour and becoming magnifi
cence. And so they did. In Lower Egypt
their tombs are barrows or pyramids : in
Upper Egypt they are artificial caves.
The dreary desert district west of the Nile
and south of Cairo consists for many
miles, all but uninterruptedly, of the ceme
tery of Memphis—a vast and mouldering
city of the dead—whose chief memorials
are the wonderful series of Pyramids, the
desecrated tombs piled up for the kings of
the Third, Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Dynas
ties. There, under stone tumuli of enor
mous size—barrows or cairns more care
fully constructed—the Pharaohs of the Old
Empire reposed in peace in sepulchres
unmarked by any emblems of the mystic
gods or sacred beasts of later imagination.
But still more significant and infinitely
more beautiful are the rock-hewn Tombs
of the Kings at Thebes, belonging to the
great monarchs of the Eighteenth, Nine
teenth, and Twentieth Dynasties, when the
religion had assumed its full mystical
development. Those magnificent subter
ranean halls form in the truest and most
literal sense a real necropolis, a town of
mummies, where each king was to inhabit
an eternal palace of regal splendour,
decorated with a profusion of polychro
matic art, and filled with many mansions
for the officers of state, still destined to
attend upon their sovereign in the nether
world. Some of the mural paintings
would even seem to suggest that slaves or
captives were sacrificed at the tomb, to
serve their lord in his eternal home, as his
courtiers had served him in the temporal
palaces of Medinet-Hdbu or the corridors
of Luxor.
At any rate, it is quite impossible for
any impartial person to examine the exist
ing monuments which line the grey desert
hills of the Nile without seeing for himself
that the mummy is everywhere the central
object of worship—that the entire prac
tical religion of the people was based upon
this all-pervading sense of the continuity
of life beyond the grave, and upon the
necessity for paying due reverence and
funereal offerings to the manes of an
cestors. Everything in Egypt points to
this one conclusion. Even the great
sacred ritual is the Book of the Dead : and
the very word by which the departed are
oftenest described means itself “ the
living,” from the firm belief of the people
that they were really enjoying everlasting
life. Mors janua vitce is the short sum
ming-up of Egyptian religious notions.
Death was the great beginning for which
they all prepared, and the dead were the
real objects of their most assiduous public
and private worship.
Moreover, in the tombs themselves we
can trace a gradual development of the
religious sentiment from Corpse-Worship
to God-Worship. Thus, in the tombs of
Sakkarah, belonging to the Old Empire
(Fifth Dynasty), all those symbolical repre
sentations of the life beyond the tomb
which came in with the later mysticism are
almost wholly wanting. The quotations
from (or anticipations of) the Book of the
Dead are few and short. The great gods
are rarely alluded to. Again, in the grottos
of Beni-Hassan (of the Twelfth Dynasty)
the paintings mostly represent scenes from
the life of the deceased, and the mystic
signs and deities are still absent. The doc
trine of rewards and punishments remains
as yet comparatively in abeyance. It is
only at the Tombs of the Kings at Thebes
(of the Eighteenth Dynasty) that entire
chapters of the Book of the Dead are tran
scribed at length, and the walls are covered
with “ a whole army of grotesque and fan
tastic divinities.”
“ But the Egyptians,” it will be objected,
“had also great gods, distinct from their
ancestors—national, or local, or common
gods—whose names and figures have come
down to us inscribed upon all the monu
ments.” Quite true : that is to say, there
are gods who are not immediately or
certainly resolvable into deified ancestors
—gods whose power and might were at last
widely extended, and who became trans
figured by degrees beyond all recognition in
the latest ages. But it is by no means
certain, even so, that we cannot trace these
greater gods themselves back in the last
resort to deified ancestors of various ruling
families or dominant cities ; and in one or
two of the most important cases the sugges
tions of such an origin are far from scanty.
�THE GODS OE EGYPT
I will take, to begin with, one typical
example. There is no single god in the
Egyptian pantheon more important or more
universally diffused than Osiris. In later
forms of the national religion he is elevated
into the judge of the departed and king of
the nether world: to be “justified by
Osiris,” or, as later interpreters say, “ a
justified Osiris,” is the prayer of every
corpse as set forth in his funeral inscrip
tion ; and identification with Osiris is
looked upon as the reward of all the happy
and faithful dead. Now Osiris, in every
one of his representations and modes, is
simply—a Mummy. His myth, to be sure,
assumed at last immense proportions ; and
his relations with Isis and Horus form the
centre of an endless series of irreconcilable
tales, repeated over and over again in art
and literature. If we took mythology as
our guide, instead of the monuments, we
should be tempted to give him far other
origins. He is identified often with other
gods, especially with Amen ; and the disen
tanglement of his personality in the monu
ments of the newer empire, when Ra, the
sun-god, got mixed up inextricably with so
many other deities, is particularly difficult.
But if we neglect these later complications
of a very ancient cult, and go back to the
simplest origin of Egyptian history and
religion, we shall, I think, see that this
mystic god, so often explained away by
elemental symbolism into the sun or the
home of the dead, was in his first begin
nings nothing more or less than what all
his pictures and statues show him to be—a
revered and worshipped Mummy, a very
ancient chief or king of the town or little
district of This by Abydos.
I do not deny that in later ages Osiris
became much more than this. Nor do I
deny that his name was accepted as a
symbol for all the happy and pious dead.
Furthermore, we shall find at a later stage
that he was identified in the end with an
annual slain Corn-God. I will even allow
that there may have been more than one
original Osiris—that the word may even at
first have been generic, not specific. But I
still maintain that the evidence shows us
the great and principal Osiris of all as a
Dead Chief of Abydos.
We must remember that in Egypt
alone history goes back to an immense
antiquity, and yet shows us already at its
very beginning an advanced civilisation
and a developed picture-writing. There
fore the very oldest known state of
Egypt necessarily presupposes a vast
anterior era of slow growth in concentration
and culture. Before ever Upper or Lower
Egypt became united under a single crown,
there must have been endless mud-built
villages and petty palm-shadowed princi
palities along the bank of the Nile, each
possessing its own local chief or king, and
each worshipping its own local deceased
potentates. The sheikh of the village, as
we should call him nowadays, was then
their nameless Pharaoh, and the mummies
of his ancestors were their gods and god
desses. Each tribe had also its special
totem, about which I shall have a little
more to say hereafter; and these totems
were locally worshipped almost as gods,
and gave rise in all probability to the later
Egyptian Zoolatry and the animal-headed
deities. To the very last, Egyptian religion
bore marked traces of this original tribal
form ; the great multiplicity of Egyptian
gods seems to be due to the adoption of so
many of them, after the unification of the
country, into the national pantheon. The
local gods and local totems, however, con
tinued to be specially worshipped in their
original sites. Thus the ithyphallic AmenKhem was specially worshipped at Thebes,
where his figure occurs with unpleasant
frequency upon every temple ; Apis was
peculiarly sacred at Memphis; Pasht at
Bubastis ; Anubis at Sekhem ; Neith at
Sais ; Ra at Heliopolis ; and Osiris himself
at Abydos, his ancient dwelling-place.
Even Egyptian tradition seems to pre
serve some dim memory of such a state of
things, for it asserts that before the time of
Menes, the first king of the First Dynasty,
reputed the earliest monarch of a united
Egypt, dynasties of the gods ruled in the
country. In other words, it was recognised
that the gods were originally kings of local
lines which reigned in the various provinces
of the Nile valley before the unification.
In the case of Osiris, the indications
which lead us in this direction are almost
irresistible. It is all but certain that Osiris
was originally a local god of This or Thinis,
a village near Abydos, where a huge mound
of rubbish still marks the site of the great
deity’s resting-place. The latter town is
described in the Harris papyrus as Abud,
the hand of Osiris ; and in the monuments
which still remain at that site, Osiris is
everywhere the chief deity represented, to
whom kings and priests present appropriate
offerings. But it is a significant fact that
Menes, the founder of the united monarchy,
was born at the same place; and this
suggests the probability that Osiris may
�64
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
have been the most sacred and most vene
rated of Menes’s ancestors. The suggestion
derives further weight from the fact that
Osiris is invariably represented as a mummy,
and that he wears a peculiar head-dress or
cap of office, the same as that which was
used in historical times as the crown of
Upper Egypt. He also holds in his hands
the crook and scourge which are the marks
of kingly office—the crook to lead his own
people like a shepherd, the scourge to
punish evil-doers and to ward off enemies.
His image is therefore nothing more nor
less than the image of a Mummied King.
Sometimes, too, he wears in addition the
regal ostrich plumes. Surely, naught save
the blind infatuation of mythologists could
make them overlook the plain inference
that Osiris was a mummified chief of
Abydos in the days before the unification
of Egypt under a single rule, and that he
was worshipped by his successors in the
petty principality exactly as we know other
kingly mummies were worshipped by their
family elsewhere.
Not only, however, is Osiris represented
as a king and a mummy, but we are
expressly told by Plutarch (or at least by
the author of the tract De Osiride which
bears his name) that the tomb of Osiris
existed at Abydos, and that the richest
and most powerful of the Egyptians were
desirous of being buried in the adjacent
cemetery in order that they might lie, as it
were, in the same grave with the great god
of their country. All this is perfectly
comprehensible and natural if we suppose
that a Thinite dynasty first conquered the
whole of Egypt; that it extended the
worship of its own local ancestor-god over
the entire country ; and that in time, when
this worship had assumed national im
portance, the local god became the chief
figure in the common pantheon.
I had arrived at this opinion indepen
dently before I was aware that Mr. Loftie
had anticipated me in it. But in his rare
and interesting Essay on Scarabs I find he
has reached the same conclusions.
“ I have myself no doubt whatever that
the names of Osiris and of Horus are
those of ancient rulers. I think that, long
before authentic history begins, Asar and
Aset his wife reigned in Egypt, probably
in that wide valley of the Upper Nile
which is now the site of Girgeh and
Berbe ” (exactly where I place the princi
pality of Osiris). “ Their son was Hor, or
Horus, the first king of Upper and Lower
Egypt; and the ‘ Hor seshoo,’ the suc
cessors of Horus, are not obscurely
mentioned by later chroniclers. I know
that this view is not shared by all students
of the subject, and much learning and
ingenuity have been spent to prove that
Asar, and Aset, and Hor, and Ptah, and
Anep are representations of the powers of
nature ; that they do not point to ancient
princes, but to ancient principles; and that
Horus and his successors are gods and
were never men. But in the oldest in
scriptions we find none of that mysticism
which is shown in the sculptures from the
time of the eighteenth dynasty down to
the Ptolemies and the Roman Emperors.”
In short, Mr. Loftie goes on to set forth a
theory of the origin of the great gods
essentially similar to the one I am here
defending.
It is quite easy to see how Osiris would
almost inevitably grow with time to be the
King of the Dead and supreme judge of
the nether regions. For, as the most
sacred of the ancestors of the regal line,
he would naturally be the one whom the
kings, in their turn, would most seek to
propitiate, and whom they would look
forward to joining in their eternal home.
As the myth extended, and as mystical
interpretations began to creep in, identifi
cations being made of the gods with the
sun or other natural energies, the original
meaning of Osiris-worship would grow
gradually obscured. But to the last, Osiris
himself, in spite of all corruptions, is repre
sented as a mummy : and even when
identified with Amen, the later intrusive
god, he still wears his mummy-bandages,
and still bears the crook and scourge and
sceptre of his primitive kingship.
It may be objected, however, that there
were many forms of Osiris, and many local
gods who bore the same name. He was
buried at Abydos, but was also equally
buried at Memphis, and at Philae as well.
Well, that fact runs exactly parallel with
the local Madonnas and the local Apollos
of other religions : and nobody has sug
gested doubts as to the human reality of
the Blessed Virgin Mary because so many
different Maries exist in different sacred
sites or in different cathedrals. Our Lady
of Loretto is the same as Our Lady of
Lourdes. Jesus of Nazareth was neverthe
less born at Bethlehem : he was the son
of Joseph, but he was also the son of
David, and the son of God. Perhaps
Osiris was a common noun : perhaps a
slightly different Osiris was worshipped
in various towns of later Egypt; perhaps
�THE GODS OF EGYPT
a local mummy-god, the ancestor of some
extinct native line, often wrongly usurped
the name and prerogatives of the great
mummy-god of Abydos, especially under
the influence of late priestly mysticism.
Moreover, when we come to consider the
subject of the manufacture of gods, we
shall see that the body of an annual in
carnation of Osiris may have been divided
and distributed among all the nomes of
Egypt. It is enough for my present pur
pose if I point out in brief that ancestor
worship amply explains the rise and pre
valence of the cult of Osiris, the kingly
mummy, with the associated cults of
Horus, Isis, Thoth, and the other deities
of the Osirian cycle.
I may add that a gradual growth of
Osiris-worship is clearly marked on the
monuments themselves. The simpler
stelle and memorials of the earliest age
seldom contain the names of any god, but
display votaries making offerings at the
shrine of ancestors. Similarly, the scenes
represented on thè walls of tombs of early
date bear no reference to the great gods of
later ages, but are merely domestic and
agricultural in character, as may be
observed at Sakkarah and even to some
extent also at Beni-Hassan. Under the
Sixth Dynasty, the monuments begin to
make more and more frequent mention of
Osiris, who now comes to be regarded as
Judge of the Dead and Lord of the Lower
World ; and on a tablet of this age in the
Boulak Museum occurs for the first time
the expression afterwards so common,
“justified by Osiris.” Under the Twelfth
Dynasty, legend becomes more prominent ;
a solar and lunar character seems to be
given by reflex to Osiris and Isis : and the
name of Ra, the sun, is added to that of
many previously distinct and independent
deities. Khem, the ithyphallic god of the
Thebaid, now also assumes greater im
portance, as is quite natural under a line
of Theban princes ; and Chem, a local
mummy-god, is always represented in his
swathing-clothes, and afterwards con
founded, certainly with Amen, and prob
ably also with the mummy-god of Abydos.
But Osiris from this time forward rises
distinctly into the front rank as a deity.
“ To him, rather than to the dead, the
friends and family offer their sacrifices. A
court is formed for him. Thoth, the re
corder [totem-god of Abydos], Anubis the
watcher, Ra the impersonation of truth,
and others, assist in judgment on the soul.”
The name of the deceased is henceforth
65
constantly accompanied by the -formula
“justified by Osiris.” About the same
time the Book of the Dead in its full form
came into existence, with its developed
conception of the lower world, and its com
plicated arrangement of planes of purga
torial progress.
Under the Eighteenth Dynasty, the
legend thickens ; the identifications of the
gods become more and more intricate ;
Amen and Ra are sought and found under
innumerable forms of other deities ; and a
foundation is laid for the esoteric Mono
theism or pantheistic nature-worship of the
later philosophising priesthood. It was
under the Nineteenth Dynasty that the
cult of local Triads or Trinities took fullest
shape, and that the mystical interpretation
of the religion of Egypt came well into the
foreground. The great Osirian myth was
then more and more minutely and mysti
cally elaborated ; and even the bull Apis,
the totem-god of Memphis, was recognised
as a special incarnation of Osiris, who thus
becomes, with Amen, the mysterious sum
ming-up of almost all the national pantheon.
At last we find the myth going off into pure
mysticism, Osiris being at once the father,
brother, husband, and son of Isis, and also
the son of his own child Horus. Sentences
with an almost Athanasian mixture of vague
ness and definiteness inform us how “ the
son proceeds from the father, and the father
proceeds from his son”; how “Ra is the
soul of Osiris, and Osiris the soul of Ra ”;
and how Horus his child, awakened by
magical rites from his dead body, is vic
torious over Set, the prince of darkness,
and sits as Osiris upon the throne of the
father whom he has revived and avenged.
Here as elsewhere the myth, instead of being
the explanation of the god, does nothing
more than darken counsel.
This gradual growth of a dead and
mummified village chief, however, into a
pantheistic god, strange as it may seem, is
not in any way more remarkable than the
gradual growth of a Galilean peasant into
the second person of an eternal and omni
potent Godhead. Nor does the myth of
the death and resurrection of Osiris (to be
considered hereafter in a later chapter)
militate against the reality of his human
existence, any more than the history of the
death and resurrection of Jesus Christ mili
tates against the human existence of Jesus
of N azareth.
The difficulty of the evolution, indeed, is
not at all great, if we consider the further
fact that, even after the concept of godship
F
�66
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
had been fully developed, the king still re
mained of like nature with the gods, their
son and descendant, a divine personage
himself, differing from them only in not
having yet received eternal life, the symbol
of which they are often shown in sculpture
as presenting with gracious expressions to
their favoured scion. “The ruling sovereign
of Egypt,” says Mr. Le Page Renouf, “ was
the living image of and vicegerent of the
sun-god. He was invested with the attri
butes of divinity, and that in the earliest
times of which we possess monumental
evidence.” And quite naturally, for in an
tique times gods had ruled in Egypt, whose
successor the king was : and the kings
before Menes were significantly known as
“ the successors of Horus.” As late as the
times of the Ptolemies, we saw, there were
priests of Menes and other Pharaohs of the
most ancient dynasties. The pyramid kings
took the title of the Golden Horus, after
wards copied by their descendants; and
from Chafra onward the reigning monarch
was known as the Son of Ra and the Great
God. Amenophis II., during his own life
time, is “ a god good like Ra, the sacred
seed of Amen, the son whom he begot.”
And on all the monuments the king is
represented of the same superhuman stature
as the gods themselves: he converses with
them on equal terms ; they lead him by the
hand into their inmost sanctuaries, or pre
sent him with the symbols of royal rule and
of eternal life, like friends of the family.
The former guerdon bestows upon him the
same rank they themselves had held on
earth ; the latter advances him to share
with them the glories of the other existence.
I conclude, therefore, that a large part of
the greater Egyptian gods—the national or
local gods, as opposed to those worshipped
by each family in its own necropolis—were
early kings, whose myths were later
expanded into legends, rationalised into
nature-worship, and adorned by priestly
care with endless symbolical or esoteric
fancies. But down to the very latest age
of independence, inscriptions of the god
Euergetes, and the goddess Berenice, or
representations like that at Philae, of the
god Philadelphus suckled by Isis, show
that to the Egyptian mind the gulf between
humanity and divinity was very narrow,
and that the original manhood of all the
deities was an idea quite familiar to priests
and people.
There was, however, another class of
gods about which we can be somewhat less
certain; these are the animal-gods and
animal-headed gods which developed out
of the totems of the various villages. Such
bestial types, Professor Sayce remarks,
“ take us back to a remote pre-historic age,
when the religious creed of Egypt,” say,
rather, the custom of Egypt, “ was still
totemism.” But in what precise relation
totemism stood to the main line of the
evolution of gods I do not feel quite so
sure in my own mind as does Mr. Herbert
Spencer. It seems to me possible that the
totem may in its origin have been merely
the lucky-beast or badge of a particular
tribe (like the regimental goat or deer);
and that from being at first petted, domes
ticated, and to some extent respected on
this account, it may have grown at last,
through a confusion of ideas, to share the
same sort of divine honours which were
paid to the ghosts of ancestors and the
gods evolved from them. But Mr. Frazer
has suggested a better origin of totemism
from the doctrine of the Separable Soul,
which is, up to date, the best explanation
yet offered of this obscure subject. Be
that as it may, if the totems were only
gradually elevated into divinities, we can
easily understand Mr. Renoufs remark
that the long series of tombs of the Apis
bulls at Sakkarah shows “ how immeasur
ably greater the devotion to the sacred
animals was in the later times than in the
former.”
May I add that the worship of totems,
as distinct from the mere care implied by
Mr. Frazer’s suggestion, very probably
arose from the custom of carving the totem
animal of the deceased on the grave-stake
or grave-board ? This custom is still
universal among the Indian tribes of North
western America.
Nevertheless, whatever be the true origin
of the totem-gods, I do not think totemism
militates in any way against the general
principle of the evolution of the idea of a
god from the ghost, the Dead Man, or the
deified ancestor. For only after the concept
of a god had been formed from ancestor
cult, and only after worship had been
evolved from the customary offerings to the
mummy or spirit at the tomb, could any
other object by any possibility be elevated
to the godhead. Nor, on the other hand,
as I have before remarked, do I feel inclined
wholly to agree with Mr. Spencer that every
•individual god was necessarily once a
particular Dead Man. It seems to me
indubitable that, after the idea of godhead
had become fully fixed in the human mind,
some gods at least began to be recognised
�THE GODS OF EGYPT
who were directly framed either from
to draw in our second chapter, they are
abstract conceptions, from natural objects,
gods to talk about, not gods to adore—
or from pure outbursts of the mythopceic
mythological conceptions rather than
faculty. I do not think, therefore, that the
religious beings. Their names occur much
existence of a class of totem-gods in Egypt
in the sacred texts, but their images are
or elsewhere is necessarily inconsistent in
rare and their temples unknown. The
any way with our main theory of the origin
actual objects of the highest worship are
of godhead.
far other than these abstract elemental con
Be this as it may, it is at any rate clear
ceptions : they are Osiris, Isis, Horus,
that totemism itself was a very ancient
Anubis, Khem, Pasht, and Athor. The
and widespread institution in early Egypt.
quaint or grotesque incised figures of Nut,
Totems are defined by Mr. Frazer as “ a
represented as a female form with arms and
class of material objects which a savage legs extended like a living canopy over the
regards with superstitious respect, believing
earth, as at Denderah, belong, I believe,
that there exists between him and every
almost ifnot qui te exclusively to the Ptolemaic
member of the class an intimate and alto period, when zodiacal and astrological con
gether special relation.” “ Observation of ceptions had been freely borrowed by the
existing totem tribes in Africa, Australia,
Egyptians from Greece and Asia. Nut
and elsewhere,” says Sir Martin Conway,
and Seb, as gods, not myths, are, in short,
“ shows us that one or more representatives
quite recent ideas in Egypt. Even sun
of the totem are often fed or even kept alive
disk Ra, himself, important as he becomes
in captivity by the tribe.” Mr. Frazer tells
in the later developed creed, is hardly so
us that “among the Narrinyeri in South
much in his origin a separate god as an
Australia, men of the snake clan sometimes
adjunct or symbol of divinity united syncatch snakes, pull out their teeth, or sew up
cretically with the various other deities. To
their mouths, and keep them as pets. In
call a king the sun is a common piece of
a pigeon clan of Samoa a pigeon was care courtier flattery. It is as Amen-Ra or as
fully kept and fed. Among the Kalong
Osiris that the sun receives most actual
in java, whose totem is a red dog, each
worship. His name is joined to the names
family as a rule keeps one of these animals,
of gods as to the names of kings.
which they will on no account allow to be
To put it briefly, then, I hold that the
struck or ill-used by any one.” In the same
element of nature-worship is a late gloss or
way, no doubt, certain Egyptian clans kept
superadded factor in the Egyptian religion;
sacred bulls, cats, crocodiles, hawks, jackals,
that it is always rather mythological or
cobras, lizards, ibises, asps, and beetles.
explanatory than religious in the strict
Mummies of most of these sacred animals,
sense; and that it does not in the least
and little images of others, are common in
interfere with our general inference that the
the neighbourhood of certain places where
real Egyptian gods as a whole were either
they were specially worshipped.
ancestral or totemistic in origin.
There is, however, yet a third class of
From the evidence before us, broadly
divine or quasi-divine beings in the newer
considered, we may fairly conclude, then,
Egyptian Pantheon to which Mr. Andrew that the earliest cult of Egypt consisted of
Lang, in his able introduction to the pure ancestor-worship, complicated by a
Euterpe of Herodotus, still allows that
doubtfully religious element of totemism,
great importance may be attached. These
which afterwards by one means or another
are the elemental or seemingly elemental interwove itself closely with the whole
deities, the Nature-Gods who play so large ghostly worship of the country. The later
a part in all rationalistic or mystical mytho gods were probably deified ancestors of the
logies. Such are no doubt Nut and Seb,
early tribal kings, sometimes directly wor
the personal heaven and earth, named as
shipped as mummies, and sometimes per
early as the inscription on the coffin of haps represented by their totem-animals or
Menkaoura of the Fourth Dynasty in the
later still by human figures with animal
British Museum : such perhaps (though far heads. Almost every one of these great
less certainly) are Khons, identified with
gods is localised to a particular place—
the rising sun, and Turn, regarded as the
“ Lord of Abydos,” “ Mistress of Senem,"
impersonation of his nightly setting. But
“ President of Thebes,” “ Dweller at Hernone of the quite obviously elemental gods,
mopolis,” as would naturally be the case if
except Ra, play any large part in the actual
they were locally-deified princes, admitted
and practical worship of the people: to
at last into a national pantheon. In the
adopt the broad distinction I have ventured I earliest period of which any monuments
�68
TUE EVOLUTION OE TUE IDEA OF GOD
remain to us, the ancestor-worship was
purer, simpler, and freer from symbolism
or from the cult of the great gods than at
any later time. With the gradual evolution
of the creed and the pantheon, however,
legends and myths increased, the syncretic
tendency manifested itself everywhere,
identifications multiplied, mysticism grew
rife, and an esoteric faith, with leanings
towards a vague pantheistic monotheism,
endeavoured to rationalise and to explain
away the more gross and foolish portions
of the original belief. It is the refinements
and glosses of this final philosophical stage
that pass current for the most part in syste
matic works as the true doctrines of Egyptian
religion, and that so many modern inquirers
have erroneously treated as equivalent to
the earliest product of native thought. The
ideas as to the unity of God, and the sun
myths of Horus, Isis, and Osiris, are clearly
late developments or excrescences on the
original creed, and betray throughout the
esoteric spirit of priestly interpretation.
But to the very last, the Worship of the
Dead, and the crude polytheism based upon
it, were the true religion of the ancient
Egyptians, as we see it expressed in all the
monuments.
Such was the religious world into which,
if we may believe the oldest Semitic tradi
tions, the Sons of Israel brought their God
Jahweh and their other deities from beyond
the Euphrates at a very remote period of
their national history. And such, in its
fuller and more mystical form, was the reli
gion practised and taught in Ptolemaic and
Roman Egypt, at the moment when the
Christian faith was just beginning to evolve
itself round the historical nucleus of the
man Christ Jesus, and him crucified.
CHAPTER IX.
THE GODS OF ISRAEL
The only people who ever invented or
evolved a pure monotheism at first hand
were the Jews. Individual thinkers else
where approached or aimed at that ideal
goal, like the Egyptian priests and the
Greek philosophers : entire races elsewhere
borrowed monotheism from the Hebrews,
like the Arabs under Mohammed, or, to a
less extent, the Romans and the modern
European nations, when they adopted
Christianity in its trinitarian form : but no
other race ever succeeded as a whole in
attaining by their own exertions the pure
monotheistic platform, however near certain
persons among them might have arrived to
such attainment in esoteric or mystical
philosophising. It is the peculiar glory of
Israel to have evolved God. And the evo
lution of God from the diffuse gods of the
earlier Semitic religion is Israel’s great con
tribution to the world’s thought.
The sacred books of the Jews, as we
possess them in garbled forms to-day,
assign this peculiar belief to the very ear
liest ages of their race : they assume that
Abraham, the mythical common father of
all the Semitic tribes, was already a mono
theist ; and they even treat monotheism as
at a still remoter date the universal religion
of the entire world from which all poly
theistic cults were but a corruption and a
falling away. Such a belief is nowadays,
of course, wholly untenable. So also is the
crude notion that monotheism was smitten
out at a single blow by the genius of one
individual man, Moses, at the moment of
the Hebrew exodus from Egypt. The bare
idea that one particular thinker, just
escaped from the midst of ardent poly
theists, whose religion embraced an endless
pantheon and a low form of animal
worship, could possibly have invented a
pure monotheistic cult, is totally opposed
to every known psychological law of human
nature. The real stages by which mono
theism was evolved out of a preceding
polytheism in a single small group of
Semitic tribes have already been well
investigated by Dutch and German
scholars : all that I propose to do in the
present volume is to reconsider the subject
from our broader anthropological stand
point, and show how in the great Jewish
god himself we may still discern, as in a
glass, darkly, the vague but constant
lineaments of an ancestral ghost-deity.
Down to a comparatively late period of
Jewish history, as we now know, Jahweh
was but one and the highest among a
considerable group of Israelitish divinities ;
the first among his peers, like Zeus among
the gods of Hellas, Osiris or Amen among
the gods of Egypt, and Woden or Thunor
among the gods of the old Teutonic
pantheon. As late as the century of
Hezekiah, the religion of the great mass of
the Israelites and Jews was still a broad
though vague polytheism. The gods seem
to have been as numerous and as localised
as in Egypt: “ According to the number of
�THE GODS OF ISRAEL
thy cities are thy gods, O Judah,” says the
prophet Jeremiah in the sixth century. It
was only by a slow process of syncretism,
by the absorption into Jahweh-worship of
all other conflicting creeds, that Israel at
last attained its full ideal of pure mono
theism. That ideal was never finally
reached by the people at large till the
return from the captivity : it had only even
been aimed at by a few ardent and
exclusive Jahweh-worshippers in the last
dangerous and doubtful years of national
independence which immediately preceded
the Babylonish exile.
In order to understand the inner nature
of this curious gradual revolution we must
look briefly, first, at the general character
of the old Hebrew polytheism ; and
secondly, at the original cult of the great
ethnical god Jahweh himself.
In spite of their long sojourn in Egypt,
the national religion of the Hebrews, when
we first begin dimly to descry its features
through the veil of later glosses, is regarded
by almost all modern investigators as truly
Semitic and local in origin. It is usually
described as embracing three principal
forms of cult: the worship of the teraphim
or family gods; the worship of sacred
stones ; and the worship of certain great
gods, partly native, partly perhaps bor
rowed ; some of them adored in the form
of animals, and some apparently elemental
or solar in their acquired attributes.
Although for us these three are one, I
shall examine them here in that wonted
order.
The cult of the teraphim, I think, we
cannot consider, on a broad anthro
pological view, otherwise than as the
equivalent of all the other family cults
known to us ; that is to say, in other words,
as pure unadulterated domestic ancestor
worship. “ By that name,” says Kuenen,
“ were indicated larger or smaller images,
which were worshipped as household gods,
and upon which the happiness of the
family was supposed to depend.” In the
legend of Jacob’s flight from Laban, we
are told how Rachel stole her father’s
teraphim : and when the angry chieftain
overtakes the fugitives, he inquires of
them why they have robbed him of his
domestic gods. Of Micah, we learn that
he made images of his teraphim, and
consecrated one of his own sons to be his
family priest: such a domestic and private
priesthood being exactly what we are
accustomed to find in the worship of
ancestral manes everywhere. Even through
69
the mist of the later Jehovistic recension
we catch, in passing, frequent glimpses of
the early worship of these family gods, one
of which is described as belonging to
Michal, the daughter of Saul and wife of
David ; while Hosea alludes to them as
stocks of wood, and Zechariah as idols
that speak lies to the people.
It is
clear that the teraphim were preserved in
each household with reverential care, that
they were sacrificed to by the family at
stated intervals, and that they were con
sulted on all occasions of doubt or difficulty
by a domestic priest clad in an ephod. I
think, then, if we put these indications side
by side with those of family cults else
where, we may conclude that the Jewish
religion, like all others, was based upon
an ultimate foundation of general ancestor
worship.
It has been denied, indeed, that ancestor
worship pure and simple ever existed among
the Semitic races. A clear contradiction of
this denial is furnished by M. Lenormant,
who comments thus on sepulchral monu
ments from Yemen : “ Here, then, we have
twice repeated a whole series of human
persons, decidedly deceased ancestors or
relations of the authors of the dedications.
Their names are accompanied with the
titles they bore during life. They are in
voked by their descendants in the same
way as the gods. They are incontestably
deified persons, objects of a family worship,
and gods or genii in the belief of the people
of their race.” After this, we need not
doubt that the teraphim were the images of
such family gods or ancestral spirits.
It is not surprising, however, that these
domestic gods play but a small part in the
history of the people as it has come down
to us in the late Jehovistic version of the
Hebrew traditions. Nowhere in literature,
even under the most favourable circum
stances, do we hear much of the manes and
lares, compared with the great gods of
national worship. Nor were such minor
divinities likely to provoke the wrath even
of that “jealous god” who later usurped
all the adoration of Israel : so that denun
ciations of their votaries are comparatively
rare in the rhapsodies of the prophets.
“ Their use,” says Kuenen, speaking of the
teraphim, “ was very general, and was by
no means considered incompatible with the
worship of Jahweh.” They were regarded
merely as family affairs, poor foemen for
the great and awsome tribal god who bore
no rival near his throne, and would not
suffer the pretensions of Molech or of the
�7o
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
Baalim. To use a modem analogy, their
cult was as little inconsistent with Jahwehworship as a belief in fairies, banshees, or
family ghosts was formerly inconsistent
with a belief in Christianity.
This conclusion will doubtless strike the
reader at once as directly opposed to the
oft-repeated assertion thatthe early Hebrews
had little or no conception of the life
beyond the grave and of the doctrine of
future rewards and punishments. I am
afraid it cannot be denied that such is the
case. Hard as it is to run counter to so
much specialist opinion, I can scarcely see
how any broad anthropological inquirer
may deny to the Semites of the tenth and
twelfth centuries before Christ participation
in an almost (or quite) universal human
belief, common to the lowest savages and
the highest civilisations, and particularly
well developed in that Egyptian society
with which the ancestors of the Hebrews
had so long rubbed shoulders. The subject,
however, is far too large a one for full
debate here. I must content myself with
pointing out that, apart from the a priori
improbability of such a conclusion, the
Hebrew documents themselves contain
numerous allusions, even in their earliest
traditional fragments, to the belief in ghosts
and in the world of shades, as well as to
the probability of future resurrection. The
habit of cave-burial and of excavated grotto
burial ; the importance attached to the
story of the purchase of Machpelah ; the
common phrase that such-and-such a
patriarch “ was gathered to his people,” or
“ slept with his fathers ” ; the embalming of
Joseph, and the carrying up of his bones
from Egypt to Palestine; the episode of
Saul and the ghost of Samuel; and indeed
the entire conception of Sheol, the place
of the departed—all alike show that the
Hebrew belief in this respect did not largely
differ in essentials from the general belief
of surrounding peoples.
Closely connected with the teraphim is
the specific worship at tombs or graves.
“ The whole north Semitic area,” says
Professor Robertson Smith, “ was dotted
over with sacred tombs, Memnonia, Semi
rami s mounds, and the like ; and at every
such spot a god or demigod had his sub
terranean abode.” This, of course, is pure
ancestor-worship.
Second in the list of worshipful objects
in early Israel come -the sacred stones,
about which I have already said a good
deal in the chapter devoted to that interest
ing subject, but concerning whose special
nature in the Semitic field a few more words
may here be fitly added.
It is now very generally admitted that
stone-worship played an exceedingly large
and important part in the primitive Semitic
religion. How important a part we may
readily gather from many evidences, but
from none more than from the fact that
even Mohammed himself was unable to
exclude from Islam, the most monotheistic
of all known religious systems, the holy
black stone of the Kaaba at Mecca. In
Arabia, says Professor Robertson Smith,
the altar or hewn stone is unknown, and in
its place we find the rude pillar or the cairn,
beside which the sacrificial victim is slain,
the blood being poured out over the stone
or at its base. But in Israel the shaped
stone seems the more usual mark of the
ghost or god. Such a sacred stone, we
have already seen, was known to the early
Hebrews as a Beth-el, that is to say an
“ abode of deity,” from the common belief
that it was inhabited by a god, ghost, or
spirit. The great prevalence of the cult of
stones among the Semites, however, is
further indicated by the curious circum
stance that this word was borrowed by the
Greeks and Romans (in a slightly altered
form) to denote the stones so supposed to
be inhabited by deities. References to
such gods abound throughout the Hebrew
books, though they are sometimes de
nounced as idolatrous images, and some
times covered with a thin veneer of Jehovism by being connected with the national
heroes and with the later Jahweh-worship.
In the legend of Jacob’s dream we get a
case where the sacred stone is anointed
and a promise is made to it of a tenth of the
speaker’s substance as an offering. And
again, on a later occasion, we learn that
Jacob “set up a pillar of stone, and he
poured a drink-offering thereon, and he
poured oil thereon ” ; just as, in the great
phallic worship of the linga in India (com
monly called the linga puja\ a cylindrical
pillar, rounded at the top, and universally
considered as a phallus in its nature, is
worshipped by pouring upon it one of five
sacred anointing liquids, water, milk, ghee,
oil, and wine. Similar rites are offered in
many other places to other sacred stones;
and in many cases the phallic value assigned
to them is clearly shown by the fact that it
is usual for sterile women to pray to them
for the blessing of children, as Hindu wives
pray to Mahadeo, and as so many Hebrew
women (to be noted hereafter) are men
tioned in our texts as praying to Jahweh.
�THE GODS OH ISRAEL
A brief catalogue of the chief stone
deities alluded to in Hebrew literature may
help to enforce the importance of the
subject: and it may be noted in passing
that the stones are often mentioned in con
nection with sacred trees—an association
with which we are already familiar. In the
neighbourhood of Sichem was an oak—the
“ oak of the prophets ” or “ oak of the
soothsayers ”—by which lay a stone, whose
holiness is variously accounted for by
describing it as, in one place, an altar of
Abraham, in another an altar of J acob, and
in a third a memorial of Joshua. But the
fact shows that it was resorted to for sacri
fice, and that oracles or responses were
sought from it by its votaries. That is to
say, it was a sepulchral monument. Near
Hebron stood “ the oak of Mamre,” and
under it a sacred stone, accounted for as
an altar of Abraham, to which in David’s
time sacrifices were offered. Near Beer
sheba we find yet a third tree, the tamarisk,
said to have been plan ted by Abraham, and an
altar or stone pillar ascribed to Isaac. In
the camp at Gilgal were “the twelve stones,”
sometimes, apparently, spoken of as “ the
graven images,” but sometimes explained
away as memorials of Jahweh’s help at the
passing of the Jordan. Other examples
are Ebenezer, “ the helpful stone,” and
Tobeleth, the “serpent-stone,” as well as
the “ great stone ” to which sacrifices were
offered at Bethshemesh, and the other
great stone at Gibeon, which was also, no
doubt, an early Hebrew deity.
And now we come to the third and most
difficult division of early Hebrew religion,
the cult of the great gods whom the jealous
Jahweh himself finally superseded. The
personality of these gods is very obscure,
partly because of the nature of our materials,
which, being derived entirely from Jehovistic sources, have done their best to over
shadow the “false gods”; but partly also, I
believe, because, in the process of evolving
monotheism, a syncretic movement merged
almost all their united attributes into
Jahweh himself, who thus becomes at last
the all-absorbing synthesis of an entire
pantheon. Nevertheless, we can point out
one or two shadowy references to such
greater gods, either by name alone, or by
the form under which they were usually
worshipped.
The scholarship of the elder generation
would no doubt have enumerated first
among these gods the familiar names of
Baal and Molech. At present, such an
^numeration is scarcely possible. We can
71
no longer see in the Baal of the existing
Hebrew scriptures a single great god. We
must regard the word rather as a common
substantive—“ the lord ” or “ the master ”
—descriptive of the relation of each dis
tinct god to the place he inhabited. The
Baalim, in other words, seem to have been
the local deities or deified chiefs of the
Semitic region ; doubtless the dead kings
or founders of families, as opposed to the
lesser gods of each particular household.
It is not improbable, therefore, that they
were really identified with the sacred stones
we have just been considering, and with
the wooden ashera. The Baal is usually
spoken of indefinitely, without a proper
name, much as at Delos men spoke of “the
God,” at Athens of “the Goddess,” and
now at Padua of “ il Santo’’—meaning
respectively Apollo, Athene, St. Antony.
Melcarth is thus the Baal of Tyre, Astarte
the Baalath of Byblos; there was a Baal of
Lebanon, of Mount Hermon, of Mount
Peor, and so forth. A few specific Baalim
have their names preserved for us in the
nomenclature of towns ; such are Baaltamar, the lord of the palm-tree; with
Baal-gad, Baal-Berith, Baal-meon, and
Baal-zephon. But in the Hebrew scrip
tures, as a rule, every effort has been made
to blot out the very memory of these “ false
gods,” and to represent Jahweh alone as
from the earliest period the one true prince
and ruler in Israel.
As for Molech, that title merely means
“ the king ” ; and it may have been applied
to more than one distinct deity. Dr.
Robertson Smith does not hesitate to hold
that.the particular Molech to whom human
sacrifices of children were offered by the
Jews before the captivity was Jahweh him
self ; it was to the national god, he believes,
that these fiery rites were performed at the
Tophet or pyre in the ravine just below the
temple.
We are thus reduced to the most nebu
lous details about these great gods of the
Hebrews, other than Jahweh, in the period
preceding the Babylonian captivity. All
that is certain appears to be that a con
siderable number of local gods were wor
shipped here and there at special sanctua
ries, each of which seems to have consisted
of an altar or stone image, standing under
a sacred tree or sacred grove, and com
bined with an ashera. While the names of
Chemosh, the god of Moab, and of Dagon,
the god of the Philistines, have come down
to us with perfect frankness and clearness,
no local Hebrew god save Jahweh has left
�72
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
a name that can now be discerned with
approach to certainty.
I must likewise premise that the worship
of the Baalim, within and without Israel,
was specially directed to upright conical
stones, the most sacred objects at all the
sanctuaries : and that these stones are
generally admitted to have possessed for
their worshippers a phallic significance.
Certain writers have further endeavoured
to show that a few animal-gods entered into
the early worship of the Hebrews. I do
not feel sure that their arguments are con
vincing ; but for the sake of completeness
I include the two most probable cases in
this brief review of the vague and elusive
deities of early Israel.
One of these is the god in the form of a
young bull, specially worshipped at Dan
and Bethel, as the bull Apis was worshipped
at Memphis, and the bull Mnevis at On or
Heliopolis. This cult of the bull is pushed
back in the later traditions to the period of
the Exodus, when the Israelites made
themselves a “ golden calf” in the wilder
ness.
Was this bull-shaped deity Jahweh him
self, or one of the polymorphic forms of
Jahweh? Such is the opinion of Kuenen,
who says explicitly, “Jahweh was wor
shipped in the shape of a young bull. It
cannot be doubted that the cult of the
bull-calf was really the cult of Jahweh in
person.” And certainly in the prophetic
writings of the eighth century we can
clearly descry that the worshippers of the
bull regarded themselves as worshipping
the god Jahweh, who brought up his people
from the land of Egypt. Nevertheless,
dangerous as it may seem for an outsider
to differ on such a subject from great
Semitic scholars, I venture to think we
may see reason hereafter to conclude that
this was not originally the case : that the
god worshipped under the form of the
bull-calf was some other deity, like the
Molech whom we know to have been re
presented with a bull’s head; and that
only by the later syncretic process did this
bull-god come to be identified in the end
with Jahweh, a deity (as seems likely) of
quite different origin, much as Mnevis
came to be regarded at Heliopolis as an
incarnation of Ra, and as Apis came to be
regarded at Mempis as an avatar of Ptah
and still later of Osiris. On the other hand,
we must remember that, as Mr. Frazer has
shown, a sacred animal is often held to be
the representative and embodiment of the
very god to whom it is habitually sacrificed.
Here again we trench on ground which
can only satisfactorily be occupied at a
later stage of our polymorphic argument.
A second animal-god, apparently, also
adored in the form of a metal image, was
the asp or snake, known in our version as
“the brazen serpent,” and connected by
the Jehovistic editors of the earlier tradi
tions with Moses in the wilderness. The
worship of the serpent is said to have gone
on uninterruptedly till the days of Hezekiah,
when, under the influence of the exclusive
devotion to Jahweh which was then be
coming popular, the image was broken in
pieces as an idolatrous object.
It is
scarcely necessary to point out in passing
that the asp was one of the most sacred
animals in Egypt.
Such, then, seen through the dim veil of
Jehovism, are the misty features of that
uncertain pantheon in which, about the
eighth century at least, Jahweh found
himself the most important deity. The
most important, I say, because it is clear
from our records that for many ages the
worship of Jahweh and the worship of
the Baalim went on side by side without
conscious rivalry.
And what sort of god was this holy
Jahweh himself, whom the Hebrews recog
nised from a very early time as emphatically
and above all others “the God of Israel”?
If ever he was envisaged as a golden
bull, if ever he was regarded as the god of
light, fire, or the sun, those concepts, I
believe, must have been the result of a late
transference of attributes and confusion of
persons, such as we may see so rife in the
more recent mystical religion of Egypt.
What in his own nature Jahweh must have
been in the earliest days of his nascent
godhead I believe we can best judge by
putting together some of the passages in
old traditionary legend which bear most
plainly upon his character and functions.
In the legendary account of the earliest
dealings of Jahweh with the Hebrew race,
we are told that the ethnical god appeared
to Abraham in Haran, and promised to
make of him “ a great nation.” Later on,
Abraham complains of the want of an heir,
saying to Jahweh, “Thou hast given me
no seed.” Then Jahweh “brought him
forth abroad, and said, Look now toward
heaven and tell the stars : so shall thy seed
be.” Over and over again we get similar
promises of fruitfulness made to Abraham :
“I will multiply thee exceedingly”; “thou
shalt be a father of many nations”; “I will
make thee exceeding fruitful ” ; “ kings
�THE GODS OE ISRAEL
shall come out of thee”; “for a father of
many nations have I made thee.” So, too,
of Sarah : “ she shall be a mother of
nations ; kings of people shall be of her.”
And of Ishmael : “ I have blessed him and
will make him fruitful, and will multiply
him exceedingly: twelve princes shall
he beget, and I will make him a great
nation.” Time after time these blessings
recur for Abraham, Isaac, and all his
family : “ I will multiply thy seed as the
stars of the heaven, and as the sand which
is upon the seashore, and thy seed shall
possess the gate of his enemies.”
In every one of these passages, and in
many more which need not be quoted, but
which will readily occur to every reader,
Jahweh is represented especially as a god
of increase, of generation, of populousness,
of fertility.
As such, too, we find him frequently and
markedly worshipped on special occasions.
He was the god to whom sterile women
prayed, and from whom they expected the
special blessing of a son, to keep up the
cult of the family ancestors. This trait sur
vived even into the poetry of the latest
period. “He maketh the barren woman to
keep house,” says a psalmist about Jahweh,
“ and to be a joyful mother of children.”
And from the beginning to the end of
Hebrew legend we find a similar character
istic of the ethnical god amply vindicated.
When Sarah is old and well stricken in years,
Jahweh visits her and she conceives Isaac.
Then Isaac in turn “intreated Jahweh for
his wife, because she was barren ; and
Jahweh was intreated of him, and Rebekah
his wife conceived.” Again, “when Jah weh
saw that Leah was hated, he opened her
womb; but Rachel was barren.” Once
more, of the birth of Samson we are told
that Manoah’s wife “ was barren and bare
not” : but “ the angel of Jahweh appeared
unto the woman and said unto her, Behold,
now thou art barren and bearest not; but
thou shalt conceive and bear a son.” And
of Hannah we are told, even more signifi
cantly, that Jahweh had “shut up her
womb.” At the shrine of J ah weh at Shiloh,
therefore, she prayed to Jahweh that this
disgrace might be removed from her and
that a child might be born to her. “ Jahweh
remembered her,” and she bore Samuel.
And after that again, “Jahweh visited
Hannah, so that she conceived and bare
three sons and two daughters.” In many
other passages we get the self-same trait :
Jahweh is regarded above everything as a
god of increase and a giver of offspring.
73
“ Children are a heritage from Jahweh,”
says the much later author of a familiar
ode : “ the fruit of the womb are a reward
from him.” “ Thy wife shall be as a fruit
ful vine,” says Jahweh to his votary by the
mouth of the poet; “ thy children like olive
plants round about thy table.” “ Happy is
the man that hath his quiver full of them,”
says another psalmist; “ they shall speak
with the enemies in the gate.” Again and
again the promise is repeated that the seed
of Abraham or of Joseph or of Ishmael
shall be numerous as the stars of heaven
or the sands of the sea; Jahweh’s chief
prerogative is evidently the gift of increase,
extended often to cattle and asses, but
always including at least sons and daughters.
If Israel obeys Jahweh, says the Deuteronomist, “Jahweh will make thee plenteous for
good in the fruit of thy belly, and in the
fruit of thy cattle, and in the fruit of thy
ground”: but if otherwise, then “cursed
shall be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit
of thy land, the increase of thy kine, and
the flocks of thy sheep.”
Now, elsewhere throughout the world we
find in like manner a certain class of phallic
gods who are specially conceived as givers
of fertility, and to whom prayers and offer
ings are made by barren women who desire
children. And the point to observe is that
these gods are usually (perhaps one might
even say always) embodied in stone pillars
or upright monoliths. The practical great
god of India—the god whom the people
really worship—is Mahadeo ; and Mahadeo
is, as we know, a cylinder of stone, to whom
the linga puja is performed, and to whom
barren women pray for offspring. There
are sacred stones in Western Europe, now
crowned by a cross, at which barren women
still pray to God and the Madonna, or to
some local saint, for the blessing of chil
dren. It is allowed that while the obelisk
is from one point of view (in later theory)
a ray of the sun, it is from another point of
view (in earlier origin) a “symbol of the
generative power of nature ”—which is only
another way of saying that it is an ancestral
stone of phallic virtue. In short, without
laying too much stress upon the connection,
we may conclude generally that the upright
pillar came early to be regarded, not merely
as a memento of the dead and an abode of
the ghost or indwelling god,but also in some
mysterious and esoteric way as a represen
tative of the male and generative principle.
