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PNo. 2,-R.P.A. EXTRA SERIES.
The "Riddle” Vindicated
......... ......... .
........... —. . ............. *"*5^
Haeckel’s Critics
Answered
JOSEPH McCABE
(FORMERLY THE VERY REV. FATHER ANTONY, O.S.F., PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY AND
ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY AT ST. ANTONY'S, FOREST GATE)
Author of “Twelve Years in a Monastery, ” “ Peter Abelard," “St. Augustine and
li is Age" etc.
WATTS & CO.,
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No. 3 of this Series will be “ SCIENCE AND SPECULATION,” being the
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�THE
Rationalist Press Association,
LIMITED.
Registered Office—V], Johnson’s Court, Fleet Street, London, E.C.
Chairman:
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�B1SH0PSGATE INSTITUIE
REFERENCE LIBRARY
Not to be taken away
HAECKEL’S CRITICS ANSWERED
�By JOSEPH McCABE.
Twelve Years in a Monastery.
A New Edition, Revised and Enlarged.
The first large edition was exhausted soon after publication, and it is now
issued, with additions, including an examination of Mr. Wells’s position on
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By PROFESSOR HAECKEL.
The Riddle of the Universe.
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By WINWOOD READE.
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The Agnostic Annual for 1904.
Contents : The Cult of the Unknown God, by Joseph McCabe ; The
Master-Builder, by Eden Phillpotts; Historic Christianity, by Charles T.
Gorham; The Position of Freethinkers in the Church, by John M. Robertson;
Towards Freedom, by Lady Florence Dixie ; A Rose, A Life (a poem),
by Henry Allsopp ; The Philosophy of the Human Mind, by Charles Watts 5
Can Man Know God ? by the Author of Mr. Balfour1 s Apologetics ; The
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London : WATTS & CO., 17 Johnson’s Court, Fleet Street, E.C.
�NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
HAECKEL’S
CRITICS ANSWERED •
BY
JOSEPH McCABE
(FORMERLY THE VERY REV. F. ANTONY, O.S.F., PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY AND ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
at st.
Antony’s,
forest gate)
AUTHOR OF “ TWELVE YEARS IN A MONASTERY," “ PETER ABELARD,”
“ST. AUGUSTINE AND HIS AGE,” ETC.
\Issued for the Rationalist Press Association, Limited.}
WATTS & CO.,
17, JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, LONDON, E.C.
1903
�BISHSPSGATE INSTITUTE
REFERENCE LIBRARY
y.. 1 9 MAY 1987
k Ciassiflcat i&n .. H. hi?. §•
�CONTENTS
PAGE
I.
II.
Some General Criticisms, and
The Unity
of the
a
Lessonin Modesty........................................ 7
World, and the Lawof Substance
.
.
.
.18
III.
The Evolution of the Inorganic World....................................................... 29
IV.
The Origin of Life................................................................................................. 39
V.
The Ascent
of
Man................................................................................................ 49
VI.
The Immortality of the Soul...............................................................................61
VII.
God........................................................................................................................ 68
VIII.
IX.
X.
Science
and
Christianity....................................................................................... 80
The Ethic and Religion of Monism.............................................................. 91
Dr. Wallace and
his
Critics............................................................................... 99
XI.
Lord Kelvin Intervenes...................................................................................... 108
XII.
Mr. Mallock’s Olive Branch..............................................................................114
XIII.
Conclusion............................................................................................................... 123
Index........................................................................................................................127
�PREFATORY NOTE
WHILST these pages were in the press an interview with Mr.
F. Ballard, written by Mr. Raymond Blathwayt, has appeared in Great
Thoughts. The interviewer introduces his subject with the following
passage :—
“ None can deny Haeckel’s sincerity; few can deny a certain wistful eager
ness ; all must stand saddened at his pessimism. He himself, if report be true,
is shaken to the very core as to his own position. A friend of his, entering his
study a few weeks ago, found him in a somewhat mournful condition. ‘ What is
the matter ? ’ said he, and the great philosopher replied, ‘ I cannot feel certain of
my own position ,■ suppose all my theories should turn out to be false? So that
even Haeckel, whom most people regard as a blank materialist, is overshadowed
now and again by the spirit world which surrounds us all, and to him also come the
doubts and craven fears to which the strongest of humanity is liable now and again.”
I at once submitted this passage to Professor Haeckel, and he
replied :—
“The anecdote about the wavering of my Monistic position is a pure invention.
My views are firm as a rockj but they may, naturally, be only partly correct.
The reader will find from the following pages that this—whoever
was the “ inventor
is only one of a long series of untruths and mis
representations with which the distant Professor has been cowardly
assailed.
J. M.
�•ii'-il tbb:»w
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til jnt»
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HAECKEL’S CRITICS ANSWERED
■ '
,• ••
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. < . . J1I&' '
bXz?
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1881 L,* imL
Chapter 1
SOME GENERAL CRITICISMS, AND A LESSON IN
MODESTY
Some forty-four years ago a young
German medical man was spending
laborious hours in an effort to penetrate
the secret of the living organism. From
his earliest years he had been powerfully
attracted to the study of life. He had
written a small work on botany whilst
he- was yet a boy at the gymnasium. He
had then had the advantage of a train
ing for the medical profession under
such masters as Kolliker and Johannes
Muller. He had published an essay on
crabs in 1857, and in 1859 he was pur
suing a most important inquiry into the
microscopic life that fills the blue waters
of the Italian coast. But his many lines
of research had not as yet led to any
large conclusions. He stood perplexed
between the discarded views of the older
biologists and the dim vision that was
slowly breaking upon the scientific mind
of the time. His own revered master
had insisted on the fixity of the various
species of organisms, but it was an age
when every note of the time-spirit whis
pered “advance” in the ears of the
younger men. The despotism of Genesis
had been broken by the new criticism,
and the Mosaic barrier to research was
being trampled under foot. The young
scientist, then in his twenty-seventh year,
returned to Berlin in 1861, and heard
that during his absence an English
naturalist had published a startlingly
revolutionary view of the whole kingdom
of life.
He obtained a copy of The
Origin of Sfecies, and saw at a glance
that a great truth had been discovered.
In the light of the new theory of evolu
tion, fulfilling the intuitions of Goethe
and the speculations of Lamarck, the
vast realm of animals and plants began
to exhibit the order and rationality he
had so long sought.
The very valuable and brilliant work
he had done in Italy secured for him a
professorship at the University of Jena,
and he at once devoted himself to the
creation of the new biology. In 1863
(his twenty-ninth year) he gave an able
address on the new theory before a
congress at Stettin, where all the most
distinguished scientists of Germany were
assembled. It was his baptism of fire
in a life-long campaign against error and
prejudice.
The vast majority of the
scientists present scoffed at Darwin’s
idea, and said it was not a matter for
serious discussion.
“The harmless
dream of an after-dinner nap,” said one
distinguished zoologist; and another
said they might as well discuss “ tableturning.”
A famous botanist present
said there was not a single fact of
science in its favour; though Darwin’s
book alone contains an overwhelming
mass of evidence. In France the great
Cuvier was crushing the young theory
with the weight of his authority. From
the pulpit of Notre Dame the brilliant
Lacordaire was assuring men that “its
father was pride, its mother lust, and
�8
SOME GENERAL CRITICISMS, AND A LESSON IN MODESTY
its offspring revolutions.” The young
naturalist went back to Jena with a
stem and grim resolve to pursue truth
through fire and water, and, as Huxley
was putting it after a like experience,
to “smite all humbugs” that lent their
authority to error. Five years later he
published his Generelle Morphologie,
which Huxley calls “ one of the greatest
scientific works ever published,” and
which considerably advanced the libera
tion of Germany from the old error.
Two years afterwards he published his
Natural History of Creation, of which
Darwin said that, had he read it earlier,
the Descent of Man would probably
never have been written.
With phe
nomenal industry, with brilliant success,
and with a moral idealism of the highest
order, he continued his research into the
nature of life and the nature of man,
and long before the close of the century
he was in the foremost rank of men of
science.
His progress was impeded by the
usual conservative hostility. For years
the ecclesiastical party strove to drive
him from the university, and enforced
a boycott of him and his family. One
day a prelate approached the Grand
Duke of Weimar, and urged him to put
an end to the scandal of the heretical
professor. “ Do you mean to say,” asked
the Grand-Duke—for the spirit of Goethe
still lingered in the court of Weimar,
“ that the professor really believes these
things he teaches?”
“He certainly
does,” assured the cleric.
“Then the
man is only doing what you are doing
yourself,” was the amiable retort. At
another time the professor himself ap
proached the head of the university,
Dr. Seebeck, an orthodox thinker, and
offered to resign his chair, to end the
trouble, as he would never swerve one
inch from the path of integrity and
faithfulness to what he considered to
be the truth. Dr. Seebeck bade him
remain; and his name has, in return,
taken the name of Jena to the ends of
the earth. His books have been trans
lated into twelve languages. Flis name
will rise first to the lips of any informed
student in the civilised world, from
Yokohama to St. Petersburg, from San
Francisco to Calcutta, if you speak of
zoology or embryology. He holds four
gold medals for research, and more
than seventy diplomas from so many
academies and learned bodies all over
the world, who have desired to have his
name on their roll of members or asso
ciates. When, in 1881, the Asiatic Society
of Bengal resolved to nominate six special
“ centenary honorary members,” he was
the one chosen for Germany. On the
occasion of his sixtieth birthday, ten
years ago, the elite of the scientific
world sent their greeting to the man
“who has devoted his life in unselfish
devotion to science and to truth, who
has opened new paths and inaugurated
fresh knowledge wherever he has turned,
and who has ever given his best for the
moral welfare of humanity.”
That is the real Ernst Haeckel.