If we recollect that the stone pillar was
often identified with the ancestor or father,
the reason for this idea will not perhaps be
�THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
quite so hard to understand. “ From these
stones we are all descended,” thinks the
primitive worshipper: “ these are our
fathers ; therefore, they are the givers of
children, the producers and begetters of all
our generations, the principle of fertility,
the proper gods to whom to pray for off
spring.” Add that many of them, being
represented as human, or human in their
upper part at least, grow in time to be ithyphallic, like Priapus, partly by mere gro
tesque barbarism, but partly also as a sign
of the sex of the deceased : and we can see
the naturalness of this easy transition.
From the Hermse of the Greeks to the rude
phallic deities of so many existing savage
races, we get everywhere signs of this con
stant connection between the sacred stone
and the idea of paternity. Where the stone
represents the grave of a woman, the deity
of course is conceived as a goddess, but
with the same implications. Herodotus saw
in Syria stelae engraved with the female
pudenda. The upright stone god is thus
everywhere and always liable to be re
garded as a god of fruitfulness.
But did this idea of the stone pillar
extend to Palestine and to the Semitic
nations ? There is evidence that it did,
besides that of Herodotus. Major Conder,
whose opinion on all questions of pure
archaeology (as opposed to philology)
deserves the highest respect, says of
Canaanitish times: “ The menhir, or conical
stone, was the emblem throughout Syria of
the gods presiding over fertility; and the
cup hollows which have been formed in
menhirs and dolmens are the indications of
libations, often of human blood, once poured
on these stones by early worshippers.” He
connects these monuments with the linga
cult of India, and adds that Dr. Chaplin
has found such a cult still surviving near
the Sea of Galilee. Lucian speaks of the
two great pillars at the temple of Hierapolis
as phalli. Of the Phoenicians Major
Conder writes : “The chief emblem wor
shipped in the temples was a pillar or cone,
derived no doubt from the rude menhirs
which were worshipped by early savage
tribes, such as Dravidians, Arabs, Celts,
and Hottentots.”
That Jahweh himself in his earliest form
was such a stone god, the evidence, I think,
though not perhaps exactly conclusive, is
to say the least extremely suggestive. I
have already called attention to it in a
previous chapter, and need not here reca
pitulate it in full; but a few stray additions
may not be without value. Besides the
general probability, among a race whose
gods were so almost universally repre
sented by sacred stones, that any particular
god, unless the contrary be proved, was so
represented, there is the evidence of all the
later language, and of the poems written
after the actual stone god himself had per
ished, that Jahweh was still popularly
regarded as, at least in a metaphorical
sense, a stone or rock. “He is the rock,”
says the Deuteronomist, in the song put
into the mouth of Moses ; “ I will publish
the name of J ahweh; ascribe greatness unto
our god.” “Jahweh liveth, and blessed
my rock,” says the hymn which a later
writer composes for David in the Second
Book of Samuel : “ exalted be the god of
the rock of my salvation.” And in the
psalms the image recurs again and again :
“Jahweh is my rock and my fortress”;
“ Who is a god save Jahweh, and who is a
rock save our god?”; “He set my feet
upon a rock, and established my goings ” ;
“ Lead me to the rock that is greater than
I”; “Jahweh is my defence, and my god
is the rock of my refuge “O come, let us
sing to Jahweh ; let us make a joyful noise
to the rock of our salvation.”
But to the earlier Israelites their god
Jahweh was simply the object—stone pillar
or otherwise—preserved in the ark or chest
which long rested at Shiloh, and which was
afterwards enshrined “ between the thighs
of the building ” (as a later gloss has it), in
the Temple at Jerusalem. The whole of
the early traditions embedded in the books
of Judges, Samuel, and Kings show us quite
clearly that Jahweh himself was then
regarded as inhabiting the ark, and as
carried about with it from place to place in
all its wanderings. The story of the battle
with the Philistines at Eben-ezer, the fall of
Dagon before the rival god, the fortunes of
the ark after its return to the Israelitish
people, the removal to Jerusalem by David,
the final enthronement by Solomon, all dis
tinctly show that Jahweh in person dwelt
within the ark, between the guardian
cherubim. “ Who is able to stand before
the face of Jahweh, this very sacred god ?”
ask the men of Bethshemesh, when they
ventured to look inside that hallowed abode,
and were smitten down by the “jealous
god ” who loved to live in the darkness of
the inmost sanctuary.1
1 Mr. William Simpson has some excellent
remarks on the analogies of the Egyptian and
Hebrew arks and sanctuaries, in his pamphlet on
The Worship of Death.
�THE GODS OF ISRAEL
It may be well to note in this connection
two significant facts : Just such an ark was
used in Egypt to contain the sacred objects
or images of the gods. And further, at the
period when the sons of Israel were tribu
taries in Egypt, a Theban dynasty ruled the
country, and the worship of the great Theban
phallic deity, Khem, was widely spread
throughout every part of the Egyptian
dominions.
Is there, however, any evidence of a linga
or other stone pillar being ever thus en
shrined and entempled as the great god of
a sanctuary? Clearly, Major Conder has
already supplied some, and more is forth
coming from various other sources. The
cone which represented Aphrodite in
Cyprus was similarly enshrined as the chief
object of a temple, as were the stelae of all
Egyptian mummies. “ The trilithon,” says
Major Conder, “becomes later a shrine, in
which the cone or a statue stands.” The
significance of this correlation will at once
be seen if the reader remembers how, in
the chapter on Sacred Stones, I showed
the origin of the idol from the primitive
menhir or upright pillar. “ The Khonds
and other non-Aryan tribes in India,” says
Conder once more, “ build such temples of
rude stones, daubed with red—a survival
of the old practice of anointing the menhirs
and the sacred cone or pillar with blood of
victims, sometimes apparently human.
Among the Indians the pillar is a lingam,
and such apparently was its meaning
among the Phoenicians.” And in the
Greek cities we know from Pausanias that
an unhewn stone was similarly enshrined
in the most magnificent adytum of the
noblest Hellenic temples. In fact, it was
rather the rule than otherwise that a stone
was the chief object of worship in the
noblest fanes.
One more curious trait must be noted in
the worship of Jahweh. Not only did he
rejoice in human sacrifices, but he also
demanded especially an offering of the
firstborn, and he required a singular and
significant ransom for every man-child
whom he permitted to live among his
peculiar votaries. On the fact of human
sacrifices I need hardly insist : they were
an integral part of all Semitic worship, and
their occurrence in the cult of Jahweh has
been universally allowed by all unprejudiced
scholars. The cases of Agag, whom
Samuel hewed to pieces before the face of
Jahweh, and of Jephthah’s daughter, whom
her father offered up as a thank-offering for
his victory, though not of course strictly
75
historical from a critical point of view, are
quite sufficient evidence to show the
temper and the habit of the Jahwehworshippers who described them. So with
the legend of the offering of Isaac, who is
merely rescued at the last moment in order
that the god of generation may make him
the father of many thousands. Again,
David seeks to pacify the anger of Jahweh
by a sacrifice of seven of the sons of Saul.
And the prophet Micah asks, “ Shall I give
my first-born for my transgression, the
fruit of my body for the sin of my soul ?”
—a passage which undoubtedly implies
that in Micah’s time such a sacrifice of the
eldest child was a common incident of
current Jahweh-worship.
From human sacrifice to circumcision
the transition is less violent than would at
first sight appear. An intermediate type
is found in the dedication of the first-born,
where Jahweh seems to claim for himself,
not as a victim, but as a slave and devotee,
the first fruits of that increase which it is
his peculiar function to ensure. In various
laws Jahweh lays claim to the first-born of
man and beast—sometimes to all, some
times only to the male first-born. The
animals were sacrificed ; the sons, in later
ages at least, were either made over as
Nazarites or redeemed with an offering or
a money-ransom. But we cannot doubt
that in the earliest times the first-born
child was slain before Jahweh. In the
curious legend of Moses and Zipporah we
get a strange folk-tale connecting this
custom indirectly with the practice of
circumcision. Jahweh seeks to kill Moses,
apparently because he has not offered up
his child : but Zipporah his wife takes a
stone knife, circumcises her son, and flings
the bloody offering at Jahweh’s feet, who
thereupon lets her husband go. This,
rather than the later account of its
institution by Abraham, seems the true old
explanatory legend of the origin of circum
cision—a legend analogous to those which
we find in Roman and other early history
as embodying or explaining certain ancient
customs or legal formulae. Circumcision,
in fact, appears to be a bloody sacrifice to
Jahweh, as the god of generation: a
sacrifice essentially of the nature of a
ransom, and therefore comparable to all
those other bodily mutilations whose origin
Mr. Herbert Spencer has so well shown in
the Ceremonial Institutions.
At the same time, the nature of the
offering helps to cast light upon the
character of Jahweh as a god of increase ;
�7b
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
exactly as the “ emerods ” with which the
Philistines were afflicted for the capture of
Jahweh and his ark show the nature of the
vengeance which might naturally be ex
pected from a deity of generation.
Last of all, how is it that later Hebrew
writers believed the object concealed in the
ark to have been, not a phallic stone, but a
copy of the “Ten Words” which Jahweh
was fabled to have delivered to Moses ?
That would be difficult to decide : but here
at least is an aperçu upon the subject which
I throw out for what it may be worth. The
later Hebrews, when their views of Jahweh
had grown expanded and etherealised, were
obviously ashamed of their old stone-worship,
if indeed they were archaeologists enough
after the captivity to know that it had ever
really existed. What more natural, then,
than for them to suppose that the stone
which they heard of as having been enclosed
in the ark was a copy of the “ Ten Words ”
—the covenant of Jahweh? Hence, per
haps, the later substitution of the term,
“ Ark of the Covenant,” for the older and
correcter phrase, “Ark of Jahweh.” One
more suggestion, still more purely hypothe
tical. Cones with pyramidal heads, bearing
inscriptions to the deceased, were used by
the Phoenicians for interments. It is just
possible that the original Jahweh may have
been such an ancient pillar, covered with
writings of some earlier character, which
were interpreted later as the equivalents or
symbols of the “Ten Words.”
Putting all the evidence together, then,
as far as we can now recover it, and inter
preting it on broad anthropological lines
by analogy from elsewhere, I should say
the following propositions seem fairly prob
able :—
The original religion of Israel was a
mixed polytheism, containing many various
types of gods, and based, like all other
religions, upon domestic and tribal ancestor
worship. Some of the gods were of animal
shapes : others were more or less vaguely
anthropomorphic. But the majority were
worshipped under the form of sacred stones,
trees, or wooden cones. The greater part
of these gods were Semitic in type, and
common to the Sons of Israel with their
neighbours and kinsmen. The character
of the Hebrew worship, however, apparently
underwent some slight modification in
Egypt ; or, at any rate, Egyptian influences
led to the preference of certain gods over
others at the period of the Exodus. One
god, in particular, Jahweh by name, seems
to have been almost peculiar to the Sons
of Israel—their ethnical deity, and there
fore in all probability an early tribal ances
tor or the stone representative of such an
ancestor. The legends are probably right
in their implication that this god was already
worshipped (not of course exclusively) by
the Sons of Israel before their stay in
Egypt; they are almost certainly correct in
ascribing the great growth and extension of
his cult to the period of the Exodus. The
Sons of Israel, at least from the date of the
Exodus onward, carried this god or his rude
image with them in an ark or box through
all their wanderings. The object so carried
was probably a conical stone pillar, which
we may conjecture to have been the grave
stone of some deified ancestor : and of this
ancestor “Jahweh” was perhaps either the
proper name or a descriptive epithet. Even
if, as Colenso suggests, the name itself was
Canaanitish, and belonged already to a
local god, its application to the sacred stone
of the ark would be merely another instance
of the common tendency to identify the gods
of one race or country, with those of another.
The stone itself was always enshrouded in
Egyptian mystery, and no private person
was permitted to behold it. Sacrifices, both
human and otherwise, were offered up to it,
as to the other gods, its fellows and after
wards its hated rivals. The stone, like
other sacred stones of pillar shape, was
regarded as emblematic of the generative
power. Circumcision was a mark of devo
tion to Jahweh, at first, no doubt, either
voluntary, or performed by way of a ransom,
but becoming with the growth and exclu
siveness of Jahweh-worship a distinctive
rite of Jahweh’s chosen people.
From this rude ethnical divinity, the
mere sacred pillar of a barbarous tribe,
was gradually developed the Lord God of
later Judaism and of Christianity—a power,
eternal, omniscient, almighty, holy; the
most ethereal, the most sublime, the most
superhuman deity that the brain of man
has ever conceived. By what slow evolu
tionary process of syncretism and elimina
tion, of spiritual mysticism and national
enthusiasm, of ethical effort and imagina
tive impulse, that mighty God was at last
projected out of so unpromising an original
it will be the task of our succeeding chapters
to investigate and to describe.
�THE RISE OF MONOTHEISM
CHAPTER X.
THE RISE OF MONOTHEISM
We have seen that the Hebrews were
originally polytheists, and that their ethni
cal god Jahweh seems to have been wor
shipped by them in early times under the
material form of a cylindrical stone pillar.
Or rather, to speak more naturally, the
object they so worshipped they regarded as
a god, and called Jahweh. The question
next confronts us, how from this humble
beginning did Israel attain to the pure
monotheism of its later age ? What was
there in the position or conditions of the
Hebrew race which made the later Jews
reject all their other gods, and fabricate out
of their early national Sacred Stone the
most sublime, austere, and omnipotent
deity that humanity has known ?
The answer, I believe, to this pregnant
question is partly to be found in a certain
general tendency of the Semitic mind;
partly in the peculiar political and social
state of the Israelitish tribes during the
ninth, eighth, seventh, sixth, and fifth
centuries before the Christian era. Or, to
put the proposed solution of the problem,
beforehand, in a still simpler form, Hebrew
monotheism was to some extent the result
of a syncretic treatment of all the gods, in
the course of which the attributes and
characters of each became merged in the
other, only the names remaining distinct;
and to some extent the result of the intense
national patriotism, of which the ethnical
god Jahweh was at once the outcome, the
expression, and the fondest hope. The
belief that Jahweh fought for Israel, and
that by trust in Jahweh alone could Israel
hold her own against Egypt and Assyria,
wildly fanatical as it appears to us to-day,
and utterly disproved by all the facts of the
case as it ultimately was, nevertheless
formed a central idea of the Hebrew
patriots, and resulted by slow degrees in
the firm establishment first of an exclusive,
and afterwards of a truly monotheistic
Jahweh-cult.
It is one of Ernest Renan’s brilliant
paradoxes that the Semitic mind is naturally
monotheistic. As a matter of fact, the
Semitic mind has everywhere evolved pretty
much the same polytheistic pantheon as
that evolved by every other group of human
beings, everywhere. Nevertheless, there
is perhaps this kernel of truth in Renan’s
77
paradoxical contention ; the Semites, more
readily than most other people, merge the
features of their deities one in the other.
That is not, indeed, by any means an exclu
sive Semitic trait. We saw already, in
dealing with the Egyptian religion, how all
the forms and functions of the gods faded
at last into an inextricable mixture, an olla
podrida of divinity, from which it was
practically impossible to disentangle with
certainty the original personalities of Ra
and Turn, of Amen and Osiris, of Neith and
Isis, of Ptah and Apis. Even in the rela
tively fixed and individualised pantheon of
Hellas, it occurs often enough that con
fusions both of person and prerogative
obscure the distinctness of the various gods.
Aphrodite and Herakles are polymorphic
in their embodiments. But in the Semitic
religions, at least in that later stage where
we first come across them, the lineaments
of the different deities are so blurred and
indefinite that hardly anything more than
mere names can with certainty be recog
nised. No other gods are so shadowy
and so vague. The type of this pantheon
is that dim figure of El-Shaddai, the early
and terrible object of Hebrew worship, of
whose attributes and nature we know
positively nothing, but who stands in the
background of all Hebrew thought as the
embodiment of the nameless and trembling
dread begotten on man’s soul by the irre
sistible and ruthless forces of nature.
This vagueness and shadowiness of the
Semitic religious conceptions seems to
depend to some extent upon the inartistic
nature of the Semitic culture. The Semite
seldom carved the image of his god.
Roman observers noted with surprise that
the shrine of Carmel contained no idol.
But it depended also upon deep-seated
characteristics of the Semitic race. Melan
choly, contemplative, proud, reserved, but
strangely fanciful, the Arab of to-day per
haps gives us the clue to the indefinite
nature of early Semitic religious thinking.
There never was a nether world more
ghostly than Sheol ; there never were gods
more dimly awful than the Elohim who
float through the early stories of the
Hebrew mystical cycle. Their very names
are hardly known to us : they come to us 1
through the veil of later Jehovistic editing
with such merely descriptive titles as the
God of Abraham, the Terror of Isaac, the
Mighty Power, the Most High Deity.
Indeed, the true Hebrew, like many other
barbarians, seems to have shrunk either
from looking upon the actual form of his
�78
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
god itself, or from pronouncing aloud his
proper name. His deity was shrouded in
the darkness of an ark or the deep gloom
of an inner tent or sanctuary ; the syllables
that designated the object of his worship
were never uttered in full, save on the most
solemn occasions, but were shirked or
slurred over by some descriptive epithet.
Even the unpronounceable title of J ahweh
itself appears from our documents to have
been a later name bestowed during the
Exodus on an antique god : while the rival
titles of the Baal and the Molech mean
nothing more than the Lord and the King
respectively. An excessive reverence for
bade the Semite to know anything of his
god’s personal appearance or true name,
and so left the features of almost all the
gods equally uncertain and equally form
less.
But besides the difficulty of accurately
distinguishing between the forms and func
tions of the different Semitic deities which
even their votaries must have felt from the
beginning, there was a superadded difficulty
in the developed creed, due to the super
position of elemental mysticism and nature
worship upon the primitive cult of ancestral
ghosts as gods and goddesses. Just as Ra,
the sun, was identified in the latest ages
with almost every Egyptian god, so solar
ideas and solar myths affected at last the
distinct personality of almost every Semitic
deity. The consequence is that all the gods
become in the end practically indistinguish
able : one is so like the other that different
interpreters make the most diverse identifi
cations, and are apparently justified in so
doing (from the mythological standpoint)
by the strong solar or elemental family like
ness which runs through the whole pantheon
in its later stages. It has even been doubted
by scholars of the older school whether
Jahweh is not himself a form of his great
rival Baal: whether both were not at bottom
identical—mere divergent shapes of one
polyonymous sun-god. To us, who recog
nise in every Baal the separate ghost-god of
a distinct tomb, such identification is.clearly
impossible.
To the worshippers of the Baalim or of
J ahweh themselves, however, these abstruser
mythological problems never presented
themselves. The difference of name and
of holy place was quite enough for them, in
spite of essential identity of attribute or
nature. They would kill one another for
the sake of a descriptive epithet, or risk
death itself rather than offer up sacrifices
at a hostile altar.
Nevertheless, various influences con
spired, here as elsewhere, to bring about a
gradual movement of syncretism—that is
to say, of the absorption of many distinct
gods into one; the final identification of
several deities originally separate. What
those influences were we must now briefly
consider.
In the first place, we must recollect that
while in Egypt, with its dry and peculiarly
preservative climate, mummies, idols, tombs,
and temples might be kept unchanged and
undestroyed for ages, in almost all other
countries rain, wind, and time are mighty
levellers of human handicraft. Thus, while
in Egypt the cult of the Dead Ancestor
survives as such quite confessedly and
openly for many centuries, in most other
countries the tendency is for the actual
personal objects of worship to be more and
more forgotten; vague gods and spirits
usurp by degrees the place of the historic
man ; rites at last cling rather to sites than
to particular persons. The tomb may dis
appear ; and yet the sacred stone may be
reverenced still with the accustomed vene
ration. The sacred stone may go ; and yet
the sacred tree may be watered yearly with
the blood of victims. The tree itself may
die ; and yet the stump may continue to be
draped on its anniversary with festal apparel.
The very stump may decay ; and yet gifts
of food or offerings of rags may be cast as
of old into the sacred spring that once
welled beside it. The locality thus grows
to be holy in itself, and gives us one clear
and obvious source of later nature-worship.
The gods or spirits who haunt such
shrines come naturally to be thought of
with the lapse of ages as much like one
another. Godship is all that can long
remain of their individual attributes. Their
very names are often unknown ; they are
remembered merely as the lord of Lebanon,
the Baal of Mount Peor. No wonder that
after a time they get to be practically identi
fied with one another, while similar myths
are often fastened by posterity to many of
them together. Indeed, we know that new
names, and even foreign intrusive names,
frequently take the place of the original
titles, while the god himself still continues
to be worshipped as the same shapeless
stone, with the same prescribed rites, in the
same squalid or splendid temples. Thus,
Melcarth, the Baal of Tyre, was adored in
later days under the Greek name of
Herakles ; and thus at Bablos two local
deities, after being identified first with the
Syrian divinities, Adonis and Astarte, were
�THE RISE OF MONOTHEISM
identified later with the Egyptian divinities, aggression put the final coping-stone on the
Osiris and Isis. Yet the myths of the risingfabric ofmonotheistic Jah weh-worship.
It is often asserted that Jahweh was
place show us that through all that time
worshipped in many places in Israel under
the true worship was paid to the dead
the form of a golden calf. That is to say,
stump of a sacred tree, which was said to
Hebrews who set up images of a metal bull
have grown from the grave of a god—in
believed themselves nevertheless to be
other words, from the tumulus of an ancient
chieftain. No matter how greatly mytho worshipping Jahweh. Even the prophets
logies change, these local cults remain ever of the eighth century regard the cult of the
constant; the sacred stones are here des bull as a form of Jahweh-worship, though
not a form to which they can personally
cribed as haunted by djinns, and there as
give their approbation. But the bull is
memorials of Christian martyrs ; the holy
probably in its origin a distinct god from
wells are dedicated here to nymph or hero,
the stone in the ark ; and if its worship
and receive offerings there to saint or fairy.
was identified with that of the Rock of
So the holy oaks of immemorial worship in
Israel, it could be only by a late piece of
England become “ Thor’s oaks ” under
syncretic mysticism.
Perhaps the link
Saxon heathendom, and “ Gospel oaks ”
here, as in the case of Apis, was a priestly
under mediaeval Christianity.
recognition of the bull as symbolising the
Finally, in the latest stages of worship,
an attempt is always made to work in the generative power of nature ; an idea which
heavenly bodies and the great energies of would be peculiarly appropriate to the god
whose great function it was to encourage
nature into the mythological groundwork
or theory of religion. Every king is the fruitfulness. But, in any case, we cannot
descendant of the sun, and every great god but see in this later calf-worship a
is therefore necessarily the sun in person.
superadded element wholly distinct from
the older cult of the sacred stone, just as
Endless myths arise from these phrases,
which are mistaken by mythologists for the worship of Ra was wholly distinct in
the central facts and sources of religion.
origin from the totem-cult of Mnevis, or as
But they are nothing of the kind. Mysticism theworship ofAmen was wholly distinct from
and symbolism can never be primitive ;
that of Khem and Osiris. The stone-god
they are well-meant attempts by cultivated and the bull-god merge at last into one,
religious thinkers of later days to read
much as at a far later date the man Jesus
deep-seated meaning into the crude ideas
merges into the Hebrew god, and receives
and still cruder practices of traditional more reverence in modern faiths than the
religion. I may add that Dr. Robertson
older deity whom he practically replaces.
Smith’s learned and able works are con
Even in the Temple at Jerusalem itself
stantly spoiled in this way by his dogged
symbols of bull-worship were apparently
determination to see nature-worship as
admitted. The altar upon which the daily
primitive, where it is really derivative, as
sacrifice was burnt had four horns ; and
the earliest starting-point, where it is really
the laver in the court, the “ brazen sea,”
the highest and latest development.
was supported upon the figures of twelve
Clearly, when all gods have come to be
oxen. When we remember that the
more or less solar in their external and
Molech had the head of a bull, we can
acquired features, the process of identifi hardly fail to see in these symbols a token
cation and internationalisation is pro of that gradual syncretism which invariably
portionately easy.
affects all developed pantheons in all civi
The syncretism thus brought about in
lised countries.
the Hebrew religion by the superposition
Much more important are the supposed
of nature-worship on the primitive cult signs of the later identification of Jahweh
must have paved the way for the later
with the sun, and his emergence as a modi
recognition of monotheism, exactly as we
fied and transfigured sun-god.
It may
know it did in the esoteric creed of Egypt,
seem odd at first that such a character
by making all the gods so much alike that
could ever be acquired by a sacred stone,
worshippers had only to change the name
did we not recollect the exactly similar
of their deity, not the attributes of the
history of the Egyptian obelisk, which in
essential conception. Let us look first how
like manner represents, first and foremost,
far this syncretism affected the later idea of the upright pillar or monolith—that is to
Jahweh, the phallic stone-god preserved in
say, the primitive gravestone—but secon
the ark ; and then let us inquire afterward
darily and derivatively, at once the genera
how the patriotic reaction against Assyrian I tive principle and a ray of the sun. With
�So
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
this luminous analogy to guide us in our
search, we shall have little difficulty in
recognising how a solar character may
have been given to the later attributes and
descriptions of Jahweh.
To his early worshippers, then, as we saw,
Jahweh was merely the stone in the ark.
He dwelt there visibly, and where the ark
went, there Jahweh went with it. But the
later Hebrews—say in the eighth century—
had acquired a very different idea of
Jahweh’s dwelling-place. Astrological and
solar ideas (doubtless Akkadian in origin)
had profoundly modified their rude primi
tive conceptions. To Amos and to the
true Isaiah, Jahweh dwells in the open sky
above and is “ Jahweh of hosts,” the leader
among the shining army of heaven, the
king of the star-world. “ Over those celes
tial bodies and celestial inhabitants Jahweh
rules”; they surround him and execute his
commands : the host of heaven are his
messengers—in the more familiar language
of our modern religion, “ the angels of the
Lord,” the servants of Jahweh. To Micah,
heaven is “the temple of Jahweh’s holiness”:
“ God on high ” is the descriptive phrase by
which the prophet alludes to him. In all
this we have reached a very different con
ception indeed from that of the early and
simple-minded Israelites who carried their
god with them bn an ox-cart from station
to station.
Furthermore, light and fire are constantly
regarded by these later thinkers as manifes
tations of Jahweh ; and even in editing the
earlier legends they introduce such newer
ideas, making “ the glory of Jahweh” light
up the ark, or appear in the burning bush,
or combining both views, the elder and the
younger, in the pillar of fire that preceded
the nomad horde of Israel in the wilderness.
Jahweh is said to “ send” or to “cast fire”
from heaven, in which expressions we see
once more the advanced concept of an
elemental god, whose voice is the thunder,
and whose weapon the lightning. All
these are familiar developments of the
chief god in a pantheon. Says Zechariah
in his poem, “Ask ye of Jahweh rain in
the time of the latter showers : Jahweh will
make the lightnings.” Says Isaiah, “ The
light of Israel shall be for a fire, And his
holy one for a flame”; “ Behold, the name
of Jahweh cometh from afar, His anger
burneth, and violently the smoke riseth on
high : His lips are full of indignation, And
his tongue is as a devouring fire.” In these
and a hundred other passages that might
be quoted we seem to see Jahweh envis
aged to a great extent as a sun-god, and
clothed in almost all the attributes of a
fiery Molech.
Once more, though this is to anticipate a
little, the later Jahweh-worship seems to
have absorbed into itself certain astro
logical elements which were originally
quite alien to it, belonging to the cult of
other gods. Such, for example, is the
institution of the Sabbath, the unlucky day
of the malign god Kewdn or Saturn, on
which it was undesirable to do any kind of
work, and on which accordingly the super
stitious Semite rested altogether from his
weekly labours. The division of the lunar
month (the sacred period of Astarte, the
queen of heaven) into four weeks of seven
days each, dedicated in turn to the gods of
the seven planets, belongs obviously to the
same late cult of the elemental and astro
logical gods, or, rather, of the gods with
whom these heavenly bodies were at last
identified under Akkadian influence. The
earlier prophets of the exclusive Jahwehworship denounce as idolatrous such
observation of the Sabbath and the
astrological feasts—“Your Sabbaths and
your new moons are an abomination to
me”; and according to Amos, Kewdn
himself had been the chief idolatrous
object of worship by his countrymen in the
wilderness.
Later on, however, the
Jehovistic party found itself powerless to
break the current of superstition on the
Sabbath question, and a new modus vivendi
was therefore necessary. They arranged
a prudent compromise. The Sabbath was
adopted bodily into the monotheistic
Jahweh-worship, and a mythical reason
was given for its institution and its sacred
character which nominally linked it on to
the cult of the ethnical god. On that day,
said the priestly cosmogonists, Jahweh
rested from his labour of creation.
Having thus briefly sketched out the
gradual changes which the conception of
Jahweh himself underwent during the ages
when his supremacy was being slowly
established in the confederacy of Israel,
let us now attack the final problem, Why
did the particular cult of Jahweh become
at last exclusive and monotheistic ?
To begin with, we must remember that,
from the very outset of the national
existence, Jahweh was clearly regarded on
all hands as the ethnical god, the special
god of Israel.
Moreover, there is reason to suppose
that the Israelites regarded Jahweh as
their supreme god. Most pantheons finally
�THE RISE OF MONOTHEISM
settle down into a recognised hierarchy, in
which one deity or another gradually
assumes the first place. So, in Hellas, the
supremacy of Zeus was undoubted ; so, in
Rome, was the supremacy of Jupiter.
Sometimes, to be sure, as among our
Teutonic ancestors, we see room for doubt
between two rival gods: it would be difficult
to assign the exact priority to either of the
two leading deities : among the English,
Woden rather bore it overThunor ; among
the Scandinavians, Thor rather bore it over
Odin. In Israel, in like manner, there was
apparently a time when the Presidency of
the Immortals hovered between Jahweh
and one or other of the local Baalim. But
in the end, and perhaps even from the very
beginning, the suffrages of the people were
mainly with the sacred stone of the ark.
He was the God of Israel, and they were
the chosen people of Jahweh.
The custom of circumcision must have
proved at once the symbol and in part the
cause, in part the effect, of this general
devotion of the people to a single supreme
god. At first, no doubt, only the first-born,
or other persons specially dedicated to
Jahweh, would undergo the rite which
marked them out so clearly as the devotees
of the god of fertility. But as time went
on, long before the triumph of the exclusive
Jahweh-worship, it would seem that the
practice of offering up every male child to
the national god had become universal.
As early as the shadowy reign of David,
the Philistines are reproachfully alluded to
in our legends as “ the uncircumcised.”
Such universal dedication of the whole
males of the race to the national god must
have done much to ensure his ultimate
triumph.
If we look at the circumstances of the
Israelites in Palestine, we shall easily see
how both religious unity and intense
national patriotism were fostered by the
very nature of their tenure of the soil ; and
also why a deity mainly envisaged as a god
of generation should have become the most
important member of their national pan
theon. Their position during the first few
centuries of their life in Lower Syria may
be compared to that of the Dorians in
Peloponnesus : they were but a little garri
son in a hostile land fighting incessantly
with half-conquered tributaries and encirc
ling foes ; now hard-pressed by rebellions
of their internal enemies ; and now again
rendered subject themselves to the hostile
Philistines on their maritime border. The
handful of rude warriors who burst upon
the land under such bloodthirsty leaders as
Joshua could only hope for success by rapid
and constant increase of their numbers, and
by avoiding as far as possible those internal
quarrels which were always the prelude to
national disgrace. To be “ a mother in
Israel” is the highest hope of every Hebrew
woman. Hence it was natural that a god
of generation should become the chief
among the local deities ; and though all
the stone gods were probably phallic, yet
Jahweh, as the ethnical patron, seems most
of all to have been regarded as the giver
of increase to Israel.
It seems clear, too, that the common
worship of Jahweh was at first the only
solid bond of union between the scattered
and discordant tribes who were afterwards
to grow into the Israelitish people. This
solidarity of god and tribe has well been
insisted on by Professor Robertson Smith
as a common feature of all Semitic worship.
The ark of Jahweh in its house at Shiloh
appears to have formed the general meeting
place for Hebrew patriotism, as the sanc
tuary of Olympia formed a focus later for the
dawning sense of Hellenic unity. The ark
was taken out to carry before the Hebrew
army, that the god of Israel might fight for
his worshippers. Evidently, therefore, from
a very early date, Jahweh was regarded in
a literal sense as the god of battles, the
power upon whom Israel might specially
rely to guard it against its enemies. When,
as the legends tell us, the national unity
was realised under David; when the subject
peoples were finally merged into a homo
geneous whole ; when the last relics of
Canaanitish nationality were stamped out
by the final conquest of the Jebusites ; and
when Jerusalem was made the capital of a
united Israel, this feeling must have in
creased both in extent and intensity. The
bringing of Jahweh to Jerusalem by David,
and the building of his temple by Solomon
(if these facts be historical), must have
helped to stamp him as the great god of
the race : and though Solomon also erected
temples to other Hebrew gods, which re
mained in existence for some centuries, we
may be sure that from the date of the open
ing of the great central shrine, Jahweh re
mained the principal deity of the southern
kingdom at least, after- the separation.
There was one characteristic of Jahwehworship, however, which especially helped
to make it at last an exclusive cult, and
thus paved the way for its final develop
ment into a pure monotheism. Jahweh
was specially known to be a “jealous
G
�82
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
god this is a trait in his temperament
early and often insisted on. We do not
know when or where the famous “Ten
Words ” were first promulgated; but we
have every reason to believe that in essence
at least they date from a very antique
period. Now, at the head of these imme
morial precepts of Jahweh stands the pro
hibition of placing any other gods before
his face. Originally, no doubt, the prohibi
tion meant exactly what it states ; that
Jahweh would endure no companion gods
to share his temple; that wherever he
dwelt he would dwell alone without what
the Greeks would have called fellow shrine
sharers. Thus we know that no ashera
was to be driven into the ground near
Jahweh’s ark ; and that when Dagon found
himself face to face with the Rock of Israel,
he broke in pieces, and could not stand
before the awful presence of the great
Hebrew Pillar. No more than this, then,
was at first demanded by “the jealous
god”: he asked of his worshippers that
they should keep him apart from the society
of all inferior gods, should allow no minor
or rival deity to enter his precincts.
Gradually, however, as Jahweh-worship
grew deeper, and the conception of god
head became wider and more sublime, the
Jahweh-worshipper began to put a stricter
interpretation upon the antique command
of the jealous god. It was supposed that
every circumcised person, every man visibly
devoted to Jahweh, owed to Jahweh alone
his whole religious service. Nobody
doubted as yet, indeed, that other gods
existed : but the extreme Jehovists in the
later days of national independence held as
an article of faith that no true Israelite
ought in any way to honour them. An
internal religious conflict thus arose between
the worshippers of Jahweh and the worship
pers of the Baalim, in which, as might be
expected, the devotees of the national god
had very much the best of it. Exclusive
Jahweh-worship became thenceforth the
ideal of the extreme Jehovists : they began
to regard all other gods as “ idols,” to be
identified with their images ; they began
to look upon Jahweh alone as a living
god, at least within the bounds of the
Israelitish nation»
To this result another ancient prohibition
of the priests of Jahweh no doubt largely
contributed. The priesthood held it unlaw
ful to make or multiply images of Jahweh.
The one sacred stone enclosed in the ark
was alone to be worshipped : and by thus
concentrating on Shiloh, or afterwards on
Jerusalem, the whole religious spirit of the
ethnical cult, they must largely have suc
ceeded in cementing the national unity.
Strict Jehovists looked with dislike upon
the adoration paid to the bull-images in the
northern kingdom, though those, too, were
regarded (at least in later days) as repre
sentatives of Jahweh. They held that the
true god of Abraham was to be found only
in the ark at Jerusalem, and that to give to
the Rock of Israel human form or bestial
figure was in itself a high crime against the
majesty of their deity Hence arose the
peculiar Hebrew dislike to “ idolatry ” ; a
dislike never equally shared by any but
Semitic peoples, and having deep roots,
apparently, at once in the inartistic genius
of the people and in the profound meta
physical and dreamy character of Semitic
thinking. The comparative emptiness of
Semitic shrines, indeed, was always a
stumbling-block to the Greek, with his
numerous and exquisite images of anthro
pomorphic deities.
All that was now wanted to drive the in
creasingly exclusive and immaterial Jahwehworship into pure monotheism for the whole
people was the spur of a great national
enthusiasm, in answer to some dangerous
external attack upon the existence of Israel
and of Israel’s god. This final touch was
given by the aggression of Assyria, and
later of Babylon. For years the two tiny
Israelitish kingdoms had maintained a pre
carious independence between the mighty
empires of Egypt and Mesopotamia. In
the eighth century it became certain that
they could no longer play their accustomed
game of clever diplomacy and polite sub
jection. The very existence of Israel was
at stake ; and the fanatical worshippers of
Jahweh broke out in that memorable
ecstasy of enthusiasm which we may fairly
call the Age of the Prophets, and which
produced the earliest masterpieces of
Hebrew literature in the wild effort to
oppose to the arms of the invaders the
passive resistance of a supreme Jahweh.
In times of old, the prophets say, when
Jahweh led the forces of Israel, the horses
and the chariots of their enemies counted
for naught : if in this crisis Israel would
cease to think of aid from Egypt or alliance
with Assyria—if Israel would get rid of all
her other gods and trust only to Jahweh—
then Jahweh would break asunder the
strength of Assyria and would reduce
Babylon to nothing before his chosen
people.
Such is the language that Isaiah ventured
�THE RISE OF MONOTHEISM
to use in the very crisis of a grave national
danger.
Now, strange as it seems to us that any
people should have thrown themselves into
such a general state of fanatical folly, it is
nevertheless true that these extraordinary
counsels prevailed in both the Israelitish
kingdoms, and that the very moment when
the national existence was most seriously
imperilled was the moment chosen by the
Jehovistic party for vigorously attempting a
religious reformation. The downfall of
Ephraim only quickened the bigoted belief
of the. fanatics in Judah that pure Jahwehworship was the one possible panacea for
the difficulties of I srael. Taking advantage
of a minority and of a plastic young king,
they succeeded in imposing exclusive
Jehovism upon the half-unwilling people.
The timely forgery of the Book of Deuteromony—the first germ of the Pentateuch—
by the priests of the temple at Jerusalem
was quickly followed by the momentary
triumph of pure Jahweh-worship. In this
memorable document the exclusive cult of
Jahweh was falsely said to have descended
from the earliest periods of the national
existence. Josiah, we are told, alarmed at
the denunciations in the forged roll of the
law, set himself to work at once to root out
by violent means every form of “ idolatry.”
He brought forth from the house of Jahweh
“ the vessels that were made for the Baal,
and for the Ashera, and for all the Host of
Heaven, and he burned them without
Jerusalem in the fields of Kidron.” He
abolished all the shrines and priesthoods of
other gods in the cities of Judah, and put
down “ them that burned incense to the
Baal, to the sun, and to the moon, and to
the planets, and all the Host of Heaven.”
He also brought out the Ashera from the
temple of Jahweh, and burnt it to ashes;
and “ took away the horses that the kings
of Judah had given to the sun, and burned
the chariots of the sun with fire.” And by
destroying the temples said to have been
built by Solomon for Chemosh, Milcom,
and Ashtoreth, he left exclusive and tri
umphant Jahweh-worship the sole ac
credited religion of Israel.
All, however, was of no avail. Religious
fanaticism could not save the little princi
pality from the aggressive arms of its
powerful neighbours. Within twenty or
thirty years of Josiah’s reformation, the
Babylonians thrice captured and sacked
Jerusalem. The temple of Jahweh was
burnt, the chief ornaments were removed,
and the desolate site itself lay deserted.
83
The principal inhabitants were transported
to Babylonia, and the kingdom of J udah
ceased for a time to have any independent
existence.
But what, in this disaster, became of the
Jahweh himself? How fared or fell the
Sacred Stone in the ark, the Rock of Israel,
in this general destruction of all its holiest
belongings ? Strange to say, the Hebrew
annalist never stops to tell us. In the
plaintive catalogue of the wrongs wrought
by the Babylonians at Jerusalem every pot
and shovel and vessel is enumerated, but
“the ark of God” is not so much as once
mentioned. Perhaps the historian shrank
from relating that final disgrace of his
country’s deity ; perhaps a sense of rever
ence prevented him from chronicling it;
perhaps he knew nothing of what had
finally been done with the cherished and
time-honoured stone pillar of his ancestors.
It is possible, too, that with his later and
more etherealised conceptions of the cult of
his god, he had ceased to regard the ark
itself as the abode of Jahweh, and was un
aware that his tribal deity had been repre
sented in the innermost shrine of the temple
by a rough-hewn pillar. Be that as it may,
the actual fate of Jahweh himself is involved
for us now in impenetrable obscurity. Prob
ably the invaders who took away “ the
treasures of the house of Jahweh, and cut
in pieces all the vessels of gold which
Solomon, King of Israel, had made,” would
care but little for the rude sacred stone of a
conquered people. We may conjecture that
they broke Jahweh into a thousand frag
ments and ground him to powder, as Josiah
had done with the Baalim and the Ashera,
so that his very relics could no longer be
recognised or worshipped. At any rate, we
hear no more, from that time forth, of
Jahweh himself, as a material existence, or of
the ark he dwelt in. His spirit alone sur
vived unseen, to guard and protect his
chosen people.
Yet, strange to say, this final disappear
ance of Jahweh himself, as a visible and
tangible god, from the page of history, in
stead of proving the signal for the utter
downfall of his cult and his sanctity, was
the very making of Jahweh-worship as a
spiritual, a monotheistic, and a cosmo
politan religion. At the exact moment
when Jahweh ceased to exist the religion
of Jahweh began to reach its highest and
fullest development. Even before the cap
tivity, as we have seen, the prophets and
their party had begun to form a most exalted
and spiritualised conception of Jahweh’s
�«4
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
greatness, Jahweh’s holiness, Jahweh’s
unapproachable nature, Jahweh’s super
human sublimity and omnipotence. But
now that the material Jahweh itself, which
cramped and clogged their ideas, had
disappeared for ever, this spiritual concep
tion of a great Unseen God widened and
deepened amazingly. Forbidden by their
creed and by Jahweh’s own express com
mand to make any image of their chosen
deity, the Hebrews in Babylonia gradually
evolved for themselves the notion of a
Supreme Ruler wholly freed from material
bonds, to be worshipped without image,
representative, or symbol; a dweller in the
heavens, invisible to men, too high and pure
for human eyes to look upon. The conical
stone in the ark gave place almost at once
to an incorporeal, inscrutable, and almighty
Being.
It was during the captivity, too, that pure
monotheism became for the first time the
faith of Israel. Convinced that desertion
of Jahweh was the cause of all their previous
misfortunes, the Jews during their exile
grew more deeply attached than ever to the
deity who represented their national unity
and their national existence. They made
their way back in time to Judaea, after two
generations had passed away, with a firm
conviction that all their happiness depended
on restoring in ideal purity a cult that had
never been the cult of their fathers. A new
form of Jahweh-worship Lad become a
passion among those who sat disconsolate
by the waters of Babylon. Few if any of
the zealots who returned at last to Jeru
salem had ever themselves known the stone
god who lay shrouded in the ark : it was
the etherealised Jahweh who ruled in heaven
above among the starry hosts to whom they
offered up aspirations in a strange land for
the restoration of Israel. In the temple
that they built on the sacred site to the new
figment of their imaginations, Jahweh was
no longer personally present: it was not so
much his “ house,” like the old one demo
lished by the Babylonian invaders, as the
place where sacrifice was offered and wor
ship paid to the great god in heaven. The
new religion was purely spiritual; Jahweh
had triumphed, but only by losing his dis
tinctive personal characteristics,and coming
out of the crisis, as it were, the blank form
or generic conception of pure deity in
general.
It is this that gives monotheism its pecu
liar power, and enables it so readily to
make its way everywhere. For monotheism
is religion reduced to its single central ele- I
ment; it contains nothing save what every
votary of all gods already implicitly believes,
with every unnecessary complexity or indi
viduality smoothed away and simplified.
Its simplicity recommends it to all intelli
gent minds ; its uniformity renders it the
easiest and most economical form of pan
theon that man can frame for himself.
Under the influence of these new ideas,
before long, the whole annals of Israel were
edited and written down in Jehovistic form ;
the Pentateuch and the older historical
books assumed the dress in which we now
know them. From the moment of the
return from the captivity, too, the mono
theistic conception kept ever widening. At
first, no doubt, even with the Jews of the
Sixth Century, Jahweh was commonly
looked upon merely as the ethnical god of
Israel. But, in time, the sublimer and
broader conception of some few among the
earlier poetical prophets began to gain
general acceptance, and Jahweh was re
garded as in very deed the one true God of
all the world—somewhat such a God as
Islam and Christendom to-day acknowledge.
Still, even so, he was as yet most closely
connected with the Jewish people, through
whom alone the gentiles were expected in
the fulness of time to learn his greatness.
It was reserved for a Graeco-Jewish Cilician,
five centuries later, to fulfil the final ideal
of pure cosmopolitan monotheism, and to
proclaim abroad the unity of God to all
nations, with the Catholic Church as its
earthly witness before the eyes of universal
humanity. To Paul of Tarsus we owe
above all men that great and on the whole
cosmopolitanising conception. .
CHAPTER XI.
HUMAN GODS
We have now in a certain sense accom
plished our intention of tracing the evo
lution of gods and of God. We have shown
how polytheism came to be, and how from
it a certain particular group of men, the
early Israelites, rose by slow degrees,
through natural stages, to the monotheistic
conception. It might seem, therefore, as
though the task we set before ourselves
was now quite completed. Nevertheless,
many abstruse and difficult questions still
lie before us. Our problem as yet is hardly
�HUMAN GODS
half solved. We have still to ask, How
did this purely local and national Hebrew
deity advance to the conquest of the
civilised world? How from an obscure
corner of Lower Syria did the god of a
small tribe of despised and barbaric
tributaries slowly live down the great
conquering deities of Babylon and Susa,
of Hellas and Italy? And again, we have
further to inquire, Why do most of the
modern nations which have nominally
adopted monotheism yet conceive of their
god as compounded in some mystically
incomprehensible fashion of Three Perácms,
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost ?
In short, I am not satisfied with tracing
the idea of a god from the primitive
mummy or the secondary ghost to the one
supreme God of the ancient Hebrews ; I
desire also to follow on that developed
concept till it merges at last in the triune
God of modern Christendom.
The Christian religion with which we
have next to deal bases itself fundamentally
upon the personality of a man, by name
Jesus, commonly described as the Christ,
that is to say “the anointed.” Of this
most sacred and deified person it is
affirmed by modern Christianity, and
has been affirmed by orthodox Christians
from a very early period, that he was not
originally a mere man, afterwards taken
into the godhead, but that he was born
from the first the son of God, that is to say,
of the Hebrew Jahweh; that he existed
previously from all time; that he was
miraculously conceived of a virgin mother ;
that he was crucified and buried ; that on
the third day he arose from the dead ; and
that he is now a living and distinct person
in a divine and mystically-united Trinity.
I propose to show in the subsequent
chapters how far all these conceptions were
already familiar throughout the world in
which Christianity was promulgated, and to
how large an extent the new religion owed
its rapid success to the fact that it was but
a résumé or idealised embodiment of all
the chief conceptions already common to
the main cults of Mediterranean civilisa
tion. At the moment when the Roman
empire was cosmopolitanising the world
Christianity began to cosmopolitanise reli
gion, by taking into itself whatever was
central, common, and universal in the
worship of the peoples among whom it
originated.
We will begin with the question of the
incarnation, which lies at the very root of
the Christian concept.
85
I have said already that in ancient Egypt
and elsewhere, “ The God was the Dead
King, the King was the Living God.” This
is true, literally and absolutely. Since the
early kings are gods, the present kings,
their descendants, are naturally also gods by
descent; their blood is divine ; they differ
in nature as well as in position from mere
common mortals. While they live, they are
gods on earth ; when they die, they pass
over to the community of the gods their
ancestors, and share with them a happy and
regal immortality. The inference made in
Egypt that the children of gods must be
themselves divine was also made in most
other countries, especially in those where
similar great despotisms established them
selves at an early grade of culture. Thus
in Peru, the Incas were gods. They were
the children of the Sun ; and when they
died, it was said that their father, the Sun,
had sent to fetch them. The Mexican kings
were likewise gods, with full control of the
course of nature ; they swore at their acces
sion to make the sun shine, the rain fall, the
rivers flow, and the earth bring forth her
fruit in due season. How they could pro
mise all this seems at first a little difficult
for us to conceive ; but it will become more
comprehensible at a later stage of our in
vestigation, when we come to consider the
gods of cultivation : even at present, if we
remember that kings are children of the
Sun, and that sacred trees, sacred groves,
and sacred wells are closely connected with
the tombs' of their ancestors, we can guess
at the beginning of such a mental connec
tion. Thus the Chinese emperor is the Son
of Heaven ; he is held responsible to his
people for the occurrence of drought or
other serious derangements of nature. The
Parthian kings of the Arsacid house, says
Mr. Frazer, to whom I am greatly indebted
for most of the succeeding facts, styled
themselves brothers of the sun and moon,
and were worshipped as deities. Number
less other cases are cited by Mr. Fraser,
who was the first to point out the full im
portance of this widespread belief in man
gods. I shall follow him largely in the
subsequent discussion of this cardinal sub
ject, though I shall often give to the facts
an interpretation slightly different from that
which he would allow to be the correct one.
For to me, godhead springs always from
the primitive Dead Man, while to Mr.
Frazer it is spiritual or animistic in origin.
Besides these human gods who are gods
by descent from deified ancestors, there is
another class of gods who are gods by
�86
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
inspiration or indwelling of the divine spirit,
that is to say of some ghost or god who
temporarily or permanently inhabits the
body of a living man. The germ-idea of
such divine possession we may see in the
facts of epilepsy, catalepsy, dream, and
madness. In all such cases of abnormal
nervous condition it seems to primitive man,
as it still seemed to the Jews of the age of
the Gospels, that the sufferer is entered or
seized upon by some spirit, who bodily in
habits him. The spirit may throw the man
down, or may speak through his mouth in
strange unknown tongues; it may exalt him
so that he can perform strange feats of
marvellous strength, or may debase him to
a position of grovelling abjectness. By
fasting and religious asceticism men and
women can even artificially attain this
state, when the god speaks through them,
as he spoke through the mouth of the
Pythia at Delphi. And fasting is always
one of the religious exercises of god-pos
sessed men, priests, monks, anchorites, and
ascetics in general. Where races have
learnt how to manufacture intoxicating
drinks, or to express narcotic juices from
plants, they also universally attribute the
effects of such plants to the personal action
of an inspiring spirit—an idea so persistent
even into civilised ages that we habitually
speak of alcoholic liquors as spirits. Both
these ways of attaining the presence of an
indwelling god are commonly practised
among savages and half-civilised people.
When we recollect how we saw already
that ancestral spirits may descend from
time to time into the skulls that once were
theirs, or into the clay or wooden images
that represent them, and there give oracles,
we shall not be surprised to find that they
can thus enter at times into a human body,
and speak through its lips, for good or for
evil. I have dwelt but little in this book
on this migratory power and this ubiqui
tousness of the spirits, because I have de
sired to fix attention chiefly on that primary
aspect of religion which is immediately and
directly concerned with Worship; but
readers familiar with such works as Dr.
Tylor’s and Mr. Frazer’s will be well aware
of the common power which spirits possess
of projecting themselves readily into every
part of nature. The faculty of possession
or of divination is but one particular exam
ple of this well-known attribute. The
mysteries and oracles of all creeds are full
of such phenomena.
Certain persons, again, are born from
the womb as incarnations of a god or an
ancestral spirit. “ Incarnate gods,” says
Mr. Frazer, “are common in rude society.
The incarnation may be temporary or per
manent......... When the divine spirit has
taken up its abode in a human body, the
god-man is usually expected to vindicate
his character by working miracles.” Mr.
Frazer gives several excellent examples of
both these classes. I extract a few almost
verbatim.
Certain persons are possessed from time
to time by a spirit of deity ; while posses
sion lasts, their own personality lies in
abeyance, and the presence of the spirit is
revealed by convulsive shakings and quiver
ings of the body. In this abnormal state
the man’s utterances are accepted as the
voice of the god or spirit dwelling in him
and speaking through him. In Mangaia,
for instance, the priests in whom the gods
took up their abode were called god-boxes
or gods. Before giving oracles, they drank
an intoxicating liquor, and the words they
spoke in their frenzy were then regarded as
divine. In other cases, the inspired person
produces the desired condition of intoxica
tion by drinking the fresh blood of a victim,
human or animal, which, as we shall see
hereafter, is probably itself an avatar of the
inspiring god. In the temple of Apollo
Diradiotes at Argos, a lamb was sacrificed
by night once a month ; a woman, who had
to observe the rule of chastity, tasted its
blood, and then gave oracles. At Ægira in
Achæa the priestess of the Earth drank the
fresh blood of a bull before she descended
into her cave to prophesy. In Southern
India the so-called devil-dancer drinks the
blood of a goat, and then becomes seized
with the divine afflatus. He is worshipped
as a deity, and bystanders ask him ques
tions requiring superhuman knowledge to
answer.
Of permanent living human gods, in
spired by the constant indwelling of a deity,
Mr. Frazer also gives several apt examples.
In the Marquesas Islands there was a class
of men who were deified in their lifetime.
They were supposed to wield supernatural
control over the elements. They could give
or withhold rain and good harvests. Human
sacrifices were offered them to appease their
wrath.
.
.
.
Sometimes, I believe, kings are divine
by birth, as descendants of gods ; but
sometimes divinity is conferred upon them
with the kingship, as indeed was the case
even in the typical instance of Egypt.
Tanatoa, king of Raiatea, was deified by a
certain ceremony performed at the chief
�HUMAN GODS
temple. He was made a god before the
gods his ancestors, as Celtic chiefs received
the chieftainship standing on the sacred
stone of their fathers. As one of the deities
of his subjects, therefore, the king was
worshipped, consulted as an oracle, and
honoured with sacrifices. The king of
Tahiti at his inauguration received a sacred
girdle of red and yellow feathers, which not
only raised him to the highest earthly
station, but also identified him with the
heavenly gods. Compare the way in which
the gods of Egypt make the king one of
themselves, as represented in the bas-reliefs,
by the presentation of the divine tau. In
the Pelew Islands a god may incarnate
himself in a common person ; this lucky
man is thereupon raised to sovereign rank,
and rules as god and king over the com
munity. Not unsimilar is the mode of
selection of a Grand Lama. In later
stages the king ceases to be quite a god,
but retains the anointment, the consecration
on a holy stone, and the claim to “ divine
right ”; he also shows some last traces of
deity in his divine power to heal diseases,
which fades away at last into the practice
of “ touching for king’s evil.”
But did ideas of this character still survive
in the Mediterranean world of the first and
second centuries, where Christianity was
evolved? Most undoubtedly they did. In
Egypt, the divine line of the Ptolemies had
only just become extinct. In Rome itself,
the divine Caesar had recently under
gone official apotheosis; the divine
Augustus had ruled over the empire
as the adopted son of the new-made
god ; and altars rose in provincial cities to
the divine spirit of the reigning Trajan or
Hadrian. Indeed, both forms of divinity
were claimed indirectly for the god Julius ;
he was divine by apotheosis, but he was
also descended from the goddess Venus.
So the double claim was made for the
central personage of the Christian faith :
he was the son of God—that is to say of
Jahweh : but he was also of kingly Jewish
origin, a descendant of David, and in the
genealogies fabricated for him in the
Gospels extreme importance is attached to
this pretended royal ancestry. Further
more, how readily men of the Mediterra
nean civilisation could then identify living
persons with gods we see in the familiar
episode of Paul and Barnabas at Lystra.
Incarnation, in short, was a perfectly ordi
nary feature of religion and daily life as
then understood.
To most modern thinkers, however, it
87
would seem at first sight like a grave diffi
culty in the way of accepting the deity of
an ordinary man that he should have suf
fered a violent death at the hands of his
enemies. Yet this fact, instead of standing
in the way of acceptance of Christ’s
divinity, is really almost a guarantee and
proof of it. For, strange as it sounds to
us, the human gods were frequently or
almost habitually put to death by their
votaries. The secret of this curious ritual
and persistent custom has been ingeniously
deciphered for us by Mr. Frazer, whose
book is almost entirely devoted to these
two main questions, “Why do men kill
their gods ?” and “ Why do they eat and
drink their flesh and blood under the form
of bread and wine ?” We must go over
some of the same ground here in rapid
summary, with additional corollaries ; and
we must also bring Mr. Frazer’s curious
facts into line with our general principles
of the origin of godhead. The belief that
it is expedient that “ one man should die
for the people,” and that the person who
so dies is a god in human shape, formed,
as we shall see, a common component of
many faiths, and especially of the faiths of
the eastern Mediterranean. Mr. Frazer
has traced the genesis of this group of
beliefs in the slaughter of the man-god in
the most masterly manner. They spring
from a large number of converging ideas,
some of which can only come out in full as
we proceed in later chapters to other
branches of our subject.
In all parts of the world, one of the com
monest prerogatives and functions of the
human god is the care of the weather. As
representative of heaven, it is his business
to see that rain falls in proper quantities,
and that the earth brings forth her in
crease in due season. But, god though he
is, he must needs be coerced if he does not
attend to this business properly. Thus, in
West Africa, when prayers and offerings
presented to the king have failed to pro
cure rain, his subjects bind him with
ropes, and take him to the grave of his
deified forefathers, that he may obtain
from them the needful change in the
weather. Here we see in the fullest form
the nature of the relation between dead
gods and living ones. The Son is the
natural mediator between men and the
Father. Among the Antaymours of Mada
gascar, the king is responsible for bad
crops and all other misfortunes. The
ancient Scythians, when ’ food was
scarce, put their kings in bonds.
�88
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
The Banjars in West Africa ascribe
to their king the power of causing
rain or fine weather. As long as the
climate is satisfactory, they load him with
presents of grain and cattle. But if long
drought or rain does serious harm, they
insult and beat him till the weather changes.
The Burgundians deposed their king if he
failed to make their crops grow to their
satisfaction.
Further than that, certain tribes have
even killed their kings in times of scarcity.
In the days of the Swedish king Domalde,
a mighty famine broke out, which lasted
several years, and could not be stayed by
human or animal sacrifices. So, in a great
popular assembly held at Upsala, the
chiefs decided that King Domalde himself
was the cause of the scarcity, and must be
sacrificed for good seasons. Then they
slew him, and smeared with his blood
the altars of the gods. Here we must
recollect that the divine king is himself a
god, the descendant of gods, and he is
sacrificed to the offended spirits of his own
forefathers. We shall see hereafter how
often similar episodes occur—how the god
is sacrificed, himself to himself; how the
Son is sacrificed to the Father, both being
gods ; and how the Father sacrifices his
Son, to make a god of him.
The divine kings being thus responsible
for rain and wind, and for the growth of
crops, whose close dependence upon them
we shall further understand hereafter, it is
clear that they are persons of the greatest
importance and value to the community.
Moreover, in the ideas of early men, their
spirit is almost one with that of external
nature, over which they exert such
extraordinary powers. A subtle sympathy
seems to exist between the king and the
world outside. The sacred trees which
embody his ancestors ; the crops, which,
as we shall see hereafter, equally embody
them ; the rain-clouds in which they dwell;
the heaven they inhabit;—all these, as it
were, are parts of the divine body, and
therefore by implication part of the godking’s, who is but the avatar of his deified
fathers. Hence, whatever affects the king,
affects the sky, the crops, the rain, the
people.
Mr. Frazer has shown many strange
results of these early beliefs—which he
traces, however, to the supposed primitive
animism, and not (as I have done) to the
influence of the ghost-theory. Whichever
interpretation we accept, however, his facts
at least are equally valuable. He calls
attention to the number of kingly taboos
which are all intended to prevent the human
god from endangering or imperilling his
divine life, or from doing anything which
might react hurtfully upon nature and the
welfare of his people. The man-god is
guarded by the strictest rules, and sur
rounded by precautions of the utmost com
plexity. He may not set his sacred foot on
the ground, because he is a son of heaven ;
he may not eat or drink with his sacred
mouth certain dangerous, impure, or un
holy foods ; he may not have his sacr§4
hair cut, or his sacred nails pared; he
must preserve intact his divine body, and
every part of it—the incarnation of the
community—lest evil come of his impru
dence or his folly.
The Mikado, for example, was and still
is regarded as an incarnation of the sun,
the deity who rules the entire universe,
gods and men included. The greatest care
must therefore be taken both ¿y him and of
him. His whole life, down to its minutest
details, must be so regulated that no act
of his may upset the established order of
nature. Lest he should touch the earth, he
used to be carried wherever he went on
men’s shoulders. He could not expose his
sacred person to the open air, nor eat out
of any but a perfectly new vessel. In every
way his sanctity and his health were
jealously guarded, and he was treated like
a person whose security was important to
the whole course of nature.
Mr. Frazer quotes several similar ex
amples, of which the most striking is that
of the high pontiff of the Zapotecs, an
ancient people of Southern Mexico. He
profaned his sanctity if he touched the
common ground with his holy foot. The
officers who bore his palanquin on their
shoulders were chosen from the members
of the highest families ; he hardly deigned
to look on anything around him ; those
who met him prostrated themselves humbly
on the ground, lest death should overtake
them if they even saw his divine shadow.
A rule of continence was ordinarily im
posed upon him ; but on certain days in the
year which were high festivals, it was usual
for him to get ceremonially and sacramen
tally drunk. On such days, .we may be
sure, the high gods peculiarly entered into
him with the intoxicating pulque, and the
ancestral spirits reinforced his godhead.
While in this exalted state (“full of the
god,” as a Greek or Roman would have
said) the divine pontiff received a visit from
one of the most beautiful of the virgins
�HUMAN GODS
consecrated to the service of the gods. If
the child she bore him was a son, it suc
ceeded in due time to the throne of the
Zapotecs. We have here again an instruc
tive mixture of the various ideas out of
which such divine kingship and godship is
constructed.
It might seem at first sight a paradoxical
corollary that people who thus safeguard
and protect their divine king, the embodi
ment of nature, should also habitually and
ceremonially kill him. Yet the apparent
paradox is, from the point of view of the
early worshipper, both natural and reason
able. We read of the Congo negroes that
they have a supreme pontiff whom they
regard as a god upon earth, and all-power
ful in heaven. But, “if he were to die a
natural death, they thought the world would
perish, and the earth, which he alone sus
tained by his power and merit, would
immediately be annihilated.” This idea of
a god as the creator and supporter of all
things, without whom nothing would be, is
of course a familiar component element of
the most advanced theology. But many
nations which worship human gods carry
out the notion to its logical conclusion in
the most rigorous manner. Since the god
is a man, it would obviously be quite wrong
to let him grow old and weak ; since there
by the whole course of nature might be
permanently enfeebled; rain would but
dribble; crops would grow thin; rivers
would trickle away ; and the race he ruled
would dwindle to nothing. Hence senility
must never overcome the sacred man-god ;
he must be killed in the fulness of his
strength and health (say, about his thirtieth
year), so that the indwelling spirit, yet
young and fresh, may migrate unimpaired
into the body of some newer and abler
representative. Mr. Frazer was the first, I
believe, to point out this curious result of
primitive human reasoning, and to illustrate
it by numerous and conclusive instances.
For this reason, then, when the pontiff of
Congo grew old, and seemed likely to die,
the man who was destined to succeedhim in
the pontificate entered his house with a
rope or club, and strangled or felled him.
The Ethiopian kings of Meroe were wor
shipped as gods; but when the priests
thought fit, they sent a messenger to the
king, ordering him to die, and alleging an
oracle of the gods (or earlier kings) as the
reason of their command. This command
the kings always obeyed down to the reign
of Ergamenes, a contemporary of Ptolemy
II. of Egypt. So, when the king of Unyoro
89
in Central Africa falls ill, or begins to show
signs of approaching age, one of his own
wives is compelled by custom to kill him.
The kings of Sofala were regarded by their
people as gods who could give rain or sun
shine ; but the slightest bodily blemish,
such as the loss of a tooth, was considered
a sufficient reason for putting one of these
powerful man-gods to death; he must be
whole and sound, lest all nature pay for it.
Many kings, human gods, divine priests, or
sultans are enumerated by Mr. Frazer, each
of whom must be similarly perfect in every
limb and member. The same perfect man
hood is still exacted of the Christian Pope,
who, however, is not put to death in case
of extreme age or feebleness. But there
is reason to believe that the Grand Lama,
the divine Pope of the Tibetan Buddhists,
is killed from time to time, so as to keep
him “ ever fresh and ever young,” and to
allow the inherent deity within him to
escape full-blooded into another embodi
ment.
In all these cases the divine king or priest
is suffered by his people to retain office, or
rather to house the godhead, till by some
outward defect, or some visible warning of
age or illness, he shows them that he is no
longer equal to the proper performance of
his divine functions. Until such symptoms
appear, he is not put to death. Some
peoples, however, as Mr. Frazer shows, have
not thought it safe to wait for even the
slightest symptom of decay before killing
the human god or king; they have destroyed
him in the plenitude of his life and vigour.
In such cases the people fix a term beyond
which the king may not reign, and at the
close of which he must die, the term being
short enough to prevent the probability of
degeneration meanwhile. In some parts
of Southern India, for example, the term
was fixed at twelve years ; at the expiration
of that time the king had to cut himself to
pieces visibly, before the great local idol,
of which he was in all probability the
human equivalent. The king of Calicut,
on the Malabar coast, had to cut his throat
in public after a twelve years’ reign. But
towards the end of the seventeenth century
the rule was so far relaxed that the king
was allowed to retain the throne, and prob
ably the godship, if he could protect him
self against all comers. As long as he was
strong enough to guard his position, it was
held that he was strong enough to retain
the divine power unharmed. The King of
the Wood at Aricia held his priesthood and
ghostly kingship on the same condition.
�90
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
More often still, however, the divine
priesthood, kingship, or godhead was held
for one year alone, for a reason which we
shall more fully comprehend after we have
considered the annual gods of cultivation.
The most interesting example, and the most
cognate to our present inquiry, is that of
the Babylonian custom cited by Berosus.
During the five days of the festival called
the Sacaea, a prisoner condemned to death
was dressed in the king’s robes, seated on
the king’s throne, allowed to eat, drink, and
order whatever he chose, and even permit
ted to sleep with the king’s concubines.
But at the end of five days he was stripped
of his royal insignia, scourged, and crucified.
I need hardly point out the crucial impor
tance of this singular instance, occurring
in a country within the Semitic circle. Mr.
Frazer rightly concludes that the condemned
man was meant to die in the king’s stead ;
was himself, in point of fact, a king substi
tute ; and was therefore invested for the
time being with the fullest prerogatives of
royalty. Doubtless we have here to deal
with a modification of an older and sterner
rule, which compelled the king himself to
be slain annually. “ When the time drew
near for the king to be put to death,” says
Mr. Frazer, “he abdicated for a few days,
during which a temporary king reigned
and suffered in his stead. At first the
temporary king may have been an innocent
person, possibly a member of the king’s
own family; but, with the growth of
civilisation, the sacrifice of an innocent
person would be revolting to the public
sentiment, and accordingly a condemned
criminal would be invested with the brief
and fatal sovereignty........We shall find
other examples of a criminal representing
a dying god. For we must not forget that
the king is slain in his character of a god ;
his death and resurrection, as the only
means of perpetuating the divine life
unimpaired, being deemed necessary for
the salvation of his people and the world.”
I need not point out the importance of such
ideas as assisting in the formation of a
groundwork for the doctrines of Chris
tianity.
The annual character of some such
sacrifices seems to be derived from the
analogy of the annually-slain gods of
cultivation, whose origin and meaning we
have yet to examine. These gods, being
intimately connected with each year’s crop,
especially with crops of cereals, pulses,
and other annual grains, were naturally
put to death at the beginning of each
agricultural year, and as a rule about the
period of the spring equinox—say at
Easter. Starting from that analogy, as I
believe, many races thought it fit that the
other divine person, the man-god king,
should also be put to death annually, often
about the same period. And I will even
venture to suggest the possibility that the
institution of annual consuls, archons, etc.,
may have something to do with such
annual sacrifices. Certainly the legends of
Codrus at Athens and of the Regifugium
at Rome seem to point to an anci&üt kingslaying custom.
At any rate, it is now certain that the
putting to death of a public man-god was
a common incident of many religions.
And it is also clear that in many cases
travellers and other observers have made
serious mistakes by not understanding the
inner nature of such god-slaying practices.
For instance, it is now pretty certain that
Captain Cook was killed by the people of
Tahiti just because he was a god, perhaps
in order to keep his spirit among them. It
is likewise clear that many rites, commonly
interpreted as human sacrifices to a god,
are really god-slayings; often the god in
one of his human avatars seems to be
offered to himself, in his more permanent
embodiment as an idol or stone image.
This idea of sacrificing a god, himself to
himself, is one which will frequently meet
us hereafter ; and I need hardly point out
that, as “ the sacrifice of the mass,” it has
even enshrined itself in the central sanc
tuary of the Christian religion.
Christianity apparently took its rise
among a group of irregular northern
Israelites, the Galilaeans, separated from
the mass of their co-religionists, the Jews,
by the intervention of a heretical and
doubtfully Israelitish wedge, the Samari
tans. The earliest believers in Jesus were
thus intermediate between Jews and
Syrians. According to their own tradition,
they were first described by the name of
Christians at Antioch ; and they appear on
many grounds to have attracted attention
first in Syria in general, and particularly at
Damascus. We may be sure, therefore,
that their tenets from the first would
contain many elements more or less dis
tinctly Syrian, and especially such elements
as formed ideas held in common by almost
all the surrounding peoples. As a matter
of fact, Christianity, as we shall see here
after, may be regarded historically as a
magma of the most fundamental religious
ideas of the Mediterranean basin, and
�THE MANUFACTURE OF GODS
especially of the eastern Mediterranean,
grafted on to the J ewish cult and the J ewish
scriptures, and clustering round the person
ality of the man-god, J esus. 11 is interesting,
therefore, to note that in Syria and the north
Semitic area the principal cult was the cult
of just such a slain man-god, Adonis—
originally, as Mr. Frazer shows, an annually
slain man-god, afterwards put to death and
bewailed in effigy, after a fashion of which
we shall see not a few examples in the
sequel, and of which the Mass itself is but
an etherealised survival. Similarly in Phry
gia, where Christianity early made a
considerable impression, the most devoutly
worshipped among the gods was Attis, who,
as Professor Ramsay suggests, was almost
certainly embodied in early times as an
annually slain man-god, and whose cult was
always carried on by means of a divine
king priest, bearing himself the name of
Attis. Though in later days the priest did
not actually immolate himself every year,
yet on the yearly feast of the god, at the
spring equinox (corresponding to the
Christian Easter), he drew blood from his
own arms, as a substitute no doubt for the
earlier practice of self-slaughter. And I
may add in this connection (to anticipate
once more) that in all such god-slaughtering
rites immense importance was always
attached to the blood of the man-god; just as
in Christianity “the blood of Christ” remains
to the end of most saving efficacy. Both
Adonis and Attis were conceived as young
men in the prime of life, like the victims
chosen for other god-slaying rites.
I have dealt in this chapter only in very
brief summary with this vast and interesting
question of human deities. Mr. Frazer has
devoted to it two large and fascinating
volumes. His work is filled with endless
facts as to such man-gods themselves, the
mode of their vicarious or expiatory slaugh
ter on behalf of the community, the gentler
substitution of condemned criminals for the
divine kings in more civilised countries, the
occasional mitigation whereby the divine
king merely draws his own blood instead of
killing himself, or where an effigy is made
to take the place of the actual victim, and
so forth ad infinitum. All these valuable
suggestions and ideas I could not reproduce
here without transcribing in full many pages
of The Golden Bough, where Mr. Frazer has
marshalled the entire evidence on the point
with surprising effectiveness.
9i
CHAPTER XII.
THE MANUFACTURE OF GODS
Normally and originally, I believe, all
gods grow spontaneously. They evolve by
degrees out of dead and deified ancestors or
chieftains. The household gods are the
dead of the family ; the greater gods are
the dead chiefs of the state or town or
village. But upon this earlier and sponta
neous crop of gods there supervenes later
an artificial crop, deliberately manufactured.
The importance of this later artificial class
is so great, especially in connection with
the gods of agriculture, and with the habit
of eating the god’s body as corn and drink
ing his blood as wine, that it becomes
necessary for us here to examine their
nature in due order. We shall find that
some knowledge of them is needed pre
liminary to the comprehension of the
Christian system.
We saw that in West Africa the belief in
another world is so matter-of-fact and
material that a chief who wishes to com
municate with his dead father kills a slave
as a messenger, after first impressing upon
him the nature of the message he will have
to deliver. A Khond desired to be avenged
upon an enemy ; so he cut off the head of
his mother, who cheerfully suggested this
domestic arrangement, in order that her
ghost might haunt and terrify the offender.
Similar plenitude of belief in the actuality
and nearness of the Other World makes
attendants, wives, and even friends of a
dead man, in many countries, volunteer to
kill themselves at his funeral, in order that
they may accompany their lord and master
to the nether realms. All these examples
combine to show us two things : first, that
the other life is very real and close to the
people who behave so ; and, second, that
no great unwillingness habitually exists to
migration from this life to the next, if occa
sion demands it.
Starting with such ideas, it is not surpris
ing that many races should have delibe
rately made for themselves gods by killing
a man, and especially a man of divine or
kingly blood, the embodiment of a god, in
order that his spirit might perform some
specific divine function. Nor is it even
remarkable that the victim selected for
such a purpose should voluntarily submit
to death, often preceded by violent torture,
so as to attain in the end to a position of
�92
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
trust and importance as a tutelary deity.
We have only to remember the ease with
which Mohammedan fanatics will face
death, expecting to enjoy the pleasures of
Paradise, or the fervour with which Chris
tian believers used to embrace the crown of
martyrdom, in order to convince ourselves
of the reality and profundity of such a
sentiment. The further back we go in
time or culture, the stronger does the
sentiment in question become ; it is only
the civilised and sceptical thinker who
hesitates to exchange the solid comforts of
this world for the shadowy and uncertain
delights of the next
The existence of such artificially-manu
factured gods has been more or less recog
nised for some time past, and attention has
been called to one or other class of them
by Mi. Baring Gould and Mr. J. G. Frazer;
but 1 believe the present work will be the
first in which their profound importance
and their place in the genesis of the higher
religions have been fully pointed out in
systematic detail.
The best known instances of such delibe
rate god-making are those which refer to
the foundation of cities, city walls, and
houses. In such cases, a human victim is
often sacrificed in order that his blood may
be used as cement, and his soul be built in
to the very stones of the fabric. Thereafter
he becomes the tutelary deity or “fortune”
of the house or city. In many cases, the
victim offers himself voluntarily for the pur
pose ; frequently he is of kingly or divine
ancestry. In Polynesia, where we usually
stand nearest to the very core of religion,
Ellis heard that the central pillar of the
temple at Mseva was planted upon the body
of a human victim. Among the Dyaks of
Borneo a slave girl was crushed to death
under the first post of a house. In October,
1881, the king of Ashanti put fifty girls to
death that their blood might be mixed with
the mud used in the repair of the royal
buildings. Even in Japan, a couple of
centuries since, when a great wall was to be
built, “ some wretched slave would offer
himself as a foundation.” Observe in this
instance the important fact that the immo
lation was purely voluntary. Mr. Tylor, it
is true, treats most of these cases as though
the victim were intended to appease the
earth-demons, which is the natural inter
pretation for the elder school of thinkers to
put upon such ceremonies ; but those who
have read Mr. Frazer and Mr. Baring Gould
will know that the offering is really a piece
of deliberate god-making. Many of the
original witnesses, indeed, correctly report
this intention on the part of the perpetra
tors ; thus Mason was told by an eye
witness that at the building of the new city
of Tavoy in Tennasserim “ a criminal was
put in each post-hole to become a protect
ing demon,” or rather deity. So in Siam,
when a new city gate was being erected,
says Mr. Speth, officers seized the first four
or eight people who passed, and buried
them under it “ as guardian angels.” And
in Roumania a stahic is defined as “ the
ghost of a person who haa been immured
in the walls of a building in order to make
it more solid.” The Irish Banshee is doubt
less of similar origin.
Other curious examples are reported from
Africa, and human victims are said to have
been buried “ for spirit-watchers ” under the
gates of Mandelay. So, too, according to
legend, here a tolerably safe guide, a queen
was drowned in a Burmese reservoir, to
make the dyke safe ; while the choice for
such a purpose of a royal victim shows
clearly the desirability of divine blood being
present in the body of the future deity.
When Rajah Sala Byne was building the
fort of Sialkot in the Punjaub, the founda
tion gave way so often that he consulted a
soothsayer. The soothsayer advised that
the blood of an only son should be shed on
the spot; and the only son of a widow was
accordingly killed there. I may add that
the blood of “ an only-begotten son ” has
always been held to possess peculiar effi
cacy.
In Europe itself not a few traces survive
of such foundation-gods, or spirits of towns,
town-walls, and houses. The Picts are said
to have bathed their foundation-stones in
human blood. St. Columba himself, though
nominally a Christian, did not scruple thus
to secure the safety of his monastery.
“ Columbkille said to his people, ‘ It would
he well for us that our roots should pass
into the earth here.’ And he said to them,
‘ It is permitted to you that some one of
you go under the earth to consecrate it.’ ”
St. Oran volunteered to accept the task,
and was ever after honoured as the patron
saint of the monastery. Here again it may
be noted that the offering was voluntary.
As late as 1463, when the broken dam of
the Nogat had to be repaired, the peasants,
being advised to throw in a living man, are
said to have made a beggar drunk (in
which state he would of course be “full of
the god”) and utilised him for the purpose.
In 1885, on the restoration of Holsworthy
church in Devon, a skeleton with a mass
�THE MANUFACTURE OF GODS
of mortar plastered over the mouth was
found imbedded in an angle of the
building. To make the castle of Liebenstein fast and impregnable, a child was
bought for hard money of its mother, and
walled into the building. Again, when the
church at Blex in Oldenburg was being
built, the authorities of the village crossed
the Weser, “ bought a child from a poor
mother at Bremerleke, and built it alive
into the foundations.” We shall see here
after that “ to be brought with a price ” is
a variant, as it were, on the voluntary
offering; great stress is often laid, when a
victim is offered, on this particular fact,
which is held to absolve the perpetrators
from the crime of god murder. So, we
shall see in the sequel, the divine animal
victim, which is the god offered to himself,
his animal embodiment to his image or
altar, must always consent to its own
sacrifice ; if it refuse or show the slightest
disinclination, it is no good victim. Legend
says that the child in the case of the
Liebenstein offering was beguiled with a
cake, probably so as to make it a con
senting party, and was slowly walled up
before the eyes of the mother. All these
details are full of incidental instructiveness
and importance.
As late as 1865,
according to Mr. Speth, some Christian
labourers, working at a block-house at
Duga, near Scutari, found two young
Christian children in the hands of Moham
medan Arnauts, who were trying to bury
them alive under the block-house.
It is about city walls that we oftenest
read such legendary stories. Thus the
wall of Copenhagen sank as fast as it was
built ; so they took an innocent little girl,
and set her at a table with toys and
eatables. Then, while she played and
eat, twelve master masons closed a vault
over her. In Italy the bridge of Arta fell
in, time after time, till they walled in the
master builder’s wife ; the last point being
a significant detail, whose meaning will
come out still more clearly in the sequel.
At Scutari in Servia, once more, the fortress
could only be satisfactorily built after a
human victim was walled into it; so the
three brothers who wrought at it decided
to offer up the first of their wives who
came to the place to bring them food.
(Compare the case of Jephtha’s daughter,
where the first living thing met by chance
is to be sacrificed to Jahweh.) So, too, in
Welsh legend, Vortigern could not finish
his tower till the foundation-stone was
wetted with “ the blood of a child born of
$3
a mother without a father ”—this episode
of the virgin-born infant being a common
element in the generation of man-gods, as
Mr. Sidney Hartland has abundantly
proved for us.
In one case cited above we saw a miti
gation of the primitive custom, in that a
criminal was substituted for a person of
royal blood or divine origin—a form of
substitution of which Mr. Frazer has
supplied abundant examples in other con
nections.
Still further mitigations are
those of building-in a person who has
committed sacrilege or broken some reli
gious vow of chastity. In the museum at
Algiers is a plaster cast of the mould left
by the body of one Geronimo, a Moorish
Christian (and therefore a recusant of
Islam), who was built into a block of
concrete in the angle of the fort in the
sixteenth century. Faithless nuns were so
immured in Europe during the middle
ages; and Mr. Rider Haggard’s statement
that he saw in the museum at Mexico
bodies similarly immured by the Inquisition
has roused so much Catholic wrath and
denial that one can hardly have any hesi
tation in accepting its substantial accuracy.
But in other cases the substitution has
gone further still ; instead of criminals,
recusants, or heretics, we get an animal
victim in place of the human one. Mr.
St. John saw a chicken sacrificed for a slave
girl at a building among the Dyaks of
Borneo. A lamb was walled-in under the
altar of a church in Denmark, to make it
stand fast; or the churchyard was han
selled by burying first a live horse—an
obvious parallel to the case of St. Oran.
When the parish church of Chumleigh in
Devonshire was taken down a few years
ago, in a wall of the fifteenth century was
found a carved figure of Christ, crucified
to a vine—a form of substitution to which
we shall find several equivalents later. In
modern Greece, says Dr. Tylor, to whom
I owe many of these instances, a relic of
the idea survives in the belief that the first
passer-by after a foundation-stone is laid
will die within the year; so the masons
compromise the matter by killing a cock
or a black lamb on the foundation-stone.
This animal then becomes the spirit of
the building.
We shall see reason to suspect, as we
proceed, that every slaughtered victim in
every rite was at first a divine-human
being ; and that animal victims are always
substitutes, though supposed to be equally
divine with the man-god they personate.
�94
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
I will ask the reader to look out for such
cases as we proceed, and also to notice,
even when I do not call attention to them,
the destination of the oracular head, and
the frequent accompaniment of “ clanging
music.”
Elsewhere we find other customs which
help to explain these curious survivals.
The shadow is often identified with the
soul; and in Roumania, when a new build
ing is to be erected, the masons endeavour
to catch the shadow of a passing stranger,
and then lay the foundation-stone upon it.
Or the stranger is enticed by stealth to
the stone, when the mason secretly
measures his body or his shadow, and
buries the measure thus taken under the
foundation. Here we have a survival of
the idea that the victim must at least be
not unwilling. It is believed that the
person thus measured will languish and
die within forty days ; and we may be sure
that originally the belief ran that his soul
became the god or guardian spirit of the
edifice. If the Bulgarians cannot get a
human shadow to wall in, they content
themselves with the shadow of the first
animal that passes by. Here again we get
that form of divine chance in the pointing
out of a victim which is seen in the case of
Jephtha’s daughter. Still milder substitu
tions occur in the empty coffin walled into
a church in Germany, or the rude images
of babies in swaddling-clothes similarly
immured in Holland. The last trace of
the custom is found in England in the
modern practice of putting coins and
newspapers under the foundation-stone.
Here it would seem as if the victim were
regarded as a sacrifice to the Earth (a late
and derivative idea), and the coins were
a money payment in lieu of the human
or animal offering. I owe many of the
cases here instanced to the careful re
search of my friend Mr. Clodd. But
since this chapter was written all other
treatises on the subject have been super
seded by Mr. Speth’s exhaustive and
scholarly pamphlet on “ Builders’ Rites
and Ceremonies,” a few examples from
which I have intercalated in my argument.
Other implications must be briefly
treated. The best ghost or god for this
purpose seems to be a divine or kingly
person; and in stages when the meaning
of the practice is still quite clear to the
builders, the dearly-beloved -son or wife of
the king is often selected for the honour of
tutelary godship. Later this notion passes
into the sacrifice of the child or wife of the
master mason ; many legends or traditions
contain this more recent element. In
Vortigern’s case, however, the child is
clearly a divine being, as we shall see to
be true a little later on in certain Semitic
instances. To the last, the connection of
children with such sacrifices is most
marked; thus, when in 1813 the ice on the
Elbe broke down one of the dams, an old
peasant sneered at the efforts of the
Government engineer, saying to him,
“ You will never get the dyke to hold un
less you first sink an irinbcent child under
the foundations.” Here the very epithet
“ innocent” in itself reveals some last echo
of godship. So too, in 1843, when a new
bridge was to be built at Halle in Germany,
the people told the architects that the pier
would not stand unless a living child was
immured under the foundations. Schrader
says that, when the great railway bridge
over the Ganges was begun, every mother
in Bengal trembled for her infant. The
Slavonic chiefs who founded Detinez “sent
out men to catch the first boy they met and
bury him in the foundation.” Here once
more we have the sacred-chance victim.
Briefly I would say there seems to be a
preference in all such cases for children,
and especially for girls ; of kingly stock, if
possible, but at least a near relation of the
master builder.
Mr. Speth points out that horses’ heads
were frequently fastened on churches or
other buildings, and suggests that they
belong to animal foundation-victims. This
use of the skull is in strict accordance with
its usual oracular destination.
Some notable historical or mythical tales
of town and village gods, deliberately
manufactured, may now be considered.
We read in First Kings that when Hiel the
Bethelite built Jericho “he laid the foun
dation thereof in Abiram his first-born, and
set up the gates thereof in his youngest
Segub.” Here we see evidently a princely
master builder sacrificing his own two sons
as guardian gods of his new city. Abun
dant traces exist of such deliberate pro
duction of a Fortune for a town. And it is
also probable that the original sacrifice was
repeated annually, as if to keep up the con
stant stream of divine life, somewhat after
the fashion of the human gods we had to
consider in the last chapter. Dido appears
to have been the Fortune or foundation
goddess of Carthage ; she is represented
in the legend as the foundress-queen, and
is said to have lept into her divine pyre
from the walls of her palace. But the
�THE MANUFACTURE OF GODS
annual human sacrifice appears to have
been performed at the same place ; for “ it
can hardly be doubted,” says Professor
Robertson Smith, “ that the spot at which
legend placed the self-sacrifice of Dido to
her husband Sicharbas was that at which
the later Carthaginian human sacrifices
were performed.” At Laodicea, again, an
annual sacrifice took place of a deer, in lieu
of a maiden ; and this sacrifice, we are
expressly told, was offered to the goddess
of the city. Legend said that the goddess
was a maiden, who had been similarly
sacrificed to consecrate the foundation of
the town, and was thenceforth worshipped
as its Fortune, like Dido at Carthage; “it
was therefore the death of the goddess her
self,” says Professor Robertson Smith, “ that
was annually renewed in the piacular rite.”
(I do not admit the justice of the epithet
“piacular.”) Again, Malalas tells us that
the 22nd of May was kept at Antioch as the
anniversary of a maiden sacrificed at the
foundation of the city, and worshipped
thereafter as the Tyche, or luck, of the
town. At Duma in Arabia an annual
victim was similarly buried under the stone
which formed the altar.
In most of the legends, as they come
down to us from civilised and lettered
antiquity, the true nature of this sanguinary
foundation-rite is over-laid and disguised
by later rationalising guesses ; and I may
mention that Dr. Robertson Smith in par
ticular habitually treats the rationalising
guesses as primitive, and the real old
tradition of the slaughtered virgin as a myth
of explanation of “ the later Euhemeristic
Syrians.” But, after the examples we have
already seen of foundation-gods, I think it
can hardly be doubted that this is to
reverse the true order; that a girl was
really sacrificed for a tutelary deity when a
town was founded, and that the substitution
of an animal victim at the annual renewal
was a later refinement. Mr. Speth quotes
a case in point of a popular tradition that a
young girl had been built into the castle of
Nieder-Manderschied ; and when the wall
was opened in 1844 the Euhemeristic work
men found a cavity enclosing a human
skeleton. I would suggest, again, that in
the original legend of the foundation of
Rome, Romulus was represented as having
built-in his brother Remus as a Fortune, or
god, of the city, and that to this identifica
tion of Remus with the city we ought to
trace such phrases as turba Remi for the
Roman people. The word forum, in its
primitive signification, means the empty
95
space left before a tomb—the Ilan or
Hence I would suggest that the
Roman Forum and other Latin fora were
really the tomb-enclosures of the original
foundation-victims.1 So, too, the English
village-green and “ play-field ” are probably
the space dedicated to the tribal or village
god—a slain man-god ; and they are usually
connected with the sacred stone and sacred
tree. I trust this point will become clearer
as we proceed, and develop the whole
theory of the foundation god or goddess,
the allied sacred stone and the tree or trunk
memorial.
For, if I am right, the entire primitive
ritual of the foundation of a village con
sisted in killing or burying alive or building
into the wall a human victim, as town or
village god, and raising a stone and plant
ing a tree close by to commemorate him.
At these two monuments the village rites
were thereafter performed. The stone and
tree are thus found in their usual conjunc
tion ; both coexist in the Indian village to
the present day, as in the Siberian wood
land or the Slavonic forest. Thus, at Rome,
we have not only the legend of the death of
Remus, a prince of the blood-royal of Alba
Longa, intimately connected with the build
ing of the wall of Roma Quadrata, but we
have also the sacred fig-tree of Romulus in
the Forum, which was regarded as the em
bodiment of the city life of the combined
Rome, so that, when it showed signs of
withering, consternation spread through
the city ; and hard by we have the sacred
stone or Palladium, guarded by the sacred
Vestal Virgins who kept the city hearth
fire, and still more closely bound up with
the fortune of that secondary Rome which
had its home in the Forum. Are not these
three the triple form of the foundation-god
of that united Capitoline and Palatine
Rome ? And may not the sacred cornel on
the Palatine, again, have been similarly
the holy foundation-tree of that older Roma
Quadrata which is more particularly asso
ciated with the name of Romulus ? Of this
tree Plutarch tells us that, when it appeared
to a passer-by to be drooping, he set up a
hue and cry, which was soon responded to
by people on all sides rushing up with
buckets of water to pour upon it, as if they
were hastening to put out a fire. Clearly,
here again we have to deal with an em
bodied Fortune.
temenos.
1 In the case of Rome, the Forum would re
present the grave of the later foundation-god of
the compound Latin and Sabine city.
�96
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
We do not often get all three of these
Fortunes combined—the human victim, the
stone, and the tree, with the annual offer
ing which renews its sanctity. But we find
traces so often of one or other of the trio
that we are justified, I think, in connecting
them together as parts of a whole, whereof
here one element survives, and there
another. “Among all primitive communi
ties,” says Mr. Gomme, “ when a village
was first established, a stone was set up.
To this stone the headman of the village
made an offering once a year.” To the
present day London preserves her founda
tion-god in the shape of London Stone,
now enclosed in a railing or iron grill just
opposite Cannon - street Station. Now,
London Stone was for ages considered as
the representative and embodiment of the
entire community. Proclamations and other
important State businesses were announced
from its top; and the defendant in trials in
the Lord Mayor’s court was summoned to
attend from London Stone, as though the
stone itself spoke to the wrong-doer with
the united voice of the assembled citizens.
The first Lord Mayor, indeed, was Henry
de Lundonstone—no doubt, as Mr. Loftie
suggests, the hereditary keeper of this
urban fetish ; in short, the representative
of the village headman. I have written at
greater length on the implications of this
interesting relic in an article on London
Stone in Longman's Magazine, to which I
would refer the reader for further informa
tion. I will only add here the curious epi
sode of Jack Cade, who, when he forced
his way, under his assumed name of Morti
mer, into the city in 1450, first of all pro
ceeded to this sacred relic, the embodiment
or palladium of ancient London, and, having
struck it with his sword, exclaimed, “Now is
Mortimer lord of this city.”
A similar sacred stone exists to this day
at Bovey Tracey in Devon, of which Ormerod tells us that the mayor of Bovey used
to ride round it on the first day of his
tenure of office, and strike it with a stick—
which further explains Jack Cade’s-pro
ceeding. According to the Totnes Times
of May 13th, 1882, the young men of the
town were compelled on the same day to
kiss the magic stone and pledge allegiance
in upholding the ancient rites and privi
leges of Bovey. (I owe these details to
Mr. Lawrence Gomme’s Village Commu
nity.') I do not think we can dissociate
from these two cases the other sacred
stones of Britain, such as the King’s Stone
at Kingston in Surrey, where several of the
West Saxon kings were crowned ; nor the
Scone Stone in the coronation-chair at
Westminster Abbey; nor the Stone of
Clackmannan, and the sacred stones
already mentioned in a previous chapter
on which the heads of clans or of Irish septs
succeeded to the chieftainship of their re
spective families. These may in part have
been ancestral and sepulchral monuments;
but it is probable that they also partook in
part of this artificia^and factitious sanctity.
Certainly in some cases that sanctity was
renewed by an animal sacrifice.
With these fairly obvious instances I
would also connect certain other statements
which seem to me to have been hitherto
misinterpreted. Thus Mesha, king of
Moab, when he is close beleaguered, burns
his son as a holocaust on the wall of the
city. Is not this an offering to protect the
wall by the deliberate manufacture of an
additional deity? For straightway the be
siegers seem to feel they are overpowered,
and the siege is raised. Observe here once
more that it is the king’s own dearly-beloved
son who is chosen as victim. Again, at
Amathus, human sacrifices were offeied
to Jupiter Hospes “ before the gates ”; and
this Jupiter Hospes, as Ovid calls him, is
the Amathusian Herakles or Malika, whose
name, preserved for us by Hesychius,
identifies him at once as a local deity
similar to the Tyrian Melcarth. Was not
this again, therefore, the Fortune of the
city? At Tyre itself the sepulchre of
Herakles Melcarth was shown, where he
was said to have been cremated. For
among cremating peoples it was natural to
burn, not slaughter, the yearly god-victim.
At Tarsus, once more, there was an annual
feast, at which a very fair pyre was erected,
and the local Herakles or Baal was burned
on it in effigy. We cannot doubt, I think,
that this was a mitigation of an earlier
human holocaust. Indeed, Dr. Robertson
Smith says of this instance : “ This annual
commemoration of the death of the god in
fire must have its origin in an older rite, in
which the victim was not a mere effigy,
but a theanthropic sacrifice—i.e., an actual
man or sacred animal, whose life, according
to the antique conception now familiar to
us, was an embodiment of the divine-human
life.” This is very near my own view on
the subject.
From these instances we may proceed, I
think, to a more curious set, whose implica
tions seem to me to have been even more
grievously mistaken by later interpreters.
I mean the case of children of kings or of
�THE MANUFACTURE OF GODS
ruling families, sacrificed in time of war or
peril as additional or auxiliary deities.
Thus Philo of Byblos says : “ It was an
ancient custom in a crisis of great danger
that the ruler of a city or nation should
give his beloved son to die for the whole
people, as a ransom offered to the avenging
demons ; and the children thus offered
were slain with mystic rites. So Cronus,
whom the Phoenicians call Israel, being
king of the land, and having an onlybegotten son called Jeoud (for in the
Phoenician tongue Jeoud signifies onlybegotten), dressed him in royal robes and
sacrificed him upon an altar in a time of war,
when the country was in great danger from
the enemy.” I do not think Philo is right
in his gloss or guess about the avenging
demons”; but otherwise his story is inte
resting evidence. It helps us more or less
directly to connect the common Phoenician
and Hebrew child-sacrifices with this
deliberate manufacture of artificial gods.
I do not doubt, indeed, that the children
were partly sacrificed to pre-existent and
well-defined great gods; but I believe also
that the practice first arose as one of
deliberate manufacture of gods, and
retained to the end many traces of its
origin.
We know that in times of national
calamity the Phoenicians used thus to
sacrifice their dearest to Baal. Phoenician
history, we know from Porphyry, is full of
such sacrifices. When the Carthaginians
were defeated and besieged by Agathocles,
they ascribed their disasters to the anger
of the god ; for whereas in former times
they used to sacrifice to him their own
children, they had latterly fallen (as we
shall see hereafter the Khonds did) into
the habit of buying children and rearing
them as victims. So two hundred young
people of the noblest families were picked
out for sacrifice ; and these were accom
panied by no less than three hundred
more, who volunteered to die for the
fatherland. They were sacrificed by being
placed, one by one, on the sloping hands
of the brazen image, from which they
rolled into a pit of fire. So too at
Jerusalem, in moments of great danger,
children were sacrificed to some Molech,
whether Jahweh or another, by being
placed in the fiery arms of the image at
the Tophet/ I will admit that in these last
cases we approach very near to the mere
piacular human sacrifice ; but we shall see,
when we come to deal with gods of
cultivation and the doctrine of the atone
97
ment, that it is difficult to draw a line
between the two ; while the fact that a
dearly-beloved or only-begotten son is the
victim—especially the son of a king of
divine blood—links such cases on directly
to the more obvious instances of deliberate
god-making. Some such voluntary sacrifice
seems to me to be commemorated in the
beautiful imagery of the 53rd of Isaiah.
But there the language is distinctly
piacular.
I have dwelt here mainly on that
particular form of artificial god-making
which is concerned with the foundation of
houses, villages, cities, walls, and fortresses,
because this is the commonest and most
striking case, outside agriculture, and
because it is specially connected with the
world-wide institution of the village or city
god. But other types occur in abundance ;
and to them a few lines must now be
devoted.
When a ship was launched, it was a
common practice to provide her with a
guardian spirit or god by making her roll
over the body of a human victim. The
Norwegian vikings used to “redden their
rollers ” with human blood. That is to say,
when a warship was launched, human
victims were lashed to the round logs over
which the galley was run down to the sea,
so that the stem was sprinkled with their
spurting blood. Thus the victim was in
corporated, as it were, in the very planks
of the vessel. Captain Cook found the
South Sea Islanders similarly christening
their war-canoes with blood. In 1784, says
Mr. William Simpson, at the launching of
one of the Bey of Tripoli’s cruisers, “ a
black slave was led forward and fastened
at the prow of the vessel to influence a
happy reception in the ocean.” And Mr.
Speth quotes a newspaper account of the
sacrifice of a sheep when the first caique
for “ Constantinople at Olympia ” was
launched in the Bosphorus. In many
other cases it is noted that a victim, human
or animal, is slaughtered at the launching
of a ship. Our own ceremony of breaking
a bottle of wine over the bows is the last
relic of this barbarous practice. Here as
elsewhere red wine does duty for blood, in
virtue of its colour. I do not doubt that
the images of gods in the bow of a ship
were originally idols in which the spirits
thus liberated might dwell, and that it was
to them the sailors prayed for assistance in
storm or peril. The god was bound up in
the very fabric of the vessel. The modern
figure-head still represents these gods;
H
�98
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
figure-heads essentially similar to the
domestic idols occur in New Zealand and
Polynesian war-canoes. The canoes of the
Solomon Islanders, for example, “ often
have as figure-head a carved representation
of the upper half of a man, who holds in
his hands a human head.” This head,
known as the “ canoe-god ” or “ charm,”
“ represents the life taken when the canoe
was first used.” A canoe of importance
“ required a life for its inauguration,” says
Dr. Codrington.