That is the man whom our ecclesias
tical M.A.’s and our D.D.’s have lately
been accusing of “scientific humbug”
and “insolent dogmatism” and “child
ish credulity” and “mendacities” and
“rhodomontade,” of being “an essen
tially ignorant guide,” “an atrophied
soul,” and “ a rude, ill-mannered, igno
rant child,” of “ poisoning the minds ”
of the people and leading them “back
into barbarism,” of “prostituting him
self,” of making “misrepresentations so
gross and glaring as to make it extremely
difficult to credit him at once with
mental ability and sincerity,” of “ having
forfeited all right to speak as a serious
scientific man,” and of being “so fla
grantly prejudiced, so false to fact, and
so insolent in tone, as to require much
self-control to keep one from flinging
the book away in disgust.” I am not
quoting itinerant Christian Evidence
lecturers, but the deliberately published
observations of Dr. Horton, Dr. Loofs,
and the Rev. Mr. Ballard.
We need not tender our sympathy to
Professor Haeckel. He has been listen
ing to language of this kind ever since
�SOME GENERAL CRITICISMS, AND A LESSON IN MODESTY
he published his famous General Mor
phology in 1866. He may have by this
time a kindly theory that it comes
naturally to a mind that breathes a
mediaeval atmosphere, and that still holds
the general principles on which the
Holy Inquisition was founded. But it
is worth while investigating how all this
lurid language is reconciled with the
culture and scholarship and tolerance
which are claimed for the modern
clergyman. The writers of these pic
turesque phrases would indignantly re
pudiate the notion that they were angry
merely because Haeckel’s views of the
nature of man and the constitution of
the universe contradict their own, and
tend to diminish the number of their
followers. They do, indeed, reject the
substance of his speculations, but their
quarrel is with the manner in which he
pursues and expounds them. A few
years ago he published a summary of
the opinions he had arrived at on a vast
number of problems of science, philo
sophy, history, and religion. As he saw
his great colleagues pass on one by one
to join “ the choir invisible,” he decided
to draw up this “last will and testa
ment ”; to look back over the sombre
fields of half-a-century of warfare, and
sum up the issues of the conflict. In
Germany his Riddle of the Universe
sold 9,000 copies in two months, and
has led to an appalling outpouring of
controversial ink. In England it was
eagerly and extensively welcomed in the
more expensive edition, and in the cheap
form it is circulating to the extent of
nearly 80,000 copies. I have waded
through the turgid flood of criticisms it
has called forth, and will deal first with
those charges which tend to palliate the
outrageous phrases I have quoted before
I proceed to the criticisms of its sub
stance. These ponderous names are
not flung out, we are told, from a secret
consciousness that sober criticism would
have little force. They are reluctantly
penned out of regard for the ethic
and aesthetic of controversy. Professor
Haeckel, whom Mr. Mallock has saluted
9
in the Fortnightly Review (September,
1901) as “one of the most eminent and
most thoughtful men of science in
Europe,” whom an antagonistic reviewer
in Knowledge describes as “ impelled by
no motive but a love of truth,” and says
that “ to know him is to love him,” and
“ there are few who have worked harder
and, at the same time, more brilliantly,
for their day and generation,” whom the
Westminster Review regards as “a great
biologist and thinker,” and whom even
Dr. Dallinger calls “a man of large
scientific attainments, a biologist of the
highest repute, and possessed of the
keenest acumen” (fThe Creator, p. 18)
—this Professor Haeckel has, it seems,
greatly violated the good taste and the
ordinary morality of literary work in his
Riddle of the Universe. Mr. Ballard
epitomises the charge very neatly in the
British Weekly. The book, he says,
“ teems with exhibitions of bitter pre
judice, arrant dogmatism, unwarranted
assumption, uncalled-for insult, logical
failure, and self-contradictions ”; and
the misguided British public calls for
five editions of it, in spite of all the
abuse that is heaped on it and all the
secret and public manoeuvres that are
directed against its circulation.
A desperate champion might ask the
reader to reflect on the atmosphere of
invective in which Haeckel has lived for
the last fifty years—from Lacordaire’s
tracing of the parentage of evolution to
Dr. Talmage’s sermons on the subject
only four years 'ago—and might recall
that even dainty prelates like Bishop
Wilberforce could utter bitter insults in
that charmed region. He might argue
that a Haeckel was not pledged to turn
the other cheek to the smiter. He might
point out that it is not soothing to have
had to spend half a life in overcoming
what is now acknowledged to be a foolish
resistance, yet see the same theological
forces arrayed at a more advanced
position to-day. But, in truth, we shall
do better to ask, what is the aesthetic
and ethical standard of controversy
cherished by Dr. Haeckel’s critics, and
B
�IO
SOME GENERAL CRITICISMS, AND A LESSON IN MODESTY
how: far does he really fall below their
shining example ?
There is Dr. Horton, for instance,
whose sensitive nature is outraged by
Haeckel’s rude comments on some of the
Christian beliefs. Now, I have been a
priest and I know how largely rhetorical
this kind of indignation is, and how
effective it is sometimes in preventing a
book from being read. As a fact, one
who was present when Dr. Horton
delivered his philippic tells how, when the
preacher read out in tremulous tones
the famous mother-in-law passage (and the
like) from the Riddle, his audience was
really shaking with suppressed laughter.
However, let us examine Dr. Horton’s
discourse,1 and learn the better manners
which he desiderates in Haeckel. He
opens with a reference to “ the depths of
degradation and despair into which the
teaching of Haeckel will plunge man
kind ; ” though, of course, to speak
of Dr. Horton’s views as degrading
would be considered insulting. Then,
though “ there has been no more diligent
and successful investigator of the facts of
nature than Ernst Haeckel during the
century that has passed,” he is a child
at moral and religious reasoning, “ a rude,
ill-mannered, ignorant child ; ” he is “ an
atrophied soul, a being that is blind on
the spiritual side.” The “ spiritual side ”
being a blend of moral and intellectual
faculty (if it is anything more than
imagination), this is grave; but Dr.
Horton says it <£in the interest of souls
and truth.” Presently he finds Haeckel
an ££ utterly unsatisfactory and essentially
ignorant guide,” an “ unthinking mind ”
with -whose “ obvious weakness and igno
rance ” and “ childish credulity ” “ the
rationalist press gulls the ignorance of
the public.” Dr. Horton admits that
modern science “ must gradually affect
the view of man, even the view of God,
which we drew from the matchless
revelation of the first chapters of
Genesis” [this in Hampstead, in the
1 It is published in the Christian World
Pulpit, June loth, 1903.
year of grace 1903 !], and must modify
“ the naive, but essentially correct, con
ceptions of our ancestors ”; but Haeckel
asks too much. I will touch in the
proper place Dr. Horton’s brief argu
mentation on the origin of life and the
origin of the mind,1 and will only admire
here the delicacy with which he points
out the spiritual consequences of monism.
“ Men who have no belief in God and
immortality sink to the level of the
brutes,” and Haeckel is “ anxious to
sweep us back into this barbarism under
the name of progress.”
Haeckel is not
conscious of the degradation that has
passed upon his spirit ” through rejecting
the particular solution of the world-riddle
which Dr. Horton recommends, but in
any one who does so “ the soul is shrunk,
the mind is warped, the very body must
carry its marks of degradation.” It is
true that the preacher’s sense of humour
awakes at one point, and he disavows
any intention of imputing these “ bestial
levels ” to Haeckel himself, but he seems
to forget the reservation, and ends in a
most ludicrous strain of commiseration.
There is nothing half so insulting and
offensive in Haeckel.
Passing by Dr. Loofs (whose little work
is one of the most spiteful and painful
diatribes that has issued from a modern
university), as he does not claim to be an
English gentleman, we may turn to the
Rev. F. Ballard for an exhibition of those
manners which Haeckel has neglected to
cultivate.
Mr. Ballard is said in the
religious press to have proved that
“ Haeckel doesn’t count,” and it will be
expected from the precision and force of
his indictment of Haeckel’s manner
(which I have quoted above) that this
1 Dr. Horton’s knowledge of the controversy
may be tested very well by his statement that
Bois-Reymond, Vogt, Buchner, and Baer, “per
haps four of the greatest men of science in the
nineteenth century in Germany,” came to “ the
recognition of spirit as the author of conscious
ness.” Not one of the four ever recognised any
thing of the kind, as we shall see. Bois-Reymond
and Baer remained agnostic, whilst Buchner and
Vogt were actually the leaders of German
materialism up to the moment of death.
�SOME GENERAL CRITICISMS, AND A LESSON IN MODESTY
scientific clergyman will be quite the
Beau Brummel of religious controversy.
He has written a chapter on The
Riddle of the Universe in his Miracles
of Unbelief, but this has been swallowed
up in his great attack in the columns of
the British Weekly. The later articles
of this series refer to the able editor of
the Clarion,, and Mr. Blatchford has
shown a sufficient command of appro
priate language to dispense with my
services. I confine myself to the first
three articles (July 23rd, 30th, and Aug.
6th). It proves, on examination, that
twelve columns out of the thirteen are
mainly preliminary comments on Haec
kel’s morals. I will deal with the thir
teenth column (which will turn out to be
very largely a question of Mr. Ballard's
morals) in its proper place, and will
here briefly examine the general criti
cisms.
Dogmatism and dishonesty are the
chief points Mr. Ballard charges, with an
infinite variety of phrasing, against the
absent Professor. Now, one would
really’ be disposed to see something in
the first point, since it is so persistently
urged by Haeckel’s critics. Unfortun
ately, when one looks closely into the
grounds of the charge it begins to totter ;
and when one compares Haeckel’s words
with those of his critics, one wonders
what dogmatism really is. There is, for
instance, that admirable writer of the
Christian World, Mr. J. Brierley (“J. B.”),
who stooped in some unguarded hour to
attack Haeckel. The Riddle is “ one of
the most amusing books this generation
has seen” because “its dogmatism is so
naive.” “ Professor Haeckel has found
everything out,” says Mr. Brierley. “ He
has exploded the old mystery, and found
it a bag stuffed with sawdust. There is
nothing to wonder at in suns and sys
tems. They are just matter and force,
and there is an end.” Now, the Chris
tian World is a fine paper, and “ J. B.”
is one of its sanest contributors, yet this
passage is astounding. Whence did a
hostile reviewer in the Sheffield Daily
Telegraph get the opposite impression
n
that Haeckel “is modest and unassum
ing in the claims he makes for his
system”? How came the Westminster
Review to call it “ a careful and conscien
tious endeavour to construct a theory of
the universe in harmony with the teach
ings of modern science”? Read the
second page of the preface to the Riddle.