Another curious instance is to be found
in the customs and beliefs regarding river
gods. Rivers, I have suggested, are often
divine because they spring near or are con
nected with the grave of a hero. But often
their divinity has been deliberately given
them, and is annually renewed by a god
making sacrifice: just as at the Jewish
Passover an annual animal-victim was
slain, and his blood smeared on the lintels,
as a renewal of the foundation sacrifice.
The best instance I have found of this
curious custom is one cited by Mr. Gomme
from Major Ellis. Along the banks of the
Prah in West Africa there are many deities,
all bearing the common name of Prah, and
all regarded as spirits of the river. At each
town or considerable village along the
stream a sacrifice is held on a day about
the middle of October. The usual sacrifice
was two human adults, one male and one
female. The inhabitants of each village
believe in a separate spirit of the Prah, who
resides in some part of the river close to
their own hamlet. Everywhere along the
river the priests of these gods officiate in
groups of three, two male and one female—
an arrangement which is peculiar to the
river gods. Here, unless I mistake, we
have an obvious case of deliberate god
making.
This savage instance, and others like it,
which space precludes me from detailing,
suggest the conclusion that many river gods
are of artificial origin. The Wohhanda in
Esthonia received offerings of little children,
whom we may fairly compare with the
children immured in buildings or offered to
the Molech. Many other rivers sponta
neously take their victim annually ■ thus the
Devonshire rhyme goes—■
River of Dart, river of Dart,
Every year thou claimest a heart.
The Spey also takes one life each year, and
so do several British rivers elsewhere.
Originally, no doubt, the victim was delibe
rately chosen and slain annually; but
later on, as a mitigation of the custom, the
river itself seems to have selected its own
spirit by divine chance, such as we have
already seen in action more than once in
the earlier cases. In other words, if a
passer-by happened to be accidentally
drowned, he was accepted in place of a
deliberate victim.1 Hence the danger of
rescuing a man from drowning ; you inter
fere with the course of divine selection, and
you will pay for it yourself by being the
next victim. “ When, in the Solomon
Islands, a man accidentally falls into a
river, and a shark attacks him, he is not
allowed to escape. If he succeeds in eluding
the shark, his fellow-tribesmen throw him
back to his doom, believing him to be
marked out for sacrifice to the god of the
river.” Similarly, in Britain itself, the Lan
cashire Ribble has a water-spirit called Peg
o’ Nell, represented by a stone image, now
headless, which stands at the spring where
the river rises in the grounds of Waddon.
(Compare the Adonis tomb and grove by
the spring at Aphaca.) This Peg o’ Nell
was originally, according to tradition, a girl
of the neighbourhood; but she was done
to death by incantations, and now demands
every seven years that a life should be
quenched in the waters of the Ribble.
When “ Peg’s night ” came round at the
close of the septennate, unless a bird, a cat,
or a dog was drowned in the river, it was
sure to claim its human victim. This name
of Peg is evidently a corruption of some
old local Celtic or pre-Celtic word for a
nymph or water-spirit; for there is another
Peg in the Tees, known as Peg Powler;
and children used there to be warned
against playing on the banks of the stream,
for fear Peg should drag them into the
water. Such traces of a child sacrifice are
extremely significant.
I cannot do more than suggest here in
passing that we have in these stories and
practices the most probable origin of the
common myth which accounts for the exist
ence of river gods or river nymphs by
some episode of a youth or maiden drowned
there. Arethusa is the example that occurs
to everyone.
I do not deny that in many of these
cases two distinct ideas—the earlier idea
1 Here is an analogue in foundation sacrifices.
A house was being built at Hind Head while
this book was in progress. A workman fell from
a beam and was killed. The other workmen
declared this was Zzz<Zr for the house, and would
ensure its stability.
�THE MANUFACTURE OF GODS
of the victim as future god, and the later
idea of the victim as prey or sacrifice—have
got inextricably mixed up ; but I do think
enough has been said to suggest the
probability that many river-gods _ are
artificially produced, and that this is in
large part the origin of nymphs and
kelpies. Legend, indeed, almost always
represents them so ; it is only our mythologists, with their blind hatred of
Euhemerism, who fail to perceive the
obvious implication. And that even the
accidental victim was often envisaged as a
river-god, after his death, we see clearly
from the Bohemian custom of going to
pray on the river bank where a man has
been drowned, and casting into the river a
loaf of new bread and a pair of wax candles
—obvious offerings to his spirit.
Many other classes of manufactured gods
seem to me to exist, whose existence I
must here pass over almost in silence.
Such are the gods produced at the
beginning of a war, by human or other
sacrifice ; gods intended to aid the warriors
in their coming enterprise by being set
free from fleshly bonds for that very
purpose. Thus, according to Phylarchus,
a human sacrifice was at one time cus
tomary in Greece at the beginning of
hostilities ; and we know that as late as
the age of Themistocles three captives
were thus offered up before the battle of
Salamis. The sacrifice of Iphigenia is a
good legendary case in point, because it is
one of a virgin, a princess, the daughter of
the leader, and therefore a typical release
of a divine or royal spirit. Here, as usual,
later philosophising represents the act as
an expiation for mortal guilt; but we may
be sure the original story contained no
such ethical or piacular element. Among
the early Hebrews the summons to a war
seems similarly to have been made by
sending round pieces of the human victim;
in later Hebrew usage this rite declines
into the sacrifice of a burnt offering;
though we get an intermediate stage when
Saul sends round portions of a slaughtered
ox, as the Levite in Judges had sent round
the severed limbs of his concubine to rouse
the Israelites. In Africa a war is still
opened with a solemn sacrifice, human or
otherwise ; and Mr. H. O. Forbes gives a
graphic account of the similar ceremony
which precedes an expedition in the island
of Timor.
In conclusion, I will only say that a
great many other obscure rites or doubtful
legends seem to me explicable by similar
99
deliberate exercises of god-making. How
common such sacrifice was in agricultural
relations we shall see in the sequel; but 1
believe that even in other fields of life
future research will so explain many other
customs. The self-immolation of Codrus,
of Sardanapalus, of P. Decius Mus, as of
so many other kings or heroes or gods or
goddesses ; the divine beings who fling
themselves from cliffs into the sea ; M.
Curtius devoting himself in the gulf in the.
Forum ; the tombs of the lovers whom.
Semiramis buried alive : all these, I takeit, have more or less similar implications.
Even such tales as that of T. Manlius
Torquatus and his son must be assimilated,
I think, to the story of the king of Moab
killing his son on the wall, or to that of the
Carthaginians offering up their children to
the offended deity ; only, in later times, the ■
tale was misinterpreted and used to point
the supposed moral of the stern and
inflexible old Roman discipline.
Frequent reiteration of sacrifices seems
necessary, also, in order to keep up the
sanctity of images and sacred rites—toput, as it were, a new soul into. them.
Thus, rivers needed a fresh river-god every
year; and recently in Ashantee it wasdiscovered that a fetish would no longer
“ work ” unless human victims were
abundantly immolated for it.
This is also perhaps the proper place to
observe that just as the great god Baal has
been resolved by modern scholarship into
many local Baalim, and just as the great
god Adonis has been reduced by recent
research in each case to some particular
Adon or lord out of many, so each such
separate deity, artificially manufactured,
though called by the common name of the
Prah or the Tiber, yet retains to the last
some distinct identity. In fact, the great
gods appear to be rather classes than
individuals. That there were many
Nymphs and many Fauni, many Silvani
and many Martes, has long been known ;
it is beginning to be clear that there were
also many Saturns, many Jupiters, many
Junones, many Vestae. Even in Greece it
is more than probable that the generalised
names of the great gods were given in
later ages to various old sacred stones
and holy sites of diverse origin : the real
object of worship was in each case the
spontaneous or artificial god ; the name
was but a general title applied in common,
perhaps adjectivally, to several such
separate deities. In the Roman pan
theon this principle is now quite well
�IOO
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
established ; in the Semitic it is probable ;
in most others the progress of modern re
search is gradually leading up to it. Even
the elemental gods themselves do not
seem in their first origin to be really singu
lar ; they grow, apparently, from general
ised phrases, like our “ Heaven ” and
“ Providence,” applied at first to the par
ticular deity of whom at the moment the
speaker is thinking. The Zeus or Jupiter
varies with the locality. Thus, when the
Latin praetor, at the outbreak of the Latin
war, defied the Roman Jupiter, we may be
sure it was the actual god there visible
before him at whom he hurled his sacri
legious challenge, not the ideal deity in
the sky above his head. Indeed, we know
that each village and each farm had a
Jovis of its own, regarded as essentially a
god of wine, and specially worshipped at
the wine-feast in April, when the first cask
was broached. This individuality of the
gods is an important point to bear in
mind ; for the tendency of language is
always to treat many similar deities as
practically identical, especially in late and
etherealised forms of religion. And mythologists have made the most of this
syncretic tendency.
A single concrete instance will help to
make this general principle yet clearer.
Boundaries, I believe, were originally put
under the charge of local and artificial
deities, by slaughtering a human victim at
each turning-point in the limits, and erect
ing a sacred stone on the spot where he
died to preserve his memory. Often, too,
in accordance with the common rule, a
sacred tree seems to have been planted
beside the sacred stone monument. Each
such victim became forthwith a boundary
god, a protecting and watching spirit, and
was known thenceforth as a Hermes or a
Terminus. But there were many Hernias
and many Termini, not in Greece and
Italy alone, but throughout the world.
Only much later did a generalised god,
Hermes or Terminus, arise from the union
into a single abstract concept of all these
separate and individual deities. Once
more the boundary god was renewed each
year by a fresh victim. Our own practice
of “ beating the bounds ” appears to be
the last expiring relic of such annual sacri
fices. The bounds are beaten, apparently,
in order to expel all foreign gods or hostile
spirits ; the boys who play a large part in
the ceremony are the representatives of
the human victims. They are whipped at
each terminus stone, partly in order to
make them shed tears as a rain-charm
(after the fashion with which Mr. Frazer
has made us familiar), but partly also
because all artificially-made gods are
scourged or tortured before being put to
death, for some reason which I do not
think we yet fully understand. The
rationalising gloss that the boys are
whipped “ in order to make them re
member the boundaries ” is one of the
usual shallow explanations so glibly offered
by the eighteenth century. The fact that
the ceremony takes place at sacred stones
or “ Gospel oaks ” sufficiently proclaims its
original meaning.
The point of view of the god-slayers
cannot be more graphically put than in the
story which Mr. William Simpson relates of
Sir Richard Burton. Burton, it seems, was
exploring a remote Mohammedan region on
the Indian frontier, and in order to do so
with greater freedom and ease had dis
guised himself as a fakir of Islam. So
great was his knowledge of Muslim devo
tions that the people soon began to enter
tain a great respect for him as a most holy
person. He was congratulating himself
upon the success of his disguise, and look
ing forward to a considerable stay in the
valley, when one night one of the elders of
the village came to him stealthily, and
begged him, if he valued his own safety, to
go away. Burton asked whether the people
did not like him. The elder answered, yes ;
that was the root of the trouble. They had
conceived, in fact, the highest possible
opinion of his exceptional sanctity, and
they thought it would be an excellent thing
for the village to possess the tomb of so
holy a man. So they were casting about
now how they could best kill him. Whether
this particular story is true or not, it at least
exhibits in very vivid colours the state of
mind of the ordinary god-slayer.
CHAPTER XIII.
GODS OF CULTIVATION
By far the most interesting in the curious
group of artificially-made gods are those
which are sacrificed in connection with agri
culture. These deities appeal to us from
several points of view. In the first place,
they form, among agricultural races as a
whole, the most important and venerated
�GODS OF CULTIVATION
objects of worship. In the second place, it
is largely through their influence or on their
analogy, as I believe, that so many other
artificial gods came to be renewed or sacri
ficed annually. In the third place, it is the
gods of agriculture who are most of all
slain sacramentally, whose bodies are eaten
by their votaries in the shape of cakes of
' bread or other foodstuffs, and whose blood
is drunk in the form of wine. The imme
diate connection of these sacramental cere
monies with the sacrifice of the mass, and
the identification of the Christ with bread
and wine, give to this branch of our inquiry
a peculiar importance from the point of view
of the evolution of Christianity. We must,
therefore, enter at some little length into the
genesis of these peculiar and departmental
gods, who stand so directly in the mainline
of evolution of the central divine figure in
the Christian religion.
All over the world, wherever cultivation
exists, a special class of corn-gods or grain
gods is found, deities of the chief foodstuff
—be it maize, or dates, or plantain, or rice
—and it is a common feature of all these
gods that they are represented by human
or quasi-human victims, who are annually
slain at the time of sowing. These human
gods are believed to reappear once more in
the form of the crop that rises from their
sacred bodies; their death and resurrec
tion are celebrated in festivals ; and they
are eaten and drunk sacramentally by their
votaries, in the shape of first-fruits, or of
cakes and wine, or of some other embodi
ment of the divine being. We have, there
fore, to inquire into the origin of this curious
superstition, which involves, as it seems to
me, the very origin of cultivation itself as a
human custom. And I must accordingly
bespeak my readers’ indulgence if I diverge
for a while into what may seem at first a
purely botanical digression.
Most people must have been struck by
the paradox of cultivation. A particular
plant in a state of nature, let us say, grows
and thrives only in water, or in some
exceedingly moist and damp situation.
You take up this waterside plant with a
trowel one day, and transfer it inconti
nently to a dry bed in a sun-baked garden;
when lo! the moisture-loving creature,
instead of withering and dying, as one
might naturally expect of it, begins to grow
apace, and to thrive to all appearance even
better and more lustily than in its native
habitat. Or you remove some parched
desert weed from its arid rock to a moist and
rainy climate ; and instead of dwindling,
IOI
as one imagines it ought to do under the
altered conditions, it spreads abroad in the
deep rich mould of a shrubbery bed, and
attains a stature impossible to its kind
in its original surroundings. Our gardens,
in fact, show us side by side plants which,
in the wild state, demand the most varied
and dissimilar habitats. Siberian squills
blossom amicably in the same bed with
Italian tulips; the alpine saxifrage spreads
its purple rosettes in friendly rivalry with
the bog-loving marsh-marigold or the dry
Spanish iris. The question, therefore,
sooner or later occurs to the inquiring
mind : How can they all live together so
well here in man’s domain, when in the
outside world each demands and exacts so
extremely different and specialised a situa
tion?
Of course it is only an inexperienced
biologist who could long be puzzled by this
apparent paradox. He must soon see the
true solution of the riddle, if he has read
and digested the teachings of Darwin.
For the real fact is, in a garden or out of it,
most of these plants could get on very well
in a great variety of climates or situations
—if only they were protected against out
side competition. There we have the
actual crux of the problem. It is not that
the moisture-loving plants cannot live in
dry situations, but that the dry-loving
plants, specialised and adapted for the
post, can compete with them there at an
immense advantage, and so, in a very short
time, live them down altogether. Every
species in a state of nature is cpntinually
exposed to the ceaseless competition of
every other; and each on its own ground
can beat its competitors. But in a garden,
the very thing we aim at is just to restrict
and prevent competition; to give each
species a fair chance for life, even in condi
tions where other and better-adapted spe
cies can usually outlive it. This, in fact, isreally at bottom all that we ever mean by a
garden—a space of ground cleared, and
kept clear, of its natural vegetation (com
monly called in this connection 'weeds}, and
deliberately stocked with other plants, most
or all of which the weeds would live down
if not artificially prevented.
We see the truth of this point of view the
moment the garden is, as we say, aban
doned^—that is to say, left once more to the
operation of unaided nature. The plants
with which we have stocked it loiter on for
a while in a feeble and uncertain fashion,
but are ultimately choked out by the
stronger and better-adapted weeds which
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THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
compose the natural vegetation of the
locality. The dock and nettle live down
in time the larkspur and the peony. The
essential thing in the garden is, in short,
the clearing of the ground from the weeds
—that is, in other words, from the native
vegetation. A few minor things may or
may not be added, such as manuring, turn
ing the soil, protecting with shelter, and so
forth ; but the clearing is itself the one
thing needful.
Slight as this point seems at first sight, I
believe it includes the whole secret of the
origin of tillage, and therefore, by implica
tion, of the gods of agriculture. For,
looked at in essence, cultivation is weeding,
and weeding is cultivation. When we say
that a certain race cultivates a certain plant-staple, we mean no more in the last resort
than that it sows or sets it in soil artificially
cleared of competing species. Sowing
without clearing is absolutely useless. So
the question of the origin of cultivation
resolves itself at last simply into this—how
did certain men come first to know that by
clearing ground of weeds and keeping it
clear of them they could promote the
growth of certain desirable human food
stuffs ?
To begin with, it may be as well to pre
mise that the problem of the origin of culti
vation is a far more complex one than
appears at first sight. For we have not
only to ask, as might seem to the inquirer
unaccustomed to such investigations, “How
did the early savage first find out that seeds
would grow better when planted in open
soil, already freed from weeds or natural
competitors ?” but also the other and far
more difficult question, “ How did the early
savage ever find out that plants would grow
from seeds at all ?” That, I take it, is the
real riddle of the situation, and it is one
which, so far as I know, has hitherto
escaped all inquirers into the history and
origin of human progress.
Fully to grasp the profound nature of this
difficulty we must throw ourselves back
mentally into the condition and position of
primitive man. We ourselves have known
so long and so familiarly the fact that plants
grow from seeds—that the seed is the
essential reproductive part of the vegetable
organism—that we find it hard to unthink
that piece of commonplace knowledge, and
to realise that what to us is an almost selfevident truth is to the primitive savage a
long and difficult inference. Our own
common and certain acquaintance with the
fact, indeed, is entirely derived from the
practice of agriculture. We have seen
seeds sown from our earliest childhood.
But before agriculture grew up, the con
nection between seed and seedling could
not possibly be known or even suspected
by primitive man. That the seed is the
reproductive part of the plant was a fact as
little likely in itself to strike him as that
the stamens were the male organs, or that
the leaves were the assimilative and diges
tive surfaces. He could only have found
out that plants grew from seeds by the ex
perimental process of sowing and growing
them. Such an experiment he was far from
likely ever to try for its own sake. He
must have been led to it by some other and
accidental coincidence.
Now, what was primitive man likely to
know and observe about the plants around
him ? Primarily one thing only : that some
of them were edible, and some were not.
There you have a distinction of immediate
interest to all humanity. And what parts
of plants were most likely to be useful to
him in this respect as foodstuffs ? Those
parts which the plant had specially filled up
with rich material for its own use or the
use of its offspring. The first are the roots,
stocks, bulbs, corms, or tubers in which it
lays by foodstuffs for its future growth ; the
second are the seeds which it produces and
enriches in order to continue its kind to
succeeding generations.
Primitive man, then, knows the fruits,
seeds, and tubers, just as the squirrel, the
monkey, and the parrot know them, as so
much good foodstuff, suitable to his pur
pose. But why should he ever dream of
saving or preserving some of these fruits or
seeds, when he has found them, and of
burying them in the soil, on the bare offchance that by pure magic, as it were, they
might give rise to others? No idea could
be more foreign to the nature and habits of
early man. In the first place, he is far
from provident; his way is to eat up at
once what he has killed or picked ; and, in
the second place, how could he ever come
to conceive that seeds buried in the ground
could possibly produce more seeds in
future? Nay, even if he did know it—
which is well-nigh impossible—would he
be likely, feckless creature that he is, to
save or spare a handful of seeds to-day in
order that other seeds might spring from
their burial-place in another twelvemonth ?
The savage, when he has killed a deer or a
game-bird, does not bury a part of it or an
egg of it in the ground, in the expectation
that it will grow into more deer or more
�GODS OF CULTIVATION
bird hereafter. Why, then, should he,
when he has picked a peck of fruits or wild
cereals, bury some of them in the ground,
and expect a harvest? Was there ever
any way in which primitive man could have
blundered blindfold upon a knowledge of
the truth, and could have discovered inci
dentally to some other function of his life
the two essential facts that plants grow
from seeds, and that the growth and supply
of useful food-plants can be artificially
increased by burying or sowing such seeds
in ground cleared of weeds—that is to say,
of the natural competing vegetation ?
I believe there is one way, and one way
only, in which primitive man was at all
likely to become familiar with these facts.
I shall try to show that all the operations
of primitive agriculture very forcibly point
to this strange and almost magical origin
of cultivation; that all savage agriculture
retains to the last many traces of its origin;
and that the sowing of the seed itself is
hardly considered so important and essen
tial a part of the complex process as certain
purely superstitious and bloodthirsty prac
tices that long accompany it. In one word,
not to keep the reader in doubt any longer,
I am inclined to believe that cultivation
and the sowing of seeds for crops had their
beginning as an adjunct of the primitive
burial system.
The one set of functions in which primi
tive men do actually perform all the essen
tial acts of agriculture, without in the least
intending it, is the almost universal act of
the burial of the dead. Burial is, so far as
I can see, the only object for which early
races, or low savages, ever turn or dig the
ground. We have seen already that the
original idea of burial was to confine the
ghost or corpse of the dead man by putting
a weight of earth on top of him ; and lest
this should be insufficient to keep him from
troublesome reappearances, a big stone was
frequently rolled above his mound or tumu
lus, which is the origin of all our monu
ments, now diverted to the honour and
commemoration of the deceased. But the
point to which I wish just now to direct
attention is this—that in the act of burial,
and in that act alone, we get a first be
ginning of turning the soil, exposing fresh
earth, and so incidentally eradicating the
weeds. We have here, in short, the first
necessary prelude to the evolution of agri
culture.
The next step, of course, must be the
sowing of the seed. And here, I venture
to think, funeral customs supply us with
103
the only conceivable way in which such
sowing could ever have begun. For early
men would certainly not waste the precious
seeds which it took them so much time and
trouble to collect from the wild plants
around them, in mere experiments on vege
table development. But we have seen that
it is the custom of all savages to offer at the
tombs of their ancestors, food and drink of
the same kind as they themselves are in the
habit of using. Now, with people in the
hunting stage, such offerings would no doubt
most frequently consist of meat, the flesh of
the hunted beasts or game-birds ; but they
would also include fish, fruits, seeds, tubers,
and berries, and in particular such rich
grains as those of the native pulses and
cereals. Evidence of such things being
offered at the graves of the dead has been
collected in such abundance by Dr. Tylor,
Mr. Frazer, and Mr. Herbert Spencer, that
I need not here adduce any examples of so
familiar a practice.
What must be the obvious result? Here,
and here alone, the savage quite uncon
sciously sows seeds upon newly-turned
ground, deprived of its weeds, and further
manured by the blood and meat of the fre
quent sacrificial offerings. These seeds
must often spring up and grow apace, with
a rapidity and luxuriance which cannot fail
to strike the imagination of the primitive
hunter. Especially will this be the case
with that class of plants which ultimately
develop into the food-crops of civilised
society. For the peculiarity of these plants
is that they are one and all—maize, corn, or
rice, pease, beans, or millet—annuals of
rapid growth and portentous stature:
plants which have thriven in the struggle
for existence by laying up large stores of
utilisable material in their seeds for the use
of the seedling; and this peculiarity
enables them to start in life in each genera
tion exceptionally well endowed, and so to
compete at an advantage with all their
fellows. Seeds of such a sort would thrive
exceedingly in the newly-turned and wellmanured soil of a grave or barrow; and,
producing there a quantity of rich and
edible grain, would certainly attract the
attention of that practical and observant
man, the savage. For, though he is so
incurious about what are non-essentials,
your savage is a peculiarly long-headed
person about all that concerns his own
immediate advantage.
What conclusion would at once be forced
upon him ? That seeds planted in freshlyturned and richly-manured soil produce
�104
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
threefold and fourfold? Nothing of the
sort. He knows naught of seeds and
manures and soils ; he would at once con
clude, after his kind, that the dreaded and
powerful ghost in the barrow, pleased with
the gifts of meat and seeds offered to him,
had repaid those gifts in kind by returning
grain for grain a hundredfold out of his
own body. This original connection of
ideas seems to me fully to explain that
curious identification of the ghost or spirit
with the corn or other foodstuff which Mr.
Frazer has so wonderfully and conclusively
elaborated in The Golden Bough.
Just at first, under such circumstances,
the savage would no doubt be content
merely to pick and eat the seeds that thus
grew casually, as it were, on the graves or
barrows of his kings and kinsfolk. But in
process of time it would almost certainly
come about that the area of cultivation
would be widened somewhat. The first
step towards such widening, I take it, would
arise from the observation that cereals and
other seeds only throve exceptionally upon
newly-made graves, not on graves in
general. For, as soon as the natural
vegetation reasserted itself, the quickening
power of the ghost would seem to be used
up. Thus it might be found well to keep
fresh ghosts always going for agricultural
purposes. Hence might gradually arise a
habit of making a new grave annually, at
the most favourable sowing-time, which
last would come to be recognised by half
unconscious experiment and observation.
And this new grave, as I shall show reason
for believing a little later, would be the
grave, not of a person who happened to
die then and there accidentally, but of a
deliberate victim, slain in order to provide
a spirit of vegetation—an artificial god—
and to make the corn grow with vigour
and luxuriance. Step by step, I believe, it
would at length be discovered that, if only
you dug wide enough, the corn would grow
well around as well as upon the actual
grave of the divine victim. Thus slowly
there would develop the cultivated field,
the wider clearing, dug up or laboured by
hand, and finally the ploughed field, which
yet remains a grave in theory and in all
essentials.
I have ventured to give this long and
apparently unessential preamble, because
I wish to make it clear that the manufac
tured or artificial god of the corn-field or
other cultivated plot really dates back to
the very origin of cultivation. Without a
god, there would be no corn-field at all ;
and the corn-field, I believe, is long con
ceived merely as the embodiment of his
vegetative spirit. Nay, the tilled field is
often at our own day, and even in our own
country, a grave in theory.
It is a mere commonplace at the present
time to say that among early men and
savages every act of life has a sacred
significance ; and agriculture especially is
everywhere and always invested with a
special sanctity. To us, it would seem
natural that the act of sowing seed should
be regarded as purely practical and
physiological; that the seed should be
looked upon merely as the part of the
plant intended for reproduction, and that
its germination should be accepted as a
natural and normal process. Savages and
early men, however, have no such concep
tions. To them the whole thing is a piece
of natural magic ; you sow seeds, or, to be
more accurate, you bury certain grains of
foodstuff in the freshly-turned soil, with
certain magical rites and ceremonies ; and
then, after the lapse of a certain time,
plants begin to grow upon this soil, from
which you finally obtain a crop of maize or
wheat or barley. The burial of the seeds
or grains is only one part of the magical
cycle, no more necessarily important for the
realisation of the desired end than many
others.
And what are the other magical acts
necessary in order that grain-bearing plants
may grow upon the soil prepared for their
reception? Mr. Frazer has collected abun
dant evidence for answering that question,
a small part of which I shall recapitulate
here. At the same time I should like
it to be clearly understood that Mr. Frazer
is personally in no way responsible for the
use I here make ofhis admirable materials.
All the world over, savages and semi
civilised people are in the habit of sacrificing
human victims, whose bodies are buried in
the field with the seed of corn or other breadstuffs. Often enough the victim’s blood is
mixed with the grain in order to fertilise it.
The most famous instance is that of the
Khonds of Orissa, who chose special victims,
known as Meriahs, and offered them up to
ensure good harvests. The Meriah was
often kept years before being sacrificed.
He was regarded as a consecrated being,
and treated with extreme affection, mingled
with deference. A Meriah youth, on reach
ing manhood, was given a wife who was
herself a Meriah ; their offspring were all
brought up as victims. “ The periodical
sacrifices,” says Mr. Frazer, “were generally
�GODS OF CULTIVATION
so arranged by tribes and divisions of tribes
that each head of a family was enabled, at
least once a year, to procure a shred of flesh
for his fields, generally about the time when
his chief crop was laid down.” On the day
of the sacrifice, which was horrible beyond
description in its details, the body was cut
1o pieces, and the flesh hacked from it was
instantly taken home by the persons whom
each village had deputed to bring it. On
arriving at its destination, it was divided by
the priest into two portions, one of which
he buried in a hole in the ground, with his
back turned and without looking at it. Then
each man in the village added a little earth
to cover it, and the priest poured water over
the mimic tumulus. The other portion of
the flesh the priest divided into as many
shares as there were heads of houses present.
Each head of a house buried his shred in
his own field, placing it in the earth behind
his back without looking. The other
remains of the human victim—the head,
the bones, and the intestines —were burned
on a funeral-pile, and the ashes were
scattered over the fields, or mixed with the
new corn to preserve it from injury. Every
one of these details should be carefully
noted.
Now, in this case, it is quite clear to me
that every field is regarded as essentially a
grave ; portions of the divine victim are
buried in it; his ashes are mixed with the seed;
and from the ground thus treated he springs
again in the form of corn, or rice, or turmeric.
These customs, as Mr. Frazer rightly notes,
“ imply that to the body of the Meriah there
was ascribed a direct or intrinsic power of
making the crops to grow.” More than
that, it seems to me that the seed itself is
not regarded as sufficient to produce a crop:
it is the seed buried in the sacred grave with
the divine flesh which germinates at last
into next year’s foodstuffs.
A few other points must be noticed about
this essential case, which is one of the most
typical instances of manufactured godhead.
The Meriah was only satisfactory if he had
been purchased—“bought with a price,”
like the children who were built as founda
tion-gods into walls ; or else was the child
of a previous Meriah—in other words, was
of divine stock by descent and inheritance.
Khonds in distress often sold their children
as Meriahs, “ considering the beatification ”
(apotheosis, I would rather say) “of their
souls certain, and their death, for the
benefit of mankind, the most honourable
possible.” This sense of the sacrifice as a
case of “ one man dying for the people ” is
105
most marked in our accounts, and is espe
cially interesting from its analogy to Chris
tian reasoning. A man of the Panud tribe
was once known to upbraid a Khondbecause
he had sold for a Meriah his daughter
whom the Panud wished to marry; the
Khonds around at once comforted the in
sulted father, exclaiming, “ Your child died
that all the world may live.” Here and
elsewhere we have the additional idea of a
piacular value attached to the sacrifice,
about which more must be said in a subse
quent chapter. The death of the Meriah
was supposed to ensure not only good crops,
but also “immunity from all disease and
accident.” The Khonds shouted in his
dying ear, “ We bought you with a price ;
no sin rests with us.” It is also worthy of
notice that the victim was anointed with oil
—a point which recalls the very name of
Christus. Once more, the victim might not
be bound or make any show of resistance ;
but the bones of his arms and his legs were
often broken to render struggling impos
sible. Sometimes, however, he was stupe
fied with opium, one of the ordinary features
in the manufacture of gods, as we have
already seen, being such preliminary stupe
faction. Among the various ways in which
the Meriah was slain I would particularly
specify the mode of execution by squeezing
him to death in the cleft of a tree. I men
tion these points here, though they some
what interrupt the general course of our
argument, because of their great impor
tance as antecedents of the Christian theory.
In fact, I believe the Christian legend to
have been mainly constructed out of the
details of such early god-making sacrifices ;
I hold that Christ is essentially one such
artificial god ; and I trust the reader will
carefully observe for himself as we proceed
how many small details (such as the
breaking of the bones) recall in many
ways the incidents of the passion and the
crucifixion.
The Khonds, however, have somewhat
etherealised the conception of artificial god
making by allowing one victim to do for
many fields together. Other savages are
more prodigal of divine crop-raisers. The
Indians of Guayaquil, in South America,
used to sacrifice human blood and the
hearts of men when they sowed their fields.
The ancient Mexicans, conceiving the maize
as a personal being who went through the
whole course of life between seed-time and
harvest, sacrificed new-born babes when
the maize was sown, older children when it
had sprouted, and so on till it was fully ripe,
�io6
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
when they sacrificed old men. The Paw
nees annually sacrificed a human victim in
spring, when they sowed their fields. They
thought that an omission of this sacrifice
would be followed by the total failure of the
crops of maize, beans, and pumpkins. In
the account of one such sacrifice of a girl
in 1837 or 1838, we are told : “While her
flesh was still warm, it was cut in small
pieces from the bones, put in little baskets,
and taken to a neighbouring corn-field.
Here the head chief took a piece of the
flesh from a basket, and squeezed a drop of
blood upon the newly-deposited grains of
corn. His example was followed by the
rest, till all the seed had been sprinkled
with the blood ; it was then covered up with
earth.”
In West Africa a tribal queen used to
sacrifice a man and woman in the month of
March. They were killed with spades and
hoes, and their bodies buried in the middle
of a field which had just been tilled. At
Lagos, in Guinea, it was the custom annually
to impale a young girl alive soon after the
spring equinox in order to secure good
crops. A similar sacrifice is still annually
offered at Benin. The Marimos, a Bechuana tribe, sacrifice a human being for
the crops. The victim chosen is generally
a short stout man. He is seized by violence
or intoxicated (note that detail) and taken
to the fields, where he is killed among the
wheat “ to serve as seed.” After his blood
has coagulated in the sun, it is burned;
the ashes are then scattered over the
ground to fertilise it.
In India, once more, the Gonds, like the
Khonds, kidnapped Brahman boys, and
kept them as victims to be sacrificed on
various occasions. At sowing and reaping,
after a triumphal procession, one of the
lads was killed by being punctured with a
poisoned arrow. His blood was then
sprinkled over the ploughed field or the
ripe crop, and his flesh was sacramentally
devoured. The last point again will call at
a later stage for further examination.
I will detail no more such instances (out
of the thousands that exist) for fear of
seeming tedious. But the interpretation I
put upon the facts is this. Originally, men
noticed that food-plants grew abundantly
from the laboured and well-manured soil
of graves. They observed that this rich
ness sprang from a coincidence of three
factors—digging, a sacred dead body, and
seeds of foodstuffs. In time, they noted
that, if you dug wide enough and scattered
seed far enough, a single corpse was
capable of fertilising a considerable area.
The grave grew into the field or garden.
But they still thought it necessary to bury
some one in the field ; and most of the
evidence shows that they regarded this
victim as a divine personage; that they
considered him the main source of growth
or fertility ; and that they endeavoured to
deserve his favour by treating him well
during the greater part of his lifetime. For
in many of the accounts it is expressly
stated that the intended victim was treated
as a god or as a divine king, and was sup
plied with every sort of luxury up to the
moment of his immolation. In process of
time, the conception of the field as differing
from the grave grew more defined, and the
large part borne by seed in the procedure
was more fully recognised. Even so, how
ever, nobody dreamed of sowing the seed
alone without the body of a victim. Both
grain and flesh or blood came to be re
garded alike as “ seed ” : that is to say, the
concurrence of the two was considered
necessary to produce the desired effect of
germination and fertility. Till a very late
period, either the actual sacrifice or some
vague remnant of it remained as an essen
tial part of cultivation. From Mr. Frazer’s
work and from other sources, I will give a
few instances of these last dying relics of
the primitive superstition.
Mr. Gomme, in his Ethnology in Folklore,
supplies an account of a singular village
festival in Southern India. In this feast, a
priest, known as the Potraj, and especially
armed with a divine whip, like the scourge
of Osiris, sacrifices a sacred buffalo, which
is turned loose when a calf, and allowed to
feed and roam about the village. In that
case, we have the common substitution of
an animal for a human victim, which
almost always accompanies advancing
civilisation. At the high festival the head
of the buffalo was struck off at a single
blow, and placed in front of the shrine of
the village goddess. Around wrere placed
vessels containing the different cereals, and
hard -by a heap of mixed grains with a
drill-plough in the centre. The carcase
was then cut up into sfnall pieces, and each
cultivator received a portion to bury in his
field. The heap of grain was finally divided
among all the cultivators, to be buried by
each one in his field with the bit of flesh.
At last, the head, that very sacred part,
was buried before a little temple, sacred to
the goddess of boundaries. The goddess
is represented by a shapeless stone—no
doubt a Terminus, or rather the tombstone
�GODS OF CULTIVATION
of an artificial goddess, a girl buried under
an ancient boundary-mark. Here we have
evidently a last stage of the same ritual
which in the case of the Khonds was per
formed with a human victim. It is worth
while noting that, as part of this ceremony,
a struggle took place for portions of the
victim.
A still more attenuated form of the same
ceremony is mentioned by Captain Hark
ness and others, as occurring among the
Badagas of the Nilgiri Hills. Among these
barbarians the first furrow is ploughed by
a low-caste Kurrumbar, who gives his bene
diction to the field, without which there
would be no harvest. Here the member
of the aboriginal race is clearly looked upon
as a priest or kinsman of the local gods,
whose co-operation must be obtained by
later intrusive races. But the Kurrumbar
does not merely bless the field ; he also
sets up a stone in its midst; and then, pros
trating himself before the stone, he sacri
fices a goat, the head of which he keeps as
his perquisite. This peculiar value of the
oracular head retained by the priest is also
significant. When harvest-time comes the
same Kurrumbar is summoned once more,
in order that he may reap the first handful
of corn—an episode the full importance of
which will only be apparent to those who
have read Mr. Frazer’s analysis of harvest
customs. But in this case also the appear
ance of the sacred stone is pregnant with
meaning. We can hardly resist the infer
ence that we have here to do with the
animal substitute for a human sacrifice of
the god-making order, in which the victim
was slaughtered, a stone set up to mark the
site of the sacrifice, and the head preserved
as a god to give oracles, in the fashion
with which we are already familiar.
Here is a striking example from Mr.
Gomme’s Ethnology in Folklore, the ana
logy of which with preceding instances will
at once be apparent:—
“ At the village of Holne, situated on one
of the spurs of Dartmoor, is a field of about
two acres, the property of the parish, and
called the Ploy Field.' In the centre of
this field stands a granite pillar (Menhir)
six or seven feet high. On May-morning,
before day-break, the young men of the
village used to assemble there, and then
proceed to the moor, where they selected
a ram lamb, and, after running it down,
brought it in triumph to the Ploy Field,
fastened it to the pillar, cut its throat, and
then roasted it whole, skin, wool, etc. At
midday a struggle took place, at the risk
107
of cut hands, for a slice, it being supposed
to confer luck for the ensuing year on the
fortunate devourer. As an act of gallantry
the young men sometimes fought their way
through the crowd to get a slice for the
chosen among the young women, all of
whom, in their best dresses, attended the
Ram Feast, as it was called. Dancing,
wrestling, and other games, assisted by
copious libations of cider during the after
noon, prolonged the festivity till mid
night.”
Here again we get several interesting
features of the primitive ritual preserved
for us. The connection with the stone
which enshrines the original village deity is
perfectly clear. This stone no doubt repre
sents the place where the local foundation
god was slain in very remote ages ; and it
is therefore the proper place for the annual
renewal sacrifices to be offered. The selec
tion of May-morning for the rite; the ■
slaughter at the stone pillar ; the roasting
of the beast whole ; the struggle for the
pieces ; and the idea that they would con
fer luck, all show survival of primitive
feeling. So does the cider, sacramental
intoxication being an integral part of all
these proceedings. Every detail, indeed,
has its meaning for those who look close ;
for the struggle at midday is itself signifi
cant, as is also the prolongation of the feast
till midnight. But we miss the burial of
the pieces in the fields ; in so far, the primi
tive object of the rite seems to have been
forgotten or overlooked in Devonshire.
Very closely bound up with the artificial
gods of cultivation are the terminal gods
with whom I dealt in the last chapter ; so
closely that it is sometimes impossible to
separate them. We have already seen
some instances of this connection ; the pro
cession of the sacred victim usually ends
with a perlustration of the boundaries. This ■
perlustration is often preceded by the head.
of the theanthropic victim. Such a cere
mony extends all over India; in France
and other European countries it survives in
the shape of the rite known as Blessing the
Fields, where the priest plays the same part
as is played among the Nilgiri hillsmen by
the low-caste Kurrumbar. In this rite the
Host is carried round the bounds of the
parish, as the head of the sacred buffalo is
carried round at the Indian festival. In
some cases every field is separately visited.
I was told as a boy in Normandy that a
portion of the Host (stolen or concealed, I
imagine) was sometimes buried in each
field ; but of this curious detail I can now
�io8
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
obtain no confirmatory evidence, and I do
not insist upon it. We must remember,
however, that the Host is the body of
Christ, and that its presence in such cases
is the exact analogue of the carrying round
the pieces of the Meriah. In England the
ceremony merges into that of Beating the
Bounds, already described; though I
believe the significance of the boy-victims,
and the necessity for whipping them as a
rain-charm, will now be more apparent
than when we last met with it.
In many cases, all the world over,
various animals come to replace the human
victim-god. Thus we learn from Festus
that the Romans sacrificed red-haired
puppies in spring, in the belief that the
crops would thus grow ripe and ruddy;
and there can be little doubt that these
puppies, like the lamb sacrificed at Holne,
were a substitute for an original human
victim. Even so, the Egyptians, as we
shall see, sacrificed red-haired men as the
representatives of Osiris, envisaged as a
corn-god. In some cases, indeed, we have
historical evidence of the human god being
^replaced at recent dates by a divine animal
victim ; for example, in Chinna Kimedy,
. after the British had suppressed human
- sacrifices, a goat took the place of the
• -sacred Meriah.
Mannhardt has collected much evidence
- 'of the curious customs still (or lately)
■ existing in modern Europe, which look like
■ survivals in a very mitigated form of the
• same superstition. These are generally
. known by the name of “ Carrying out
Death,” or “ Burying the Carnival.” They
. are practised in almost every country of
JEurope, and relics of them survive even in
^England. The essence of these cerei ^monies consists in an effigy being substi• ;tuted for the human victim. This effigy is
' treated much as the victim used to be.
' Sometimes it is burned, sometimes thrown
'»into a river, and sometimes buried piecejneal. In Austrian Silesia, for example,
•the effigy is burned, and while it is burning
,a general struggle takes place for the
pieces, which are pulled out of the flames
with bare hands. (Compare the struggle
among the Khonds, and also at the Potraj
festival and the Holne sacrifice.) Each
person who secures a fragment of the
figure ties it to a branch of the largest tree
in his garden, or buries it in his field, in
the belief that this causes the crops to
grow better. Sometimes a sheaf of corn
does duty for the victim, and portions of it
^re buried in each field as fertilisers. In
the Hartz Mountains, at similar ceremonies, .
a living man is laid on a baking-trough
and carried with dirges to a grave ; but a
glass of brandy is substituted for him at
the last moment. Here the spirit is the
equivalent of a god. In other cases the
man is actually covered with straw, and so
lightly buried. In Italy and Spain a
similar custom bore the name of “ Sawing
the Old Woman.” In Palermo a real old
woman was drawn through the streets on
a cart, and made to mount a scaffold,
where two mock executioners proceeded to
saw through a bladder of blood which had
been fitted to her neck. The blood gushed
out, and the old woman pretended to swoon
and die. This is obviously a mitigation of
a human sacrifice. At Florence an effigy
stuffed with walnuts and dried figs repre
sented the Old Woman. At mid-Lent
this figure was sawn through the middle
in the Mercato Nuovo, and when the dried
fruits tumbled out they were scrambled for
by the crowd, as savages scrambled for
fragments of the human victim or his
animal representative.
Upon all this
subject a mass of material has been
collected by Mannhardt and Mr. Frazer.
Perhaps the most interesting case of all is
the Russian ceremony of the Funeral of
Yarilo. In this instance the people chose
an old man and gave him a small coffin
containing a figure representing Yarilo.
This he carried out of the town, followed
by women chanting dirges, as the Syrian
women mourned for Adonis, and the
Egyptians for Osiris. In the open fields a
grave was dug, and into it the figure was
lowered amid weeping and wailing.
Myth and folk-lore also retain many
traces of the primitive connection. Thus,
in the genuine American legend of Hia
watha, the hero wrestles with and van
quishes Mondamin, and w’here he buries
him springs up for the first time the maize,
or Indian-corn plant. Similar episodes
occur in the Finnish Kalevala and other
barbaric epics.
In order to complete our preliminary
survey of these artificial gods of cultivation,
before we proceed to the consideration of
the great corn-gods and wine-gods, it may ;
be well to premise that in theory at least
the original victim seems to have been a
king or chief, himself divine, or else at
least a king’s son or daughter, one of the
divine stock, in whose veins flowed the
blood of the earlier deities. Later on, it
would seem, the temporary king was often
allowed to do duty for the real king ; and
�GODS OF CULTIVATION
for this purpose he seems frequently to
have been clad in royal robes, and treated
with divine and royal honours. Examples
of this complication will crop up in the
sequel. For the present I will only refer
to the interesting set of survivals, collected
by Mr. Gomme, where temporary kings or
mayors in England are annually elected,
apparently for the sake of being sacrificed
only. In many of these cases we get mere
fragmentary portions of the original rite ;
but by piecing them all together we obtain
on the whole a tolerably complete picture
of the original ceremonial observance. At
St. Germans, in Cornwall, the mock mayor
was chosen under the large walnut-tree at
the May-fair; he was made drunk over
night, in order to fit him for office, and was in
that state drawn round the nut-tree, much
as we saw the mayor of Bovey rode round
the Bovey stone on his accession to the
mayoralty. The Mayor of St. Germans
also displayed his royal character by being
mounted on the wain or cart of old Teutonic
and Celtic sovereignty. At Lostwitliiel the
mock mayor was dressed with a crown on
his head, and a sceptre in his hand,
and had a sword borne before him. At
Penrhyn the mayor was preceded by
torch-bearers and town sergeants, and
though he was not actually burnt, either in
play or in effigy, bonfires were lighted, and
fireworks discharged, which connect the
Geremony with such pyre-sacrifices of
cremationists as the festival of the Tyrian
Melcarth and the Baal of Tarsus. On
Halgaver Moor, near Bodmin, a stranger
was arrested, solemnly tried in sport, and
then trained in the mire or otherwise illtreated. At Polperro the mayor was
generally “ some half-witted or drunken
fellow,” in either case, according to early
ideas, divine ; he was treated with ale, and,
“having completed the perambulation of
the town,” was wheeled by his attendants
into the sea. There he was allowed to
scramble out again, as the mock victim
does in many European ceremonies ; but
originally, I do not doubt, he was drowned
as a rain-charm.
These ceremonies, at the time when our
authorities learnt of them, had all degene
rated to the level of mere childish pastimes ;
but they contain in them, none the less,
persistent elements of most tragic signifi
cance, and they point back to hideous and
sanguinary god-making festivals. In most
of them we see still preserved the choice
of the willing or unconscious victim ; the
preference for a stranger, a fool, or an
109
idiot; the habit of intoxicating the chosen
person; the treatment of the victim as
king, mayor, or governor; his scourging or
mocking ; his final death ; and his burning
on a pyre, or his drowning as a rain
charm. All these points are still more
clearly noticeable in the other form of
survival where the king or divine victim
is represented, not by a mock or temporary
king, but by an image or effigy. Such is the
common case of King Carnival, who is at
last burnt in all his regalia, or thrown into
a river.
The general conclusion I would incline
to draw from all these instances is briefly
this. Cultivation probably began with the
accidental sowing of grains upon the tumuli
of the dead. Gradually it was found that,
by extending the dug or tilled area and sow
ing it all over, a crop would grow upon it,
provided always a corpse was buried in the
centre. In process of time divine corpses
were annually provided for the purpose, and
buried with great ceremony in each field.
By-and-bye it was found sufficient to offer
up a single victim for a whole tribe or vil
lage, and to divide his body piecemeal
among the fields of the community. But
the crops that grew in such fields were still
regarded as the direct gifts of the dead and
deified victims, whose soul was supposed to
animate and fertilise them. As cultivation
spread, men became familiarised at last
with the conception of the seed and the
ploughing as the really essential elements
in the process ; but they still continued to
attach to the victim a religious importance,
and to believe in the necessity of his pre
sence for good luck in the harvest. With
the gradual mitigation of savagery an
animal sacrifice was often substituted for
a human one; but the fragments of the
animal were still distributed through the
fields with a mimic or symbolical burial,
just as the fragments of the man-god had
formerly been distributed. Finally, under
the influence of Christianity and other civi
lised religions, an effigy was substituted for
a human victim, though an animal sacrifice
was often retained side by side with it, and
a real human being was playfully killed in
pantomime.
In early stages, however, I note that the
field or garden sometimes reta'ns the form
of a tumulus. Thus Mr. Turner, the
Samoan missionary, writes of the people of
Tana, in the New Hebrides :—
“ They bestow a great deal of labour on
their yam plantations, and keep them in
fine order. You look over a reed fence,
�no
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
and there you see ten or twenty mounds of
earth, some of them seven feet high and
sixty in circumference. These are heaps of
loose earth without a single stone, all
thrown up by the hand. In the centre they
plant one of the largest yams whole, and
round the sides some smaller ones.”
This looks very much like a tumulus in
its temenos. I should greatly like to know
whether a victim is buried in it.
I may add that the idea of the crop being
a gift from the deified ancestor or the
divine-human victim is kept up in the
common habit of offering the first-fruits to
the dead, or to the gods, or to the living
chief, their representative and descendant.
Our own harvest-festival seems to preserve
the offering in a Christianised form.
Finally, I will add that in many cases it
looks as though the divine agriculture
victim were regarded as the king in person,
the embodiment of the village or tribal god,
and were offered up, himself to himself, at
the stone which forms the monument and
altar of the primitive deity. Of this idea
we shall see examples when we go on to
examine the great corn-gods and wine-gods ■
.of the Mediterranean region.
CHAPTER XIV.