“ The studies of these world-riddles which
I offer in the present work,” you read,
“ cannot reasonably claim to give a
perfect solution of them; they merely
offer to a wide circle of readers a critical
inquiry into the problem, and seek to
answer the question as to how nearly we
have approached that solution at the
present day. What stage in the attain
ment of truth have we actually arrived
at in this closing year of the nineteenth
century ? What progress have we really
made during its course towards that
immeasurably distant goal ? ”
Those
words—and you will vainly seek their
equal in modesty in any religious riddle
solver in the world—meet the eye at the
very opening of the book, and they are
substantially repeated at its close (p.
134).1 “The answer which I give to
these great questions,” Haeckel con
tinues, “ must naturally be merely sub
jective and only partly correct.” Was
there ever so singular a “ dogmatist ” ?
“ The one point that I can claim is that
my Monistic Philosophy is sincere from
beginning to end.” “ My own command
of the various branches of science is
uneven and defective, so that I can
attempt no more than to sketch the
general plan of such a world-picture,
and point out the pervading unity of its
parts, however imperfect be the execu
tion.” “ In taking leave of my readers,
I venture the hope that, through my
sincere and conscientious work—in spite
of its faults, of which I am not uncon
scious-—I have contributed a little to
wards the solution of the great enigma.”
If that is dogmatism, and the average
theological pronouncement is fragrant
1 I quote throughout from the cheap edition
of the Riddle.
�12
SOME GENERAL CRITICISMS, AND A LESSON IN MODESTY
with modesty, we shall need to recon
sider our moral terminology.1
But Mr. Ballard would tell us there
are other passages in which “ the most
arrogant dogmatism ” breaks out. Well,
Haeckel has told us the book is uneven
and sketchy, that its parts were written
at different times, in different moods;
and, knowing there was no inconsistency
of thought, he may have trusted to the
intelligence of his readers to adjust any
mere inconsistency of expression. But
the truth is, that Mr. Ballard’s choice
examples (given in his third article) of
“ unmitigated dogmatism ” are little short
of ridiculous. “ Thus we have got rid of
the transcendental design of the philo
sophy of the schools ” and “ The unpre
judiced study of natural phenomena
reveals the futility of the theistic idea ”
are two of the shorter quotations. Clearly,
Mr. Ballard must mean that Haeckel
should have interposed “ in my opinion ”
in these sentences. Does Mr. Ballard
do that? Does any sane and literary
writer do it who expects to have intelli
gent readers ? Professor Haeckel is by
no means a Social Democrat, but he
does credit “ the general reader ” with
intelligence enough to relieve him from
saying “ this is my opinion ” at every
third line. He has gone out of his way
to warn the reader from the beginning
that his conclusions are “ merely subjec
tive.” In not one of these cases does he re
present a conclusion as being unanimously
accepted. On the contrary, Mr. Ballard
and his friends are never tired of point
ing out how Haeckel, on his own showing,
1 An amusing feature of this delinquency of
Mr. J. Brierley’s—which I sincerely regret to
have to notice—is that it follows upon a fine
article on ‘ ‘ Candour in the Pulpit ’’—that is to
say, on the lack of candour in the pulpit and of
honesty in apologetic literature. So that, almost
side by side with this unhappy passage, one
reads : “A foremost modern theologian, by no
means of the radical school, has recorded his
significant judgment that one of the main charac
teristics of apologetic literature is its lack of
honesty; and no one who has studied theology can
doubt that it has suffered more than any other
science from equivocal phraseology” {Christian
World, August 20th, 1903 ; p. 10).
is contradicted by his own colleagues in
Germany. The whole matter is too ab
surd to prolong. Haeckel’s “dogma
tisms ” are the ordinary ways of expres
sion in adult literature. They shine with
modesty in comparison with theological
utterances, and they are guarded from
misinterpretation on the part of the unin
formed by a most rare and conscientious
warning in the preface.
Finally let us consider the charge of
misinterpretation, trickery (“jugglery,”
the Rev. Rhondda Williams says), and
general dishonesty of method. To deal
with this fully would be to anticipate my
whole book here; the reader will be
amply informed for judgment in the
sequel. But we may, in the meantime,
profitably run our eye over Mr. Ballard’s
twelve columns of moral censorship. In
the last chapter of Miracles of Unbelief,
Mr. Ballard says “ we find misrepresen
tations so gross and glaring as to make it
extremely difficult to credit the writer at
once with mental ability and sincerity ”
(p. 35°)- 1° immediate justification of
this, Mr. Ballard quotes Haeckel’s state
ment (p. 46 of the Riddle) that even
some Christian theologians deny the
liberty of the will. This Bachelor of
Divinity seems unaware for the moment
that the Calvinists notoriously denied
freedom on the very ground indicated
by Haeckel, and that the greater part of
the Catholic theologians (the Thomists
and Augustinians) are accused by their
colleagues of being, logically, in the same
predicament. A more paltry justifica
tion for so grave a charge it would be
hard to conceive. The only other point
in the chapter worth noting is the com
ment on abiogenesis, and this will be met
at a later stage.1 I turn to the pages of
the British Weekly, and their blush of
righteous indignation.
The only point that concerns us in
1 But the many admirers of Mr. Ballard who
wish to know the worst at once may refer now
to p. 40, and see how their apologist garbles
his quotation from Haeckel, misrepresents his
position, misstates the attitude of science, and
so wins a glorious victory—over the Decalogue.
�SOME GENERAL CRITICISMS, AND A LESSON IN MODESTY
the first article is a curiously spirited
attack on my opinion that the Riddle is
“unanswered because it is unanswer
able,” and it is instructive to consider
this. Take down your copy of the
Riddle—do not contract the slovenly
and expensive habit of trusting. a con
troversial writer; and I will give you
pages throughout, which Mr. Ballard
never does—and notice that I wrote this
in November, 1902. Mr. Rhondda
Williams had not then written his
pamphlet, Dr. Horton had not preached
his sermon, and Dr. Loofs’s book was
unknown in England.
The only
“ reply ” in the field was a hastily added
chapter to Mr. Ballard’s Miracles of
Unbelief, which one may be pardoned
for not having discovered by 1902.
Further, I wrote with pointed reference
to Dr. Beale’s pathetic promise of a
reply in the agony column of the Times,
Oct. 1st, 1900; a promise which he
withdrew by referring later (Dec. 19th)
to a tiresome collection of letters from
the Lancet which he had published in
1898. Moreover, I pointedly wanted
an answer to the most important thesis
of the book, the evolution of mind,
which, I find, even Mr. Ballard had not
met. Mr. Ballard’s selection of spon
taneous generation as the chief point —
whereas Haeckel only offers it as “a
pure hypothesis,” and it is only an
incidental (though necessary) conse
quence of his system—is unworthy of a
serious scientific man. So, brushing
aside criticisms of Haeckel’s views on
Christ and the Immaculate Conception,
which have nothing to do with the
integrity of his system, I deplored “ the
silence or triviality of his opponents.”
But note how Mr. Ballard manipulates
this innocent observation. Premising
that I am “ doubtless honest,” and that
“ the apostles of free-thought, of all
men, might leave others free to think
for themselves,” and so on, he tells me
it was answered by himself (in an
obscure corner of an obscure book) and
—by anticipation! That encourages
him to call my statement an “ untruth.”
13
In the second article my enormity
grows. Readers are told that I assert
the “ monistic mechanism ‘ has been for
ever established ’ as the all-sufficient
origin, means, and end of everything ”;
whereas I most clearly said only that
“ the case for the evolution of mind ”
had been “ for ever established.” Later
we have a reference to “ the reactionary
assurances of an ex-ecclesiastic to the
effect ‘ that all Christian faith is ship
wrecked and all Christian convictions
amongst the breakers.’ ” The unsophis
ticated reader will learn with surprise (in
spite of “ to the effect ”) that this, whether
reactionary or not, is not a quotation from
me. And finally the growth is complete,
and I am made to “sneer at the triviality
or the silence of the opponents of the
mechanical theory of the universe.” Mr.
Ballard, F.R.M.S., clearly makes a very
improper use of his microscope at
times.
So it is with my innocent remark that
in the Riddle we have a “ masterly treat
ment of the question of the evolution of
mind.” “ Masterly ” soon grows into
“ more masterly,” and Mr. Ballard airily
asks : “ I really want to know why, for
some of us who make no profession to
be experts, Dr. Haeckel’s treatment
should be more ‘ masterly ’ than that of,
say, Dr. Wallace ” ; and in the end :
“ May we not then ask Mr. McCabe, or
Mr. Blatchford, why, or by what
authority, they proclaim that Prof.
Haeckel’s treatment is so much more
masterly than that of all others as to
foreclose the question ? ” The perver
sion of my phrase into a comparison
and the implication that I fail in respect
for Dr. Wallace or any other dis
tinguished thinker come very oddly
from the pen of this literary censor
morum.
Yet this is a fair sample of Mr.
Ballard’s procedure—and is in fact a
great part of his procedure, or I should
not have dwelt on it. The only other
important element in Mr. Ballard’s
preliminary twelve columns is his
industrious collection of authorities to
�14
SOME GENERAL CRITICISMS, AND A LESSON IN MODESTY
oppose to Dr. Haeckel. I shall speak
presently of the proper merit of this, but
must touch a few points of it here to
finish the consideration of Mr. Ballard’s
standard of controversy. He constantly
affirms that Haeckel is opposed by the
majority of scientific authorities. We
shall see what this really amounts to,
but let us consider it here in the light of
the more important question whether
they support Christianity. I have care
fully examined the list of writers quoted
against Haeckel by Mr. Ballard, and
this is the result. In the front rank
are the three eminent scientists, Lord
Kelvin, Sir O. Lodge, and Dr. A. R.
Wallace. Their convictions every man
will respect who respects himself, but—
two of them are Spiritists (having there
fore, an alien and empirical source of
faith, and holding views on the future state
which Christian teaching rejects), and
Lord Kelvin gives a very slender support,
as we shall see. Then there are Dr.
Beale (who confesses in his latest book
that he is fighting a vast majority), Dr.
Croll (who denies the liberty of the
will), Dr. Stirling (whose contribution is
the same as Dr. Beale’s), Dr. Winchell
and Sir J. W. Dawson (geologists of a
past generation, who defend the literal
interpretation of i. Genesis : Sir J. W.
Dawson thinks geology only claims
7000 years for the life of man, and
that “ the deluge is one of the most
important events both in human history
and the study of the later geological
periods ”), Professor Flower (with ten
lines of qualifications, but whose only
contribution to the subject seems to be
an address at a Church Congress, in which
he sharply tells the clergy they have
done mischief enough in the past, and had
better leave evolution to men of science ;
two short phrases about an “ eternal
power ” and the “ Divine govern
ment of the world ” seem to constitute
his slender theology), Dr. A. Macalister,
Professor Le Conte and Mr. Fiske
(American evolutionists and Pantheists),
Mr. Row (the Christian Evidence
lecturer), Dr. Cook (the American
Christian evidence lecturer), and Lord
Grimthorpe (the Vicar-general of York,
whose “legal and scientific mind” may
be seen at work in his Letters on Dr.
Todd's Discourses on the Prophecies}. The
rest of Mr. Ballard’s list consists of pro
fessional theologians. “ Dr.” This, and
“ Professor ” That, usually turn out to be
graduates in divinity. I am not for a
moment slighting the scientific acquire
ments of men like Dr. Dallinger, Mr.
Newman Smyth (one of the few
apologists who retain the character of a
gentleman amidst polemical work), Dr.
Iverach, Mr. Ballard, Mr. Profeit, and
Mr. Kennedy; I am not so unintelligent.
But it would be absurd to say that the
publications of these professors of
apologetics and doctors of divinity have
the same value, as replies to Haeckel, as
those of scientific laymen. The result is
that Mr. Ballard’s list is totally and
gravely misleading to the uninformed.
Rubbish like the “ Present Day Tracts ”
and antiquated work like Winchell’s and
Dawson’s and Stirling’s and Wainwright’s
are mixed up with the good work of
Newman Smyth and Dallinger and
Kennedy.
Evolutionists and non
evolutionists, theists and pantheists,
Christians and non-Christians, are hastily
thrown together. He drags in Prof.
W. James to rebuke Haeckel; the
average reader will have little suspicion
that James rejects the title of theist,
speaks scornfully of Mr. Ballard’s God,
and is not sure of the immortality of the
soul. All this is gravely misleading.
Clearly, Mr. Ballard’s ideal of con
troversy is not much superior to that
of Dr. Horton. Yet this budding con
troversialist has the effrontery to tell
Haeckel that “if he has no sense of
shame, then we have a sufficient object
lesson as to the failure of ‘ monistic
religion ’ to develop even an elementary
degree of morality.” This is provoked
by statements which Haeckel quotes
with transparent honesty from writers
named in his book. We have seen
how an equally coarse outburst was
prompted by a statement (as to the free-
�SOME GENERAL CRITICISMS, AND A LESSON IN MODESTY
dom of the will) which is literally correct.
The only other specific criticisms offered
by Mr. Ballard relate to the nature of
matter and the origin of life. In both
cases he gives a mere travesty of
Haeckel’s position. We shall take them
in detail later (though the reader may
find them at once by means of the index,
if he desires). For the present we take
our leave of these graceful guardians of
the taste and ethic of controversy.
“ What sort of an age do we live in ? ”
asked the Prager Tageblatt, when it saw
the clerical and scientific Lilliputians
of Germany shooting their insults at the
distinguished scientist. We are living,
still, in an age when religion is made to
consist essentially in certain speculations
about the nature of the universe, which
were framed, in substance, thousands of
years ago ; an age when any independent
speculator on the nature of things must
expect to arouse a bitter antagonism if
his conclusions differ from those of
religious tradition. Religion is, in a most
important aspect, “ a cosmic doctrine,”
to quote the words of Mr. Mallock.
“Religion and science,”he says, “touch
and oppose each other primarily as rival
methods of explaining the .... universe
taken as a whole, man forming part of
it.” Until a short time ago theologians
held that their particular cosmic specula
tions had the distinction of a super
natural origin, and they damned people
-who called them into question. To-day
the gilt is wearing off the legends of
Genesis, but the hereditary spirit of
intellectual arrogance goes more slowly.
To-day there are many theologians who
call themselves truth-seekers, and there
are a few who write and speak as if
they were truth-seekers, and not truthfulminators. But the sad truth is that
the majority are morally hampered by a
conviction of the sacredness and the
exclusive truth of certain speculations,
about God and the soul, which they
have a corporate charge to defend.
Every man who opposes them is con
structed into a hater of their religion and
a menace to human progress. The
15
diminution of their followers seems
only to increase their violence. “Al
ready,” says Mr. Rhondda Williams, “ it
is the fact that the cultured laity on the
one hand and the bulk of the democracy
on the other are outside the Churches.”1
Yes, people are seeking the truth, out in
the light of day, and they distrust a
tradition that has broken down section
by section as the century advanced.
Haeckel, starting from a most compre
hensive knowledge of living nature, has
reached out to certain conclusions on the
cosmic mystery. It will not avail to
Caricature his conclusions and vilify his
person and motives and method. Neither
he, nor his translator, nor his publishers,
dreamed of thrusting his zoological
authority down people’s throats, except
in so far as his book deals with zoology.
His further conclusions must be met on
their argumentative merits. His whole
system must be judged by rational
evidence.
Dust-throwing and mud
throwing are not the methods of truth
seekers ; they are the devices of timid
or foolish partisans.
But before I enter upon a systematic
examination of Haeckel’s system and the
criticisms it has provoked, I wish to ex
pose one further misrepresentation of a
general character. Almost all the critics
endeavour to make us distrust Flaeckel
by attributing to him a solitary and
isolated position in the scientific ■world.
Even if this were the case, it would only
be an incentive to examine his views
with the greater care. Copernicus stood
alone throughout life. Darwin was op
posed by most of the scientists of his
time. Wolff enunciated a profound
truth which was not accepted until long
after his death. Robert Owen preached
a whole series of social truths that we
all accept to-day. Further, all writers
do not regard Haeckel as isolated. Mr.
Mallock, in his Religion as a Credible
Doctrine, not only takes him to be the
supreme living representative of scientific
philosophy, but says that he and his
1 Does Science Destroy Religion ? p. 29.
�16
SOME GENERAL CRITICISMS, AND A LESSON IN MODESTY
colleagues “ are correct in their methods
and arguments—that the attempts of
contemporary theologians to find flaws
in the case of their opponents, or to
convert the discoveries of science into
proofs of their own theism, are exercises
of an ingenuity wholly and hopelessly
misapplied, and exhibit too often an
unreasoning or a feverish haste which
merely exposes to. ridicule the cause
which they are anxious to defend.”1 Dr.
Lionel Beale speaks throughout his
Vitality of the majority being on
Haeckel’s side in that controversy. Dr.
Iverach speaks in his Theism of “ scien
tists,” in a general way, as refusing to go
with him. But the misconception it is
particularly needful to clear up is as to
the relation of Haeckel’s Monism to
Agnosticism. When Mr. Ballard speaks
crudely of the majority of modern scien
tists being opposed to Haeckel, the
uninformed will conclude that they are,
therefore, more or less with Mr. Ballard.
We have corrected that impression by
giving the list of all the scientific laymen
of England and the United States, of
recent years, that Mr. Ballard has been
able to get under one very broad religious
umbrella. It bears only a small propor
tion to the whole, even when we have
added Professor Henslow and a few
more later on. On the other hand, the
average educated man would say that
Haeckel is a materialist and atheist, and
the great bulk of our men of science
reject both names. Haeckel, it is true,
equally rejects the name materialist, but
we may defer that point to the next
chapter. Our average educated man
has no illusion as to Huxley, Tyndall,
Clifford, Darwin, Bain, Sully, Maudsley,
Spencer, Ray Lankester, Karl Pearson,
and scientists of that type (or those
types) favouring what Mr. Ballard would
call religion. These have professed
Agnosticism; and the silence on the
religious question of the vast majority of
our scientific men must—especially in
1 The Fortnightly Review, September, 1901 ;
p. 400.
view of the feverish alertness of the
Churches to drag them on to platforms
when they are known to be in the least
favourable—I should say, be construed
in the same sense.
Now, Agnosticism is held to be more
or less respectable. Mr. Ballard quotes
Huxley and Darwin and Tyndall with a
light heart and without the least recburse
to his red ink. Haeckel is abused be
cause of his “dogmatism.” But let us
refrain from raising dust, and see what
the difference really comes to. I might
quote Lord Grimthorpe, whose “legal
and scientific mind ” Mr. Ballard has
warmly recommended to us : “ As for
professing to believe neither alternative,
atheism or theism, . . . that is not only
probably but certainly wrong, and, in
deed, is so impossible that any man who
thinks he has come to that conclusion is
mistaken, and is at present an atheist.” 1
But I think a writer of that type ought
to be left in his grave. Listen, however,
to what one of the ablest living thinkers
of England says on the matter : “ The
Neutral or Agnostic Monism now in
vogue amongst scientific men ... is
scientifically popular mainly because it
is still essentially naturalistic, and dis
parages the so-called psychical aspect as
epistemologically subordinate to the
physical. . . This monism escapes the
absurdities of the old materialism more
in seeming than in fact . . it is material
ism without matter. . . In this monism
the mechanical theory is still regarded
as furnishing a concrete and complete
presentment of the objective world. . .
If dualism is unsound, there seems to
be no agnostic resting-place between
materialism and spiritualism.”2 I do
not subscribe to all this, but the high
authority of the writer encourages me
to say that the custom of opposing our
1 At the close of The Origin of the Laws of
Nature.