CORN- AND WINE-GODS
In advanced communities the agricultural
gods with whom we dealt in the last
chapter come to acquire specific class
names, such as Attis and Adonis ; are
specialised as corn-gods, wine-gods, gods
of the date-palm, or gods of the harvest;
and rise to great distinction in the various
religions.
I propose to examine at some length the
more important of these in the Mediter
ranean civilisations, where Christianity was
first evolved. And I begin with Dionysus.
One of the notable features of the Potraj
festival of southern India, of which I gave
a brief abstract in the previous chapter, is
its orgiastic character. As type of the
orgiastic god-making ceremonies, with
their five-day festival, it well deserves some
fuller description. The feast takes place
near the temple of the village goddess, who
is worshipped in the form of an unshapely
stone, stained red with vermillion, the pro
bable representative of the first human
foundation-victim. An altar was erected
behind this temple to the god who bears
the name of Potraj. He is a deity of culti
vation. The festival itself was under the
charge of the Pariahs, or aboriginal out
casts ; it was attended by all the lowest
classes, including the dancing girls of the
temple and the shepherds or other “non
Aryan ” castes. During the festival these
people took temporarily the first place in
the village ; they appeared to form the
court of the temporary king, and to repre
sent the early local worship, whose gods
the conquering races are afraid of offending.
For since the dead of the conquered race
are in possession of the soil, immigrant
conquerors everywhere have a superstitious
dread of incurring their displeasure. On
the first day of the orgy the low-caste
people chose one of themselves as priest or
Potraj.
On the second day of the feast the
sacred buffalo, already described as having
the character of a theanthropic victim, was
thrown down before the goddess ; its head
was struck off at a single blow, and was
placed in front of the shrine, with one leg
in its mouth. The carcase, as we saw
already, was then cut up, and delivered to
the cultivators to bury in their fields. The
blood and offal were afterwards collected
into a large basket ; and the officiating
priest, a low-caste man, who bore (like the
god) the name of Potraj, taking a live kid,
hewed it in pieces over the mess. The
basket was then placed on the head of a
naked man, of the leather-dresser class,
who ran with it round the circuit of the
village boundaries, scattering the fragments
right and left as he went. The Potraj was
armed with a sacred whip, like Osiris ; and
this whip was itself the object of profound
veneration.
On the third and fourth days many
buffaloes and sheep were slaughtered ; and
on the fourth day women walked naked to
the temple, clad in boughs of trees alone—
a common religious exercise, of which I
have only space here to suggest that St.
Elizabeth of Hungary and the Godiva pro-cession at Coventry are surviving relics.
(These relations have well been elucidated
by Mr. Sidney Hartland.)
On the fifth and last day the whole com
munity marched with music to the village
temple, and offered a concluding sacrifice
at the Potraj altar. A lamb was concealed
close by. The Potraj, having found it after
a pretended search, rendered it insensible
by a blow of his whip, or by mesmeric
�CORN- AND WINE-GODS
passes—a survival of the idea of the volun
tary victim. ■' Then the assistants tied the
Potraj’s hands behind his back, and the
whole party began to dance round him with
orgiastic joy. Potraj joined in the excite
ment, and soon came under the present
influence of the deity. He was led up,
bound, to the place where the lamb lay
motionless. ■ Carried away with divine
frenzy, he rushed at it, seized it with his
teeth, tore through the skin, and eat into
its throat. When it was quite dead, he
was lifted up ; a dishful of the meat-offering
was presented to him ; he thrust his blood
stained face into it, and it was then buried
with the remains of the lamb beside the
altar. After that his arms were untied, and
he fled the place. I may add that as a rule
the slaughterer of the god everywhere has
to fly from the vengeance of his worshippers,
who, after participating in the attack, pre
tend indignation as soon as the sacrifice is
completed.
The rest of the party now adjourned to
the front of the temple, where a heap of
grain deposited on the first day was divided
among all the cultivators, to be sown by
each one in the field with his piece of flesh.
After this, a distribution was made of the
piled-up heads of the buffaloes and sheep
slaughtered on the third and fourth days.
These were evidently considered as sacred
as divine heads generally in all countries
and ages. About forty of the sheeps’ heads
were divided among certain privileged per
sons ; for the remainder a general scramble
took place, men of all castes soon rolling
together on the ground in a mess of putrid
gore. For the buffaloes’ heads, only the
Pariahs contended. Whoever was fortu
nate enough to secure one of either kind
carried it off and buried it in his field. Of
the special importance of the head in all
such sacrifices Mr. Gomme has collected
many apposite examples.
The proceedings were terminated by a
procession round the boundaries : the
burial of the head of the sacred buffalo
close to the shrine of the village goddess ;
and the outbreak of a perfect orgy, a “rule
of misrule,” during which the chief musician
indulged in unbridled abuse of all the
authorities, native or British.
I have given at such length an account
of this singular festival, partly because it
sheds light upon much that has gone
before, but partly also because it helps to
explain many elements in the worship of
the great corn- and wine-gods. One point
of cardinal importance to be noticed here
hi
is that the officiating priest, who was at one
time also both god and victim, is called
Potraj like the deity whom he represents.
So, too, in Phrygia the combined Attisvictim and Attis-priest bore the name of
Attis ; and so in Egypt the annual Osirisoffering bore the name of Osiris, whom he
represented.
If I am right, therefore, in the analogy of
the two feasts, Dionysus was in his origin a
corn-god, and later a vine-god, annually
slain and buried in order that his blood
might fertilise the field or the vineyard. In
the Homeric period he was still a general
god of cultivation : only later did he be
come distinctively the grape-god and wine
deity. There was originally, I believe, a
Dionysus in every village ; and this divine
victim was annually offered, himself to him
self, with orgiastic rites like those of Potraj.
Mr. Laurence Gomme has already in part
pointed out this equation of the Hellenic
and the Indian custom. The earliest form
of Dionysus-worship, on this hypothesis,
would be the one which survived in Chios
and Tenedos, where a living human being
was orgiastically torn to pieces at the feast
of Dionysus. At Orchomenus the human
victim was by custom a woman of the
family of the Oleiae (so that there were
women Dionysi): at the annual festival
the priest of Dionysus pursued these women
with a drawn sword, and if he caught one
he had the right to slay her. (This is the
sacred-chance victim.) In other places
the ceremony had been altered in historical
times ; thus at Potniae, in Bceotia, it was
once the custom to slay a child as Dionysus;
but later on a goat, which was identified
with the god, was substituted for the origi
nal human victim. The equivalence of the
animal victim with the human god is shown
by the fact that at Tenedos the new-born
calf sacrificed to Dionysus—or as Dionysus
—was shod in buskins, while the mother
cow was tended like a woman in childbed.
Elsewhere we find other orgiastic rites
still more closely resembling the Indian
pattern. Among the Cretans a Dionysus
was sacrificed biennially under the form of
a bull; and the worshippers tore the living
animal to pieces wildly with their teeth.
Indeed, says Mr. Frazer, the rending and
devouring of live bulls and calves seems to
have been a regular feature of the Dionysiac rites. In some cities, again, the animal
that took the place of the human victim
was a kid. When the followers of Diony
sus tore in pieces a live goat and drank its
blood, they believed they were devouring
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THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
the actual body and blood of the god. This
eating and drinking the god is an important
point.
I do not desire to dwell too long upon
any one deity, or rather class of deities ;
therefore I will say briefly here that when
Dionysus became the annual or biennial
vine-god victim, it was inevitable that his
worshippers should have seen his resurrec
tion and embodiment in the vine, and
should have regarded the wine it yielded
as the blood of the god. In this case the
identification was particularly natural, for
could not every worshipper feel the god in
the wine? and did not the divine spirit
within it inspire and intoxicate him ? To
be “ full of the god ” was the natural ex
pression for the resulting exhilaration : the
cult of the wine-spirit is thus one of those
which stands on the surest and most inti
mate personal basis.
The death and resurrection of Dionysus
are accordingly a physical reality. The god
is annually killed in the flesh, as man, bull,
or goat; and he rises again in the vine, to
give his blood once more for the good of
his votaries. Moreover, he may be used as
a fertiliser for many other trees ; and so we
find Dionysus has many functions. He is
variously adored as Dionysus of the tree,
and more particularly of the fruit-bearing
fig and apple. His image, like those of
other tree-gods already encountered, was
often an upright post, without arms, but
draped (like the ashera} in a mantle, and
with a bearded mask to represent the head,
while green boughs projecting from it
marked his vegetable character. He was
the patron of cultivated trees ; prayers were
offered to him to make trees grow ; he was
honoured by fruit-growers, who set up an
image of him, in the shape of a natural
tree-stump, in the midst of their orchards.
(Compare that last degraded and utilitarian
relic, the modem scarecrow.) For other
equally interesting facts I would refer the
reader once more to Mr. Frazer, whose rich
store I must not further rifle. It seems to
me obvious from his collection of facts that
there was originally everywhere a separate
local Dionysus, an annual man-god or
woman-god victim (for which a beast was
later substituted), and that only slowly did
the worship of the individual Dionysi pass
into the general worship of one great ideal
ised god Dionysus. The great gods are at
first classes, not individuals.
Mr. Gomme has further pointed out three
interesting points of resemblance between
the Dionysiac rites and the Indian Potraj
festival. In the first place, Dionysus is
sometimes represented to his worshippers
by his head only—no doubt a preserved
oracular head ; and in any case a parallel
to the importance of the head in the Indian
ceremony. In the second place, the sacrificer of the calf at Tenedos was driven out
and stoned after the fulfilment of the rite—
a counterpart of the Potraj fleeing from the
place after the slaughter of the lamb. And
in the third place, the women worshippers
of Dionysus attended the rites nude,
crowned with garlands, and daubed over
with dirt—a counterpart of the naked
female votaries surrounded with branches
of trees in the Indian festival. All three of
these points recur abundantly in similar
ceremonies elsewhere.
As a rule, I severely disregard mere
myths, as darkeners of counsel, confining
my attention to the purely religious and
practical elements of custom and worship.
But it is worth while noting here for its
illustrative value the Cretan Dionysusmyth. Dionysus is there represented as the
son of Zeus, a Cretan king ; and this legend
encloses the old idea that the Dionysusvictim was at first himself a divine godking, connected by blood with the supreme
god or founder of the community. Hera,
the wife of Zeus, was jealous of the child,
and lured him into an ambush, where he
was set upon by her satellites the Titans,
who cut him limb from limb, boiled his
body with various herbs, and ate it. Other
forms of the myth tell us how his mother
Demeter pieced together his mangled
remains, and made him young again.
More often, however, Dionysus is the son
of Semele, and various other versions are
given of the mode of his resurrection. It
is enough for our purpose that in all of
them the wine-god, after having been slain
and torn limb from limb, rises again from
the dead, and often ascends to his father
Zeus in Heaven. The resurrection, visibly
enacted, formed in many places a part of
the rite.
On the whole, then, though I do not deny
that the later Greeks envisaged Dionysus
as a single supreme god of vegetation, nor
that many abstract ideas were finally
fathered upon the worship — especially
those which identified the death and resur
rection of the god with the annual winter
sleep and spring revival—I maintain that
in his origin the Dionysus was nothing
more than the annual corn-victim, after
wards extended into the tree and vine
victim.
�CORN- AND WINE-GODS
I pass on to Osiris, in his secondary or
acquired character as corn-god.
I have already expressed the belief, in
which I am backed up by Mr. Loftie, that
the original Osiris was a real historical
early king of This by Abydos. But in the
later Egyptian religion, after mystic ideas
had begun to be evolved, he came to be
regarded as the god of the dead, and every
mummy or every justified soul was looked
upon as an Osiris. Moreover, it seems
probable that in Egypt the name of Osiris
was also fitted to the annual slain corn
victim or corn-god. Thus all over Egypt
there were many duplicates of Osiris ;
notably at Busiris, where the name was
attached to an early tomb like the one at
Abydos. This identification of the newmade god with the historic ancestor, the
dead king, or the tribal deity is quite habit
ual ; it is parallel to the identification of
the officiating Potraj with the Potraj god,
of the Attis-priest with Attis, of the
Dionysus-victim with the son of Zeus ; and
it will meet us hereafter in savage parallels.
Let us look at the evidence.
As in India, the Osiris festival lasted for
five days. (The period is worth noting.)
The ceremonies began with ploughing the
earth. We do not know for certain that a
human victim was immolated; but many
side analogies would lead us to that con
clusion, and suggest that as elsewhere the
sacred victim was torn to pieces in the
eagerness of the cultivators and worshippers
to obtain a fragment of his fertilising body.
For in the myth, Typhon cuts up the corpse
of the god into fourteen pieces, which he
scatters abroad (as the naked leatherdresser scatters the sacred buffalo): and
we know that in the Egyptian ceremonies
one chief element was the search for the
mangled portions of Osiris, the rejoicings
at their discovery, and their solemn burial.
On one of the days of the feast a proces
sion of priests went the round of the
temples—or beat the bounds : and the
festival closed with the erection of a pillar
or stone monument to the Osiris, which, in
a bas-relief, the king himself is represented
as assisting in raising. I think it is im
possible to overlook the general resem
blance of these rites to the rites of Potraj.
The character of the later Osiris, or the
god-victim identified with him, as a corn
and vegetable god, is amply borne out by
several other pieces of evidence. Osiris, it
is said, was the first to teach men the use
of corn. He also introduced the cultivation
of the vine. Mr. Frazer notes that, in one I
of the chambers dedicated to Osiris in the
great temple of Isis at Philte, the dead
body of Osiris is represented with stalks of
corn springing from it, and a priest is
watering the stalks from a pitcher which
he holds in his hand.
Again, in the legend of Busiris, and the
glosses or comments upon it, we get im
portant evidence. The name Busiris
means the city of Osiris, which was so called
because the grave of an ancient Osiris
(either a mummy, or a local chief identified
with the great god of Abydos) was situated
there. Human sacrifices were said to have
been offered at his tomb ; just as the Potraj
sacrifice is offered at the shrine of the
village goddess, and just as the annual
victim elsewhere was sacrificed at the Ter
minus stone or the sacred stone of the
foundation-god or goddess. The victims
were red-haired men, and strangers. Their
ashes were scattered abroad with winnow
ing fans. They were slain on the harvest
field, and mourned by the reapers (like
Adonis and Attis) in the song which
through a Greek mistake is known to us as
the Maneros. The reapers prayed at the
same time that Osiris might revive and
return with renewed vigour in the following
year. The most interesting point in this
account, pieced together from Apollodorus,
Diodorus, and Plutarch, is the fact that it
shows us how the annual Osiris was identi
fied with the old divine king who lay in his
grave hard by ; and so brings the case
into line with others we have already con
sidered aud must still consider. As for the
hunting after the pieces of Osiris’s body,
that is just like the hunting after the
mangled pieces of Dionysus by Demeter.
I interpret both the resurrection of Osiris,
and the story of the fragments being pieced
together and growing young again, told of
Dionysus, as meaning that the scattered
pieces, buried like those of the Khond
Meriah, grow up again next year into the
living corn for the harvest.
Furthermore, there exists to this day in
Egypt an apparent survival of the ancient
Osiris rite, in an attenuated form (like the
mock mayors in England), which distinctly
suggests the identification I am here at
tempting. In Upper Egypt, Klunzinger
tells us, on the first day of the (Egyptian)
solar year, when the Nile has usually
reached its highest point, the regular
government is suspended for three days in
each district, and every town chooses it own
temporary ruler. This temporary king (a
local Osiris, as I believe) wears a conical
I
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THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
cap, and a long flaxen beard, and is
enveloped in a strange mantle. I say
unhesitatingly, the dress of an Osiris,
wearing the old royal cap of Upper Egypt.
With a wand of office in his hands—like
the crook which Osiris carries on the
monuments—and attended by men dis
guised as scribes, executioners, and so
forth, he proceeds to the governor’s house.
The governor allows himself to be deposed;
the mock Uing, mounting the throne, holds
a tribunal, to whose decisions even the
governor himself must bow. In short, like
other temporary kings, he really enjoys
royal authority for the moment. After
three days, however, the mock king is con
demned to death ; the envelope or shell in
which he is encased is committed to the
flames ; and from its ashes creeps forth
the Fellah who impersonated him. I do
not doubt that the case here represents
the antique coffer or mummy-case of Osiris.
In this graphic ceremonial, then, I see a
survival, with the customary mitigations, of
the annual Osiris sacrifice, once actually
performed on a human victim. I do not
doubt that in Egypt as elsewhere a mock
king was formerly chosen in place of the
real king to personate the descendant of
Osiris, an Osiris himself: and that this
substitute' was put to death, and torn to
pieces or burnt, while his ashes were
winnowed and scattered over the land. It
may also be worth while to inquire whether
the scourge which Osiris holds in the basreliefs is not the equivalent of the divine
whip of the Potraj, and the other whips
which Mr. Gomme has so ingeniously
correlated with that very venerable and
mystic attribute.
I would suggest, then, that Osiris in his
later embodiment was annually renewed as
a corn and vine victim. Originally a king
of Upper Egypt, or part of it, he was
envisaged in later myth as a general culture
god. Isis, his sister and wife, discovered
wheat and barley growing wild; and Osiris
introduced these grains among his people,
who thereupon abandoned cannibalism, and
took to grain-growing. An annual victim,
most often a stranger, identified with the
racial god, was torn to pieces in his place ;
and Osiris himself was finally merged with
the abstract spirit of vegetation, and sup
posed to be the parent of all trees.
Let us next look very briefly at the case
of Adonis.
The Adon or Lord commonly known as
Thammuz was one of the chief elements in
Syrian religion. He was closely connected
with the namesake river Adonis, which rose
by his grave at the sacred spring of Aphaca.
We do not actually know, I believe, of a
human Adonis-victim ; but his death was
annually lamented with a bitter wailing,
chiefly by women. Images of him were
dressed like corpses, and carried out as if
for burial, and then thrown into the sea or
into springs. This was evidently a rain
charm, such as is particularly natural in a dry
country like Syria. In certain places the
resurrection of the Adonis was celebrated
on the succeeding day. At Byblos he also
ascended into heaven before the eyes of his
worshippers—a point worth notice from its
Christian analogies. The blood-red hue
of the river Adonis in spring—really due to
the discolouration of the tributary torrents
by red earth from the mountains—was set
down to the blood of the god Adonis ; the
scarlet anemone sprang from his wounds.
But the scholiast on Theocritus expressly
explains the Adonis as “the sown corn”;
and that he was “ seed,” like the common
corn-victims in India and elsewhere, we
can hardly doubt from the repeated stories
of his death and resurrection. Ths socalled “ gardens of Adonis,” which were
mimic representations of a tumulus planted
with corn, formed a most noticeable part of
the god’s ritual. They consisted of baskets
or pots, filled with earth, in which wheat,
barley, flowers, and so forth, were sown and
tended by women ; and at the end of eight
days they were carried out with the images
of the dead Adonis, and flung into the sea
or into springs. This was no doubt another
case of a rain-charm.
What Adonis was to Syria, Attis was to
Phrygia. Originally he seems, according
to Professor Ramsay, to have been repre
sented by an annual priest-victim, who
slew himself for the people to ensure
fertility. This priest-victim himself bore
the name of Attis, and was identified with
the god whose worship he performed. In
later days, instead of killing himself, he
merely drew his own blood; and there is
reason to think that a pig was also substistuted as duplicate victim, and that this
pig was itself regarded as an Attis. Ana
logies exist with the Paschal lamb ; while
the self-mutilation of Attis-worship has
also features in common with Jewish cir
cumcision. Moveover, the ceremonies were
closely connected, at Pessinus at least, with
the ancient sacred stone which bore the
name of Cybele, and which was described
as the Mother of the Gods ; this connection
exactly recalls that of the Potraj god in
�SACRIFICE AND SACRAMENT
India with the cult of the local village
goddess. As I believe the village goddess
to be the permanent form of the foundation
human sacrifice, I also believe Cybele to
be the sacred stone of the original virgin
who was sacrificed at the first foundation
of Pessinus.
When the sacred stone of Cybele and
the cult of Attis were removed to Rome
the festival consisted of a five days’ rite,
like that of the Potraj. It took place at
the spring equinox, as does our own equiva
lent festival of Easter. On the first day a
pine-tree was cut down in the woods, and
the effigy of a young man was tied to it.
This effigy no doubt represented the
primitive human sacrifice, and its cruci
fixion answers exactly to the slaughter of
the sacred buffalo in India. The second
day yields nothing of importance ; on the
third day the Attis-priest drew blood from
his own arms and presented it as an offer
ing ; I would conjecture that this was a
substitute for self-immolation, and that the
self-immolation was originally performed
by mutilation of the genitals. It was per
haps on this night that a mourning took
place over the body of Attis, represented
by an effigy, which was afterwards solemnly
buried. On the fourth day came the
Festival of Joy, on which, as Mr. Frazer
believes, the resurrection of the god was
celebrated. The fifth day closed with a
procession to the brook Almo, in which the
sacred stone of the goddess and her
bullock-cart were bathed as a rain-charm.
On the return the cart was strewn with
flowers. I think the close parallelism to
the Indian usage is here fairly evident.
Attis was thus essentially a corn-god.
His death and resurrection were annually
celebrated at Rome and at Pessinus. An
Attis of some sort died yearly. The Attis
of Pessinus was both priest and king; it
was perhaps at one time his duty to die at
the end of his yearly reign as a corn-god
for his people. One epithet of Attis was
“very fruitful”; he was addressed as “the
reaped yellow ear of corn and when an
effigy took the place ofthe annual slain priestking, this effigy was itself kept for a year,
and then burnt as the priest-king himself
would have been at an earlier period. It
seems to me impossible to resist the cumu
lative weight of this singular evidence.
For the very curious customs and myths
regarding Demeter, Persephone, and other
female corn-victims, I must refer the reader
once more to Mr. Frazer. (It is true, the
inquirer will there find the subject treated
II5
from the opposite standpoint.) In many
countries, from Peru to Africa, a girl or
woman seems to have been offered up as a
corn-goddess ; this corn-goddess seems to
have been sown with the seed, and believed
to come to life again with the corn ; and
several European harvest customs appear
to be mitigations of the old ceremonial,
with the usual substitution of an animal or
an effigy for the human victim. Regarded
in this light, Mr. Frazer’s collection of facts
about the corn baby affords an excellent
groundwork for research.
I cannot, however, refrain from mention
ing that the ceremonies of “Carrying out
Death ” and “ Burying the Carnival,” which
prevail all over Europe, retain many inte
resting features of the Potraj, Dionysus,
and Attis-Adonis festivals. The figure of
Death—that is to say, as I understand it,
the image of the dead human god—is often
torn to pieces, and the fragments are then
burned in the fields to make the crops grow
well. But the Death is also drowned or
buried ; in the first case like Adonis, in the
second like the Osiris in the modern
Egyptian custom. And the analogies of
the festivals to those of India and Western
Asia must strike every attentive reader of
Mr. Frazer’s masterwork.
I will only add here that while corn-gods
and wine-gods are the most notable mem
bers of this strange group of artificial
deities, the sacred date-palm has its im
portance as well in the religions of Meso
potamia ; and elsewhere the gods of the
maize, the plantain, and the cocoanut rise
into special or local prominence. So do the
Rice-Spirit, the Oats-Wife, the Mother of
the Rye, and the Mother of the Barley (or
Demeter). All seem to be modifications of
the primitive victim, sacrificed to make a
spirit for the crop, or to act as “ seed ” for
the date or the plantain.
CHAPTER XV.
SACRIFICE AND SACRAMENT
We have now arrived at a point where we
can more fully understand those curious
ideas of sacrifice and sacrament which lie
at the root of so much that is essential in
the Jewish, the Christian, and most other
religions.
Mr. Galton tells us that to the Damaras,
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THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
when he travelled among them, all meat
was common property. No one killed an
ox except as a sacrifice and on a festal
occasion ; and when the ox was killed, the
whole community feasted upon it indis
criminately. This is but a single instance
of a feeling almost universal among primi
tive pastoral people. Cattle and other
domestic animals, being regarded as sacred,
are rarely killed ; and when they are killed,
they are eaten at a feast as a social and
practically religious rite—in short, sacra
mentally. I need not give instances of so
well-known a principle ; I will content my
self with quoting what Dr. Robertson Smith
says of a particular race : “ Among the
early Semites generally, no slaughter was
legitimate except for sacrifice.”
Barbaric herdsmen, indeed, can hardly
conceive of men to whom flesh meat is a
daily article of diet. Mr. Galton found the
idea very strange to his Damaras. Primi
tive pastoral races keep their domestic
animals mainly for the sake of the milk, or
as . beasts of burden, or for the wool and
hair; they seldom kill one except for a feast,
at which the gods are fellow-partakers.
Indeed, it is probable, as the sequel will
suggest, that domestic animals were origi
nally kept as totems or ancestor-gods, and
that the habit of eating the meat of sheep,
goats, and oxen has arisen mainly out of
the substitution of such a divine animal
victim for the divine human-victim of
earlier usage. Our butchers’ shops have
their origin in mitigated sacrificial canni
balism.
Sacrifice, regarded merely as offering
to the gods, has thus, I believe, two dis
tinct origins. Its- earliest, simplest, and
most natural form is that whose develop
ment we have already traced—the placing
of small articles of food and drink at the
graves of ancestors or kings or revered
fellow-tribesmen. That from a very early
period men have believed the dead to eat
and drink, whether as corpse, as mummy,
as. ?h°st °f buried friend, or as ethereal
spirit of cremated chieftain, we have already
seen.
But there is another mode of sacrifice,
superposed upon this, and gradually tend
ing to be more or less identified with it,
which yet, if I am right, had a quite dif
ferent origin in the artificial production of
gods about which I have written at con
siderable length in the last three chapters.
The human or animal victim, thus
slaughtered in order to make a new god
or protecting spirit, came in time to be
assimilated in thought to the older type
of mere honorific offerings to the dead
gods ; and so gave rise to those mystic
ideas of the god who is sacrificed, him
self to himself, of which the sacrament of
the Mass is the final ana most mysterious
outcome. Thus, the foundation - gods,
originally killed in order to make a pro
tecting spirit for a house or a tribal god
for a city or village, came at last to be
regarded as victims sacrificed to the Earth
Goddess or to the Earth Demons ; and
thus, too, the Meriahs and other agricul
tural victims, originally killed in order to
make a corn-god or a corn-spirit, came at
last to be regarded as sacrifices to the
Earth, or to some abstract Dionysus or
Attis or Adonis. And since in the last case
at least the god and the victim were still
called by the same name and recognised
as one, there grew up at last in many lands,
and in both hemispheres, but especially
in the Eastern Mediterranean basin, the
mystic theory of the sacrifice of a god,
himself to himself, in atonement or expia
tion, which forms the basis of the Christian
Plan of Salvation. It is this secondary
and derivative form of sacrifice, I believe,
which is mainly considered in Professor
Robertson Smith’s elaborate and extremely
valuable analysis.
I have said that the secondary form of
sacrifice, which for brevity’s sake I shall
henceforth designate as the mystic, is found
in most parts of the world and in both
hemispheres. This naturally raises the
question whether it has a single common
origin, and antedates the dispersal of man
kind through the hemispheres ; or whether
it has been independently evolved several
times over in many lands by many races.
For myself I have no cut-and-dried answer
to this abstruse question, nor do I regard
it, indeed, as a really important one. On
the one hand, there are many reasons
for supposing that certain relatively high
traits of thought or art were common
property among mankind before the dis
persion from the primitive centre, if a
primitive centre ever existed. On the
other hand, psychologists know well that
the human mind acts with extraordinary
similarity in given circumstances all the
world over, and that identical stages of
evolution seem to have been passed through
independently by many races, in Egypt
and Mexico, in China and Peru; so that
we can find nothing inherently improbable
in the idea that even these complex con
ceptions of mystic sacrifice have distinct
�SACRIFICE AND SACRAMENT
origins in remote countries. What is cer
tain is the fact that among the Aztecs, as
among the Phrygians, the priest who sacri
ficed, the victim he slew, and the image or
great god to whom he slew him, were all
identified; the killer, the killed, and the
being in whose honour the killing took
place were all one single indivisible deity.
Even such details as that the priest clothed
himself in the skin of the victim are common
to many lands ; they may very well be
either a heritage from remote ancestral
humanity, or the separate product of the
human mind, working along like grooves
under identical conditions.
I must further premise that no religion
as we now know it is by any means primi
tive. The most savage creeds we find
among us have still hundreds of thousands
of years behind them. The oldest religions
whose records have descended to us, like
those of Egypt and of Assyria, are still
remote by hundreds of thousands of years
from the prime original. Cultivation itself
is a very ancient and immemorial art. Few
savages, even among those who are com
monly described as in the hunting stage,
are wholly ignorant of some simple form of
seed-sowing and tillage. The few who are
now ignorant of those arts show some
apparent signs of being rather degenerate
than primitive peoples. My own belief or
suspicion is that ideas derived from the set
of practices in connection with agriculture
detailed in the last two chapters have
deeply coloured the life and thought of
almost the whole human race, including
even those rudest tribes which now know
little or nothing of agriculture.
Early pastoral races seldom kill a beast
except on great occasions. When they
kill it, they devour it in common, all the
tribe being invited to the festival. But
they also eat it in fellowship with their
gods ; every great feast is essentially a
Theoxenion, a Lectisternium, a banquet in
which the deities participate with mortals.
It is this sense of a common feast of gods
■and men which gave, no doubt, the first
step towards the complex idea of the sacra
mental meal—an idea still further developed
.at a later stage by the addition of the con
cept that the worshipper eats and drinks
the actual divinity.
My own belief is that all sacrificial feasts
of this god-eating character most probably
■originated in actual cannibalism, and that
later an animal victim was substituted for
■the human meat; but I do not insist on
this point, nor attempt, strictly speaking, to
117
prove it. It is hardly more than a deeply
grounded suspicion. Nevertheless, I will
begin for convenience sake with the canni
bal class of sacrifice, and will come round
in time to the familiar slaughter of sheep
and oxen, which in many cases is known to
have supplanted a human offering.
Acosta’s account of the Mexican custom
is perhaps the best instance we now possess
of the ritual of cannibal mystic sacrifice in
its fullest barbarity. “They took a cap
tive,” says that racy old author, “at random;
and before sacrificing him to their idols,
they gave him the name of the idol to whom
he should be sacrificed, and dressed him in
the same ornaments, identifying him with
the god. During the time that the identi
fication lasted, which was for a year in
some feasts, six months or less in others,
they reverenced and worshipped him in the
same manner as the idol itself. Mean
while, he was allowed to eat, drink, and
make merry. When he went through the
streets, the people came forth to worship
him ; and every one brought alms, with
children and sick people that he might
cure them and bless them. He did as he
pleased in everything, except that he had
ten or twelve men about him, to prevent
him from escaping. In order that he might
be reverenced as he passed, he sometimes
sounded upon a small flute, to tell the people
to worship him. When the feast arrived,
and he had grown fat, they killed him,
opened him, and, making a solemn sacri
fice, eat him.” There, in the words of a
competent authority, we have the simple
cannibal feast in its fullest nakedness.
I need hardly point out how much this
account recalls the Khond custom of the
Meriah. The victim, though not really of
royal blood, is made artificially into a
divine king; he is treated with all the
honours of royalty and godhead, is dressed
like the deity with whom he is identified,
and is finally killed and eaten. The last
point alone differs in any large degree
from the case of the Meriah. We have
still to inquire, “Why did they eat him ?”
The answer to this inquiry takes us into
the very heart and core of the sacramental
concept.
It is a common early belief that to eat
of any particular animal gives you the
qualities of that animal. The Miris of
Northern India prize tiger’s flesh for men ;
it gives them strength and courage ; but
women must not eat it; ’twould make them
“ too strong-minded.” The Namaquas
abstain from eating hare; they would
�118
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
become faint-hearted if they swallowed it ;
but they eat the meat of the lion or drink
the blood of the leopard, in order to gain
their strength and courage. Among the
Dyaks, young men and warriors must not
eat deer ; it would render them cowardly ;
but women and very old men are allowed
to eat it. Men of the Buro and Aru Islands
feed on the flesh of dogs in order to be
bold and nimble. The flesh and blood of
brave men are eaten in order to inspire
bravery. Du Chaillu’s negro attendants,
we saw, scraped their ancestors’ skulls,
and drank the powder in water.
This case of Du Chaillu’s warriors takes
us with one bound into the heart of the
subject. Many savages for similar reasons
actually eat their own dead fathers.1 We
learn from Strabo that the ancient Irish
“ deemed it honourable to devour the
bodies of their parents.” So, Herodotus
tells us, did the Issedones of Central Asia.
The Massagetae used “from compassion”
to club and eat their aged people. The
custom was quite recently common among
the Battas of Sumatra, who used “ religi
ously and ceremonially to eat their old
relations.” In Australia it was usual to
eat relatives who died by mischance.
Generally speaking, the parents or rela
tives were eaten in order “ not to let the
life go out of the family ” ; or to preserve
the bodies and souls in a kindred body;
or to gain the courage and other qualities
of the dead relation. In short, the dead
were eaten sacramentally or, as one writer
even phrases it, “ eucharistically.” Mr.
Hartland has collected many striking in
stances.
But if men eat the bodies of their
fathers, who are their family and household
gods, they will also naturally eat the bodies
of the artificial gods of cultivation, or of
the temporary kings who die for the people.
By eating the body of a god you absorb
his divinity ; he and you become one ; he
is in you and inspires you. This is the
root-idea of sacramental practice ; you eat
your god by way of complete union ; you
subsume him in yourself; you, and he are
one being.
Still, how can you eat your god if you
also bury him as a corn-spirit to use him
as seed ? The Gonds supply us with the
1 Since this chapter was written the subject
of honorific cannibalism has been far more fully
treated by Mr. Sidney Hartland in the chapter
on funeral Rites, in the second volume of The
Legend of Perseus.
answer to that obvious difficulty. For, as
we saw, they sprinkle the blood of the
victim over the ploughed field or ripe crop,
and then they sacramentally devour his
body. Such a double use of the artificial
god is frequently to be detected, indeed,
through the vague words of our authorities.
We see it in the Potraj ceremony, where
the blood of the lamb is drunk by the
officiating priest, while the remainder of
the animal is buried beside the altar ; we
see it in the numerous cases where a
portion of the victim is eaten sacramentally,
and the rest burned and scattered over the
fields, which it is supposed to fertilise.
You eat your god in part, so as to imbibe
his divinity; but you bury him in part, so
as to secure at the same time his fertilising
qualities for your corn or your vineyard.
I admit that all this is distinctly mystic ;
but mystery-mongering and strange re
duplication of persons, with marvellous
identifications and minute distinctions,
have always formed much of the stock-intrade of religion.
And now let us return awhile to our
Mexican instances.
At the annual feast of the great god
Tezcatlipoca, which, like most similar
festivals, fell about the same time as the
Christian Easter, a young man was chosen
to be the representative of the god for a
twelvemonth. As in the case of almost
all chosen victims, he had to be a person
of unblemished body, and he was trained
to behave like a god-kijig with becoming
dignity. During his year of godship he
was lapped in luxury; and the actual
reigning emperor took care that he should
be splendidly attired, regarding him
already as a present deity. He was
attended by eight pages clad in the royal
livery—which shows him to have been a
king as well as a god ; and wherever he
went the people bowed down to him.
Twenty days before the festival at which
he was to be sacrificed, four noble maidens,
bearing the names of four goddesses, were
given him to be his brides. The final feast
itself, like those of Dionysus, of Attis, and
of Potraj, occupied five days—a coincidence
between the two hemispheres which almost
points to original identity of custom before
the dispersion of the races. During these
five days the real king remained in his
palace—and this circumstance plainly
shows that the victim belonged to the
common class of substituted and temporary
divine king-gods. The whole court, on
the other hand, attended the victim. On
�SACRIFICE AND SACRAMENT
the last day of the feast the victim was
ferried across the lake in a covered barge
to a small temple in the form of a pyramid.
On reaching the summit, he was seized
and held down on a block of stone—no
doubt an altar of funereal origin—while
the priest cut open his breast with a stone
knife, and plucked his heart out. This
he offered to the god of the sun. The head
was hung up among the skulls of previous
victims, no doubt for oracular purposes,
and as a permanent god ; but the legs and
arms were cooked and prepared for the
table of the lords, who thus partook of the
god sacramentally. His place was imme
diately filled by another young man, who
for a year was treated with the same
respect, and at the end of that time was
similarly slaughtered.
I do not think I need point out the close
resemblance of this ritual to that of the
Khond Meriah, of the Potraj, and of the
festivals of Dionysus, Osiris, Attis, and
Adonis. But I would also call particular
attention to the final destination of the
skull, and its exact equivalence to the
skull of the animal-god in India and else
where.
“ The idea that the god thus slain in the
person of his representative comes to life
again immediately,” says Mr. Frazer, “was
graphically represented in the Mexican
ritual by skinning the slain man-god, and
clothing in his skin a living man, who thus
became the new representative of the god
head.”
The blood of the victims was separately
offered ; and I may add in this connection
that as a rule both ghosts and gods are
rather thirsty than hungry. I take the
explanation of this peculiar taste to be that
blood and other liquids poured upon the
ground of graves or at altar-stones soon
sink in, and so seem to have been drunk
or sucked up by the ghost or god ; whereas
meat and solid offerings are seen to be
untouched by the deity to whom they are
presented. A minor trait in this blood
loving habit of the gods is seen in the fact
that the Mexicans also gave the god to
drink fresh blood drawn from their own
ears, and that the priests likewise drew
blood from their legs, and daubed it on
the temples. Similar mitigations of selfimmolation are seen elsewhere in the Attispriest drawing blood from his arms for
Attis, in the Hebrew Baal-priests “ cutting
themselves for Baal,” and in the familiar
Hebrew rite of circumcision. Blood is
constantly drawn by survivors or wor
119
shippers as an act of homage to the dead
or to deities.
I might multiply instances of human
sacrifices of the mystic order elsewhere, but
I prefer to pass on to the various mitiga
tions which they tend to undergo in various
communities. In its fullest form, I take it,
the mystic sacrifice ought to be the selfimmolation of a divine priest-king, a god
and descendant of gods, himself to him
self, on the altar of his own divine founda
tion-ancestor. But in most cases which
we can trace, the sacrifice has already
assumed the form of an immolation of a
willing victim, a temporary king, of the
divine stock only by adoption, though
sometimes a son or brother of the actual
monarch. Further modifications are that
the victim becomes a captive taken in war
(which, indeed, is implied in the very
etymology of the Latin word wictima}, or a
condemned criminal, or an imbecile, who
can be more readily induced to undertake
the fatal office. Of all of these we have
seen hints at least in previous cases. Still
more mitigated are the forms in which the
victim is allowed to escape actual death by
a subterfuge, and those in which an image
or effigy is allowed to do duty for the living
person. Of these intermediates we get a
good instance in the case of the Bhagats,
mentioned by Col. Dalton, who “ annually
make an image of a man in wood,
put clothes and ornaments on it, and
present it before the altar of a Maha
deo ” (or rude stone phallic idol). “ The
person who officiates as priest on the
occasion says, ‘ O, Mahadeo, we sacrifice
this man to you according to ancient cus
toms. Give us rain in due season, and a
plentiful harvest.’ Then, with one stroke
of the axe, the head of the image is struck
off, and the body is removed and buried.”
This strange rite shows us a surviving but
much mitigated form of the Khond Meriah
practice.
As a rule, however, such bloodless repre
sentations do not please the gods ; nor do
they succeed in.really liberating a ghost or
com-god. They are, after all, but feeble
phantom sacrifices. Blood the gods want,
and blood is given them. The most com
mon substitute for the human victim-god
is therefore the animal victim-god, of which
we have already seen copious examples in
the ox and kid of Dionysus, the pig of
Attis, and many others. It seems pro
bable that a large number of sacrifices, if
not the majority of those in which domestic
animals are slain, belong in the last resort
�J 20
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
to the same category. Thus, indeed, we
can most easily explain the theory of the
so-called “ theanthropic ” victim — the
animal which stands for a man and a
god—as well as the point of view of sacri
fice so ably elaborated by Dr. Robertson
Smith.
According to this theory, the domestic
animals were early regarded as of the same
kin or blood as the tribe ; and the slaughter
of an ox, a goat, or a sheep could only be
permitted if it were done, like the slaughter
of a king’s son, sacrificially and sacra
mentally. In my own opinion, this scarcely
means more than that the sacred domestic
animals were early accepted as substitutes
for the human victim, and that they were
eaten sacrificially and sacramentally as the
human victim was also eaten. But I will
waive this somewhat controversial point,
and content myself with suggesting that
the animal victim was habitually treated as
in itself divine, and that its blood was
treated in the same way as the blood of
the original cannibal offering. At the same
time, the sacrifice was usually offered at the
altar of some older and, so to speak, more
constant deity, while the blood of the
victim was allowed to flow over the sacred
stone. Certainly, both among the Arabs
and the Hebrews, all slaughter of domestic
animals appears to have been at one time
sacrificial; and even when the slaughter
ceased necessarily to involve a formal
sacrifice, it was still thought necessary to
slay the victim in the name of a god, and to
pour out the blood in his honour on the
ground. Even in the Grieco-Roman world,
the mass of butcher’s meat was “meat
offered to idols.” We shall see hereafter
that among existing savages the slaughter
of domestic animals is still regarded as a
sacred rite.
I believe also that as a rule the blood
offering is the earliest and commonest form
of slaughter to the gods ; and that the
victim in the earlier stages was generally
consumed by the communicants, as we
know the cannibal victim to have been con
sumed among the Mexicans, and as we saw
the theanthropic goat or kid was orgiasti
cally devoured by the worshippers of Diony
sus. It is a detail whether the sacred victim
happened to be eaten raw or cooked; the
one. usage prevailed in the earlier and more
orgiastic rites, the other in the milder and
more civilised ceremonies. But in either
case the animal-god, like the human god,
was eaten sacramentally by all his wor
shippers, who thus took into themselves his
divine qualities. The practice of burning
the victim, on the other hand, prevailed
mainly, I think, among cremationists, like
the Tyrians and Hellenes, though it un
doubtedly extended also to many burying
peoples, like the Hebrews and Egyptians.
In most cases even of cremated victims, it
would appear, a portion at least of the
animal was saved from the fire and sacra
mentally eaten by the worshippers.
Once more, the victim itself was usually
a particular kind of sacred animal. This
sacredness of the chosen beast has some
more important bearings than we have yet
considered. For among various pastoral
races various domesticated animals possess
in themselves positive sanctity. We know,
for example, that cows are very holy in the
greater part of India, and buffaloes in the
Deccan. Among the African peoples of
the pastoral tribes, the common food is
milk and game ; cattle are seldom slaught
ered merely to eat, and always on excep
tional or sacred occasions—the very occa
sions which elsewhere demand a human
victim—such as the proclamation of a war,
a religious festival, a wedding, or the funeral
of a great chieftain. In such cases the
feast is public, all blood-relations having a
natural right to attend. The cattle-kraal
itself is extremely sacred. The herd and
its members are treated by their masters
with affectionate and almost brotherly
regard.
A few further points must also be added.
Among early races, to kill and eat wild
animals, or to kill and eat enemies, who are
not members of the tribe, is not accounted
in any way wrong. But to kill a tribesman
—to shed kindred blood—is deeply sinful;
and so it is sinful to kill and eat the domestic
herds. In old age, indeed, or when sick
and feeble, you may kill and eat your blood
relation blamelessly ; and so you may also
kill and eat old or sickly cattle. But, as a
rule, you only eat them sacramentally and
sacrificially, under the same circumstances
where you would be justified in killing and
eating a human victim. Thus, as a rule,
each tribe has its own sacred beast, w’hich
is employed as a regular substitute for a
man-god. Among the Arabs, this beast
was a camel; among the Indian peoples,
the bull or the buffalo ; among shepherd
races, it is the sheep or goat; among the
Teutons, the horse; among many settled
urban peoples, the * pig; and with the
Samoyeds and Ostiaks, their one chattel,
the reindeer.
Also, as a rule, the cow or other female
�SACRIFICE AND SACRAMENT
121
animal was not usually sacrificed ; she was every home, and partakers of every meal,
kept for milk-yielding. It was the bull, the side by side with the living. They lived in
ram, the ox, the he-goat, that was oftenest the house, as still in New Guinea. Liba
offered and eaten sacramentally. Mere tions to them were poured from every cup ;
utilitarian considerations would soon lead food was offered to their ghosts or skulls
to this use, just as our own butchers kill or wooden images at every family gather
ram lambs by choice, and spare the ewes ing. The ordinary feasts were thus mere
for breeding. The custom, once introduced,
enlarged festal gatherings, at which a victim
would tend to become sacred ; for whatever was sacrificially slain and sacramentally
our divine ancestors did is itself divine, and eaten ; and the visitors believed they were
should not be lightly or carelessly altered.
eating the body and blood of the god to
Hence we can understand that supreme their own salvation. Greater sacrifices,
sanctity of the cow which has made so like the hecatombs, or the heroic Indian
many races refuse to sacrifice it, while they horse-sacrifice, must have been relatively
sacrifice and eat the bull or ox without let rare; but in all of them we see clear proof
or scruple. Thus the Todas have never that the victim was regarded as a sacred •
eaten the flesh of the female buffalo; but animal, that is to say a god, in one of his
the male they eat once a year, sacra embodiments.
mentally, all the adult men in the village
Clear evidence of this equivalence is
joining in the ceremony of killing and seen in the fact that the worshippers often
roasting it.
clad themselves in the skin of the victim,
A remarkable instance of the thean- as the Mexicans did in the skin of the
thropic sacrifice of such a sacred animal annual god. Sometimes the hide is even
is given us in Nilus’s account of the cere used to deck the idol. In the Cyprian
mony performed by the Arabs of his time. sacrifice of a sheep to the sheep-goddess
A holy camel, chosen as a victim, was Aphrodite, the celebrants wore the skin of
bound upon a rude cairn of piled-up stones. the sheep ; while the Assyrian DagonThe leader of the band then led the wor worshipper offered the fish sacrifice to the
shippers thrice round the cairn in a solemn fish-god, clad in a fish-skin. Of similar
procession, chanting a solemn hymn as import is doubtless the aegis or goat-skin of
they went. As the last words of the hymn Athena, envisaged as a goat-goddess, and
were sung, he fell upon the camel (like the skins used in the Dionysiac mysteries.
Potraj on the lamb), wounded it, and
I do not hesitate to affiliate all these on a
hastily drank of the blood. Forthwith the primitive usage like that of the Mexican
whole company hacked off pieces of the cannibal sacrifice.
quivering flesh, and devoured them raw
Having reached this point, we can see
with such wild haste that, between the rise further that the case where a sacred animal,
of the day-star and that of the sun, the the representative of a human victim, is
entire camel was absolutely eaten. I may slaughtered before the altar of an older
note that the annual sacrifice of the paschal god is exactly equivalent to the other known
lamb among the shepherd Hebrews is case where a human victim is slaughtered
obviously a mere mitigation of this bar before the foundation-stone of a town or
barous rite. In that case, as might be village. In either case, there is a distinct
expected in a most civilised race, the victim
renewal of the divine life ; fresh blood, as it
is roasted whole ; but it is similarly neces were, is instilled by the act into the ancient
sary that every part of it should be hastily deity.
eaten. Legend further informs us, in the
As a whole, then, we may venture to say
instance of the Passover, that the lamb was not perhaps that all, but that a great
a substitute for a human victim, and that number of sacrifices, and certainly the
the first-born were sanctified to Jahweh, best-known among historic nations, are
instead of being sacrificed. Note also that slaughters of animal substitutes for human
the feast of the paschal lamb occupied the
victims ; and that the flesh is sacramentally
now familiar space of five days : the sacred consumed by the worshippers.
animal was chosen on the tenth day of the
There is one special form of this animal
month, and sacrificed on the fourteenth.
sacrifice, however, which I cannot here pass
The whole ceremonial is most illustrative over in complete silence. It is the one of
and full of survivals.
which the harvest-feast is the final relic.
And now we must also remember that in
Mr. Frazer has fully worked out this theme
most countries the gods were housemates
in his fascinating essay : to detail it here at
of their worshippers, present at all times in
length would occupy too much space ; I
�122
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
can only give the barest outline of his
instances. Originally, it would seem, the
corn-god or corn-spirit was conceived
. during the reaping as taking refuge in the
last sheaf left standing. Whoever cut that
wisp of corn slew the corn-spirit, and was
therefore, on the analogy of the slayer of
the divine king, himself the corn-spirit.
Mr. Frazer does not absolutely assert that
this human representative was originally
killed and eaten, though all analogy would
seem to suggest it; but that he was at least
killed is abundantly certain ; and killed he
still is, in dumb show at any rate, on many
modern European corn-fields. More often,
• however, the corn-spirit is supposed to be
embodied in any animal which happens to
be found in the last sheaf, where even now
small creatures like mice and hedgehogs
often take refuge. In earlier times, how
ever, wolves, wild boars, and other large
animals seem to have been frequently met
with under similar circumstances. How
ever that may be, a great many beasts—
generally sacred beasts—are or have been
sacramentally eaten as representatives of
the corn-god ; while, conversely, the last
sheaf is often made up into the image of a
man, or still more often of a woman, and
preserved religiously for a year, like the
annual king, till the next harvest. Some
times a cock is beheaded and eaten at the
harvest ■ feast, special importance being
here attached to its head, as to the head of
the human victim in so many other cases.
Sometimes, as with the ancient Prussians,
it was the corn-goat whose body was sacra
mentally eaten.' Sometimes, as at Cham
bery, an ox is slaughtered, and eaten with
special rites by the reapers at supper.