2 Professor J. Ward, Naturalism and Agnosti
cism, p. 207, vol. ii. So Professor Case, in the
article on Metaphysics in the tenth edition of the
Encyc. Brit, says Huxley, Tyndall, and Spencer,
only escape materialism by being inconsistent.
�'some general criticisms, and a lesson IN MODESTY
Agnostic scientists to Haeckel—especi
ally when fairly ancient quotations are
dug out of their works in support of it—
is totally misleading.
The difference between them is this
(setting aside for the manner the question
of idealism): Haeckel’s system is a
comprehensive theory covering the uni
verse, whilst they remain on ground
which they feel to be very solid. They
affirm the evolution of all things, of
matter, of solar systems, of species from
lower species, of man, of religion and
ethics. But they decline to skate at all
on thin ice. Whether the universe had
a beginning, whether evolution has been
purposively guided, whether or how life
arose out of non-life, whether conscious
ness is of the same texture as physical
force, whether death makes an end of it
—all these things they prefer to leave to
a later generation. Where they do
affirm, they agree with Haeckel; but
they consider his further affirmations
premature, to say the least. They
agree with him that the religious theory
is quite uncalled-for by the facts of
science ; but they think it too early to
frame counter-theories. This is the real
significance of those famous conversions
of German scientists of which every
critic of Haeckel has made so much.
Du Bois-Reymond, Virchow, Baer, and
Wundt spread their affirmations over
the universe in their younger days. At
a later period they restricted themselves,
like Huxley or Darwin, to positions
which seemed impregnable. They re
treated to Agnosticism on the more ad
vanced questions. It. is absurd to find
Haeckel’s critics representing them as
having gone over to theism or Christian
ity.1 Like Huxley and Tyndall (in his
1 Haeckel is read a ferocious lesson in
manners by all his critics for putting a certain
construction on their change. Let it stand. I
am chiefly concerned with the truth or untruth
of his ideas. I see, therefore, a far more griev
ous sin in the almost general misrepresentation
of the nature of these “conversions.” Dr.
Horton, we saw, slipped in Vogt and Buchner,
the most advanced materialists of Germany, as
converts to spiritualism. Mr, Ballard inserts
17
agnostic mood) they only decline to
follow Haeckel in a constructive theory
of the origin of life and the relation of
consciousness to brain, and the strenuous
denial of God and immortality; but they
shrink just as severely from the con
structive theories and the dogmas of
Haeckel’s critics.
In that sense Haeckel stands apart,
though far from alone. Is he justified
in leaping the abysses from which his
colleagues shrink ? Would it be wiser to
keep to the solid ground ? To put no
rounded system before the world ? We
can judge best when we have covered
the whole ground over which his system
extends. Meantime, remember three
things which are lost sight of in the dust
of this controversy. Firstly, Dr. Haeckel
does not claim anything like equal value
for his views on all points. He knows
perfectly well how the evidence differs,
and how at times he must bridge a chasm
with “a pure hypothesis,”as he calls his
theory of abiogenesis; though he does
not even put out a hypothesis without
sober ground.
His system is an
elaborate structure of demonstrated
truths, convincing theories, and rational
hypotheses of all grades of strength. The
critic who confuses the latter with the
former, and thinks he has destroyed
“ the fundamental axiom,” when he has
only shown that some outlying hypothesis
A only a hypothesis, does not evince
much discernment or a scrupulous desire
to let truth prevail. Secondly, dualism,
or theism, may not logically rush in if one
Romanes, of whose conversion Haeckel was
totally unaware when he wrote the book, and
whose change of views differs toto co:lo from that
of Virchow or Wundt. All essentially misstate
the real “ metamorphosis.” It was merely from
dogmatic monism to what Dr. Ward calls
“agnostic monism.” It lends no support to
theism or spiritualism. Prof. Haeckel assures me
that “even to-day these men are styled atheists
by German ecclesiastical writers.” Read Mr.
Kennedy’s attack on Du Bois-Reymond’s hetero
doxy, after his “ Ignorabimus-Rede,” in his
Natural Theology and Modern Thought, pp.
42-65. Darwin used stronger language about
Virchow than is to be found in the Riddle.
�18
THE UNITY OF THE WORLD, AND THE LAW OF SUBSTANCE
of Haeckel’s particular hypotheses breaks
down. Between Haeckel and Martineau
or Fiske lies the broad region of neutral
or agnostic monism. And thirdly, this
is the ordinary procedure of science. It
throws out the light bridges of its hypo
theses far in advance of its solid march.
They may be withdrawn later. More
probably they will gather strength as the
years roll on, and be at length absorbed
in the growth of the impregnable
structure of scientific truth.
Chapter II
THE UNITY OF THE WORLD, AND THE LAW
OF SUBSTANCE
What, then, is this monism which
has aroused so much bitterness and an
tagonism ? Once more, before we can pro
ceed to a sober and patient study of the
position of Dr. Haeckel, we find it
necessary to lay the dust which his
critics have raised. There is the defini
tion given by the Rev. Ambrose Pope,
who seems to have led the opposition
to Haeckel in the Clarion controversy.
Mr. Pope disposes of the system —
which it has taken Dr. Haeckel a
laborious life-time to construct—-with
a marvellous and quite papal facility.
It was made, he thinks, during three “half
day excursions” out of Haeckel’s own
province. From these he returned with
certain “assumptions” which contain,
with almost ludicrous clearness, the con
clusions he wanted to reach. We will
have a word on these “ assumptions ”
(which are really the conclusions of years
of observation and reflection) when the
time comes. But incidentally Mr. Pope
defines monism, or, as he calls it for
some occult reason, “ physiological
monism.”_ “Briefly,” he says, “the
universe is not dual in its ultimate
nature, viz., spirit (or soul) and matter;
but single (monistic), viz., matter (or
substance).” Mr. Pope goes on to say
airily that "this is another of those inno
cent-looking hypotheses” from which
Haeckel derives his atheism, &c. How
any man can fail to see that this is
not an assumption, but the most
laboured conclusion of Haeckel’s sys
tem—not the base but the apex of his
pyramid—passes comprehension. Mean
time, it is formulated in utter defiance
of Haeckel’s words, and one might think
Haeckel would be consulted on the
matter. He says (p. 8) that monism
does “ not deny the existence of spirit,
and dissolve the world into a heap of
dead atoms ” and that “ matter cannot
exist and be operative without spirit, or
spirit without matter.” Dr. Horton and
many others have the same confusion.
The Rev. Rhondda Williams says : “ He
recognises that there is something which
is not material (spatial) which we may
call mind, or soul, or spirit. But if this
spiritual something is treated as the
mere, product of matter, or the mere
function of the material organism, its
reality is denied, i.e., it has no real
spiritual nature.” But Haeckel has no
where said that spirit (or force) is a
product of matter. There are scientists
who resolve matter into force, but no one
ever attempted the reverse, except in
�THE UNITY OF THE WORLD, AND THE LAW OF SUBSTANCE
the sense of reducing force to motion,
which Haeckel certainly does not.
Monism is so clearly defined at the
very commencement of Haeckel’s book
(p. 8) that these gentlemen must have
convinced themselves he gave an im
proper definition in order to escape the
odious label “materialist.” Before we
proceed, let us be perfectly clear why
this odium does attach to the word
“materialism.” It is well worthwhile,
for here is one of the strangest and most
common sophisms
of the
hour.
Materialism is the name for two totally
different things, which are constantly
confused. There is, in the first place,
materialism as a theory of the universe—
the theory that matter is the source
and the substance of all things. That is
(if you associate “ force ” or “ energy ”
or “motion” with your “matter,” as
every materialist does) a perfectly
arguable theory. It has not the remotest
connection with the amount of wine a
man drinks or the integrity of his life.
But we also give the name of materialism
to a certain disposition of the sentiments,
which few of us admire, and which
would kill the root of progress if it
became general. It is the disposition to
despise ideals and higher thought, to
confine one’s desires to selfish and
sensual pleasure and material advance
ment. There is no connection between
this materialism of the heart and that of
the head.
For whole centuries of
Christian history whole nations believed
abundantly in spirits without it having
the least influence on their morals;
and, on the other hand, materialists like
Ludwig Buchner, or Vogt, or Moleschott,
were idealists (in the moral sense) of the
highest order.1 Look around you and
see whether the belief or non-belief (for
the Agnostic is in the same predicament
here) in spirit is a dividing-line in conduct.
There is no ground in fact for the con
fusion, and it has wrought infinite
mischief; while it has rendered, and
1 See sketches of their lives in Last Words on
Materialism,
19
still renders, incalculable service to con
servative religion.
In his Natural History of Creation
Professor Haeckel admitted that his
monism was not far removed, from
scientific materialism. But there is still
so gross a confusion on the subject
that it is very natural for him to refuse
the name.
Indeed, he could not
logically accept it, and no one who is well
informed in recent physics will accept it,
unless he is allowed to interpret it in his
own way; a right which seems to be
denied to men like Dr. Haeckel. Glance
at any scientific work, and you will
find that it speaks as much, if not
more, about force than about matter.
Hence if critics insist on calling
materialism a belief in “dead atoms”
and “ hard atoms,” and “ solid atoms,”
and nothing else, there
are no
materialists to-day, if ever there were?
We shall see more presently about
modern notions of matter and force, but
may take it that Haeckel, in proper
scientific spirit, attaches as much im
portance to force as to matter, and does
not make any absurd attempt to derive
force from matter.1 Further, he identi
fies “ soul ” or “ spirit ” with force. Mr.
Williams says this is a polite way of
denying its existence, and Mr. Pope
would say it is an assumption.
It is
neither one nor 'the other, but a most
serious and characteristic conclusion of
Haeckel’s researches.