Sometimes it is the old sacred Teutonic
animal, the horse, that is believed to
inhabit the last wisp of corn. I will add
parenthetically here (what I trust in some
future work to show) that we have probably
in this and kindred ideas the origin of the
sacred and oracular heads of horses and
oxen attached to temples or built into
churches. Sometimes, again, it is a pig
that represents the god, and is ceremonially
eaten at the harvest festival.
I need hardly mention that all these
sacred animals, substitutes for the original
human god, find their parallels in the
festivals of Dionysus, Attis, Osiris,
Demeter, Adonis, Lityerses, and the other
great corn and wine gods of the historic
civilisations.
But there is yet another and more
sublimated form of sacramental feast.
Since the corn-god and the wine-god,
when slain, undergo resurrection in the
corn and the vine, may we not also eat
their bodies as bread, and drink their
blood as wine or soma ?
To people already familiar, first with the
honorific cannibal form of god-eating, and
then with its gentler animal-victim modifi
cation, nothing could be more natural than
this slight transference of feeling. Nay,
more : whoever eat bread and drank wine
from the beginning must have known it
was the body and blood of a god he was
eating and drinking. Still, there is a
certain difference between mere ordinary
every-day food and the sacramental feast,
to which sacred cannibalism and animal
sacrifice had now familiarised men’s
minds. Accordingly, we find in many
cases that there exists a special sacra
mental eating and drinking of bread and
wine, which is more especially regarded as
eating the body and drinking the blood of
the deity.
Some curious illustrative facts may here
be cited. Since straw and corn grow from
the slaughtered corn-god, they may be
regarded as one of his natural embodi
ments. Hence, when human sacrifices are
prohibited, people sometimes make a straw
god do duty for a human one. The
Gonds, we saw, used once to kidnap sacred
Brahman boys—gods by race, as it were,
yet strangers and children—scatter their
blood over the fields, and eat their bodies
sacramentally. But when the unsym
pathetic British government interfered
with the god-making habits of the Gond
people, they took, says Col. Dalton, to
making an image of straw instead, which
they now similarly sacrifice. So it may be
noted in many of the ceremonies of
“ Burying the Carnival ” and the like,
which I have already cited, that a straw
man is substituted symbolically for the
human victim. Indeed, in that singular
set of survivals we have every possible
substitute—the mock king, the imbecile,
the pretended killing, the ceremonial
shedding of blood, the animal victim, and
the straw man or effigy. I may add that
even the making of our modern Guy
Fawkes as “a man of straw” is thus no
mere accident. But we get a very similar
use of corn in the curious practice of
fashioning the corn-wife and the corn-baby,
so fully detailed by Mr. Frazer. In this
attenuated survival of human sacrifice, a
sheaf of corn does duty for a human
victim, and represents the life of the corn
�SACRIFICE AND SACRAMENT
god or corn-spirit from one year to another.
All the existing evidence goes to suggest
the idea that at harvest a corn-maiden or
corn-wife, after a year of deification, was
slain in former times, and that the human
victim is now represented by her vegetable
analogue or equivalent, the corn in the ear,
a sheaf of which does duty in her place,
and reigns as corn-queen till the next year’s
harvest. The corn-baby is thus a temporary
queen, made of corn, not of human flesh
and blood. We may compare with this
case the account of the Sioux girl who was
sacrificed by the Pawnees, by being burned
over a slow fire, and then shot (like St.
Sebastian) with arrows. The chief sacrificer tore out her heart and devoured it,
thus eating the goddess in true cannibal
fashion. While her flesh was still warm, it
was cut up into small pieces and taken to
the corn-field. Drops of blood were
squeezed from it upon the grains of seed
corn ; after which it was all covered up in
the ground to form a crop-raiser. Of such
a ghastly goddess-making ceremony our
seemingly innocent harvest comedy of the
corn baby is probably the last surviving
relic. Mr. Frazer rightly connects it with
the cult of the Athenian Kore, Persephone.
I think, indeed, the double form of the
name, “the Old Woman” and “the Corn
baby,” makes it probable that the pair are
the vegetable equivalents of both Demeter
and her ravished daughter.
In other cases, however, it is the actual
bread and wine themselves, not the straw
or the corn in the ear, that represent the
god and are sacramentally eaten. We owe
to Mr. Frazer most of our existing know
ledge of the wide prevalence and religious
importance of this singular ritual.
We have seen already that in many
countries the firstfruits of the crops are
presented either to ancestral ghosts, or to
the great gods, or else to the king, who is
the living god and present representative
of the divine ancestors. Till this is done
it would be unsafe to eat of the new harvest.
The god within it would kill you. But in
addition to the ceremonial offering of firstfruits to the spirits, many races also “eat
the god” in the new corn or rice sacra
mentally. In Wermland, in Sweden, the
farmer’s wife uses the grain of the last
sheaf (in which, as we saw, the corn-god or
corn-spirit is supposed specially to reside)
in order to bake a loaf in the shape of a
little girl. Here we have the maiden, who
was previously sacrificed as a corn-goddess
or Persephone, reappearing once more in a
123
bread image. This loaf is divided among
all the household and eaten by them. So
at La Palisse, in France, a man made of
dough is hung upon the fir-tree which is
carried home to the granary on the last
harvest-waggon. The dough man and the
tree are taken to the mayor’s house till the
vintage is over; then a feast takes place,
at which the mayor breaks the dough man
in pieces, and gives the fragments to the
people to eat. Here the mayor clearly
represents the king or chief, while the feast
of first-fruits and the sacramental eating
are combined, as was perhaps originally
the case, in one and the same sacrificial
ceremony. No particular mention is made
of wine ; but as the feast is deferred so as
to take place after the vintage, it is pro
bable that the blood of the wine-god as
well as the body of the corn-god entered
once at least into the primitive ritual.
Many similar feasts survive in Europe ;
but for the rite of eating the corn-god in
its fullest form we must go once more to
Mexico, which also supplied us with the
best and most thoroughly characteristic
examples of the cannibal god-eating. Twice
a year, in May and December, an image of
the great Mexican god Huitzilopochtli was
made of dough, then broken in pieces, and
solemnly eaten by his assembled wor
shippers. Two days before the May feast,
says Acosta, the virgins of the temple
kneaded beet-seeds with roasted maize,
and moulded them with honey into a paste
idol, as big as the permanent wooden idol
which represented the god, putting in glass
beads for eyes, and grains of Indian corn
in the place of teeth. The nobles then
brought the vegetable god an exquisite and
rich garment, like that worn by the wooden
idol, and dressed the image up in it. This
done, they carried the effigy on a litter on
their shoulders, no doubt to mark its royal
authority. On the morning of the feast the
virgins of the god dressed themselves in
garlands of maize and other festal attire.
Young men, similarly caparisoned, carried
the image in its ark or litter to the foot of
the great pyramid temple. It was drawn
up the steps with clanging music of flutes
and trumpets—a common accompaniment
of god-slaying ceremonies. Flowers were
strewed on it, as was usual with all the gods
of vegetation, and it was lodged in a little
chapel of roses. Certain ceremonies • of
singing and dancing then took place, by
means of which the paste was consecrated
into the actual body and bones of the god.
Finally, the image was broken up and
�124
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
distributed to the people, first the nobles, and
then the commonalty, who received it, men,
women, and children, “ with such tears,
fear, and reverence as if it were sacred,
saying they did eat the flesh and bones of
God, wherewith they were grieved.” I
need not point out the close resemblance
here to the mourning over the bodies of
Attis and Adonis, nor to the rites of
Dionysus.
Still more closely does the December
feast (which took place, like Christmas, at
the winter solstice) recall the cannibal prac
tice ; for here an image of the god was
made of seeds, kneaded into dough with
the blood of children. Such a Massacre of
the Innocents occurs often elsewhere in
similar connections : we shall meet with it
again on a subsequent occasion. The
image was placed on the chief altar of the
temple, and on the day of its Epiphany the
king of Mexico offered incense to it. Bam
bino gods like this are well known in other
countries. Next day it was taken down,
and a priest flung at it a flint-tipped arrow.
This was called “killing the god so that his
body might be eaten.” One of the priests
then cut out the heart of the image and
gave it to the actual king to eat, just as in
other sacrifices the priest cut out the throb
bing heart of the human victim and placed
it in the mouth of the cannibal god. The
rest of the image was divided into small
pieces, which were distributed to all the
males of the community, adults or children.
The ceremony was called “God is Eaten.”
Mr. Frazer’s work is a perfect thesaurus of
analogous customs.
Mr. Frazer calls attention to an interesting
transitional instance. Loaves made in the
shape of men were called at Rome Maniae;
and it appears that such loaves were speci
ally made at Aricia. Now, Aricia was also
the one place in Italy where a divine priestking, the Rex Nemoralis, lived on well
recognised into the full blaze of the historic
period, on the old savage tenure of killing
his predecessor. Again, Mania was the
name of the Mother or Grandmother of
Ghosts. Woollen images, dedicated to this
Latin Cybele, were hung out in Rome at
the feast of the Compitalia, and were said
to be substitutes for human victims. Mr.
Frazer suggests that the loaves in human
form which were baked at Aricia were
sacramental bread ; and that in old days,
when the Rex Nemoralis was annually
slain, loaves were also made in his image
as in Mexico, and were eaten sacramentally
by his worshippers. I do not hesitate
myself to suggest still further that the
gingerbread cakes, shaped like a man, and
still richly gilt, which are sold at so many
fairs in France and Italy, and also some
times in England, are last dying relics of
similar early sacramental images. For
fairs are for the most part diminished survi
vals of religious festivals.
As the theanthropic animal victim repre
sents a man and a god, it is reasonable
that a cake shaped as an animal and baked
of flour should sometimes do as well as the
animal victim. For the corn is after all the
embodiment of the corn-god. Hence bakers
in the antique world used to keep in stock
representations in dough of the various
sacrificial animals, for people who were too
poor to afford the originals. Oxen and
sheep were regularly so represented. When
Mithridates besieged Cyzicus, and the
people could not get a black cow to sacrifice
to Persephone, they made a dough cow and
placed it at the altar. At the Athenian
festival of the Diasia, cakes shaped like
animals were similarly sacrificed ; and at
the Osiris festival in Egypt, when the rich
offered a real pig, the poor used to present
a dough pig as a substitute.
But in many other rites the sacramental
and sacrificial cake has entirely lost all
semblance of a man or animal. The god
is then eaten either in the shapeless form of
a boiled mess of rice or porridge, or in a
round cake or loaf, without image of any
sort, or in a wafer stamped with the solar
or Christian cross. Instances of this type
are familiar to everyone.
More closely related still to primitive
cannibalism is the curious ritual of the SinEater, so well elaborated by Mr. Sidney
Hartland. In Upper Bavaria what is
called a corpse-cake is kneaded from flour,
and placed on the breast of a dead person,
in order to absorb the virtues of the de
parted. This cake is then eaten by the
nearest relation. In the Balkan peninsula
a small image of the dead person was made
in bread and eaten by the survivors of the
family. These are intermediate stages
between cannibalism and the well-known
practice of sin-eating.
I hope I have now made clear the general
affiliation which I am seeking to suggest, if
not to establish. My idea is that in the
beginning certain races devoured their own
parents, or parts of them, so as to absorb
the divine souls of their forebears into their
own bodies. Later, when artificial godmakingbecame a frequent usage, especially
in connection with agriculture, men eat the
�THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT
god, or part of him, for a similar reason.
But they likewise eat him as the corn or
yam or rice, sacramentally. When theanthropic victims were substituted for the
man-god, they eat the theanthropic victim
in like manner. Also they made images in
paste of both man and beast, and, treating
these as compounded of the god, similarly
sacrificed and eat them. And they drank
his blood, in the south as wine, in the north
as beer, in India as soma. If this line of
reconstruction be approximately correct,
then sacraments as a whole are in the last
resort based upon survival from the cannibal
god-feast.
It is a significant fact that in many cases,
as at the Potraj festival, the officiating
priest drinks the blood of the divine victim,
while the laity are only permitted to eat of
its body.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONE
MENT
One more element of some importance
yet remains in the complex conception of
the human or animal victim, or slain god,
which we must briefly examine before we
can proceed with advantage to the evolu
tion of Christianity; I mean the doctrine
of piacular sacrifice—or, in other words, of
the atonement.
“Without shedding’of blood,” says the
author of one of the earliest Christian
tractates, “ there is no remission of sin.”
This is a common theory in all advanced
religions ; the sacrifice is regarded, not
merely as the self-immolation of a willing
divine victim or incarnate god, but also as
an expiation for crimes committed. “ Be
hold the Lamb of God,” says the Baptist
in the legend, “which taketh away the
sins of the world.”
This idea, I take it, is not primitive.
Sin must be regarded as a late ethical in
truder into the domain of religion. Early
man for the most part takes his gods
joyously. He is on the best of terms with
them. He eats and drinks and carouses in
their presence. They join in his phallic
and bacchanalian orgies. They are not
great moral censors, like the noble creation
of the Hebrew prophets, “of purer eyes
than to behold iniquity.” They are crea
125
tures of like passions and failings with him
self. Angry they may be at times, no
doubt; but their anger as a rule can be
easily assuaged by a human victim, or by
the blood of slaughtered goats and bulls.
Under normal circumstances they are
familiar housemates. Their skulls or
images adorn the hearth. In short, they
are average members of the tribe, gone
before to the spirit-world ; and they con
tinue to share without pride or asceticism
in the joys and feasts and merry-makings
of their relatives.
Thus the idea of expiation, save as a
passing appeasement for a temporary tiff,
did not probably occur in the very earliest
and most primitive religions. It is only
later, as ethical ideas begin to obtrude
themselves into the sacred cycle, that the
notion of sin, which is primarily that of
an offence against the established eti
quette of the gods, makes itself slowly
visible. In many cases later glosses seem
to put a piacular sense upon what was in
its origin, by obvious analogy, a mere
practical god-making and god-slaying
ceremony. But in more consciously philo
sophic stages of religion this idea of atone
ment gains ground so fast that it almost
swallows up the earlier conception of com
munion or feasting together. Sacrifice is
then chiefly conceived of as a piacular
offering to a justly offended or estranged
deity ; this is the form of belief which we
find almost everywhere meeting us in the
hecatombs of the Homeric poems, as in
many works of Hellenic and Semitic litera
ture.
In particular, the piacular sacrifice seems
to have crystallised and solidified round
the sacred person of the artificial deity.
“ The accumulated misfortunes and sins of
the whole people,” says Mr. Frazer, “are
sometimes laid upon the dying god, who
is supposed to bear them away for ever,
leaving the people innocent and happy.”
“ Surely he hath borne our griefs and car
ried our sorrows,” says one of the Hebrew
poets, whose verses are conjecturally
attributed to Isaiah, about one such divine
scapegoat; “yet we did esteem him
stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.
He was wounded for our transgressions ;
he was bruised for our iniquities. The
chastisement of our peace was upon him,
and with his stripes are we healed.
Jahweh hath laid upon him the iniquity of
us all.”.
The ideas here expressed in such noble
language were common to all the later
�126
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
man-gods of the more advanced and ethical
religions.
Mr. Frazer is probably right in connect
ing the notion of the scapegoat, human or
animal, with the popular barbaric idea of
the transference of evils. Thus, in popular
magic of all nations, diseases of every sort,
from serious fevers and plagues down to
headache, toothache, warts, and sores, are
transferred by some simple ceremony of
witchcraft to animals, rags, or other people.
I will quote examples but briefly. Epilepsy
is made over to leaves and thrown away in
the Malay Archipelago. Toothache is put
into a stone in Australia. A Bechuana king
gave his illness to an ox, which was drowned
in his stead, to secure his recovery. Mr.
Gomme quotes a terrible story of a Scotch
nobleman who transferred his mortal disease
to his brother by a magical ceremony.
“ Charms ” for fever or for warts generally
contain some such amiable element of
transferring the trouble to a string, a rag,
or a piece of paper, which is flung away to
carry the evil with it to the person who next
touches it.
Closely connected with these notions of
transference are also the occasional or
periodical ceremonies undertaken for the
expulsion of evils from a village or a com
munity. Devils, demons, hostile spirits,
diseases, and other misfortunes of every
sort, are frequently thus expelled with gongs,
drums, and other magical instruments.
Often the boundaries of the tribe or parish
are gone over, a perlustration is performed,
and the evil influences are washed out of
the territory or forcibly ejected. Our own
rite of Beating the Bounds represents on
one of its many sides this primitive cere
mony. Washings and dippings are frequent
accompaniments of the expulsive ritual; in
Peru it was also bound up with that
common feature of the com-god sacrament
—a cake kneaded with the blood of living
children. The periodical exorcism gene
rally takes place once a year, but is some
times biennial: it has obvious relations
with the sacrifice of the human or animal
victim. In Europe it still survives in many
places as the yearly expulsion of witches.
Putting these two cardinal ideas together,
we arrive at the compound conception of
the scapegoat. A scapegoat is a human or
animal victim, chosen to carry off, at first
the misfortunes or diseases, later the sin
and guilt of the community. The name by
which we designate it in English, being
taken from the derivative Hebrew usage,
has animal implications; but, as in all
analogous cases, I do not doubt that the
human evil-bearer precedes the animal one.
A good example of this incipient stage
in the evolution of the scapegoat occurs at
Onitsha, on the Quorra River. Two human
beings are there annually sacrificed, “to
take away the sins of the land”—though I
suspect it would be more true to native
ideas to say, “ the misfortunes.” The num
ber two, as applied to the victims, crops up
frequently in this special connection. The
victims here again are “bought with a
price ”—purchased by public subscription.
All persons who during the previous year
have committed gross offences against
native ethics are expected to contribute to
the cost of the victims. Two sickly people
are bought with the money, “one for the
land and one for the river.” The victims
are dragged along the ground to the place
of execution, face downward. The crowd
who accompany them cry, “ Wickedness !
wickedness!” So in Siam it was cus
tomary to choose a broken-down woman
of evil life, carry her on a litter through
the streets (which is usually a symbol of
kingship or godhead), and throw her on a
dunghill or hedge of thorns outside the
wall, forbidding her ever again to enter
the city. In this eastern case there is
mere expulsion, not actual killing.
In other instances, however, the divine
character attributed to the human scape
goat is quite unmistakable. Among the
Gonds of India, at the festival of the god
of the crops, the deity descends on the
head of one of the worshippers, who is
seized with a fit, and rushes off to the
jungle. There, it is believed he would die
of himself, if he were not brought back
and tenderly treated ; but the Gonds, more
merciful here than in many other cases,
take him back and restore him. The idea
is that he is thus singled out to bear the sins
of the rest of the village. At Halberstadt
in Thuringia an exactly similar custom sur
vived till late in the Middle Ages. A man
was chosen, stained with deadly sin, as the
public scapegoat. On the first day of Lent
he was dressed in mourning, and expelled
from church. For forty days he wandered
about, fed only by the priests, and no one
would speak to him. He slept in the street.
On the day before Good Friday, however,
he was absolved of his sins, and, being
called Adam, was believed to be now in a
state of innocence. This is a mitigated and
Christianised form of the hun' an sinoffering.
Again, the Albanians of the Eastern
�THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT
Caucasus kept a number of sacred slaves
in the temple of the moon, many of whom
were inspired and prophesied. When one'
of these men exhibited unusual symptoms
of inspiration, the high priest had him
bound with a sacred chain, and maintained
for a year in luxury, like the Mexican corn
god. This fact immediately brings the
human scapegoat into line with the annual
human gods we have already considered.
At the end of a year he was anointed with
unguents (or, so to speak, christed), and
led forth to be sacrificed. The sacrifice
was accomplished as a purificatory cere
mony.
In Greece we get similar traces of the
human scapegoat. At Chseronea in Bceotia,
the chief magistrate at the town-hall, and
every householder in his own house, as we
learn from Plutarch (who was himself a
magistrate there), had on a certain day to
beat a slave with rods of agnus castus, and
turn him out of doors, with the formula,
“ Out, hunger 1 in, health and wealth 1”
Elsewhere the custom retained more un
pleasant features. At Marseilles, when the
colony was ravaged by plague, a man of
the poorer classes used voluntarily to offer
himself as a sin-offering or scapegoat.
Here we have once more the common
episode of the willing victim. For a whole
year, like other annual gods, he was fed at
the public expense, and treated as a gentle
man—that is to say, a kingly man-god.
At the end of that time he was dressed in
sacred garments—another mark of godship
—decked with holy branches, the common
insignia of gods of vegetation, and led
through the city, while prayers were offered
up that the sins of the people might fall on
his head. He was then cast out of the
colony. The Athenians kept a number of
outcasts as public victims at the expense
of the town ; and when plague, drought,
or famine befell, sacrificed two of them
(note the number) as human scapegoats.
One was said to be a substitute for the
men, and one for the women. They were
led about the city (like Beating the Bounds
again), and then apparently stoned to death
without it. Moreover, periodically every
year, at the festival of the Thargelia, two
victims were stoned to death as scapegoats
at Athens, one for the men, and one for
the women. I would conjecturally venture
to connect this sacred number, not merely
with the African practice already noted,
but also with the dual kings of Sparta, the
two consuls at Rome, and the two suffetes
at Carthage and in other Semitic cities.
127
The duality of kings, indeed, is a frequent
phenomenon.
I can only add here that the many other
ceremonies connected with these human
scapegoats have been well expounded and
explained by Mannhardt, who shows that
they were all of a purificatory character,
and that the scourging of the god before
putting him to death was a necessary
point of divine procedure. Hence the
significance of the agnus cashes.
Briefly, then, the evidence collected by
Mannhardt and Frazer suffices to suggest
that the human scapegoat was the last
term of a god, condemned to death, upon
whose head the transgression or mis
fortunes of the community were laid as
substitute. He was the vicarious offering
who died for the people.
It is only here and there, however, that
the scapegoat retains to historical times
his first early form as a human victim.
Much more often, in civilised lands at
least, we get the usual successive mitiga
tions of the custom. Sometimes, as we
have seen already in these cases, the
victim is not actually killed, but merely
expelled, or even only playfully and cere
monially driven out of the city. In other
instances, we get the familiar substitution
of the condemned criminal, or the imbecile,
as in the Attic Thargelia. In the vast
majority of cases, however, we have the
still more common substitution of a sacred
animal for a human victim ; and this
appears to be in large part the origin of
that common religious feature, the piacular
sacrifice.
Occasionally we get historical or halfhistorical evidence of the transition from a
human victim to a divine or quasi-divine
animal. Thus, the people of Nias offer
either a red horse or a buffalo to purify the
land ; but formerly a man was bound to
the same stake with the buffalo, and when
the buffalo was killed the man was driven
away, no native daring to receive him or
feed him. The sacrificial camel of the
ancient Arabs, presumably piacular, is
expressly stated to be a substitute for a
human victim.
As a rule, the man-god or divine animal
selected as a scapegoat is not actually
slaughtered, in the fullest form of the rite;
he is driven away, or flung into the sea, or
left to die of hunger and thirst. Some
times, however, he is burned as a holo
caust : sometimes he is stoned, and some
times slaughtered. And in later and less
perfect forms of piacular animal sacrifice,
�128
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
slaughter was the rule, save where burning
■had ousted it. Indeed, in many cases, it
is difficult to disentangle the various
elements of the complex question. People
had got accustomed to certain forms of
sacrifice, and mixed them up indiscrimi
nately, so that one and the same rite seems
sometimes to be sacramental, sacrificial,
and piacular, all at once. Thus Dr.
Robertson Smith writes of ancient Egypt :
“Bulls were offered on the altar, and part
of the flesh eaten in a sacrificial feast ; but
the sacrifice was only permitted as a
piaculum, was preceded by a solemn fast,
and was accompanied by public lamenta
tion, as at the death of a kinsman.” Com
pare the annual mourning for Adonis ; and
also the similar union of sacrifice, sacra
ment, and Atonement in the Mass, which,
at the great resurrection-festival of the
Christian year, Easter, is equally preceded
by a fast, and by the solemn mourning of
Good Friday.
Now, I do not pretend to discriminate
accurately in these very mixed cases between
one element and another in the compound
rite. Often enough, all the various traits
of god-slaying, of sacrament, and of public
expiation are evidently present. Usually,
too, the victim is slain before the altar or
sacred stone of some earlier and greater
god, and its blood poured forth for him.
But the identity of god and victim is often
quite clear.
On the whole, then, at the stage we have
at last reached, I will not attempt to dis
tinguish in every case between the various
superposed ideas in the sacrificial cere
mony. Most sacrifices seem in the last
resort to be substitutes for human-divine
victims. Most seem to be sacramental, and
most to be more or less distinctly piacular.
I do not even know whether, in reconstruct
ing afresh for others a series of rites the
ideas of which have grown slowly clear to
my own mind by consideration of numerous
mixed examples, I have always placed each
particular fact in its best and most effective
position for illustration. I would like to
add, however, that the ideas here formu
lated must give a new meaning to many
points we could not at first understand
in ceremonies mentioned in our earlier
chapters. I will take only one example—
that of the place of Samoyed sacrifice
which Baron Nordenskiold sawon Vaygats
Island. We can now divine the meaning
of the heap of reindeer skulls piled around
the rude open-air shrine ; for reindeer are
the sacred and theanthropic animals of the
northern races ; while the preservation of
their heads at the hypoethral altar of the
elder gods or ghosts has its usual holy and
oracular meaning. We can also guess why
remains of a fireplace could be seen by the
side, at which the sacrificial and sacra
mental meal was habitually prepared ; and
why the mouths of the idols were smeared
with blood, in order to make the older gods
or ghosts participators in the festival.
Indeed, any reader who has followed me
thus far, and who now turns back to the
earlier chapters of this book, will find that
many details appear to him in quite a
different light, and will see why I have
insisted beforehand on some minor
points which must have seemed to him at
the time wholly irrelevant.
Many other curious ceremonies that seem
equally meaningless at first in narratives
of travel will also come to have a significant
meaning when thus regarded. For instance,
Mr. Chalmers tells us that among the New
Guinea natives of particular districts “ pigs
are never killed but in the one place, and
then they are offered to the spirit. The
blood is poured out there, and the carcase
is then carried back to the village, to be
divided, cooked, and eaten. Pigs’ skulls
are kept and hung up in the house. Food
for a feast, such as at house-building”—a
most pregnant hint—“is placed near the
post where the skulls hang, and a prayer
is said. When the centre-post is set up,
the spirits have wallaby, fish, and bananas
presented to them, and they are besought
to keep that house always full of food, and
that it may not fall when the wind is
strong.” If we recall other cases else
where, we can hardly doubt that the pigs
in these instances are killed as sacred
victims at the grave of the chief family
ancestor; especially when Mr. Chalmers
also tells us that “each family has a sacred
place where they carry offerings to the
spirits of deceased ancestors, whom they
greatly fear.” When sickness, famine, or
scarcity of fish occurs, it is these spirits that
have to be appeased. And if we recollect
once more that in so many cases the
central post of the hut is based on a human
or animal victim, both in New Guinea and
elsewhere, we can hardly doubt that to this
household-god or foundation-ghost the
offerings at the central post are presented.
Finally, the skulls of the pigs which are
kept in the house and hung on the post
remind us on the one hand of the skulls of
ancestor-gods similarly preserved, and on
the other hand of the skulls of theanthropic
�THE WORLD BEFORE CHRIST
129
towns at the time when Christianity began
to spring spontaneous in their midst. We
can arrive at some idea of the product itself
by observing the environment in which it
was evolved.
Once more, Christianity grew—for the
most part, among the lower orders of the
cosmopolitan seaports. It fashioned itself
among the slaves, the freedmen, the Jewish,
Syrian, and African immigrants, the
Druidical Gauls and Britons of Rome, the
petty shopkeepers, the pauperised clients,
the babes and sucklings of the populous
centres. Hence, while based upon Judaism,
it gathered hospitably into itself all those
elements of religious thought and religious
practice that were common to the whole
world, and especially to the Eastern Medi
terranean basin. Furthermore, it gathered
hospitably into itself in particular those
elements which belonged to the older and
deeper-seated part of the popular religions,
rather than those which belonged to the
civilised, Hellenised, and recognised modi
fications of the State religions. It was a
democratic rather than an official product.
CHAPTER XVII.
We have to look, therefore, at the elder far
more than the younger stratum of religious
TIIE WORLD BEFORE CHRIST
thought in the great cities for the in
fluences which went to mould Christianity.
Christianity grew. It was a natural
I do not deny, indeed, that the new faith
product. It did not spring, full-fledged,
was touched and tinged in all its higher
from any one man’s brain, as Athene sprang
parts by beautiful influences from Neo
from the head of Zeus. It was not even
Platonism, Alexandrian Judaism, and other
invented by any little group or school of half-mystical philosophic systems; but for
men, Petrine or Pauline, the apostles or the
its essential groundwork we have still to go
disciples, the early Church of Jerusalem,
to the root-stratum of religious practice
Antioch, or Alexandria. Christianity grew and belief in Antioch and Alexandria, in
—slowly. It developed, bit by bit, for three
Phrygia and Galatia, in Jerusalem and
long centuries, taking shape by gradual
Rome. It based itself above all on sacra
stages in all the teeming centres of the ment, sacrifice, atonement, and resurrec
Roman world ; and even after it had tion. Yet again, Christianity originated
assumed a consistent form as the Holy
first of all among the Jewish, Syrian, or
Catholic Church, it still went on growing in
Semitic population of these great towns of
the minds of men, with a growth which
the empire, at the very moment of its full
never ends, but which reveals itself even
cosmopolitanisation ; it spread rapidly from
now in a thousand modes, from a Vatican
them, no doubt at first with serious modi
Council to the last new departure of the
fications, to the mixed mass of sailors,
last new group of American sectaries.
slaves, freedwomen, and townspeople who
Christianity grew—in the crowded cosformed apparently its earliest adherents.
mopolitanised seaports and cities of the
Hence, we must look in it for an intimate
Roman Empire—in Antioch, Alexandria,
blend of Judaism with the central ideas of
Thessalonica, Cyrene, Byzantium, Rome.
the popular religions, Aryan or Hamitic, of
Its highway was the sea. Though partly
the Mediterranean basin. We must expect
Jewish in origin, it yet appears from its
in it much that was common in Syria, Asia
earliest days essentially as a universal and
Minor, Hellas, and Egypt—something even
international religion. Therefore we may
from Gaul, Hispania, Carthage. Its first
gain some approximate knowledge of its
great apostle, if we may believe our autho
origin and antecedents by considering the rities, was one Saul or Paul, a halfreligious condition of these various great
Hellenised Jew of Semitic and commercial
victims kept by the people of India at their
festivals, or fastened by early Greeks and
Romans on their temples. “ They cook the
heads of their slain enemies,” says Mr.
Chalmers again, “ to secure clean skulls to
- put on sacred places.”
We must then remember these two car
dinal points : first, that a dying god, human
or animal, is usually selected as a conve
nient vehicle for the sins of the people ; and
second, that “ without shedding of blood
there is no remission of sin.” These two
doctrines were commonly current all over
the world, but especially in that Eastern
Mediterranean world where Christianity
was first evolved. Indeed, they were there
so generally recognised that the writers of
the earliest Christian tractates, the Apos
tolic Epistles, take them for granted as selfevident—as principles of which every intel
ligent man would at once admit the truth
and cogency.
�13°
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
Tarsus in Sicilia, and a Roman citizen. Its
first great churches sprang up in the busy
ports and marts of the Levant. Its very
name of Christian was given to it first in
the crowded and cosmopolitan city of
■ Antioch.
It is here, then, in these huge slavepeopled hives of Hellenised and Roma
nised commerce, that we must look for the
mother-ideas of Christianity.
Antioch was quite undoubtedly in the
earliest times the principal cradle of the
new religion. I do not mean that Jeru
salem was not very probably the place
where men first began to form a small
sect of esoteric Christ-worshippers, or that
Galilee was not the region where the Christ
himself most largely lived and taught, if
indeed such a person ever really existed.
In those matters the traditions handed
down to us in the relatively late Gospels
may be perfectly correct : and, again, they
may not. But Christianity as we know it,
the Christianity of the Pauline epistles and
the later writings, such as the Gospels and
the works of the Fathers, must have been
essentially a cult of wider Syrian and
Gentile growth. It embraces in itself
elements which doubtless lingered on in
secluded corners more or less among the
mass of the people even in Judaea itself,
though discountenanced by the adherents
of the priestly and official Jahweh-worship ;
but which were integral parts of the popular
and even the recognised religion through
out the whole of northern Syria.
Antioch, where Christianity thus took its
first feeble steps, was a handsome and
bustling commercial city, the capital of
the Greek Seleucid kings, and the acknow
ledged metropolis of the Syrian area. At
the time of Paul (if there was a Paul) it
probably contained half a million people ;
it was certainly the largest town in Asia,
and worthy to be compared with Rome
itself in the splendour of its buildings.
Many things about its position are de
serving of notice. It stood upon the banks
of the Orontes, a sacred stream, ensconced
in a rich agricultural plain, fourteen miles
from the river’s mouth. Its Ostia was at
Selucia, the harbour whence flowed the
entire export trade of Syria and the east
towards Hellas and Italy. The Mediterra
nean in front connected it with Rome,
Alexandria, Asia Minor, Greece; the
caravan routes across the Syrian desert in
the rear put it in communication with the
bazaars of Mesopotamia and the remoter
east. It was thus the main entrepot of the
through trade between two important
worlds. The Venice of its time, it lay at
the focal point where the highroads of
Europe and of Asia converged.
Scholars of repute have pointed out the
fact that, even earlier than the days of Paul,
Buddhist ideas from India seem to have
dribbled through and affected the Syrian
world, as Zoroastrian ideas a little later
dribbled through and affected the thought
of Alexandria : and some importance has
been attached to this infiltration of motives
from the mystical east. Now, I do not
care to deny that budding Christianity
may have been much influenced on its
ritual and still more on its ethical side by
floating elements of Buddhist opinion.
But on the whole I think the facts we have
just been considering as to the manufacture
of artificial human gods and the nature
and meaning of piacular sacrifices will
suffice to show that Christianity was chiefly
a plant of home growth. The native soil
contained already every essential element
that was needed to feed it—the doctrine of
the Incarnation, the death of the ManGod, the atoning power of his Blood, the
Resurrection and Ascension. So that,
while allowing due weight to this peculiar
international position of Antioch, as the
double-faced Janus-gate of Europe and
Asia, I am not inclined to think that points
peculiar to Buddhism need have exercised
any predominant influence in the evolution
of the new religion. For we must re
member that Buddhism itself did but
subsume into its own fabric ideas which
were common to Peru and Mexico, to
Greece and India, to Syria and Egypt,
and which came out in fresh forms,
surging up from below, in the creed of
Christendom. If anything is clear from
our previous researches it is this—that the
world has never really had more than one
religion—“ of many names, a single central
shape,” as the poet phrases it.
The Syrian people, Semites by race and
cult, had fallen, like all the rest of the
eastern world, under the Hellenic dominion
of the successors of Alexander. A quick
and subtle folk, very pliable and plastic,
they underwent rapid and facile Hellenisa
tion. It was an easy task for them to
accept Greek culture and Greek religion.
The worshipper of Adonis had little
difficulty in renaming his chief god as
Dionysus and continuing to practise his
old rites and ceremonies to the newlynamed deity after the ancestral pattern.
The Astarte whom the east has given to
�THE WORLD BEFORE CHRIST
Hellas under the alias of Aphrodite came
back again as Aphrodite to Astarte’s old
sanctuaries. Identifications of gods and
cults were but simple matters, where so
many gods were after all essentially
similar in origin and function.
The Seleucids, however, did not fare so
well in their attempt to impose the alien
gods on the fierce Jehovistic zealots of the
southern mountains. Antiochus IV. en
deavoured in vain to force the cults of
intrusive Hellenism on his new kingdom
of Palestine. He reckoned without his
hosts. The populace of Jerusalem would
not away with his “idolatrous” rites—
would not permit the worship of Zeus and
Pallas, of Artemis and Aphrodite, to usurp
a place in the holy city of Jahweh. The
rebellion of the Maccabees secured at
least the religious independence of Judaea
from the early Seleucid period down to the
days of Vespasian and Titus. Lower
Syria remained true in her arid hills to
the exclusive and monotheistic cult of the
God of Israel. And at the same time the
Jew spread everywhere over the surround
ing countries, carrying with him not only
his straw and his basket, but also his
ingrained and ineradicable prejudices.
In Antioch, then, after the Roman absorp
tion of Syria, a most cosmopolitan religion
appears to have existed, containing mingled
Semitic and Hellenic elements, half assimi
lated to one another, in a way that was
highly characteristic of the early empire.
And among the popular cults of the great
city we must certainly place high those of
Adonis and Dionysus, of Aphrodite-Astarte,
and of the local gods or goddesses, the
Baalim and Ashtareth, such as the maiden
who, as we learnt from Malalas, was sacri
ficed at the original foundation of the city,
and ever after worshipped as its Tyche or
Fortune. In other words, the conception
of the human god, of the corn and wine
god, of the death of the god, and of his
glorious resurrection, must have all been
perfectly familiar ideas to the people of
Antioch and of Syria in general.
Let us note here, too, that the particular
group of Jahweh-worshippers among whom
the Christ is said to have found his personal
followers were not people of the priestly
type of Jerusalem, but Galilaean peasants
of the northern mountains, separated from
the most orthodox set of Jews by the intru
sive wedge of heretical Samaritans, and
closely bordering on the heathen Phoenician
seaboard—“the coasts of Tyre and Sidon.”
Here Judaism and heathenism marched
together; here Jahweh had his worshippers
among the fishers of the lake, while Hel
lenism had fixed itself in the statelier villas
of Tiberias and Ptolemais.
Alexandria was another of the great cos
mopolitan seaport towns where Christianity
made its earliest converts, and assumed
not a few of its distinctive tenets. Now,
in Alexandria, Hellenism and the immemorially ancient Egyptian religion found
themselves face to face at very close;
quarters. It is true, the town in its his
torical aspect was mainly Greek, founded?
by the great Macedonian, and priding itself'
on its pure Hellenic culture. But the mass of the lower orders who thronged its alleys
must surely have consisted of more or less
mongrel Egyptians, still clinging with all
the old Egyptian conservatism to the ideas
and practices and rites of their fathers..
Besides these, we get hints of a large cosmo
politan seafaring population, among whom,
strange faiths and exotic gods found ready
acceptance. Beside the stately forms of
the Greek pantheon and the mummified
or animal-headed Egyptian deities, the
imported Syrian worship of Adonis had
acquired a firm footing ; the annual festival
of the slaughtered god was one of the
principal holidays; and other Syrian or
remoter faiths had managed to secure their
special following. The hybrid Serapis
occupied the stateliest fane of the hybrid
city. In that huge and busy hive, indeed,
every form of cult found a recognised place,
and every creed was tolerated which did
not inculcate interference with the equal
religious freedom of others.
The Ptolemaic family represents in itself
this curious adaptability of the Graeco
Egyptian Alexandrian mind. At Alexandria
and in the Delta the kings appear before
us as good Hellenes, worshipping their
ancestral deities in splendid temples; but
in the Thebaid the god Ptolemy or the
goddess Cleopatra erected buildings in
honour of Ptah or Khem in precisely the
old Egyptian style, and appeared on their
propyla in the guise of Pharaohs engaged
in worshipping Amen-Ra or Osiris. The
great Alexander himself had inaugurated
this system when he gave himself out as
the son of “Zeus Ammon”; and his indirect
representatives carried it on throughout
with a curious dualism which excused itself
under the veil of arbitrary identifications.
Thus Serapis himself was the dead Apis
bull, invested with the attributes of an
Osiris and of the Hellenic Hades ; while
Amen-Ra was Zeus in an Egyptain avatar.
�132
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
The large Jewish colony at Alexandria
also prepared the way for the ultimate
admixture of Neo-Platonism in the Christian
faith ; while the Egyptian belief in Triads
of gods formed the groundwork for the
future doctrine of the Trinity, so doggedly
battled for by the Alexandrian Athanasius.
It is true that Ampère and Preller have
strenuously denied any Egyptian admixture
in the philosophy of Alexandria, and their
reasoning may be conclusive enough as to
the upper stratum of thought ; but it must
at least be admitted that popular belief in
the city of the Ptolemies must have been
deeply coloured by the ideas and creeds of
its Egyptian substratum. Now, in the
growth of Christianity it was the people
who counted, not the official classes, the
learned, or the philosophic. We must not
attribute to the population of the East
End of London the theology of Pusey or
the evolutionism of Herbert Spencer.
Christianity would seem also to have
taken part at least of its form in Rome.
And, as Roman influence extended likewise
over every portion of the vast empire, I must
say a few words here about the origin and
growth of the Roman religion.
That religion, as it comes upon us in the
<few glimpses we get of its early Italic and
pre-Hellenised form, was one of the rudest
.and most primitive type, almost savage in
its extreme simplicity. It knew hardly any
great gods by name: the few deities it
possessed it expressed only for the most
part by adjectival names. Few, I say, as
to type, for as to number of individuals
their name- indeed was legion ; they per
vaded the whole world in that reckless
multiplicity which distinguishes the simple
•ghosts or spirits of early hunting or pastoral
peoples. With the Romans this multipli
city, ubiquity, and vagueness survived into
a relatively settled and civilised agricultural
condition. A vast number of small depart
mental gods, with few or no great ones
—that is the first state of the Roman
pantheon.
The central point of old Roman religion
was clearly the household ; the family
ghosts or lares were the most honoured
gods. We may instructively compare Mr.
Chalmers’s account of the theology of New
Guinea. Besides these ancestral shades,
or almost identical with them, came the
penates or practical deities of the store-room,
perhaps the representatives of the victims
slain as foundation-ghosts at the first erec
tion of the building. Of these two, the
Lares were undoubtedly the departed
ancestors of the family; they lived near
the spot where they were first buried (for
the old Romans were buriers), and they still
presided over the household as in life, like
its fathers and senators. They were wor
shipped daily with prayers and simple offer
ings of food and drink : their masks or
busts which hung on the wall.were perhaps
the representatives, or in ancient days the
coverings, of the old oracular heads or
skulls ; for the skulls themselves may have
been preserved in wax, as so often elsewhere
at an earlier period.1 The Penates which
were worshipped with the Lares seem to
have stood for the family spirit in a more
generalised way; they represent the con
tinuity and persistence of its Fortune ; and
therefore, if we may trust the analogy of
the Fortune of a town, they are probably
the ghosts of the foundation or renewal
victims. In judging of all this, we cannot
attach too great importance to the analogy
of Negritto and Polynesian customs.
Other deities are more public. But most
of them seem to belong to the simplest and
most immediately ghost-like stratum. They
had to do with sowing, reaping, and vintage
—in other words, were corn or wine gods,
Or else they had to do with the navigable
river, the Tiber, and the port of Ostia,
which lay at its mouth—in other words,
were spring and river gods. Or else they
had to do with war and expeditions—in
other words, were slaughtered campaign
gods of the Iphigenia pattern, Bellonas
and battle-victims.
Among this dim crowd of elder manu
factured deities, Saturnus, the sowing god,
was most likely an annual corn-victim ; his
adjectival name by itself suggests that con
clusion. Terminus, the boundary god, is
already familiar to us. About these two at
least we can hardly be mistaken. Seia,
Segetia, Tutilina, were the successive corn
deities. They seem to equate with the suc
cessive maidens slain for the corn in other
communities, and still commemorated in
our midst by the corn-baby and the corn
wife. At each stage of age in the corn a
corresponding stage in the age of the
human victim was considered desirable.
But how reconcile this idea with the exist
ence of numerous petty functional deities—
1 To this use of the oracular head I would venture
also to refer the common employment of small
masks as amulets—an employment which, as
Bötticher rightly remarks, explains “ the vast
number of such subjects met with in antique
gems.”
�THE WORLD -BEFORE CHRIST
gods of the door and the hinge ?—with the
Cunina who guards the child in the cradle,
and the Statina who takes care of him
when he begins to stand ? I answer, all
these are but adjectival gods, mere ghosts
or spirits, unknown in themselves, but con
ceived as exercising this particular function.
“The god that does so-and-so” is just a
convenient expression, no more; it serves
its purpose, and that was enough for the
practical Roman. How readily they could
put up with these rough-and-ready identifi
cations we know in the case of Aius Locutius and of the Deus Rediculus.
Each Terminus and each Silvanus is thus
the god or protecting ghost of each boun
dary stone or each sacred grove—not a
proper name, but a class—not a particular
god, but a kind of spirit. The generalised
and abstract gods are later unifications of
all the individuals included in each genus.
The Janus, I take it, was at first the victim
once sacrificed annually before each gate of
the city, as he is sacrificed still on the west
coast of Africa : as the god of opening, he
was slaughtered at the opening of every
new year; and the year conversely opened
its course with the month sacred to the god
of opening. Perhaps he was also slain as
fortune at the beginning of each war. The
Vesta is the hearth-goddess; and every
house had its Vesta; perhaps originally a
slaughtered hearth-victim. Every man had
in like manner his Genius,- an ancestral
protecting spirit; the corresponding guar
dian of the woman was her Juno; they
descend to Christianity, especially in its
most distinctive Roman form, as the guar
dian angels. Mars was a corn-spirit; only
later was he identified with the expedi
tionary god. The Jupiter or Jovis was a
multiple wine-god, doubtless in every case
the annual victim slain, Dionysus-wise, for
the benefit of the vineyard. Each village
and each farm had once its Jovis, specially
worshipped, and, I doubt not, originally
slaughtered, at the broaching of the year’s
first wine-cask in April. But his name
shows that, as usual, he was also identified
with that very ancient Sky-god who is
common to all the Aryan race ; the par
ticular Jovis being probably sacrificed, him
self to himself, before the old Sky-god’s
altar, as elsewhere the Dionysus-victim at
the shrine of Dionysus.
These identifications, I know, may sound
fanciful to mere classical scholars, unac
quainted with the recent advances in
anthropology, and I would not have ven
tured to propound them at an earlier stage
133
of our involved argument; but now that we
have seen and learned to recognise the
extraordinary similarity of all pantheons
the whole world over, I think the exact way
these deities fall into line with the wall
gods, gate-gods, corn-gods, wine-gods,
boundary-gods, forest-gods, fountain-gods,'
and river-gods everywhere else must surely
be allowed some little weight in analogi
cally placing them.
The later Roman religion only widens, if
at all, from within its own range by the
inclusion of larger and larger tribal ele
ments. Thus the Deus Fidius, who pre
sided over each separate alliance, I take to
be the ghost of the victim slain to form a
covenant; just as in Africa to this day,
when two tribes have concluded a treaty of
peace, they crucify a slave “ to ratify thebargain.” The nature of such covenant
victims has been well illustrated by Pro
fessor Robertson Smith, but the growth of
the covenant-gods, who finally assumed
very wide importance, is a subject which
considerations of space prevent me from
including in our present purview. The
victim, at first no doubt human, became
later a theanthropic animal; as did also
the Jovis-victim and the representatives of
the other adjectival or departmental deities..
The Roman Mars and the Sabine Quirinus
may readily have been amalgamated into a
Mars Quirinus, if we remember that Mars
is probably a general name, and that any
number of Martes may at any time have
been sacrificed. The Jovis of the city of
Rome thus comes at last to be the greatest
and most powerful Jupiter of them all, and
the representative of the Roman union.
Under Hellenising influences, however, all
these minor gods get elevated at last into
generalised deities ; and the animal victims
offered to them become mere honorific or
pi.acular sacrifices, hardly identified at all
with the great images who receive them.
The Hellenising process went so far,
indeed, at Rome that the old Roman
religion grew completely obscured, and
almost disappeared, save in its domestic
character. In the home the Lares still
held the first rank. Elsewhere Bacchus
took the place of Liber, while the traits of
Hermes were fastened on the adjectival
Roman bargain-spirit Mercurius. Yet even
so, the Roman retained his primitive belief
in corn and wine gods under the newer
guises ; his Ceres he saw as one with the
Attic Demeter; his rural ceremonies still
continued unchanged by the change of
attributes that infected and transfigured the
�134
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
city temples. Moreover, the Romans, and
later the cosmopolitan population of Rome,
borrowed gods and goddesses freely from
without in ever-increasing numbers. In
very early days they borrowed from Etruria;
later they borrowed Apollo from Greece,
and (by an etymological blunder) fixed upon
their own Hercules the traits of Heracles.
On the occasion of a plague they publicly
summoned Asclepios, the Greek leech-god,
from Epidaurus; and at the very crisis of
the life-and-death conflict with Hannibal
they fetched the sacred field-stone known
as Cybele, the Mother of the Gods, from
Pessinus in Phrygia. The people of
Pessinus with strange compliance let their
goddess go; and the whole orgiastic cult of
Attis was thus transported entire to I talian
soil. The rites of the great festival were
carried on at Rome almost as they had
been carried on before in Phrygia ; so that
an Asiatic worship of the most riotous type
found a firm official footing in the centre of
the empire. The priest, indeed, was still
an Asiatic, or at least not a Roman ; but
the expulsion of Hannibal from Italy which
followed on this adoption of a foreign god
must have greatly increased the prestige
.and reputation of the alien and orgiastic
deity.
The luxurious Aphrodite of Eryx in
Sicily arrived in Rome about the same time
with Cybele. Originally a Semitic goddess,
she combined the Hellenic and oriental
ideas, and was identified in Italy with the
old Latin Venus.