I am now
stating his position, not the grounds for
it (which will come in due time). He
concludes that the thinking and willing
force in man—what we call his mind or
spirit—is identical with the force that
reveals itself in light and heat. In
other words, he is forced to think that
spirit and energy are one and the same
thing, and so he uses the names in
discriminately. But he is further con
vinced, on grounds we shall see
presently, that matter and spirit (or
1 Yet even the writer of the article on Meta
physics in the 10th edition of the Encyclopedia
Britannica, who devotes two columns to the
Riddle, joins in this general misrepresentation,
�20
THE UNITY OF THE WORLD, AND THE LAW OF SUBSTANCE
force) are not two distinct entities or
natures, but two forms or two aspects of
one single reality, which he calls the
fundamental substance.
This
one
entity with the two attributes, this
matter-force substance, is the sole
reality that exists—to use a Greek word,
the motion—the one nature that presents
itself to our contemplation in the
infinitely varied panorama of the
universe.
This position is logically, as I said,
the culmination of Haeckel’s system.
For the convenience of this brief de
scription I take it as the starting point
of that network of explanations, theories,
and hypotheses which constitutes the
monistic philosophy. There is a most
important school of philosophers who
will challenge even the existence of this
matter-force substance, as we shall see
presently, but for the vast majority of
men of science, as well as of ordinary
folk, this matter-force element is the one
obvious reality. In this Haeckel’s cri
tics are at one with him. It is when
Haeckel goes on to say it is the sole —
mon-on—reality that the conflict begins.
The view which Haeckel opposes is that
there is another element in existence,
totally distinct from this matter-force
reality : that the mind of man cannot be
an evolution from the matter-force sub
stance, and that this substance itself
could not have evolved into the orderly
universe about us except under the guid
ance of a still higher intelligent principle,.
God. Now, it would be quite legitimate
to say that we are as yet so imperfectly
acquainted with this matter-force reality
that it is premature to say what it can o<cannot do. That is the Agnostic posi
tion, rejecting alike the dualist theory of
Mr. Ballard and the monistic explana
tions of Dr. Haeckel.1 But monism is
more ambitious.
Science has now
1 But I must repeat—so persistent is the mis
representation—that this agnostic position is as
antagonistic to Christianity as monism is. Its
quarrel with what it calls the premature theories
of the monist is a purely scientific or philosophical
matter, and is totally unconnected with religion.
amassed enormous quantities of facts
concerning every part and aspect of the
universe. The monist believes we can
already, with this material, sketch in
broad outline, at least, the upward
growth of the great world-substance
until it is transfigured in the beauty of
the living organism, and becomes selfconscious in the mind of man. Every
body admits to-day, says Mr. Mallock,
that the inorganic world is “an absolute
monism.”
The monist proceeds to
bring the realms of life and conscious
ness into this matter-force unity, and to
show that we are not warranted in claim
ing that its growth needs a designer or a
controller. He will go on until he has
embraced the whole life of humanity,
science, art, religion, and ethics, in his
single formula.
Do not misunderstand me to the
extent of supposing, as so many strangely
do, that the monist is bound to have a
theory ready for every phenomenon
under heaven. We find even the ablest
of Haeckel’s critics claiming that monism
breaks down here, or fails to explain
there, and then with a chant of praise
fluttering the banner of dualism in the
breach. Such a course is absurd. If
the monistic theory fails anywhere, the
next attitude that logic enforces is agnos
ticism, or reserve of judgment.
If
Haeckel’s theory of the origin of life, or
of heredity, or of consciousness, or of
morality, or of Christ, will not stand the
strain of rational examination, this does
not impair the general system of monism.
The heart of the system is (i) the affir
mation that a great matter-force sub
stance (or nature) is unrolling its poten
tialities in the universe about us
(which no one denies), and (2) that we
have no rational evidence that there exists
any other substance (or super-nature).
To say that Haeckel is bound to explain
everything or die, is a grotesque assump
tion.
He has plainly disavowed so
foolish an ambition. It may be that
before the last red rays of our dying sun
fall upon the eyes of the last of our race,
some millions of years hence, the mon-
�THE UNITY OF THE WORLD, AND THE LAW OF SUBSTANCE 21
bundle of sense-impressions which he
istic philosophy will be complete. That
quite gratuitously supposes to be caused
is the “ infinitely remote goal ” he spoke
by a material object, and his stomach.is
of. But, as I said, science has already
accumulated so vast a library of know a fiction. So with the whole of material
life. It is a kinematoscopic display in
ledge that we may venture even now to
draw the outline of an extensive view of the mind—not, as far as we know, taken
from life. Berkeley opined that God
the universe in the monistic sense. That
was the operator of the instrument.
is what Dr. Haeckel does in the Riddle,
Idealists generally have dispensed with
of the Universe. He has spent half a
the operator now. The show unwinds
century in seeking truth. He has fought
itself by some occult law of the mind.
side by side with the finest scientific
thinkers of the last century in overcom In either case “ this too, too solid flesh ”
ing an historic resistance on the part of does melt, and thaw into something
the Churches. No one who is not con thinner than “an everlasting dew,”
Matter is a mental construction, force
vinced that humanity has already, at the
very beginning of its higher life, reached is the same, the world they make up
cannot be otherwise.
There is, of
the final truth, will be diverted by the
course, the agnostic position, that we
sneers and gibes of heated partisans
do not know whether this kinematoscopic
from a patient study of his conclusions.
No one who believes that truth is a panorama is a photograph, or a diagram,
of a real world, or no. But all idealists,
sacred possession, and the first condition
and they are the vast majority in philo
of lasting progress—no one who feels
sophy to-day, sternly insist that the
that dignity and sincerity are the first
matter and force which the scientist
qualities required in its pursuit—will
manipulates are mental counters; that
allow himself to be turned from the true
he is dealing with his idea of matter and
and vital issues by a petty and frivolous
force, whether or no an eternal reality
criticism of irrelevant details.
corresponds to these. Hence it is that
The plan I have adopted is to state
so many cultivated reviewers set aside
first the almost undisputed unity of the
inorganic world, then proceed to con Haeckel’s system with polite disdain.
sider its evolution, and pursue the pro His realism—his habit of talking of
cess of development through the suc matter and force as familiar objective
cessive stages of life, consciousness, and realities—is too naive.
Now this philosophy so obviously cuts
reason. But I have already said that
an important group of philosophers chal out the root of Haeckel’s system that
some of his clerical critics have put on
lenge our right even to the inorganic
superior airs and borrowed phrases from
world as a base of operations. Age
it. If the very existence of matter and
after age philosophy has rung the changes
on the familiar bells—materialism, ideal force is doubtful, clearly monism is in a
parlous state. They forget one thing.
ism, spiritualism, realism. To-day the
system in favour in the schools is ideal If idealism excludes, or throws doubt on,
the objective reality of matter, it in the
ism. According to the idealists the
same proportion destroys the Christian
naive belief of the average man that he
position. What is the meaning of the
lives in a material universe, which lay
Incarnation, or the death of Christ, or
here in space before humanity began to
the whole historic foundation of Chris
furrow its soil, and will lie there still
tianity, if the material world and its
when the last man has dropped into his
eternal tomb, is a delusion. The arch history are subjective ? Dr. Iverach sees
this very well, and warns his impetuous
sophist, Berkeley, comes along, and
colleagues. “In truth,’’ he says, “we
explains that the orange he thinks he
must arrive at a conception which leaves
is vulgarly injecting into a material
cavity he calls a stomach, is only a room for real individuality; that will
�22
THE UNITY OF THE WORLD, AND THE LAW OF SUBSTANCE
recognise the uniqueness of every person,
and yet place every person in relation to
every other person and thing that is, has
been, or will be. It must allow reality
to history, and permit a real progress
and real events in it. It must recognise
human activity as a factor in the world’s
history, and recognise somehow that
good and evil, happiness and misery,
righteousness and sin, are not appear
ance, but stern realities, which philo
sophy and theology must deal with.”1
There are, of course, important divines
amongst the idealists, such as Dr. Caird,
but they are neither consistent nor likely
ever to be literally adopted.
The
Catholic Church is intensely realistic.
Its philosophers, Dr. Ward, Dr. Mivart,
Father Maher, Father Clark, etc., have
never yielded a step to the reigning
fashion of idealism. In a word, the
defenders of religion whom Haeckel
opposes are as “ naive realists ” as he is.
It is only the more short-sighted who
meddle with the edged tools of the
modern metaphysician.
But the philosophers themselves, the
aristocracy of the intellectual world!
Are we to go on with our construction
in total disregard of their protest ? I
believe Haeckel is quite right in doing
so. As Mr. Mallock says, these idealist
dreams are not “ the mere raving
which at first sight they seem to be.”
On the other hand, the common fashion
idealists have of saying that the man
who refuses to take them seriously must
be altogether ignorant of their philo
sophy—a species of arrogance peculiar
to idealists and Roman Catholics—is
absurd. Few cultivated men are ignorant
of their arguments.
But the average
man of science, the average historian,
and the average man of affairs, sweep
away their theory as, in the words of
Mr. Mallock, “a fantastic, though in
genious and learned, dream.2 “ If phi1 Theism in the Light of Present Science and
Philosophy, p. 305.
2 Religion as a Credible Doctrine, p. 202.
Mr. Mallock gives an admirable summary of the
system, as presented by its latest and ablest
expositor, Professor James Ward.
losophers,” he says again, “instead of
confining themselves to the solemn alti
tudes of existence . . . would conde
scend to take their examples from the
common events of life, they would avoid
many of the mistakes which expose
them to the just ridicule of the vulgar.”
The historian is hardly likely to admit
that the stupendous drama he is engaged
in reconstructing is not the real play of
living passion. The astronomer is not
prepared to see in the vast expanse of
the heavens only the unreal mirage
of his ideas.
The physicist contemp
tuously repudiates the idealist’s interpre
tation of his matter and force.
The
question is raised, said Sir A. Rucker, in
his presidential address to the British
Association in 1901, “whether our basic
conceptions are to be regarded as accu
rate descriptions of the constitution of the
universe around us, or merely convenient
fictions,” and he gave an emphatic adhe
sion to the former. His speech ended
with a claim that ether and the atom are
not mere mental fictions, not mere “ work
ing hypotheses,” but “objective realities.”
His successor in the presidency, Pro
fessor Dewar, no less strongly repudiated
“ the ancient mystifications by which a
certain school shatter the objective reality
of matter and energy.” Indeed, signs
are not wanting of a coming change
amongst the metaphysicians themselves.
The immense difficulty of explaining how
we can perceive an external world is
familiar enough to every thinking man.
But philosophy must try again.
The
material world is more convincing than
all their difficulties.
The article on
“ Metaphysics,” by Professor Case, in the
latest edition of our greatest Encyclopaedia
is one long warning that the reign, or the
nightmare, of idealism is over, and that
we shall shortly return through “the
anarchy of modern metaphysics ” (as he
says), to a normal belief in the reality of
a material world, the reality of war and
disease and poverty and ignorance, and
the rationality and validity of social
enthusiasm and scientific investigation.
With Professor Haeckel, then, we pass
�THE UNITY OF THE WORLD, AND THE LA W OF SUBSTANCE
by our perplexed metaphysicians, and
smile at their supercilious comments.
We turn to the spreading panorama of
inorganic nature as the first embodiment
of the monistic substance.1
There
should be no criticism for us to meet
here, but the eagerness to deny and to
discredit and to score a point—as if we
were conducting a mimic Parliament in
some dull provincial town, instead of
being sober searchers for truth—has
been so feverish that we shall find it
breaking out into all kinds of frivolous
criticisms.
When you look up at night into the
heavens you see some three or four
thousand stars scattered through space.
Each is an incandescent sphere, rarely
less than three million miles in circum
ference, and usually separated from its
fellows by billions of miles of space. It
would take some 175,000 years to count
the distance in miles to the nearest of
them. Some of them can be proved to
be at least 1,500,000,000,000,000 miles
away. With the use of a good telescope
the number of these world-masses runs
up to more than a hundred millions.
Yet even then we seem to be only at the
fringe of the question of the magnitude
of our universe. When a telescope
containing a highly sensitive photo
graphic plate is directed to what seem to
be dark and empty parts of space, and
is kept in that position for eight or ten
hours, the plate is found to bear the
faint imprint of a fresh myriad of worlds.
They are so far distant that, though they
are 150 times more luminous than lime
light, and though the waves of light they
send us have been falling on the plate—
1 A certain school would have us admit that,
because our conviction of the reality of the
external world is incapable of demonstrative sup
port, we should grant the same privilege to the
belief in God. There is no analogy whatever.
We cannot get away from our belief in the real
world. The idealists themselves assume it in
their arguments—as when they take the physi
cist’s analysis of sound or light, to throw doubt on
our hearing or sight. There is not a particle of
this irresistibility about the idea of God. We
can trace its roots and reject it without the
slightest inconsistency.
23
a plate that would take a picture in the
merest fraction of a second in day-time
— at the rate of 700,000,000,000,000
per second, many of them fail to make the
least impression after six or eight hours’
exposure. We have no ground for sup
posing our most powerful instruments
bring us to anything like a limit to the
universe.
Is the universe infinite? Dr. Haeckel
speaks of it as infinite and eternal, and
this is just one of those typical cases
where the monist outruns the agnostic.
The criticisms which have been passed
on the phrase “ infinite ” (we shall speak
of eternity later), as applied to the
material universe, are not very dis
cerning. There are critics who imagine
that Haeckel must advance no statement
for which he cannot furnish empirical
proof; whereas he has told us from the
first page that, as a sensible thinker, he
employs his faculty of speculation
(taking care that it starts from facts) as
well as his power of observation. Then
there are critics who insist on thinking—
it is very convenient for their purpose—
that he lays the same stress on every line
of his system, and so cry “ dogmatism ”
wherever the evidence is slender. We
must approach the subject more reason
ably. The question is, does the evidence
of astronomy point in the direction of
limits or of illimitableness ? Philosophy
has nothing to say against the infinity of
the cosmos. “We have no evidence,”
says Dr. Ward, “of definite space and
time limits; quite the contrary. ... we
certainly cannot prove that the universe
as a whole is measurable and therefore
finite. And when we pass to more
purely a priori considerations, the case
against a universe with fixed and finite
limits is equally strong.”1 The idea of
a limit is in fact unthinkable, and the
evidence of astronomy is far from sug
gesting it. “Is the universe infinite?
Who can say ? ” asks Dr. Dallinger.
He refers to the fairly definite scheme of
1 Naturalism and Agnosticism, vol. i. p. 195.
Dr. Ward does not, of course, say the cosmos is
infinite.
�24
THE UNITY OF THE WORLD, AND THE LA W OF SUBSTANCE
our milky way, but says 11 it may be but
a complex particle in a universe of
universes, stretching on for ever and
ever over the bourneless immensity of
the unknown.”1 Briefly, what evidence
we have is totally against the idea of a
limit, and that idea is so unimaginable
that it would never have been suggested
but for theological considerations. Dr.
Haeckel prefers to rely on the scientific
indications. I reserve for a separate
chapter the discussion of Prof. Wallace’s
curious views on the subject.
The next step that science takes is to
establish the unity of this immeasurable
universe. There is no question to-day
about the identity of the matter which
composes these innumerable and widely
distant worlds. The spectroscope is a
more delicate analyst than the apparatus
of the chemist. It has detected poison
and convicted criminals where chemistry
has been mute. And the spectroscope
will tell us the chemical constituents of
Arcturus, 1,500,000,000,000,000 miles
away, as confidently as it ■will analyse
the matter in the laboratory. It needs
for its operation only a ray of light from
the matter in question. We have thus
learned that the material of the stars is
the same as that of our earth. We may
find different elements here and there;
we may find matter in states we cannot
detect or produce on earth. But the
ancient idea that the heavens were made
of a superior substance is totally dis
credited. From end to end of the
known universe matter is one. It is
also established that a more subtle form
of matter, called ether, fills the inter
stellar spaces and penetrates into the
very heart of the most solid substances.
Even the apparently rigid particles of a
1 The Creator, p. 14. Strange to say, Dr.
Dallinger immediately continues: “If that be
so, we can make no useful inference from our
finite universe ” : and shortly after actually infers
that the world was created on the ground that it
is “finite”! “What is finite begins to be,
must have been caused to be” (p. 14). If
Haeckel had proceeded in this slovenly fashion,
what an outcry there would have been.
block of iron are really swimming in
miniature oceans of ether.
But this is not unity, it is a wonderful
variety, some of the critics exclaim; you
give us ether on the one hand and some
seventy-four different kinds of ponderable
matter on the other. The latter part of
the objection is not now seriously urged.
For years the indications in chemistry
pointed towards a real unity of the chemi
cal elements, and to-day no one has any
doubt whatever that they are all multi
ples of some simpler form of atom. The
unity of oxygen, hydrogen, iron, gold, and
so on, is completely accepted. Astrono
mers have observed in some of the stars
matter which seems to be actually in a
transition stage; and physics, which has
made gigantic strides of late, seems to
have detected the same phenomenon in
its laboratories, as Sir O. Lodge points
out in his brilliant Romanes Lecture for
1903. The elements have been built
up by evolution from some simpler and
homogeneous substance. That is the
belief of all physicists and chemists, and
it is based on a mass of facts. Mr.
Ballard thinks it useful, or wise, to raise
the dust even here. He says (third
article—not the one in which he charges
Haeckel with dogmatism) that Haeckel
frankly confesses—as he does—his lack
of expert knowledge of physics, and adds
that these “ ultimate questions of mole
cular physics of necessity determine our
conceptions of the constitution of matter,
and so are fundamental to the whole of
his monistic theory.” This is mere dust
throwing. The unity of matter is a
necessary part of the monistic theory,
but this is given in the commonest and
the finest manuals of physics as an
established and accepted truth; how the
various elements arose from one form of
matter is a subject of merely speculative
interest to Dr. Haeckel, and is not yet
settled. But Mr. Ballard plunges deeper,
and says Haeckel’s confession of weak
ness in physics “ does not prevent his
recommending ‘ the brilliant pyknotic
theory ’ of J. C. Vogt to the acceptance
of every biologist.” Then he begs the
�THE LAW OF SUBSTANCE 25
THE UNITY OF THE WORLD, AND
reader to study the stale criticisms of
Mr. Stallo “before accepting the VogtHaeckel theory as final,” and later says
Haeckel “decides that the conception
which best suits his purpose is the one
to be generally received.”
He then
reads a lesson on the impropriety of
misleading people, and, finally, after a
bewilderingly tortuous run, appeals to
the expert physicists Stewart and Tait
and Lord Kelvin to prove—quite irrele
vantly—that there is a Supreme Being.
The whole passage is too ludicrous to
analyse in detail, but I must point out
two things. Firstly, Mr. Ballard has no
more doubt than I have of the unity, of
matter, which is the only serious point
in question; Haeckel can fit into his
system any theory of the. evolution of
matter that physicists decide to adopt.
Secondly, Mr. Ballard quite misrepre
sents Haeckel’s attitude towards the
“pyknotic theory.” He does not say
“it is the one to be generally received,”
but says (p. 78) he “thinks it will prove
more acceptable to every biologist who
believes in the unity of nature” than
the other theory. The foolishness of
the whole episode is seen when one
reflects that this somewhat old (1891)
theory of Vogt’s is infinitely nearer to
the theories which are being discussed
to-day than the “ kinetic ” theory which
he dislikes.
The unity of all ponderable matter is,
then, an accepted doctrine, but we meet
fresh difficulties when we turn to ask if
there is a unity of ponderable and im
ponderable matter (or ether). . Here, in
deed, we meet a critic of a friendly dis
position whom it is courteous to hear. A
writer in the Reformer says, “ it will be
news to most of us that the ether is. the
original and fundamental matter, since
it is in its properties, so far as known,
pretty nearly the antithesis of all we
understand by material ”; and he
describes ether as “a material substance
which has none of the properties of
matter, and has most of those usually
associated with spirit.” Whether ether
has the properties of spirit or no depends
on what we mean by spirit. Theologians
mean nothing like ether, but spiritists
(who seem to be generally materialists
unconsciously) frequently do.