Later still yet other gods were imported
from without. New deities flowed in from
Asia and Africa. The population of the
city under the early empire had almost
•ceased to be Roman, save in the upper
strata ; a vast number of slaves from all
parts of the world formed the lowest layer
m the crowded vaults : the middle rank
was filled by Syrians, Africans, Greeks,
Sicilians, Moors, and freedmen—men of
all places and races from Spain or Britain
to the Euphrates and the Nile, the steppes
and the desert. The Orontes, said Juvenal,
had flooded the Tiber. Among this mixed
mass of all creeds and colours, subfusc or
golden-haired, a curious mixture of religions
grew up. Some of these were mere ready
made foreign importations—Isis-worship
from Egypt; Jahweh-worship from Judaea;
strange eastern or northern or African cults
from the remotest parts of Pontus or Mauri
tania. Others were intermixtures or rational
isations of older religions, such as Chris
tianity, which mingled together Judaism
and Adonis or Osiris elements, such as
Gnosticism, which, starting from Zoroastrian infiltrations, kneaded all the gods of
the world at last into its own supreme
mystic and magic-god Abraxas.
Looking a little deeper through the
empire in general, we see that from the
time of Augustus onward the need for a
new cosmopolitan religion, to fit the new
cosmopolitan state, was beginning to be
dimly felt and acknowledged. Soldiers
enlisted in one country took the cult and
images of their gods to another. The bull
slaying Mithra (in whom we can hardly
fail to see a solar form of the bull-god, who
sacrifices a bull, himself to himself, before
his own altar) was worshipped here and
there, as numerous bas-reliefs show, from
Persia to Britain. The Gaul endeavoured
to identify his own local war-gods with the
Roman Mars, who had been Hellenised in
turn into the duplicate presentment of the
Greek Ares. The Briton saw his river
gods remodelled in mosaic into images
like those of Roman Tiber, or provided
with the four horses who drag the Roman
Neptune, as Neptune has borrowed the
representation at last- from the Greek
Poseidon. And this was all the easier
because everywhere alike horses were
sacrificed to sea or river, in lieu of human
victims; just as everywhere corn-gods
were dressed in green, and everywhere
wine-gods wore coronals of vine-leaves on
their holy foreheads. Men felt the truth
I have tried to impress, that everywhere
and always there is but oiie religion.
Attributes and origin were so much alike
that worship was rapidly undergoing a
cosmopolitanisation of name, as it already
possessed a similarity of rites and underly
ing features. Language itself assisted this
unifying process. In the west, as Latin
spread, Latin names of gods superseded
local ones ; in the east, as Greek spread,
Hellenic deities gave their titles and their
beautiful forms to native images.
But this was not enough. As the govern
ment was one, under a strong centralised
despotism, it was but natural that the reli
gion should be one also, under the rule
of a similar omnipotent deity. Man makes
his heaven in the image of earth, his
pantheon answers to his political constitu
tion. The mediaeval hall of heaven had
an imperial God, like the Othos or the
Fredericks, on his regal throne, surrounded
by a court of great barons and abbots in
the angels and archangels, the saints and
martyrs: the new religions, like Spiritualism
�THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
and Theosophy, which spring up in the
modern democratic world, are religions
of free and independent spirits, hardly
even theistic. The Roman empire thus
demanded a single religion under a single
strong god. Materialists were satisfied
with the worship of the Emperor or of the
city of Rome : idealists turned rather to
Isis or to Christ.
One religion there was which might
have answered the turn of the empire : the
pure and ideal monotheism of Judaea. But
the cult of Jahweh was too local and too
national; it never extended beyond the
real or adopted sons of Israel. Even so,
it gained proselytes of high rank at Rome,
especially among women ; as regards men,
the painful and degrading initiatory cere
mony of Judaism must always have stood
seriously in the way of converts. Yet, in
spite of this drawback, there were prose
lytes in all the cosmopolitan cities where
the Jews were settled ; men who loved
their nation and had built them a syna
gogue. If Judaism could but get rid of
its national exclusiveness, and could in
corporate into its god some more of those
genial and universal traits which he had
too early shuffled off—if it could make
itself less austere, less abstract, and at the
same time less local—there was a chance
that it might rise to be the religion of
humanity. The dream of the prophets
might still come true, and all the world
might draw nigh to Zion.
At this critical juncture an obscure little
sect began to appear among the Jews and
Galilaeans, in Jerusalem and Antioch, which
happened to combine in a remarkable
degree all the main requirements of a new
world-religion. And whatever the cult of
Jesus lacked in this respect in its first
beginnings, it made up for as it went, by
absorption and permeation.
It was a Catholic Church : it stood for
the world, not for a tribe or a nation. It
was a Holy Church : it laid great stress
upon the ethical element. It was a Roman
Church : it grew and prospered throughout
the Roman empire. It made a city what
was once a world. Whence it came and
how it grew must be our next and final
questions.
135
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
While the world was thus seething and
fermenting with new faiths the Creed of
the Christ made its first appearance on the
seaboard of Asia. In spite of certain re
marks in my first chapter, I am not such a
“ gross and crass Euhemerist ” as to insist
dogmatically on the historical existence of
a personal Jesus. Of the Christ himself, if
a Christ there were, we know little or
nothing. The account of his life which
has come down to us in the Gospels is so
devoid of authority, and so entirely built
up of miraculous fragments, derived from
elsewhere, that we may well be excused for
gravely doubting whether he is not rather
to be numbered with St. George and St.
Catherine, with Perseus and Arthur, among
the wholly mythical and imaginary figures
of legend and religion.
On the other hand, it is quite possible, or
even probable, that there really did live in
Galilee, at some time about the beginning
of our accepted era, a teacher and
reformer bearing the Semitic name which
is finally Hellenised and Latinised for us
as Jesus. If so, it seems not unlikely that
this unknown person was crucified (or
rather hung on a post) by the Romans at
Jerusalem under the Procurator G. Pontius
Pilatus ; and that after his death he was
worshipped more or less as a god by his
immediate followers. Such kernel of truth
may very well exist in the late and deriva
tive Gospel story ; a kernel of truth, but
imbedded in a mass of unhistorical myth
which implicitly identifies him with all the
familiar corn-gods and wine-gods of the
Eastern Mediterranean.
Furthermore, it is even possible that the
Christ may have been deliberately put to
death, at the instigation of the Jewish
rabble, as one of those temporary divine
kings whose nature and meaning we have
already discussed. If this suggestion seem
improbable from the lack of any similar
recorded case in the scanty Jewish annals,
I would answer that formal histories seldom
give.us any hint of the similar customs still
surviving in civilised European countries ;
that many popular rites exist unheard of
everywhere ; and that the Jews were com
monly believed through the Middle Ages
to crucify Christian boys, like St. Hugh
of Lincoln, in certain irregular and
�136
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
unrecognised ethnical ceremonies. Further
more, lest I should be thought to adduce this
instance through an anti-Semite tendency
(which I do not in the slightest degree
possess), I may add that even among
' Christians similar customs are believed to
exist in rural parts of Italy at the present
day—there are villages where a man dies
yearly as the representative of Christ: and
that in my opinion the Oberammergau and
other Passion Plays are survivals of like
representations in which a condemned
criminal, the usual substitute, did once
actually enact the part of Christ. In short,
■ I do not hesitate to say that god-slaying
ceremonies, more or less attenuated, have
lingered on everywhere in obscure forms
among the folk-rites and folk-customs of
the most civilised peoples.
Without doing more than briefly indicate
this possibility, however, I pass on to say
that if ever there was really a personal
Christ, and if his followers began by vaguely
believing in his resurrection, the legend, as
we get it, is obviously made up of collected
fragments of all the god-slaying customs
and beliefs we have been considering in
detail through the last six or seven chapters.
In the Gospel of his later believers, after the
sect had spread widely among the Gentiles
of the towns, Jesus is conceived of as a corn
and wine god, a temporary king, slain on a
cross as a piacular atonement, and raised
again from the dead after three days, in the
manner common to all corn and wine gods.
It is possible, of course, that the first
believers may have fastened all these ideas
on to an accidental combination and execu
tion, so to speak ; but it is possible too that
the Christ may actually have been put to
death at the great spring feast of the Passover, in accordance with some obscure and
unrecognised folk-rite of the rabble of
Jerusalem. I do not even pretend to have
an opinion on this subject; I do not assert
or deny any historical nucleus of fact ; I
am satisfied with saying that the story, on
the whole, exhibits the Christ to us entirely
in the character of a temporary king, slain
with piacular rites as a corn and wine god.
In the earliest Christian documents, the
Pauline and other Apostolic Epistles, we
get little information about the history of
the real or mythical Christ. Shadowy allu
sions alone to the crucifixion and the
resurrection repay our scrutiny.
But
through the mist of words we see two or
three things clearly. The Christ is des
cribed as the son of God—that is to say, of
the Jewish deity ; and he is spoken of con
tinually as slain on a post or tree, the
sacred symbol of so many old religions.
He dies to save mankind ; and salvation is
offered in his name to all men. A careful
reading of the epistles from this point of
view will give in brief an epitome of the
earliest and least dogmatic yet very doc
trinal Christian theology. Its cardinal
points are four—incarnation, death, resur- ■
rection, atonement.
The later accounts which we get in the
Gospels are far more explicit. The legend
by that time had taken form : it had grown
clear and consistent. All the elements of
the slain and risen corn and wine god are
there in perfection. For brevity’s sake, I
will run all these accounts together, adding
to them certain traits of still later origin.
The aspect of Christ as a survival of the
corn-gOd is already clear in Paul’s argument
in First Corinthians on the resurrection of
the body. This argument would strike
home at once to every Greek and every
Asiatic. “ That which you sow is not
quickened unless it die. And when you
sow, you sow not the body that is to be, but
bare grain ; it may be wheat or any other
grain. But God gives it a shape as pleases
him ; to every seed its own body.” The
whole of this fifteenth chapter, the earliest
statement of the Christian belief, should be
read through in this connection by any one
who wishes to understand the close relation
of the idea of sowing to the resurrection.
It might have been written by any wor
shipper of Adonis or Osiris who wished to
recommend his special doctrine .of a bodily
resurrection to a doubtful cremationist,
familiar with the cult of Dionysus and of
Attis.
The earliest known rite of the Christian
Church was the sacramental eating and
drinking of bread and wine together ; which
rite was said to commemorate the death of
the Lord and his last supper, when he eat
and drank bread and wine with his dis
ciples. The language put into his mouth
on this occasion in the Gospels, especially
the Fourth, is distinctly that of the corn and
wine god. “ I am the true vine ; ye are the
branches.” “ I am the bread of life.”
“ Take, eat, this is my body.” “ This is my
blood of the new testament.” Numberless
other touches of like kind are scattered
through the speeches.
In early Christian art, as exhibited in the
catacombs at Rome, the true vine is most
frequently figured; as are also baskets o-f
loaves, with the corresponding miracle of
the loaves and fishes. Multiplication of
�THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
bread and wine are the natural credentials
of the corn and wine god. The earliest
description we possess of Christ, that of
John of Damascus, states that his com
plexion was “of the colour of wheat”; while
in the apocryphal'letter of Lentulus to the
Roman Senate we read in the same spirit
that his hair was “wine-coloured.” The
Greek description by Epiphanius Monachus
says that Christ was six feet high ; his hair
long and golden-coloured ; and in counte
nance he was ruddy like his father David.
All these descriptions are obviously influ
enced by the identification of the bread and
wine of the eucharist with the personal
Jesus.
In the usage of the Church from very
early days, it has been customary to eat the
body of Christ in the form of bread, and to
drink his blood as wine in the sacrament.
In the Catholic Church this continuous
ceremony takes place at an altar contain
ing sacred bones, and is represented as
being the offering of God, himself to him
self, in the form of a mystic and piacular
sacrifice. The priest drinks the wine or
blood ; the laity eat only the bread or body.
A curious custom which occurs in many
churches of Sicily at Easter still further
enforces this unity of Christ with the cult
of earlier corn and wine gods, like Adonis
and Osiris. The women sow wheat, lentils,
and canary-seed in plates, which are kept
in the dark and watered every second day.
The plants soon shoot up ; they are then
tied together with red ribbons, and the
plates containing them are placed on the
sepulchres which, with effigies of the dead
Christ, are made up in Roman Catholic
and Greek churches on Good Friday, “just
as the gardens of Adonis,” says Mr. Frazer,
“ were placed on the grave of the dead
Adonis.” In this curious ceremony we get
a survival from the very lowest stratum of
corn-god worship ; the stratum where an
actual human victim is killed, and corn
and other crops are sown above his body.
Even where the sowing itself no longer
survives the sepulchre remains as a relic
of the same antique ritual. Such sepulchres
are everywhere common at Easter, as are
the cradles of the child-god at the feast of
the winter solstice. The Pietà is the final
form of this mourning of the corn-god by
the holy women.
Passing on to the other aspects of Christ
as corn-god and divine-human victim, we
see that he is doubly recognised as god
and man, like all the similar gods of early
races. In the speeches put into his mouth
137
by his biographers he constantly claims
the Jewish god as his father. Moreover,
he is a king ; and his kingly descent from
his ancestor David is insisted upon in the
genealogies with some little persistence.
He is God incarnate ; but also he is the
King of the Jews, and the King of Glory.
Wise men come from the east to worship
him, and bring gifts of gold and myrrh
and frankincense to the infant God in his
manger cradle. But he is further the
Christ, the anointed of God; and, as we
saw, anointment is a common element with
numerous other divine-human victims.
Once more, he is the King’s son; and he
is the only begotten son, the dearly beloved
son, who is slain as an expiation for the
sins of the people. The heavens open, and
a voice from them declares, “ This is my
beloved son in whom I am well pleased.”
He is affiliated, like all other such victims,
on the older and earlier ethnical god,
Jahweh ; and though he is himself God,
and one with the Father, he is offered up,
himself to himself, in expiation of the sin
committed by men against divine justice.
All this would be familiar theology indeed
to the worshipper of Osiris, Adonis, and
Attis.
The common Hebrew offering was the
paschal lamb; therefore Christ is envisaged
as the Lamb of God, that taketh away the
sins of the world. In the paintings of the
catacombs it is as a lamb that the Saviour
of the world is oftenest represented. As a
lamb he raises another lamb, Lazarus ; as
a lamb he turns the water into wine ; as a
lamb he strikes the living springs from the
rock on the spandrils of the sarcophagus
of Junius Bassus. But his birth in a
manger is also significant; and his vine
and his dove are almost as frequent as his
lamb in the catacombs.
The Gospel history represents the passion
of Christ essentially as the sacrifice of a
temporary king, invested with all the
familiar elements of that early ritual.
Christ enters Jerusalem in royal state,
among popular plaudits, like those which
always accompany the temporary king, and
the Attis or Adonis. He is mounted on an
ass, the royal beast of the Semites. The
people fling down branches of trees in his
path, as they always fling down parts of
green trees before the gods of vegetation.
On Palm Sunday his churches are still
decked with palm-branches or with sprays
of willow-catkin. Such rites with green
things form an integral part of all the old
rituals of the tree-god or the corn-god, and
�138
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
of all the modern European survivals in
folk-lore—they are equally found in the
Dionysiac festival, and in the Jack-in-theGreen revels on English fair-days. The
connection with trees is also well marked
throughout the Gospels ; and the miracle
of the barren fig-tree is specially mentioned
in close connection with the entry into
J erusalem.
The Christ goes as a willing victim to
the cross ; he does not seriously ask that
the cup should pass from him.
He
foretells his own death, and voluntarily
submits to it. But he is also bought with
a price—the thirty pieces of silver paid to
Judas. Of all this we had forecasts in the
Khond, the Mexican, and various other
rituals.
Furthermore, there is a trial—a double
trial, before the high priest and before
Pilate. Such trials, we have seen, are
common elements of the mock-king’s
degradation. Like all other similar vic
tims, the Christ, after being treated like
a monarch, is reviled and spat upon, buf
feted and insulted. He is bound with
cords, and carried before Pilate. The
procurator asks him, “ Art thou the King
of the Jews?” and the Christ by implica
tion admits the justice of the title. All the
subsequent episodes of the painful drama
are already familiar to us. The sacred
victim is cruelly scourged that his tears
may flow. As in other cases he is crowned
with flowers or with bark, in order to
mark his position as king of vegetation, so
here he is crowned with a chaplet of thorns
that adds to his ignominy. The sacred
blood must flow from the sacred head.
But still, he is clothed with purple and
saluted with the words, “ Hail, King of the
Jews 1” in solemn irony. He is struck on
the head with a reed by the soldiers : yet
even as they strike they bow their knees
and worship him. They give him to drink
wine, mingled with myrrh ; “ but he re
ceived it not.” Then he is crucified at
Golgotha, the place of a skull,1 on a cross,
the old sacred emblem of so many reli
gions ; it bears the inscription, “ The King
of the Jews,” by order of the Procurator.
After the death of the Christ he is mourned
over, like Adonis and Osiris, by the holy
women, including his mother. I do not
think I need point out in detail the many
1 According to mediaeval legend, the skull was
Adam’s, and the sacred blood which fell upon it
revived it. In crucifixions a skull is generally
represented at the foot of the cross.
close resemblances which exist between the
Mother of the Gods and the Mother of
God—the Theotokos.
The thieves crucified with the Saviour
have their legs broken, like many other
sacred victims ; but the .Christ himself has
not a bone broken, like the paschal lamb
which was the Jewish substitute for the
primitive human victim. Thus both ideas
on this subject, the earlier and the later,
seem to find an appropriate place in the
history. Instead of having his legs broken,
however, the Christ has his side pierced;
and from it flows the mystic blood of the
atonement, in which all Christians are
theoretically washed ; this baptism of blood
(a literal reality in older cults) being
already a familiar image at the date of the
Apocalypse, where the robes of the elect
are washed white in the blood of the lamb
that was slain.
After the crucifixion the Christ is taken
down and buried. But, like all other corn
and wine gods, he rises again from the
dead on the third day—this very period of
three days being already a conventional
one in similar cases. Every one of the
surroundings recalls Osiris and Attis. It
is the women once more who see him first;
and afterwards the men. Finally, he
ascends into heaven, to his Father, before
the wondering eyes of his disciples and his
mother. In each item of this there is
nothing with which we are not already
familiar elsewhere.
I will not pursue the analogy further.
To do so would be endless. Indeed, I do
not think there is an element in the Gospel
story which does not bear out the parallel
here suggested. The slight incident of the
visit to Herod, for example, is exactly
analagous to the visit of the false Osiris in
modern Egypt to the governor’s house, and
the visit of the temporary or mock king in
so many other cases to the real king’s
palace. The episode where Herod and his
men of war array the Christ in a gorgeous
robe is the equivalent of the episode of the
Mexican king arraying the god victim in
royal dress, and is also paralleled in nume
rous other like dramas elsewhere. The
women who prepare spices and ointments
for the body recall the Adonis rites ; Pilate
washing his hands of the guilt of con
demnation recalls the frequent episode of
the slaughterers of the god laying the
blame upon others, or casting it on the
knife, or crying out, “ We bought you with
a price ; we are guiltless.” Whoever will
read carefully through the Gospel accounts,
�THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
side by side with Mr. Frazer’s well-chosen
collection of mock-king narratives, will see
for himself that endless other minor traits
crop up in the story which may be equated
with numerous similar incidents in the
death and resurrection of the man-god
elsewhere.
The very subjects of the parables are in
themselves significant: the lord of the
vineyard who sends his son, whom the
hirers slay ; the labourers who come at the
eleventh hour ; the sower and the good
and bad ground ; tlie grain of mustard
seed ; the leaven of the Pharisees ; the
seed growing secretly; the sons in the
vineyard. It will be found that almost all
of th'em turn on the key-note subjects of
bread and wine, or at least of seed-sowing.
By what precise stages the story of the
Galilaean man-god arose and fixed itself
around the person of the real or mythical
Jesus it would be hard to say. Already in
the epistles we may catch stray glimpses,
in the germ, of most of it. Already we
notice strange hints and foreshadowings.
Probably the first Jewish disciples had
arrived at the outline of the existing story
even before the Gentiles began to add their
quotum. And when we look at documents
so overloaded with miracle and legend as
the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles,
we find it hard indeed to separate any
element of historical truth from the enor
mous accretion of myth and legend. Still,
I see no grave reason to doubt the general
truth of the idea that the Christian belief
and practice arose first among Galilrean
Jews, and that from them it spread with
comparative rapidity to the people of Syria
and Asia Minor. It even seems probable
that one Saul or Paul was really the person
who first conceived the idea of preaching
the new religion throughout the empire,
and especially in the great cities, as a faith
which might be embraced by both Jew and
Gentile. Certainly, while the young cult
contained most of the best features of
Judaism, viewed as a possible universal
religion—its monotheism, its purity, its
comparative freedom from vile and absurd
legends of the gods and their amours—it
surpassed the elder faith in acceptability to
the world at large, and especially to the
people of Syria and western Asia. Every
one of them could have said with perfect
truth, “ Nothing is changed ; there is but
one god more to worship.”
As the church spread, the legend grew
apace. To the early account of the death
and resurrection of the King of the Jews
139
later narrators added the story of his
miraculous birth from a virgin mother, who
conceived directly frqm the spirit of God
wafted down upon her. The wide extent
and the origin of this belief about the
conception of gods and heroes has been
fully examined by Mr. Sidney Hartland in
his admirable study of the Legend of
Perseus. The new believers further pro
vided their divine leader with a royal
genealogy from David downward, and
made him, by a tolerably circuitous argu
ment, be born at Bethlehem, according to
the supposed prophecy—though, if there
ever was really a Jesus at all, it would,
seem that the one fact of which we could .
feel tolerably sure about him was the fact.
of his being a man of Nazareth. Later
writers put into his mouth a moral teaching
high for its time, somewhat .anticipated by
Hillel and other rabbis, and perhaps im
part of Buddhist origin.; they also made him announce for himself that divine role
of mediator and atoner which they them
selves claimed for the Saviour of Mankind.
He calls himself the vine, the bread of
life, the good shepherd ; he is called “ the
lamb of God that taketh away the sins of
the world,” by John the Baptist, an enthu
siast whose fame has attracted him at last
into the Christian legend. Very early, the
old rite of water-lustration or baptism,
adopted by John, was employed as one of
the chief Christian ceremonies, the cere
mony of initiation, which replaced with
advantage the bloody and dangerous
Jewish circumcision. This allowed far
freer proselytism than Judaism could ever
expect; and though no doubt at first the
Christians regarded themselves as a sect
of the Jews, and though they always
adopted entire the Jewish sacred books
and the Jewish God, with all the Jewish
history, cosmogony, and mythology, yet
the new religion was from the beginning
a cosmopolitan one, and preached the
word unto all nations. Such a faith,
coming at such a moment, and telling men
precisely what they were ready to believe,
was certain beforehand of pretty general
acceptance. When Constantine made
Christianity the official creed of the
empire, he did but put an official stamp
of approval on a revolution that had long
been growing more and more inevitable.
In one word, Christianity triumphed, be
cause it united in itself all the most vital
elements of all the religions then current
in the world, with little that was local,
national, or distasteful ; and it added to
�140
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
them all a high ethical note and a social
doctrine of human brotherhood especiallysuited to an age of unification and syste
matic government.
Occasionally, even in the Gospels them
selves, we get strange passing echoes of a
mysterious identification of the Christ with
the ancient Hebrew ethnical god, not as
the Lord of the Universe alone, but vaguely
remembered as the sacred stone of the
ark, the Rock of Israel. “The stone
which the builders rejected, that one has
become the head of the corner.” “ Who
soever shall fall on this stone shall be
broken ; but on whomsoever it shall fall,
it will grind him to powder.” And in a
•speech put into the mouth of Christ he
says to Peter, “ Rock thou art, and on this
Rock will I build my assembly.”1
Sometimes, too, in the epistles the two
Ideas of the corn-god and the foundation
stone-god are worked upon alternately.
“ I have planted ; Apollos watered.” “Ye
are God’s husbandry; ye are God’s build
ing.” “ I have laid the foundation, and
another builds thereon. Let every man
take care how he builds upon it. For other
foundation can no man lay than that which
is laid, which is the Christ, Jesus.” Or
again : “You are built upon the foundation
of the apostles and prophets, Jesus, the
Christ, being himself the chief corner
stone.” Whoever re-reads the epistles by
the light of the analogies suggested in this
book will find that they positively teem
with similar references to the familiar
theology of the various slain man-gods,
which must have been known to every one
•along the shores of the Mediterranean.
The Church which was built upon this
rock has shown its continuity with earlier
religions in a thousand ways and by a
thousand analogies. Solar and astrologi
cal elements have been freely admitted,
side by side with those which recall the
corn and wine-gods. The chief festivals
still cling to the solar feasts of the equi
noxes and the solstices. Thus every year
the Church celebrates in mimicry the death
and resurrection of the Christ, as the
Mediterranean peoples celebrated the
death and resurrection of the Attis, the
1 I can honestly assure the polemical Protes
tant divine that I am well aware of the differ
ence in gender in this passage—and of its utter
unimportance. The name Peter could not well
be made feminine to suit a particular play upon
words, or to anticipate the objections of a par
ticular set of trivial word-twisters.
Adonis, the Dionysus, the Osiris. It cele
brates the feast at the usual time for most
such festivals, the spring equinox. More
than that, it chooses for the actual day of
the resurrection, commonly called in
English Easter, and in the Latin dialects
the Paschal feast (or Pâques), a trebly
astrological date. The festival must be as
near as possible to the spring equinox ;
but it must be after a full moon, and it
must be on the day sacred to the sun.
Before the feast a long fast takes place, at
the close of which the Christ is slain in
effigy, and solemnly laid in a mimic
sepulchre. Good Friday is the anniversary
of his piacular death, and the special day
of the annual mourning, as for Adonis and
Attis. On Easter Sunday he rises again
from the dead, and every good Catholic
is bound to communicate—to eat the body
of his slaughtered god on the annual spring
festival of reviving vegetation. Compari
son of the Holy Week ceremonies at Rome
with the other annual festivals, from the
Mexican corn-feast and the Potraj rite of
India to Attis and Adonis, will be found
extremely enlightening—I mean, of course,
the ceremonies as they were when the Pope,
the Priest-King, the representative of the
annual Attis at Pessinus, officiated publicly
in the Sistine Chapel, with paschal music
known as Lamentations, and elevation of
the Host amid the blare of trumpets. On
this subject I limit myself to the barest
hint. Whoever chooses to follow out so
pregnant a clue will find it lead him into
curious analogies and almost incredible
survivals.
Similarly, the birth of Christ is celebrated
at the winter solstice, the well-known date
for so many earlier ceremonies of the gods
of vegetation. Then the infant god lies
unconscious in his cradle. Whoever has
read Mr. Frazer’s great work will under
stand the connection of the holly and the
mistletoe, and the Christmas tree, with
this second great festival of Christendom,
very important in the Teutonic north,
though far inferior in the south to the
spring-tide feast, when the god is slain and
eaten of necessity. I limit myself to saying
that the Christmas rites are all of them
rites of the birth of the corn-god.
The Christian cross, too, it is now known,
was not employed as a symbol of the faith
before the days of Constantine, and was
borrowed from the solar wheel of the
Gaulish sun-god-worshippers who formed
the mass of the successful emperor’s legion
aries.
�THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
We are now, therefore, in a very different
position for understanding the causes which
led to the rise and development of the
Christian religion from that which we
occupied at the outset of our inquiry. We
had then to accept crudely the bare fact
that about the first century of our era a
certain cult of a Divine Man, Jesus, arose
among a fraction of a maritime people of
Lower Syria. That fact as we at first
received it stood isolated and unrelated in
its naked singularity. We can now see
that it was but one more example of a
universal god-making tendency in human
nature, high or low; and in our last chapter
we shall find that this universal tendency
to worship the dead has ever since persisted
as fully as ever, and is in fact the central
element in the entire religious instinct of
humanity.
The main emotional chord upon which
Christianity played in its early days—and
indeed the main chord upon which it still
plays-—is just, I believe, the universal feeling
in favour of the deification or beatification
of the dead, with the desire for immortality
on the part of the individual believer him
self in person. Like all other religions,
but even more than any other religion at
that time in vogue, Christianity appealed to
these two allied and deep-seated longings
of human nature. It appealed on the one
hand to the unselfish emotions and affec
tions of mankind by promising a close,
bodily, personal, and speedy reassociation
of the living believer with his dead relatives
and friends. It appealed on the other hand
to the selfish wishes and desires of each,
by holding forth to every man the sure and
certain hope of a glorious resurrection.
A necessary consequence of the universal
ferment and intermixture of pantheons
everywhere during the early days of the
Roman Empire was a certain amount of
floating scepticism about the gods as a
whole, which reaches its highest point in
the mocking humour of Lucian. But
while this nascent scepticism was very real
and very widespread, it affected rather
current beliefs as to the personality and
history of the various gods than the under
lying conception of godhead in the abstract.
Even those who laughed and those who
disbelieved retained at bottom many super
stitions and supernatural ideas. Their
scepticism was due, not like that of our own
time to fundamental criticism of the very
notion of the supernatural, but to the obvious
inadequacy of existing gods to satisfy the
requirements of educated cosmopolitans.
141
The deities of the time were too coarse, too
childish, too gross for their worshippers.
The common philosophic attitude of culti
vated Rome and cultivated Alexandria
might be compared to some extent to that
of our own Unitarians, who are not indeed
hostile to the conception of theology in its
own nature, but who demur to the most
miraculous and supernatural part of the
popular doctrine.
With the mass, however, the religious
unrest showed itself mainly, as it always
shows itself at such critical moments, in a
general habit of running after strange reli
gions, from some one or other of which the
anxious inquirer hopes to obtain some
divine answer to his difficulties. When old
faiths decay, there is room for new ones.
As might have been expected, this ten
dency was most clearly shown in the great
cosmopolitan trading towns, where men of
many nations rubbed shoulders together,
and where outlandish cults of various sorts,
had their temples and their adherents.
Especially was this the case at Rome, Alex
andria, and Antioch, the capitals respec
tively of the Roman, the Hellenic, and the
Semitic worlds. In the Grseco-Egyptian
metropolis the worship of Serapis, a com
posite deity of hybrid origin, grew gradually
into the principal cult of the teeming city.
At Antioch Hellenic deities were ousting
the Baalim. At Rome, the worship of Isis,,
of Jahweh, of Syrian and other Eastern
gods, was carried on by an ever-increasing
body of the foreign, native, and servile
population. These were the places where
Christianity spread. The men of the vil
lages were long, as the world still quaintly
phrases it, “ pagans.”
The strange cults which united in thus
gradually crushing out the old local and
national pantheons throughout the Roman
world had for the most part two marked
attributes in common : they were more or
less mystical, and they tended more or less
in the direction of monotheism. Solar
myth, syncretism, the esoteric priestly in
terpretations, and the general diffusion of
Greek philosophic notions, mixed with
subtler oriental and Zoroastrian ideas, had
all promoted the rise and growth of the
mystic element, while a vague monothe
istic movement had long been apparent in
the higher thought of Egypt, Greece, Italy,
and the East. In the resulting conflict and
intermixing of ideas, Judaism, as one of
the most mystical and monotheistic of reli
gions, would have stood a good chance of
becoming the faith of the world had it not
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THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
been for the fatal weight of its strict and
obstinate national character. Even as it
was, Jewish communities were scattered
through all the commercial towns of the
Graeco-Roman world; a Jewish colony
strongly influenced Alexandria ; and Jewish
teachers made proselytes in Rome in the
very bosom of the imperial household.
The ferment which thus existed by the
Orontes, the Nile, and the Tiber must also
have extended in a somewhat less degree
to all the cosmopolitan seaports and trading
towns of the great and heterogeneous mili
tary empire. What was true of Rome,
Alexandria, and Antioch was true in part,
we have every reason to believe, of Damas
cus, of Byzantium, of Sinope, of Ephesus;
of Rhodes, of Cyrene, of Athens, of Car
thage ; perhaps even of Massilia, of Gades,
of Burdigala, of Lugdunum. All around
the eastern Mediterranean at least, new
faiths were seething, new ideas were brew
ing, new mysticisms were being evolved,
new superstitions were arising, Phoenix
like, out of the dying embers of decaying
creeds. Setting aside mere exotic or hybrid
cults, like the worship of Serapis at Alex
andria and of Isis at Rome, or mere abor
tive attempts like the short-lived worship of
Antinous in Egypt, we may say that three
of these new religions appealed strongly to
the wants and desires of the time, and
those three were Mithraism, Gnosticism,
and Christianity.
All were alike somewhat eclectic in cha
racter ; and all could lay claim to a certain
, cosmopolitan and catholic spirit unknown
to the cults of the old national pantheons.
All came to the Greek and Roman world
from the mystic east, the land of the rising
sun, whose magic is felt even at the present
day by the votaries of Theosophy and of
Esoteric Buddhism. Which of the three
was to conquer in the end might have
seemed at one time extremely doubtful :
nor indeed do I believe that the ultimate
triumph of Christianity, the least imposing
of the three, was by any means at first a
foregone conclusion. The religion of Jesus
probably owed quite as much to what we
call chance—that is to say, to the play of
purely personal and casual circumstances
—as to its own essential internal character
istics. If Constantine or any other shrewd
military chief had happened to adopt the
symbols of Mithra or Abraxas instead of
the name of Christ, it is quite conceivable
that all the civilised world might now be
adoring the mystic divinity of the three
hundred and sixty-five emanations as
sedulously as it actually adores the final
theological outcome of the old Hebrew
Jahweh. But there were certain real
advantages as well, which told, I believe,
in the very nature of things, in favour of
the Christ as against the coinage of
Basilides or the far-eastern sun-god. Con
stantine, in other words, chose his religion
wisely. It was the cult exactly adapted to
the times : above all others, during the two
centuries or so that had passed since its
first beginning (for we must place the real
evolution of the Christian system consider
ably later than the life or death of Jesus
himself) it had shown itself capable of
thoroughly engaging on its own side the
profoundest interests and emotions of the
religious nature.
We must remember, too, that in all
religious crises, while faith in the actual
gods and creeds declines rapidly, no
corresponding weakening occurs in the
underlying sentiments on which all religions
ultimately base themselves. Hence the
apparent paradox that periods of doubt are
also almost always periqds of intense
credulity as well. The human mind, cast
free from the moorings which have long
sufficed for it, drifts about restlessly in
search of some new haven in which it may
take refuge from the terrors of uncertainty
and infidelity. And its new faith is always
but a fresh form of the old one. A god or
gods, prayer, praise, and sacraments, are
essential elements. More especially is it
the case that when trust in the great gods
begins to fail, a blind groping after necro
mancy, spiritualism, and ghost-lore in
general takes its place for the moment.
We have seen this tendency fully exempli
fied in our own time by the spiritualists and
others ; nor was it less marked in the
tempest of conflicting ideas which broke
over the Roman world from the age of the
Antonines to the fall of the empire. The
fact is, the average man cares but little,
after all, for his gods and his goddesses,
viewed as individuals. They are but an
outlet for his own emotions. He appeals to
them for help, as long as he continues to
believe in their effective helpfulness : he is
ready to cajole them with offerings of blood
or to flatter them with homage of praise
and prayer, as long as he expects to gain
some present or future benefit, bodily or
spiritual, in return for his assiduous adula
tion. But as soon as his faith in their
existence and power begins to break down,
he puts up with the loss of their godhead,
so far as they themselves are concerned,
�THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
without one qualm of disappointment or
inconvenience. It is something far other
than that that touches him in religion : it
is his hopes for his own eternal welfare, and
the welfare after death of those that love
him.
Hence a decline of faith in the great
gods is immediately followed by a recrudes
cence of the most barbaric and original
element in religion—the cult of the ghost or
spirit, necromancy, the direct worship of the
dead or intercourse with the dead: a habit of
inquiry into the positive chances of human
immortality. This necromantic spirit is
well marked in Gnostic remains, and in
the fragmentary magical literature of the
decadent Grseco-Roman world. It is
precisely the same tendency which pro
duces spiritualism in our own time; and it
is due to the desire to find some new and
experimental basis for the common human
belief in the immortality of the soul or the
resurrection of the body.
And here we get the clue to the serious
change which Christianity wrought in the
religious feeling of the western world—a
change whose importance and whose
retrograde nature has never yet, I believe,
been fully recognised. For Christianity,
while from one point of view, as a mono
theistic or quasi-monotheistic religion, an
immense advance upon the aesthetic
paganism of Greece and Italy, was from
another point of view, as a religion of
resurrection rather than a religion of im
mortality, a step backward for all Western
Europe.
Even among the Jews themselves, how
ever, the new cult must have come with all
the force of an “ aid to faith ” in a sceptical
generation. Abroad, among the Jewish Hel
lenists, Greek philosophy must have under
mined much of the fanatical and patriotic
enthusiasm for Jahweh which had grown
stronger and ever stronger in Judaea itself
through the days of the Maccabees and the
Asmonaean princes. Scraps of vague Pla
tonic theorising on the nature of the Divine
were taking among these exiles the place
of the firm old dogmatic belief in the Rock
of Israel. At home the Hellenising ten
dencies of the house of Herod, and the
importance in Jerusalem of the Sadducees
“ who say there is no resurrection,” were
striking at the very roots of the hope and
faith that pious Jews most tenderly
cherished. Instead of Israel converting
the world, the world seemed likely to con
vert Israel. Swamped in the great absorb
ing and assimilating empire, Judah might
143
follow in the way of Ephraim. And Israel’s
work in the world might thus be undone,
or rather stultified for ever.
Just at this very moment, when all faiths
were tottering visibly to their fall, a tiny
band of obscure Galiisean peasants, who
perhaps had followed a wild local enthu
siast from their native hills up to turbulent
Jerusalem, may have been seized with a
delusion neither unnatural nor unaccustomed
under their peculiar circumstances, but
which nevertheless has sufficed to turn or
at least to modify profoundly the entire
subsequent course of the world’s history.
Their leader, if we may trust the uni
versal tradition of the sect, as laid down
long after in their legendary Gospels, was
crucified at Jerusalem under G. Pontius
Pilatus. If any fact upon earth about
Jesus is true, besides the fact of his resi
dence at Nazareth, it is this fact of the
crucifixion, which derives verisimilitude from
being always closely connected with the
name of that particular Roman official.
But three days after, says the legend, the
body of Jesus could not be found in the
sepulchre where his friends had laid him;
and a rumour gradually gained ground
that he had risen from the dead, and had
been seen abroad by the women who
mourned him and by various of his dis
ciples. In short, what was universally be
lieved about all other and elder human gods
was specifically asserted afresh in a newer
case about the man Christ Jesus. The
idea fitted in with the needs of the time,
and the doctrine of the Resurrection of
Jesus the Christ became the corner-stone
of the new-born Christian religion.
Nothing can be clearer than the fact,
admitted on all hands, that this event
formed the central point of the Apostles’
preaching. It was the Resurrection of
Jesus, regarded as an earnest of general
resurrection for all his followers, that they
most insisted upon in their words and
writings. It was the resurrection that
converted the world of Western Europe.
“Your faith is flagging,” said the early
Christians in effect to their pagan fellows :
“ your gods are half-dead; your ideas
about your own future, and the present
state of your departed friends, are most
vague and shadowy. In opposition to all
this, we offer you a sure and certain hope ;
we tell you a tale of real life, and recent;
we preach a god of the familiar pattern,
yet very close to you ; we present you with
a specimen of actual resurrection. We
bring you good tidings of Jesus as the
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THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
Messiah, and him crucified : to the Jews, a
stumbling-block ; to the Greeks, foolish
ness ; but to such as are saved a plain
evidence of the power of the God of Israel.
Accept our word ; let your dead sleep in
Christ in our catacombs, as once they
slept in Osiris at Abydos, or rested upon
him that rests at Philte.” “ If Christ be
not risen,” says one of the earliest Christian
writers in a passionate peroration, “ then
is our preaching vain, and your faith is
vain also : but as it is, Christ is risen from
the dead, and has become the first fruits of
them that slept.” “ Else what shall they
do,” he goes on, touching to the quick that
ingrained human desire for communion
with the departed, “ what shall they do
which are baptised for the dead, if the
dead rise not at all ? Why are they then
baptised for the dead?” These, in short,
apart from the elements common to all
creeds, are the three great motors of primi
tive Christianity : one dogmatic, the resur
rection of Jesus ; one selfish, the salvation
of the individual soul ; one altruistic, the
desire for reunion with the dead among
one’s beloved.
Syria and Egypt could easily accept the
new doctrine. It involved for them no
serious change of front, no wide departure
from the ideas and ceremonies which
always formed their rounded concept of
human existence. There is a representa
tion of the resurrection of Osiris in the little
“ Temple on the Roof” at Denderah which
might almost pass for a Christian illustra
tion of the resurrection of Jesus. In its
beginnings, in short, Christianity was essen
tially an oriental religion; it spread fastest
in the eastern Mediterranean basin, where
Judaism was already well established. It
is a significant fact that its official adoption
as the public religion of the Roman state
was the act of the same prince who deli
berately shifted the seat of his government
from the Tiber to the Bosphorus, and
largely transformed the character of the
empire from a Latin to a Grieco-Asiatic
type. All the new religions which struggled
together for the mastery of the world were
oriental in origin : the triumph of Chris
tianity was but a single episode in the
general triumph of aggressive orientalism
over the occidental element in the Roman
system.
Egypt in particular, I believe, had far
more to do with the dogmatic shaping of
early Christianity, and the settlement of
Christian symbolism and Christian mysti
cism, than is generally admitted by the
official historians of the primitive Church.
There, where the idea of resurrection was
already so universal, and where every man
desired to be “justified by Osiris,” Chris
tianity soon made an easy conquest of a
people on whose faith it exerted so little
change. And Egypt easily made its in
fluence felt on the plastic young creed. It
is allowed that the doctrine of the Trinity
took shape among the Triad-worshippers
on the banks of the Nile, and that the
scarcely less important doctrine of the
Logos was borrowed from the philosophy
of Alexandrian Jews. Nobody can look at
the figures of Isis and the infant Horus in
any Egyptian museum without being at
once struck by the obvious foreshadowing
of the Coptic and Byzantine Madonna and
Child. The mystery that sprang up about
the new doctrines ; the strange syncretic
union of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost into
a single Trinity ; the miraculous concep
tion by the Theotokos or mother of God—
a clear variant in one aspect on the older
idea of Hathor; and the antenatal existence
of Christ in heaven before his incarnation
—all are thoroughly Egyptian in character,
with a faint superadded dash of Alexan
drian Jewish Hellenism. The love of
symbols which the young Church so early
exhibits in the catacombs and elsewhere
smacks equally of Ptolemaic reminiscences
of Thebes and Memphis. The mummy
form of Lazarus ; the fish that makes such
a clever alphabetic ideogram for the name
and titles of Jesus ; the dove that symbo
lises the Holy Ghost ; the animal types
of the four evangelists—all these are in
large part Egyptian echoes, resonant of
the same spirit which produced the hiero
glyphics and the symbolism of the great
Nilotic temples.
Nay, more, the very details themselves
of Christian symbolism often go back to
early Egyptian models. The central
Christian emblem of all, the cross, is holy
all the world over : it is the sacred tree ;
and each race has adapted it to its own
preconceived ideas and symbols. But in
Coptic Christianity it has obvious affinities
with the crux ansata. In the Coptic room
of the New Museum at Ghizeh is an early
Christian monument with a Greek uncial
inscription, on which is represented a cross
of four equal limbs with expanded flanges,
having a crux ansata inserted in all its
four interstices. At the Coptic church of
Abu Sirgeh at Old Cairo occurs a similar
cross, also with suggestions of Taulike
origin, but with other equal-limbed crosses
�THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
substituted for the cruces ansattz in the
corners. How far the Egyptian Christians
thus merely transferred their old ideas to
the new faith may be gathered from a
single curious example. In Mr. Loftie’s
collection of sacred beetles is a scarabaeus
containing a representation of the cruci
fixion, with two palm branches : and other
scarabs have Christian crosses. If we re
member how extremely sacred the scarab
was held in the Egyptian religion, and
also that it was regarded as the symbol of
the resurrection, we cannot possibly miss
the importance of this implication. In
deed, the Alexandrian Father, Epiphanius,
speaks of Christ as “the scarabseus of
God,” a phrase which may be still better
understood if I add that in the treatise on
hieroglyphs known under the name of
Horapollo a scarabmus is said to denote
“ an only-begotten.” Thus “ the lamb of
God” in the tongue of Israel becomes
“ the scarabaeus of God ” in the mouth of
an Egyptian speaker.
In the west, however, the results of the
spread of Christianity were far more
revolutionary. Indeed, I do not think the
cult of Jesus could ever have spread at all
in Rome had it not been for the large
extent to which the city was peopled in
later times by Syrians and Africans. And
if Christianity had not spread in Rome, it
could never have gained a foothold at all
in the Aryan world.
Foremost among the changes which
Christianity involved in Italy and the rest
of western Europe was the retrograde
change from the belief in immortality and
the immateriality of the soul, with crema
tion as its practical outcome, to the belief
in the resurrection of the body, with a
return to the disused and discredited
practice of burial as its normal correlative.
The catacombs were the necessary result
of this backward movement; and with the
catacombs came in the possibility of relic
worship, martyr-worship, and the adoration
of saints and their corpses. I shall trace
out in greater detail in my next chapter the
remoter effects of this curious revival of
the prime element in religion—the cult of
the dead : it must suffice here to point
out briefly that it resulted as a logical
effect from the belief in the resurrection
of Christ, and the consequent restoration
of the practice of burial. Moreover, to
polytheists this habit gave a practical
opening for the cult of many deities in the
midst of nominal monotheism, which the
Italians and sundry other essentially poly
145
theistic peoples were not slow to seize
upon. It is true that theoretically the
adoration paid to saints and martyrs is
never regarded as real worship ; but I
need hardly say that technical distinctions
like these are always a mere part of the
artificial theology of scholastic priesthoods,
and may be safely disregarded by the
broad anthropological inquirer. The
genuine facts of religion are the facts and
rites of the popular cult, which remain in
each race for long periods together essen
tially uniform.
Thus we early get two main forms of
Christianity, both official and popular :
one eastern—Greek, Coptic, Syrian ; more
mystical in type, more symbolic, more
philosophic, more monotheistic : the other
western—Latin, Celtic, Spanish ; more
Aryan in type, more practical, more
material, more polytheistic. And these at
a later time are reinforced by a third or
northern form—the Teutonic and Pro
testant ; in which ethical ideas prepon
derate over religious, and the worship of
the Book in its most literal and often
foolish interpretation supersedes the earlier
worship of Madonna, saints, pictures,
statues, and emblems.
At the period when Christianity first
begins, to emerge from the primitive
obscurity of its formative nisus, however,
we find it practically compounded of the
following elements—which represent the
common union of a younger god offered
up to an older one with whom he is
identified.
First of all, as the implied basis, taken
for granted in all the early Hebrew scrip
tures, there is current Judaism, in the form
that Judaism had gradually assumed in
the fourth, third, and second centuries
before the Christian era. This includes as
its main principle the cult of the one god
Jahweh, now no longer largely thought of
under that personal name, or as a strictly
ethnic deity, but rather envisaged as the
Lord God who dwells in heaven, very much
as Christians of to-day still envisage him.
It includes also an undercurrent of belief in
a heavenly hierarchy of angels and arch
angels, the court of the Lord (modifications
of an earlier astrological conception, the
Host of Heaven), and in a principle of
evil, Satan or the devil, dwelling in hell,
and similarly surrounded by a crowd of
minor or assistant demons. Further, it
accepts implicitly from earlier Judaism the
resurrection of the dead, the judgment of
the good and the wicked, the doctrine of
L
�146
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
future rewards and punishments (perhaps
in its fullest shape a Hellenistic importation
from Egypt, though also commonly found
in most spontaneous religions), and many
other tenets of the current Jewish belief.
In short, the very earliest Christians, being
probably for the most part J ews, Galilaeans,
and proselytes, or else Syrians and
Africans of Judaising tendencies, did not
attempt to get rid of all their preconceived
religious opinions when they became
Christians, bnt merely superadded to these
as a new item the special cult of the deified
Jesus.
On the other hand, as the Gospel
spread to the Gentiles, it was not
thought necessary to burden the fresh
converts with the whole minute cere
monial of Judaism, and especially
with , the unpleasant initiatory rite of
circumcision. A mere symbolical lustra
tion, known as baptism, was all that was
demanded of new adherents to the faith,
with abstinence from any participation in
“heathen” sacrifices or functions. And
the general authority of the Hebrew Scrip
tures, especially as a historical account of
the development of Judaism, from which
Christianity sprang, was more or less fully
admitted, at first by implication or quota
tion alone, but afterwards by the deliberate
and avowed voice of the whole Christian
assembly. The translation of this mixed
mass of historical documents, early cosmo
gonies ill-reported and Jehovised Jewish
traditions, misinterpreted poems, and con
scious forgeries, in the Latin version known
as the Vulgate, had the effect of endowing
Europe for many centuries with a false
body of ancient history.
Superimposed upon this substratum of
current Judaism with its worship of Jahweh
came the distinctive Jesus-cult, the worship
of the particular dead Galilaean peasant.
But how, in a religion pretending to be
monotheistic, were these two distinct cults
of two such diverse gods to be reconciled
or to be explained away ? By the familiar
doctrine of the incarnation, and the belief
in the human god who is sacrificed, himself
to himself, as a piacular offering. Jewish
tradition and subtler Egyptian mysticism
sufficed to smooth over- the apparent
anomaly. The Jews looked forward to a
mysterious deliverer, a new Moses, the
Messiah, who was to fulfil the destiny of
Israel by uniting all nations under the
sceptre of David, and by bringing the
Gentiles to the feet of the God of Israel.
Jesus, said the Christians, had proclaimed
himselfthat very Messiah, the Christ of God;
he had often alluded to the great Hebrew
deity as his father ; he had laid claim to
the worship of the Lord of heaven. Further
than this, perhaps, the unaided Jewish
intelligence would hardly have gone: it
would have been satisfied with assigning to
the slain man-god J esus a secondary place,
as the only begotten Son of God, who gave
himself up as a willing victim—a position
perhaps scarcely more important than that
which Mohammed holds in the system of
Islam. Such, it seems to me, is on the
whole the conception which permeates the
synoptic Gospels, representing the ideas of
Syrian Christendom. But here the acute
Graeco-Egyptian mind came in with its
nice distinctions and its mystical identifica
tions. There was but one god, indeed;
yet that god was at least twofold (to go no
further for the present). He had two
persons, the Father and the Son : and the
Second Person, identified with the Alexan
drian conception of the Logos, though
inferior to the Father as touching his man
hood, was equal to the Father as touching his
godhead—after the precise fashion we saw
so common in describing the relations of
Osiris and Horus, and the identification of
the Attis or Adonis victim with the earlier
and older god he represented. “ I and my
Father are one,” says the Christ of the
Fourth Gospel, the embodiment and incar
nation of the Alexandrian Logos. And in
the very forefront of that manifesto of Neo
Platonic Christianity comes the dogmatic
assertion, “In the beginning was the Logos:
and the Logos dwelt with God : and the
Logos was God.”
Even so the basis of the new creed is
still incomplete. The Father and Son give
the whole of the compound deity as. the
popular mind, everywhere and always, has
commonly apprehended it. But the scho
lastic and theological intelligence needed a
Third Person to complete the Trinity which
to all mankind, as especially to orientals, is
the only perfect and thoroughly rounded
figure. In later days, no doubt, the
Madonna would have been chosen to fill up
the blank, and, on the analogy of Isis, would
have filled it most efficiently. As a matter
of fact, in the creed of Christendom as the
Catholic people know it, the Madonna is
really one of the most important person
ages. But in those early formative times
the cult of the Theotokos had hardly yet
assumed its full importance: perhaps,
indeed, the Jewish believers would have
been shocked at the bare notion of the
�SURVIVALS IN CHRISTENDOM
worship of a woman, the readmission of an
Astarte, a Queen of Heaven, into the faith
of Israel. Another object of adoration had
therefore to be found. It was discovered in
that vague essence, the Holy Ghost, or
Divine Wisdom, whose gradual develop
ment and dissociation from God himself is
one of the most curious chapters in all the
history of artificial god-making. The
“ spirit of Jahweh ” had frequently been
mentioned in Hebrew writings ; and, with
so invisible and unapproachable a deity as
the Jewish God, was often made to do duty
as a messenger or intermediary where the
personal presence of Jahweh himself would
have been felt to contravene the first neces
sities of incorporeal divinity. It was the
“spirit of Jahweh” that came upon the
prophets : it was the “ wisdom of Jahweh ”
that the poets described, and that grew at
last to be detached from the personality of
God, and alluded to almost as a living in
dividual. In the early Church this “ spirit
of God,” this “ holy spirit,” was supposed to
be poured forth upon the heads of believers ;
it descended upon Jesus himself in the
visible form of a dove from heaven, and
upon the disciples at Pentecost as tongues
of fire. Gradually the conception of a per
sonal Holy Ghost took form and definite
ness : an Alexandrian monk insisted on the
necessity for a Triad of gods who were yet
one God ; and by the time the first creeds
of the nascent Church were committed to
writing, the Spirit had come to rank with
the Father and the Son as the Third Per
son in the ever-blessed Trinity.
By this time, too, it is pretty clear that
the original manhood of Jesus had not
merged in the idea of his eternal godhead ;
he was regarded as the Logos, come down
from heaven, where he had existed before
all worlds, and incarnate by the Holy Ghost
in the Virgin Mary. The other articles of
the Christian faith clustered gradually
round these prime elements : the myth
gathered force ; the mysticism increased ;
the secondary divine beings or saints grew
vastly . in numbers ; and the element of
Judaism disappeared piecemeal, while a
new polytheism and a new sacerdotalism
took root apace in the Aryan world. I
shall strive to show, however, in my con
cluding chapters, how even to the very end
the worship of the dead is still the central
force in modern Christianity; how religion,
whatever its form, can never wander far
from that fundamental reality; and how,
whenever by force of circumstances the
gods become too remote from human life,
147
so that the doctrine of resurrection or per
sonal immortality is endangered for a time,
and reunion with relations in the other
world becomes doubtful or insecure, a re
action is sure to set in which takes things
back once more to these, fundamental con
cepts.
CHAPTER XIX.
SURVIVALS IN CHRISTENDOM
We have now travelled far, apparently,
from that primitive stage of god-making
where the only known gods are the corpses,
mummies, skulls, ghosts, or spirits of dead
chieftains or dead friends and relations.
The God of Christianity, in his fully-evolved
form, especially as known to thinkers and
theologians, is a being so vast, so abstract,
so ubiquitous, so eternal, that he seems to
have hardly any points of contact at all
with the simple ancestral spirit or sacred
stone from which in the last resort he
appears to be descended. Yet even here
we must beware of being misled by too
personal an outlook. While the higher
minds in Christendom undoubtedly con
ceive of the Christian God in terms of
Mansel and Martineau, the lower minds
even among ourselves conceive of him in
far simpler and more material fashions. A
good deal of inquiry among ordinary
English people of various classes, not
always the poorest, convinces me that to
large numbers of them God is envisaged
as possessing a material human form, more
or less gaseous in composition; that, in
spite of the Thirty-nine Articles, he has
body, parts, and passions; that he is
usually pictured to the mind’s eye as about
ten or twelve feet high, with head, hands,
eyes and mouth, used to see with and
speak with in human fashion ; and that he
sits on a throne, like a king as he is, sur
rounded by a visible court of angels and
archangels. Italian art so invariably repre
sents him, with a frankness unknown to
Protestant Christendom.
The fact is, so abstract a conception as
the highest theological conception of God
cannot be realised except symbolically, and
then for a few moments only, in complete
isolation. The moment God is definitely
thought of in connection with any cosmic
activity, still more in connection with any
human need, he is inevitably thought of on
�148
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
human analogies, and more or less com
pletely anthropomorphised in the brain of
the believer. Being by origin an offshoot
of the mind of man, a great deified human
being, he retains necessarily still, for all
save a few very mystical or ontological
souls, the obvious marks of his ultimate
descent from a ghost or spirit. Indeed, on
the mental as opposed to the bodily side,
he does so for us all; since even theologians
freely ascribe to him such human feelings
as love, affection, a sense of justice, a spirit
of mercy, of truth, of wisdom ; knowledge,
will, the powers of intellect, all the essential
and fundamental human faculties and emo
tions.
Thus, far as we seem to have travelled
from our base in the most exalted concepts
of God, we are nearer to it still than most
of us imagine. Moreover, in spite of this
height to which the highest minds have
raised their idea of the Deity, as the creator,
sustainer, and mover of the universe, every
religion, however monotheistic, still con
tinues to make new minor gods for itself
out of the dead as they die, and to worship
these gods with even more assiduous
worship than it bestows upon the great
God of Christendom or the great gods of
the central pantheon. The Christian reli
gion makes such minor deities no less than
all others. The fact is, the religious emotion
takes its origin from the affection and
regard felt for the dead by survivors,
mingled with the hope and belief that they
may be of some use or advantage, temporal
or spiritual, to those who call upon them;
and these primitive faiths and feelings
remain so ingrained in the very core of
humanity that even the most abstract of all
religions, like the Protestant schism, cannot
wholly choke them, while recrudescences
of the original creed and custom spring up
from time to time in the form of spiritualism,
theosophy, and other vague types of simple
ghost-worship.
Most advanced religions, however, and
especially Christianity in its central, true,
and main form of Catholicism, have found
it necessary to keep renewing from time to
time the stock of minor gods—here arbi
trarily known as saints—much as the older
religions found it always necessary from
year to year to renew the foundation-gods,
the corn- and wine-gods, and the other
special deities of the manufactured order,
by a constant supply of theanthropic
victims. What I wish more particularly to
point out here, however, is that the vast
majority of places of worship all the world
over are still erected, as at the very begin
ning, above the body of a dead man or
woman ; that the chief objects of worship
in every shrine are still, as always, such
cherished bodies of dead men and women ;
and that the primitive connection of religion
with death has never for a moment been
practically severed in the greater part of
the world—not even in Protestant England
and America.
Mr. William Simpson was one of the
first persons to point out this curious under
lying connection between churches, temples,
mosques, or topes, and a tomb or monu
ment. He has proved his point in a very
full manner, and I would refer the reader
who wishes to pursue this branch of the
subject at length to his interesting mono
graphs. In this work I will confine my
attention mainly to the continued presence
of this death-element in Christianity, with
a few stray instances picked up from the
neighbouring and interesting field of Islam.
There is no religion in all the world
which professes to be more purely mono
theistic in character than Mohammedanism.
The unity of God, in the very strictest sense,
is the one dogma round which the entire
creed of Islam centres. More than any
other cult, it represents itself as a distinct
reaction against the polytheism and super
stition of surrounding faiths. The isolation
of Allah is its one great dogma. If, there
fore, we find even in this most monotheistic
of existing religious systems a large element
of practically polytheistic survival—if we
find that even here the Worship of the
Dead remains, as a chief component in
religious practice, if not in religious theory,
we shall be fairly entitled to conclude, I
think, that such constituents are indeed of
the very essence of religious thinking.
When I first came practically into con
nection with Islam in Algeria and Egypt, I
was immediately struck by the wide pre
valence among the Mohammedan popula
tion of forms of worship for which I was
little prepared by anything I had previously
read or heard as to the nature and practice
of that exclusive and ostentatiously mono
theistic faith. Two points, indeed, forcibly
strike any visitor who for the first time has
the opportunity ofobserving a Mohammedan
community in its native surroundings. The
first is the universal habit on the part of the
women of visiting the cemeteries and mourn
ing or praying over the graves of their rela
tions on Friday, the sacred day of Islam.
The second is the frequency of Koubbas,
or little whitewashed mosque-tombs, erected
�SURVIVALS IN CHRISTENDOM
over the remains of Marabouts, fakeers, or
local saints, which form the real centres
for the religion and worship of every village.
Islam, in practice, is a religion of pil
grimages to the tombs of the dead. In
Algeria every hillside is dotted over with
these picturesque little whitewashed domes,
each overshadowed by its sacred date-palm,
each surrounded by its small walled
enclosure or temenos of prickly pear or
agave, and each attended by its local
ministrant, who takes charge of the tomb
and of the alms of the faithful. Holy
body, sacred stone, tree, well, and priest—
not an element of the original cult of the
dead is lacking. ' Numerous pilgrimages
are made to these koubbas by the devout;
and on Friday evenings the little court
yards are almost invariably thronged by a
■crowd of eager and devoted worshippers.
Within, the bones of the holy man lie
preserved in a frame hung - about with
rosaries, pictures, and other oblations of
his ardent disciples, exactly as in the case
of Roman Catholic chapels. The saint, in
fact, is quite as much an institution of
monotheistic Islam as of any other religion
with which I am practically acquainted.
These two peculiarities of the cult of
Islam strike a stranger immediately on the
most casual visit. When he comes to look
at the matter more closely, however, he
finds also that most of the larger mosques
in the principal towns are themselves
similarly built to contain and enshrine the
bones of saintly personages, more or less
revered in their immediate neighbourhood.
Some of these are indeed so holy that their
bones have been duplicated exactly like
the wood of the true cross, and two tombs
have been built in separate places where
the whole or a portion of the supposed
remains are said to be buried., I will only
specify as instances of such holy tombs the
sacred city of Kerouan in Tunisia, which
ranks second to Mecca and Medina alone
in the opinion of all devout western
Mohammedans. Here the most revered
building is the shrine of “ The Companion
of the Prophet,” who lies within a cata
falque covered with palls of black velvet
and silver—as funereal a monument as is
known to me anywhere. Close by stands
the catafalque of an Indian saint, while
other holy tomb-mosques abound in the
city. In Algiers town, the holiest place is
similarly the mosque-tomb of Sidi Abd-erRahman, which contains the shrine and
body of that saint, who died in 1471.
Around him, so as to share his sacred
149
burial-place (like the Egyptians who
wished to be interred with Osiris), lie the
bodies of several Deys and Pashas. Lights
are kept constantly burning at the saint’s
tomb, which is hung with variouslycoloured drapery, after the old Semitic
fashion, while banners and ostrich-eggs,
the gifts of the faithful, dangle round it
from the decorated ceiling. Still more
sacred is the venerable shrine of Sidi Okba
near Biskra, one of the most ancient places
of worship in the Mohammedan world.
The tomb of the great saint stands in a
chantry, screened off from the noble
mosque which forms the ante-chamber,
and is hung round with silk and other
dainty offerings. All the chief mosques at
Tlemgen, Constantine, and the other
leading North African towns similarly
gather over the bodies of saints or
marabouts, who are invoked in prayer, and
to whom every act of worship is offered.
All over Islam we get such holy grave
mosques. The tomb of the Prophet at
Medina heads the list: with the equally
holy tomb of his daughter Fatima. Among
the Shiahs, Ali’s grave at Nejef and
Hoseyn’s grave at Kerbela are as sacred
as that of the Prophet at Medina. The
shrines of the Imams are much adored in
Persia. The graves of the seers in India,
the Ziarets of the fakeers in Afghanistan,
show the same tendency. In Palestine,
says Major Conder, worship at the tombs
of local saints “represents the real religion
of the peasant.”
One word must be given to Egypt, where
the cult of the dead was always so marked
a feature in the developed religion, and
where neither Christianity nor Islam has
been able to obscure this primitive ten
dency. Nothing is more noticeable in the
Nile Valley than the extraordinary way in
which the habits and ideas as to burial
and the preservation of the dead have sur
vived in spite of the double alteration in
religious theory. At Sakkarah and Thebes
one is familiar with the streets and houses
of tombs, regularly laid out so as to form
in the strictest sense a true Necropolis, or
city of the dead. Just outside Cairo, on
the edge of the desert, a precisely similar
modern Necropolis exists to this day, regu
larly planned in streets and quarters, with
the tomb of each family standing in its own
courtyard or enclosure, and often very
closely resembling the common roundroofed or domed Egyptian houses. In this
town of dead bodies every distinction of
rank and wealth may now be observed.
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THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
The rich are buried under splendid mausolea
of great architectural pretensions; the poor
occupy humble tombs just raised above the
surface of the desert, and marked at head
and foot with simple Egyptian tombstones.
Still, the entire aspect of such a cemetery
is the aspect of a town. In northern
climates the dead sleep their last sleep
under grassy little tumuli, wholly unlike
the streets of a city; in Egypt, to this day,
the dead occupy, as in life, whole lanes
and alleys of eternal houses. Even the
spirit which produced the Pyramids and
the Tombs of the Kings is conspicuous in
modern or mediaeval Cairo in the taste
which begot those vast domed mosques
known as the Tombs of the Khalifs and
the Tombs of the Mamelooks. Whatever
is biggest in the neighbourhood of ancient
Memphis turns out on examination to be
the last resting-place of a Dead Man, and
a place of worship.
Almost every one of the great mosques
of Cairo is either a tomb built for himself
by a ruler—and this is the more frequent
case—or else the holy shrine of some saint
of Islam. It is characteristic of Egypt,
however, where king and god have always
been so closely combined, that while else
where the mosque is usually the prayer-tomb
of a holy man, in Cairo it is usually the
memorial-temple of a Sultan, an Emeer, a
viceroy, or a Khedive. It is interesting to
find, too, after all we have seen as to the
special sanctity of the oracular head, that
perhaps the holiest of all these mosques
contains the head of Hoseyn, the grandson
of the Prophet. A ceremonial washing is
particularly mentioned in the story of its
translation.
I will not linger any longer, however, in
the precincts of Islam, further than to
mention the significant fact that the great
central object of worship for the Moham
medan world is the Kaaba at Mecca, which
itself, as Mr. William Simpson long ago
pointed out, bears obvious traces of being
at once a tomb and a sacred altar-stone.
Sir Richard Burton’s original sketch of
this mystic object shows it as a square
and undecorated temple-tomb, covered
throughout with a tasselled black pall—a
most funereal object—the so-called “sacred
carpet.” It is, in point of fact, a simple
catafalque. As the Kaaba was adopted
direct by Mohammed from the early
Semitic heathenism of Arabia, and as it
must always have been treated with the
same respect, I do not think we can avoid
the obvious conclusion that this very ancient
tomb has been funereally draped in the
self-same manner, like those of Biskra,
Algiers, and Kerouan, from the time of its
first erection. This case thus throws light
on the draping of the ashera, as do also the
many-coloured draperies and hangings of
saints’ catafalques in Algeria and Tunis.
Nor can I resist a passing mention of
the Moharram festival, which is said to be
the commemoration of the death of Hoseyn,
the son of Ali (whose holy head is pre
served at Cairo). This is a rude piece of
acting, in which the events supposed to be
connected with the death of Hoseyn are
graphically represented ; and it ends with a
sacred Adonis-like or Osiris-like proces
sion, in which the body of the saint is
carried and mourned over. The funeral is
the grand part of the performance ; cata
falques are constructed for the holy corpse,
covered with green and gold tinsel—the
green being obviously a last reminiscence
of the god of vegetation. In Bombay,
after the dead body and shrine have been
carried through the streets amid weeping
and wailing, they are finally thrown into
the sea, like King Carnival. I think we
need hardly doubt that here we have an
evanescent relic of the rites of the corn
god, ending in a rain-charm, and very
closely resembling those of Adonis and
Osiris.
But if in Islam the great objects of worship are the Kaaba tomb at Mecca and the
Tomb of the Prophet at Medina, so the
most holy spot in the world for Christendom
is—the Holy Sepulchre. It was for pos
session of that most sacred place of pil
grimage that Christians fought Moslems
through the Middle Ages; and it is there
that while faith in the human Christ was
strong and vigorous the vast majority of
the most meritorious pilgrimages continued
to be directed.
For the most part, however, in Christen
dom, and especially in those parts of Chris
tendom remote from Palestine, men con
tented themselves with nearer and more
domestic saints. From a very early date
we see in the catacombs the growth of this
practice of offering up prayer by (or to) the
bodies of the dead who slept in Christ. A
chapel or ca/pella, as Dean Burgon has
pointed out, meant originally an arched
sepulchre in the walls of the catacombs, at
which prayer was afterwards habitually
made; and above-ground chapels were
modelled, later on, upon the pattern of
these ancient underground shrines. I have
alluded briefly in my second chapter to the
�SURVIVALS IN CHRISTENDOM
probable origin of the cruciform church
from two galleries of the catacombs cross
ing one another at right angles : the High
Altar stands there over the body or relics
of a dead saint; and the chapels represent
other minor tombs grouped like niches in
the catacombs around it. A chapel is thus,
as Mr. Herbert Spencer phrases it, “ a tomb
within a tomb’-’; and a great cathedral is a
serried set of such cumulative tombs, one
built beside the other. Sometimes the
chapels are actual graves, sometimes they
are cenotaphs; but the connection with
death is always equally evident. On this
subject I would refer the reader again to
Mr. Spencer’s pages.
So long as Christianity was proscribed at
Rome and throughout the empire the wor
ship of the dead must have gone on only
silently, and must have centred in the cata
combs or by the graves of saints and
martyrs—the last-named being practically
mere Christian successors of the willing
victims of earlier religions. When Chris
tianity had triumphed, however, and gained
not only official recognition but official
honour, the cult of the martyrs and the
other faithful dead became with Christian
Rome a perfect passion. The Holy Inno
cents, St. Stephen Protomartyr, the name
less martyrs of the Ten Persecutions,
together with Polycarp, Vivia Perpetua,
Felicitas, Ignatius, and all the rest, came to
receive from the Church a form of venera
tion which only the nice distinctions of the
theological mind could enable us to dis
criminate from actual worship. The great
procession of the slain for Christ in the
mosaics of Sant’ Apollinare Nuovo at
Ravenna gives a good comprehensive list
of the more important of these earliest
saints (at least for Aryan worshippers),
headed by St. Martin, St. Clement, St.
Justin, St. Lawrence, and St. Hippolytus.
Later on came the more mythical and
poetic figures, derived apparently from
heathen gods—St. Catherine, St. Barbara,
St. George, St. Christopher. These form
as they go a perfect new pantheon, circling
round the figures of Christ himself, and his
mother the Madonna, who grows quickly
in turn, by absorption of Isis, Astarte, and
Artemis, into the Queen of Heaven.
The love-feasts or agapa of the early
Christians were usually held, in the cata
combs or elsewhere, above the bodies of
the martyrs. Subsequently the remains of
the sainted dead were transferred to lordly
churches like Sant’ Agnese and San Paolo,
where they were deposited under the altar
151
or sacred stone thus consecrated, from
whose top the body and blood of Christ
was distributed in the Eucharist. As early
as the fourth century we know that no
church was complete without some such
relic ; and the passion for martyrs spread
so greatly from that period onward that at
one time no less than 2,300 corpses of holy
men together were buried at S. Prassede.
It is only in Rome itself that the full im
portance of this martyr-worship can now be
sufficiently understood, or the large part
which it played in the development of
Christianity adequately recognised. Per
haps the easiest way for the Protestant
reader to put himself in touch with this
side of the subject is to peruse the very
interesting and graphic account given in
the second volume of Mrs. Jameson’s
Sacred and Legendary Art.
I have room for a few illustrative
examples only.
When St. Ambrose founded his new
church at Milan, he wished to consecrate
it with some holy relic. In a vision he
beheld two young men in shining clothes,
and it was revealed to him that these were
holy martyrs whose bodies lay near the
spot where he lived in the city. He dug
for . them accordingly, and found two
bodies, which proved to be those of two
saints, Gervasius and Protasius, who had
suffered for the faith in the reign of Nero.
They were installed in the new basilica
Ambrose had built at Milan.
The body of St. Agnes, saint and martyr,
who is always represented with that familiar
emblem, the lamb which she duplicates,
lies in a sarcophagus under the High Altar
of Sant’ Agnese beyond the Porta Pia at
Rome. The body of St. Cecilia lies in the
church of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere.
Almost every church in Rome has its entire
body of a patron saint, oftenest a martyr of
the early persecutions.
The great central temple of the Catholic
Church is St. Peter’s at Rome. The very
body of the crucified saint lies enshrined
under the high altar, in a sarcophagus
brought from the catacomb near S. Sebastiano. Upon this Rock, St. Peter’s and
the Catholic Church are founded. Anacletus, the successor of Clement, built a
monument over the bones of the blessed
Peter; and if Peter be a historical person
at all, I see no reason to doubt that his
veritable body actually lies there. St. Paul
shares with him in the same shrine ; but
only half the two corpses now repose within
the stately Confessio in the Sacristy of the
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THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
papal basilica: the other portion of St.
Peter consecrates the Lateran ; the other
portion of St. Paul gives sanctity to San
Paolo fuori le Murd.
Other much venerated bodies at Rome
are those of the Quattro Coronati, in the
church of that name; S. Praxedis and St.
Pudentiana in their respective churches ;
St. Cosmo and St. Damian; and many
more too numerous to mention. Several
of the Roman churches, like San Clemente,
stand upon the site of the house of the
saint to whom they are dedicated, or whose
body they preserve, thus recalling the early
New Guinea practice. Others occupy the
site of his alleged martyrdom or enclose
the pillar to which he was fastened. In
the single church of San Zaccaria at Venice,
again, I found the bodies of St. Zacharias
(father of John the Baptist), St. Sabina,
St. Tarasius, Sts. Nereus and Achilles, and
many other saints.
How great importance was attached to
the possession of the actual corpse or
mummy of a saint we see exceptionally well
indeed in this case of Venice. The bring
ing of the corpse or mummy of St. Mark
from Alexandria to the lagoons was long
considered the most important event in the
history of the Republic; the church in
which it was housed is the noblest in
Christendom, and contains an endless series
of records of the connection of St. Mark
with the city and people that so royally
received him.
Nor was that the only important helper
that Venice could boast. She contained
also the body of St. George at San Giorgio
Maggiore, and the body of St. Nicholas at
San Niccolo di Lido. The beautiful legend
of the Doge and the Fisherman (immor
talised for us by the pencil of Paris
Bordone in one of the noblest pictures the
world has ever seen) tells us how the three
great guardian saints, St. Mark, St. George,
and St. Nicholas, took a gondola one day
from their respective churches, and rowed
out to sea amid a raging storm to circum
vent the demons who were coming in a
tempest to overwhelm Venice. A fourth
saint, of far later date, whom the Venetians
also carried off by guile, was St. Roch of
Montpelier. This holy man was a very
great sanitary precaution against the plague,
to which the city was much exposed through
its eastern commerce. So the men of Venice
simply stole the body by fraud from Mont
pelier, and built in its honour the exquisite
church and Scuola di San Rocco, the great
museum of the art of Tintoret. The fact
that mere possession of the holy body
counts in itself for much could not be
better shown than by these forcible abduc
tions.
The corpse of St. Nicholas, who was a
highly revered bishop of Myra in Lycia, 1
lies, as I said, under the high altar of San
Niccolo di Lido at Venice. But another
and more authentic body of the same great
saint, the patron of sailors and likewise of
schoolboys, lies also under the high altar
of the magnificent basilica of San Nicolà
at Bari, from which circumstance the holy
bishop is generally known as St. Nicolas of
Bari. A miraculous fluid, the Manna di
Bari, highly prized by the pious, exudes
from the remains. A gorgeous cathedral
rises over the sepulchre. Such emulous
duplication of bodies and relics is extremely
common, both in Christendom and in Islam.
The corpse of St. Augustine, for example,
lies at Pavia in a glorious ark, one of the
most sumptuous monuments ever erected
by the skill of man, as well as one of the
loveliest. Padua similarly boasts the body
of St. Antony of Padua, locally known as
“ il Santo,” and far more important in his
own town than all the rest of the Chrisfian
pantheon put together. Dominican monks
and nuns make pilgrimages to Bologna, in
order to venerate the body of St. Dominic,
who died in that city, and whose corpse is
enclosed in a magnificent sarcophagus in
the church dedicated to him. Siena has
for its special glory St. Catherine the Second
—the first was the mythical princess of
Alexandria—and the house of that ecstatic
nun is still preserved intact as an oratory
for the prayers of the pious. Her head, laid
by in a silver shrine or casket, decorates
the altar of her chapel in San Domenico,
where the famous frescoes of Sodoma too
often usurp the entire attention of northern
visitors. Compare the holy head of
Hoseyn at Cairo. The great Franciscan
church at Assisi, once more, enshrines the
remains of the founder of the Franciscans
under the high altar ; the church of Santa
Maria degli Angeli below it encloses the
little hut which was the first narrow home
of the nascent order.
North of the Alps, again, I cannot
refrain from mentioning a few salient in
stances, which help to enforce the princi
ples already enunciated. At Paris the two
great local saints are St. Denis and Ste.
Geneviève. St. Denis was the first bishop
of Lutetia and of the Parish : he is said to
have been beheaded with his two com
panions at Montmartre—Mons Martyrum.
�SURVIVALS IN CHRISTENDOM
He afterwards walked with his head in his
hands from that point (now covered by the
little church of St. Pierre, next door to the
new basilica of the Sacré Cœur) to the spot
where he piously desired to be buried. A
holy woman named Catulla (note that
last echo) performed the final rites for
him at the place where the stately abbey-,
church of St. Denis now preserves his
memory.
As for Ste. Geneviève, she rested first in
the church dedicated to her on the site now
occupied by the Pantheon, which still in
part, though secularised, preserves her
memory. Her body (or what remains of it)
lies at present in the neighbouring church
of St. Etienne du Mont.
Other familiar examples will occur to
every one, such as the bones of the Magi
or Three Kings, preserved in a reliquary in
the Cathedral at Cologne ; those of St.
Ursula and the 11,000 virgins ; those of St.
Stephen and St. Lawrence at Rome ; those
of St. Hubert, disinterred and found uncor
rupted, at the town of the same name in
the Ardennes ; and those of St. Longinus
in his chapel at Mantua. All these relics
and bodies perform astounding miracles,
and all have been the centres of important
cults for a considerable period.
In Britain, from the first stages of Chris
tianity, the reverence paid to the bodies of
saints was most marked, and the story of
their wanderings forms an important part
of our early annals. Indeed, I dwell so long
upon this point because’ few northerners
of the present day can fully appreciate the
large part which the Dead Body plays and
has played for many centuries in Christian
worship. Only those who, like me, have
lived long in thoroughly Catholic countries,
have made pilgrimages to numerous famous
shrines, and have waded through reams of
Anglo-Saxon and other early mediaeval
documents, can really understand this
phase of Christian hagiology. To such
people it is abundantly clear that the actual
Dead Body of some sainted man or woman
has been in many places the chief object of
reverence for millions of Christians in suc
cessive generations. A good British in
stance is found in the case of St. Cuthbert’s
^corpse. The tale of its wanderings can be
read in any good history of Durham.
But everywhere in Britain we get similar
local saints, whose bodies or bones per
formed marvellous miracles and were
zealously guarded against sacrilegious in
truders. Bede himself is already full of
such holy corpses ; and in later days they
153
increased by the hundred. St. Alban at
St. Alban’s, the protomartyr of Britain ; the
“ white hand ” of St. Oswald, that when all
else perished remained white and uticorrupted because blessed by Aidan ; St.
Etheldreda at Ely, another remarkable and
illustrative instance ; Edward the Confessor
at Westminster Abbey : these are but a few
out of hundreds of examples which will at
once occur to students of our history. And
I will add that sometimes the legends of
these saints link us on unexpectedly to far
earlier types of heathen worship ; as when
we read concerning St. Edmund of East
Anglia, the patron of Bury St. Edmund’s,
that Ingvar the viking took him by force,
bound him to a tree, scourged him cruelly,
made him a target for the arrows of the
pagan Danes, and finally beheaded him.
Either, I say, a god-making sacrifice of the
northern heathens ; or, failing that, a remi
niscence, like St. Sebastian, of such god
making rites as are preserved in the legends
of ancient martyrs.
But during the later Middle Ages the
sacred Body of Britain, above all others,
was undoubtedly that of Thomas A’Becket
at Canterbury. Hither, as we know, all
England went on pilgrimage; and nothing
could more fully show the rapidity of
canonisation in such cases than the fact
that even the mighty Henry II. had to
prostrate himself before his old enemy’s
body and submit to a public scourging at
the shrine of the new-made martyr. For
several hundred years after his death there
can be no doubt at all that the cult of St.
Thomas of Canterbury was much the most
real and living worship throughout the
whole of England; its only serious rivals
in popular favour being the cult of St.
Cuthbert to the north of Humber, and that
of St. Etheldreda in the Eastern Counties.
Holy heads in particular were common
in Britain before the Reformation. A
familiar Scottish case is that of the head
of St. Fergus, the apostle of Banff and the
Pictish Highlands, transferred to and
preserved at the royal seat of Scone.
“ By Sanct Fergus heid at Scone” was the
favourite oath of the Scotch monarchs, aS
“ Par Sainct Denys ” was that of their
French contemporaries.
In almost all these cases, again, and
down to the present day, popular appre
ciation goes long before official Roman
canonisation. Miracles are first performed
at the tomb, and prayers are answered; an
irregular cult precedes the formal one.
Even in our own day, only a few weeks
�154
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
after Cardinal Manning’s death, advertise
ments appeared in Catholic papers in
London giving thanks for spiritual and
temporal blessings received through the
intervention of Our Lady, the saints, “and
our beloved Cardinal.”
This popular canonisation has often far
outrun the regular official acceptance, as
in the case of Joan of Arc in France at
the present day, or of “ Maister John
Schorn, that blessed man born,” in the
Kent of the Middle Ages. Wales and
Cornwall are full of local and patriotic
saints, often of doubtful Catholicity, like
St. Cadoc, St. Padern, St. Petrock, St.
Piran, St. Ruan, and St. Illtyd, not to
mention more accepted cases, like St.
Asaph and St. David. The fact is, men
have everywhere felt the natural desire for
a near, a familiar, a recent, and a present
god or saint; they have worshipped rather
the dead whom they loved and revered
themselves than the elder gods and
the remoter martyrs who have no body
among them, no personal shrine, no local
associations, no living memories. “ I have
seen in Brittany,” says a French corres
pondent of Mr. Herbert Spencer’s, “the
tomb of a pious and charitable priest
covered with garlands : people flocked to
it by hundreds to pray of him that he
would procure them restoration to health,
and guard over their children.” There,
with the Christian addition of the supreme
God, we get once more the root-idea of
religion.
I should like to add that beyond such
actual veneration of the bodies of saints
and martyrs, there has always existed a
definite theory in the Roman Church that
no altar can exist without a relic. The
altar, being itself a monumental stone,
needs a body or part of a body to justify
and consecrate it. Dr. Rock, a high
authority, says in his Hierurgia: “ By the
regulations of the Church it is ordained
that the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass be
offered upon an altar which contains a
stone consecrated by a Bishop, enclosing
the relics of some saint or martyr ; and be
covered with three linen cloths that have
been blessed for that purpose with an
appropriate form of benediction.” The
consecration of the altar, indeed, is con
sidered even more serious than the
consecration of the church itself; for
without the stone and its relic the cere
mony of the mass cannot be performed at
all. Even when mass has to be said in a
private house the priest brings a conse
crated stone and its relic along with him ;
and other such stones were carried in the
retables or portable altars so common in
military expeditions of the Middle Ages.
The church is thus a tomb, with chapel
tombs around it; it contains a stone monu
ment covering a dead body or part of a
body ; and in it is made and exhibited the
Body of Christ, in the form of the conse
crated and transmuted wafer.
Not only, however, is the altar in this
manner a reduced or symbolical tomb, and
not only is it often placed above the body
of a saint, as at St. Mark’s and St. Peter’s,
but it sometimes is itself a stone sarco
phagus. One such sarcophagus exists in
the Cathedral at St. Malo ; I have seen
other coffin-shaped altars in the monastery
of La Trappe near Algiers and elsewhere.
When, however, the altar stands, like that
at St. Peter’s, above the actual body of a
saint, it does not require to contain a relic;
otherwise it does. That is to say, it must
be either a real or else an attenuated and
symbolical sarcophagus.
Apart from corpse-worship and relic
worship in the case of saints, Catholic
Christendom has long possessed an annual
Commemoration of the Dead, the Jour des
Morts., which links itself on directly to
earlier ancestor-worship. It is true, this
commemoration is stated officially, and no
doubt correctly, to owe its origin (in its
recognised form) to a particular historical
person, Saint Odilo of Cluny ; but when we
consider how universal such commemora
tions and annual dead-feasts have been in
all times and places, we can hardly doubt
that the Church did but adopt and sanctify
a practice which, though perhaps accounted
heathenish, had never died out at all among
the mass of believers. The very desire to
be buried in a church or churchyard, and
all that it implies, link on Christian usage
here once more to primitive corpse-worship.
Compare with the dead who sleep with
Osiris. In the Middle Ages many people
were buried in chapels containing the body
(or a relic) of their patron saint.
In short, from first to last religion never
gets far away from these its earliest and
profoundest associations. “God and im
mortality”—those two are its key-notes.
And those two are one ; for the god in the
last resort is nothing more than the im
mortal ghost, etherealised and extended.
On the other hand, whenever, religion
travels too far afield from its emotional and
primal base in the cult of the nearer dead,
it must either be constantly renewed by
�CONCLUSION
fresh and familiar objects of worship, or it
tends to dissipate itself into mere vague
pantheism. A new god, a new saint, a
“ revival of religion,” is continually neces
sary. The Sacrifice of the Mass is wisely
repeated at frequent intervals ; but that
alone does not suffice : men want the
assurance of a nearer, a more familiar deity.
In our own time, and especially in Protes
tant and sceptical England and America,
this need has made itself felt in the rise of
spiritualism and kindred beliefs, which are
but the doctrine of the ghost or shade in
its purified form, apart, as a rule, from the
higher conception of a supreme ruler. I
have known many men of intellect, suffer
ing under a severe bereavement—the loss
of a wife or a dearly-loved child—take
refuge for a time either in spiritualism or
Catholicism. The former seems to give
them the practical assurance of actual
bodily intercourse with the dead, through
mediums or table-turning; the latter sup
plies them with a theory of death which
makes reunion a probable future for them.
This desire for direct converse with the
dead we saw exemplified in a very early
or primitive stage in the case of the Mandan
wives who talk lovingly to their husbands’
skulls ; it probably forms the basis for the
Common habit of keeping the head while
burying the body, whose widespread results
we have so frequently noticed. I have
known two instances of modern spiritualists
who similarly had their wives’ bodies em
balmed, in order that the spirit might
return and inhabit them.
Thus the Cult of the Dead, which is the
earliest origin of all religion, in the sense
of worship, is also the last relic of the reli
gious spirit which survives the decay of
faith due to modern scepticism. To this
cause I refer on the whole the spiritualistic
utterances of so many among our leaders
of modern science. They have rejected
religion, but they cannot reject the Inherited
and ingrained religious emotions.
CHAPTER XX.
CONCLUSION
And now we have reached at last the end
of our long and toilsome disquisition. I
need hardly say to those who have per
sisted with me so far that I do not regard
155
a single part of it all as by any means final.
There is not a chapter in this book, indeed,
which I could not have expanded to double
or treble its present length had I chosen
to include in it a tithe of the evidence I
have gathered on the subject with which
it deals. But for many adequate reasons
compression was imperative. Some of the
greatest treatises ever written on this pro
foundly important and interesting question
have met with far less than the attention
they deserved because they were so bulky
and so overloaded with evidence that the
reader could hardly see the wood for the
trees : he lost the thread of the argument
in the mazes of example. In my own case
I had, or believed I had, a central idea ;
and I desired to set that idea forth with
such simple brevity as would enable the
reader to grasp it and to follow it. I go,
as it were, before a Grand Jury only. I
do not pretend in any one instance to have
proved my points ; I am satisfied if I have
made out a frima facie case for further
inquiry.
My object in the present reconstructive
treatise has therefore been merely to set
forth, in as short a form as was consistent
with clearness, my conception of the steps
by which mankind arrived at its idea of
its God. I have not tried to produce evi
dence on each step in full; I have only
tried to lay before the general public a
rough sketch of a psychological rebuilding,
and to suggest at the same time to scholars
and anthropologists some inkling of the
lines along which evidence in favour of my
proposed reconstruction is likeliest to be
found. This book is thus no more than a
summary of probabilities. As in this pre
liminary outline of my views I have dealt
with few save well-known facts, and relied
for the most part upon familiar collocations
of evidence, I have not thought it necessary
to encumber my pages with frequent and
pedantic footnotes, referring to the passages
or persons quoted.
I wish also to remark before I close that
I do not hold dogmatically to the whole or
any part of the elaborate doctrine here
tentatively suggested. I have changed my
own mind far too often, with regard to these
matters, in the course of my personal evolu
tion ever to think I have reached complete
finality. Fifteen or twenty years ago, in
deed, I was rash enough to think I had
come to anchor, when I first read Mr. Her
bert Spencer’s sketch of the origin of reli
gion in the opening volume of the Principles
of Sociology. Ten or twelve years since
�156
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
doubts and difficulties again obtruded
themselves. Six years ago once more,
when The Golden Bough appeared, after
this book had been planned and in part
executed, I was forced to go back entirely
upon many cherished former opinions, and
to reconsider many questions which I had
fondly imagined were long since closed for
me. Since that time new lights have been
constantly shed upon me from without, or
have occurred to me from within ; and I
humbly put this sketch forward now for
what it may be worth, not with the idea
that I have by any means fathomed the
whole vast truth, but in the faint hope that
I may perhaps have looked down here and
there a little deeper into the profound
abysses beneath us than has been the lot of
most previous investigators. At the same
time, I need hardly reiterate my sense of
the immense obligations under which I lie
to not a few among them, and pre-eminently
to Mr. Spencer, Mr. Frazer, Mr. Hartland,
and Dr. Tylor. My only claim is that I
may perhaps have set forth a scheme of re
construction which further evidence will
possibly show to be true in parts and mis
taken in others.
On the other hand, by strictly confining
my attention to religious features, properly
so called, to the exclusion of mythology,
ethics, and all other external accretions orx
accidents, I trust I have been able to de-'
monstrate more clearly than has hitherto
been done the intimate connection which
always exists between cults in general and
the worship of the Dead God, natural or
artificial. Even if I have not quite suc
ceeded in inducing thebeliever in primitive
animism to reconsider his prime dogma of
the origin of gods from all-pervading spirits
(of which affiliation I can see no proof in
the evidence before us), I venture to think
I shall at any rate have made him feel that
Ancestor-Worship and the Cult of the Dead
God have played a far larger and deeper
part than he has hitherto been willing to
admit in the genesis of the religious emo
tions. Though I may not have raised the
worship of the Dead Man to a supreme and
unique place in the god-making process, I
have at least, I trust, raised it to a position
of higher importance than it has hitherto
held, ever since the publication of Mr.
Herbert Spencer’s epoch-makingresearches.
I believe I have made it tolerably clear that
the vast mass of existing gods or divine
persons, when we come to analyse them,
do actually turn out to be dead and deified
human beings.
This is not the place, at the very end of
so long a disquisition, to examine the theory
of primitive animism. I would therefore
only say briefly here that I do not deny the
actual existence of that profoundly animistic
frame of mind which Mr. Im Thum has so
well depicted among the Indians of Guiana;
nor that which exists among the Samoyeds
of Siberia ; nor that which meets us at
every turn in historical accounts of the old
Roman religion. I am quite ready to admit
that, to people at that stage of religious
evolution, the world seems simply thronged
with spirits on every side, each of whom has
often his own special functions and peculiar
prerogatives. But I fail to see that any one
of these ideas is demonstrably primitive.
Most often we can trace ghosts, spirits, and
gods to particular human origins: where
spirits exist in abundance and pervade all
nature, I still fail to understand why they
may not be referred to the one known source
and spring of all ghostly beings. It is
abundantly clear that no distinction of
name or rite habitually demarcates these
ubiquitous spirits at large from those
domestic gods whose origin is perfectly
well remembered in the family circle. I
make bold to believe, therefore, that in
every such case we have to deal with un
known and generalised ghosts—with ghosts
of varying degrees of antiquity. If any one
can show me a race of spirit-believers who
do not worship their own ancestral spirits,
or can adduce any effective prime differentia
between the spirit that was once a living
man and the spirit that never was human
at all, I will gladly hear him. Up to date,
however, no such race has been pointed
out, and no such differentia ever posited.
The truth is, we have now no primitive
men at all. Existing men are the descen
dants of people who have had religions, in
all probability, for over a million years.
The best we can do, therefore, is to trace
what gods we can to their original source,
and believe that the rest are of similar
development. And whither do we track
them ?
“ So far as I have been able to trace
back the origin of the best-known minor
provincial deities,” says Sir Alfred Lyall,
speaking of India in general, “they are
usually men of past generations who have
earned special promotion and brevet rank
among disembodied ghosts....... Of the
numerous local gods known to have been
living men, by far the greater proportion
derive from the ordinary canonisation of
holy personages....... The number of shrines
�CONCLUSION
thus raised in Berar alone to these ancho
rites and persons deceased in the odour of
sanctity is large, and it is constantly
increasing. Some of them have already
attained the rank of temples.” Erman
came to a similar conclusion about the gods
of those very Ostyaks who are often quoted
as typical examples of primitive animists.
Of late years numerous unprejudiced inves
tigators, like Mr. Duff Macdonald and
Captain Henderson, have similarly come
to the conclusion that the gods of the
natives among whom they worked were all
of human origin ; while we know that some
157
whole great national creeds, like the Shinto
of Japan, recognise no deities at all save
living kings and dead ancestral spirits.
Under these circumstances, judging the
unknown by the known, I hesitate to posit
any new and fanciful source for the small
residuum of gods whose human origin is
less certainly known to us.
In one word, I believe that corpse-worship
is the protoplasm of religion, while admit
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mythology, and of its more modern and
philosophical offshoot, theology.
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and, in order to ensure a large circulation, is being issued in good
style at the very low price of sixpence. In America the published
price, in cloth, is 75c. (three shillings), in paper 50c. (two shillings).
“ The boldest, the brightest, the most varied and informing of any work of the kind extant.”
—G. J. Holyoake (in Preface to British edition).
“ Interesting as a pointed statement of the most advanced thought on matters of religion.”—Scots- man.
“A glance at this by Mr. Mangasarian ‘almost persuades’ us to revoke our resolution never
to look at a catechism again.”— The New Age.
“ Grapples with the problems that underlie all the creeds and all the systems of science and
philosophy.”—Glasgow Herald.
“ The author shows good judgment in devising questions, and great fertility of resource in
answering them. The book is well worth a perusal.”—Educational News.
AGENTS FOR THE RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION, LIMITED :
WATTS & CO., 17, JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, E.C.
�Now Ready, xvL-920 pp., cloth, 6s. net, by post 6s. 6d.
POPULAR EDITION
OF
SUPERNA TURAL
RELIGION.
AN INQUIRY INTO THE REALITY OF DIVINE
REVELATION.
Thoroughly Revised and brought up to date by the Author, in some eases
entirely fresh sections being added.
“Who was the Author of ‘Supernatural Religion’? The question
was almost savagely discussed five and twenty years ago, it has again and again risen since, and it is
revived by the announcement that the famous work is being republished in a cheap edition by the
Rationalist Press Association. The form in which the announcement appears is calculated to cause
surprise. This new edition, we read, ‘ has been thoroughly revised and brought up to date by the
author, several new and important sections being added.’ This distinctly implies that the author has
all these years concealed, and still conceals, his identity. When Supernatural Religion first appeared
in 1874 several distinguished men were charged with having written it. One of them was a
learned and venerable prelate of the Church, and there was for a time unpleasant scandal in the
mere thought of such disloyalty. Controversy raged around the mystery of the authorship, and
still more around the book itself, which ran through seven editions, and was universally regarded as
the ablest critical work that had appeared in English theological literature. Dr. Lightfoot set
himself to answer the author of Supernatural Religion in a work which itself became famous ; Dr.
Row, Dr. Sadler, and Dr. Sanday, the Biblical commentator, did their best to tear it to pieces ;
Archbishop Tait, as we read in Canon Benham’s life of him, ridiculed it, but, like many other
orthodox Christians, was uneasily affected by it; Matthew Arnold, who was at the time busy with
controversy over his own Literature and Dogma, spoke of the author as a learned and exact writer,
and welcomed him to his own support; John Morley, in the Fortnightly Review, said of him that
he stated his case ‘ with a force which no previous English writer on the negative side can have the
smallest claim to rival.’ All these critics shared the public curiosity as to who the author of the
astounding book could be, and the problem is still subject of dispute. Its reappearance to-day,
written ‘ up to date,’ will arouse considerable interest.”— Yorkshire Post, October 8th, 1902.
Since this notice appeared in the Yorkshire Post it has been formally announced that the author
of Supernatural Religion is Walter R. Cassels.
Library Edition, 10s. net, by post 10s. 6d.
AGENTS FOR THE RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION, LIMITED :
WATTS & CO., 17, JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, LONDON, E.C.
�R.P.A. Cheap Repripts
1. HUXLEY’S LECTURES AND ESSAYS.
(A SELECTION.)
2. THE PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.
By EDWARD
CLODD.
3. MODERN SCIENCE & MODERN THOUGHT.
By SAMUEL LAING.
4. LITERATURE AND DOGMA:
Apprehension of the Bible.
An Essay Towards a Better
By MATTHEW ARNOLD.
5. THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE.
By Professor
ERNST HAECKEL.
6. EDUCATION :
INTELLECTUAL, MORAL, & PHYSICAL.
By HERBERT SPENCER.
7. THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD.
By
GRANT ALLEN.
8. HUMAN ORIGINS.
By
SAMUEL
LAING.
Revised
by
EDWARD CLODD.
9. THE SERVICE OF MAN.
By j. cotter morison.
With “ In Memoriam ” Introduction by FREDERIC HARRISON.
10. LECTURES AND ESSAYS.
By Professor TYNDALL.
6d. each, by post 8d.; the 8 post free 4s.
Nos. 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, and 9 may be had in cloth, each Is. net, by post Is. 3d.;
or the 7 post paid for 7s. 6d.
AGENTS FOR THE RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION, LTD.:
WATTS & CO., 17, JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, E.C.
PRINTED BY WATTS AND CO., 17, JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, LONDON, E.C.
*
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
The evolution of the idea of God. An inquiry into the origins of religions / revised and slightly abridged by Franklin T. Richards
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 160 p. : ill. (port.) ; 23 cm.
Series: R.P.A. Cheap Reprints
Notes: Issued for the Rationalist Press Association Ltd. The last three pages are the RPA's publications list. Printed in double columns. First published, London: Grant Richards, 1897. Signature on front cover: "F. Winn". Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Second impression (making 55,000 copies).
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grant, Allan
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Richards, Franklin T (ed.)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1903
Publisher
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Watts & Co. (London, England)
Subject
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God
Religion
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (The evolution of the idea of God. An inquiry into the origins of religions / revised and slightly abridged by Franklin T. Richards), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Identifier
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N045
Format
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
God
NSS
Religion