In any
case both Sir O. Lodge and Sir A.
Rucker meet the objection for us. Sir O.
Lodge, in his Romanes Lecture (1903),
says some physicists admit two kinds of
inertia, and he himself boldly advocates
the unity of electricity and ponderable
matter. “ An electric charge,” he says
(p. 4), “ possesses the most fundamental
and characteristic properties of matter,
viz., mass or inertia.” Sir A. Rucker, in
his presidential speech (1901), sweeps
the objection away as unphilosophical.
“ We cannot,” he says, “ explain things by
the things themselves.
If it be true
that the properties of matter are the
product of an underlying machinery,
that machinery cannot itself have the
properties which it produces, and must,
to that extent at all events, differ from
matter in bulk as it is directly presented
to the senses.”1 The affinity of ether
and ponderable matter is not questioned
in science, whatever the actual degree
of affinity may prove to be. And the
proof is advancing rapidly. I have said
that the astro-physicist finds a . transi
tional matter in the heavenly bodies, and
now the terrestrial physicist announces 2
that in his experiments with the new
element, radium, he witnesses the actual
break-down of the ponderable atom into
a form of matter he associates with
electricity. In fact, every modern theory
1 These principles also dispose of the critic in
Light who finds Haeckel “very uneasy” at
having to fit ether into his scheme, and thinks
his “ annexing ” it is “desperate work at this
hour of the day.” Seeing that the whole trend
of physics has been ever since in the direction
which Haeckel follows, I should say the criticism
is “ desperate work.” Light thinks ether is
“ending the old materialism ” and making for
spiritist monism. As I said, it depends what
you mean by spirit. Religious philosophy has
always meant “ unextended substance.
Ether
is just as quantitative as the most ponderable of
the elements.
2 See Sir O. Lodge’s Romanes Lecture, 1903,
and the discussion at the recent British Associa
tion meeting.
�26
™E miTY 0F ™E WORLD, AND THE LAW OF SUBSTANCE
of the atom implies its origin from ether,
’
what does Haeckel mean by making this
or their common origin.
’
reality, or substance, of which they are
Haeckel is, therefore, fully justified in
the . manifestations, the central mystery
taking from physics and chemistry his
of life at one moment, and doubting its
thesis of the unity of matter. No man
very existence the next ? A patient ex
of science disputes it, and it is a purely
amination of what Haeckel says, and a
scientific question. With regard to the
little less eagerness to score rhetorical
unity of force, there is even less difficulty.
It is now notorious that the forces of the points, would have enabled Mr. Rhondda
Williams and other critics to see what
universe are interchangeable, and are
he meant. He warned them that the
regarded in physics as so many varieties Riddle'^ a sort of “sketch-book,” and
(chiefly differentiated by wave-movements
they might have expected a lack of com
of different lengths) of one fundamental
plete harmony of expression. Haeckel
energy. I am not, of course, including says (p. 134): “We must even grant that
here the disputed “ vital force ” and the
this essence of substance [more cor
human soul, which later chapters will
rectly, the essence of this substance]
discuss. But the unity of the forces with becomes more mysterious and enigmatic
which the physical sciences deal is beyond the deeper we penetrate into the know
dispute. We have thus so far simplified
ledge of its attributes, matter and energy,
the visible universe as to detect beneath and the more thoroughly we study its
its kaleidoscopic variety the operation of
countless phenomenal forms and their
one form of force and one form of matter evolution. We do not know the ‘thing
from end to end of the universe. The
in itself’ that lies behind these know
next and final step as far as the unity of able phenomena. But why trouble about
the material universe is concerned is to
this enigmatic ‘thing in itself’ when
bring together this matter and force
we have no means of investigating it,
themselves.
when we do not even clearly know
Dr. Haeckel has done this by saying whether it exists or no ? ” The Greeks
that matter and force (or spirit) are “ the long ago started the notion that the
two fundamental attributes, or principal properties or attributes of a thing were
properties, of the all-embracing divine
really distinct from its substance. The
essence of the world, the universal sub mediaeval philosophers made them as
stance.” He further admits that “ the distinct as the skin is from a potato, and
innermost character ” of this substance so it became a general custom to speak
is still totally unexplored; and in the end
of the essence or substance of a thing as
seems to question its existence altogether being hidden within or underneath a
(P- I34)- Here, of course, the critics
shell of properties. The senses stopped
are active. In the first place let us
short at the shell, but the intellect some
examine the alleged arbitrariness of this
how penetrated to the kernel. Kant’s
conjunction of matter and force. It is
critical philosophy destroyed this sup
a perfectly sound scientific and philo posed privilege of the intellect, but
sophic procedure. We not only know substituted for the substance-and-prono form of matter without force, but we perties idea the equally false and arbi
cannot imagine it. It could not act on trary notion of phenomena (qualities or
our organs of perception. On the other attributes that reach the senses) and
hand, we know no force apart from matter noumena (or “ things-in-themselves,”
(or ether). Force seems to be always which would be food for the intellect, if
embodied or substantiated in matter.
it could reach them). In both cases
Each is an incomplete reality; or, rather,
there is the veil of phenomena, or pro
they are two sides, or two different mani perties (colour, sound, shape, etc.), and
festations, of one reality.
That is in the veiled and inaccessible substance,
full accord with scientific teaching. But j <or essence, or noumenon. Now, many
�THE UNITY OF THE WORLD, AND THE LAW OF SUBSTANCE
of us deny to-day that there is any solid
ground for the distinction at all, and that
is what Haeckel means. You say, he
argues, that matter and force are only
phenomena, and that there is an under
lying “thing-in-itself.” If there is, he
says, it is as mysterious as ever; but I
see no good reason at all for thinking
that matter and force are a screen or
veil hiding something else. They are
the one eternal substance or reality. It
is a pure fallacy to say tnat in oidinary
experience we are dealing with a shell, of
properties or phenomena, and not with
the realities themselves.
Therefore—
logic sternly enjoining us never to multi
ply entities without necessity—I take it
that matter and force are the world-sub
stance breaking upon our perception in
two different ways.1
To illustrate the point , further, and to
meet a further class of critics, let us hear
what science says about these properties
or phenomena of things. Let us take
the familiar ones, sound and colour,
Are you unaware, we are severely asked,
that science has shown these to be
totally subjective ? Yes, I am quite un
aware ", though I know perfectly well
what science has done. I am writing
over a green table-cloth. Science tells
me that this really means that the
material covering my table, is of such a
molecular texture that it absorbs. a
number of the waves of sun-light which
fall upon it, and only reflects the blue
and yellow waves. These it sends to my
retina at the rate of some hundred
billion per second: they cause a
peculiar movement in my optic nerve,
and finally in my brain, and—I see green.
So, as I write, the clock strikes twelve.
That is to say, the metal molecules of
the bell are thrown into a violent
oscillation; they cause waves in the
surrounding atmosphere; and the in
tricate mechanism of the ear turns these
into a modification of my auscultory
nerve and brain. And all this elaborate
description of objective movements and
objective agencies is supposed, to.have
made colour and sound “subjective.!
In point of fact, it has done away, with
the old shell of properties (though, it is a
question how far people ever did say
their sensations of colour and sound
were objective) and brought us into
direct touch with realities. And as all
the unnumbered objects about us con
stitute, fundamentally, one matter and
one force, we are face to face with the
one fundamental reality. We do not
“ know all about it.”
That is the
grossest perversion of Haeckel’s words.
To borrow the fine metaphor of Sir A.
Rucker, we see it in a light that is still
dim, but we see it. It is for the future
to complete the outline and fill in the
detail, as the light grows.1
Thus we have given in terms of
science the world substance, the matter
force reality, which is the constructive
starting point of Monism. The res^
our work consists in eliminating the
additional substances or forces which
theists, spiritualists, or supernaturalists
would compel us to add to it. It only
remains here to say a word of what
Haeckel calls the fundamental “law of
substance.” And first as to Haeckels
idea of a “law.” A fair-minded re
viewer in the Inquirer (March 9, 1901)
says: “The distinguished author seems
to have failed to see that to imagine a
law as an active power is every whit as
‘ anthropomorphic ’ as to imagine a God
of manlike form as feeling.” A writer in
Knowledge (January 30, 1901)—from
whom the Inquirer probably borrowed—
1 From these principles the reader can answer
for himself the often-heard criticism : You build
up the universe by matter and force, but what
do you really know about matter and force themselves ? The answer is : Go to a good library,
and ask for a few recent manuals of astronomy,
geology, chemistry, physics, and physiology. If
they do not deal with matter and force,, they
deal with fictions. The fallacy of the criticism
1 And that is not only the literal, but the only
is, of course, that science deals with this lmposrational, meaning of “phenomenon.”
Prof.
I torly shell of “ phenomena,” and does not reach
Haeckel readily endorses my explanation of his
I the “ essence ” or the “ underlying reality.”
position.
�28
THE UNITY OF THE WORLD, AND THE LA W OF SUBSTANCE
puts it as strongly : “ To scientific minds
tion of energy—which are, said the
who regard laws of nature as merely con Manchester Guardian critic, “precisely
ceptual formulae summing up certain
the oldest of all man’s discoveries in
sequences of experience, it may seem
the cosmological field.”
No particle
that to replace a deliberate architect and
of matter is ever annihilated or created ;
ruler of the world by 1 the eternal iron
that is the first axiom. Recent experi
laws of nature ’ is to be guilty of an
ments have actually seen the break
anthropomorphism precisely analogous to down of what has been called the
those on which the illustrious author
atom, and have seen particles chipped
pours contempt,” and he says, “ evolution off it; but only another form of matter
travels through the book like a creator is produced. The observations have
in disguise.” It would be rather curious
been so broad that physicists have felt
if one of the ablest living scientists did justified in concluding that indestructi
not know what science means by “ a law.”
bility or permanence is a property of
I .say science, because there is here no
matter. The same has been experi
discrepancy of views. That “ law ” only mentally demonstrated of force.1 Both
means “a summing-up of experience,” a are constant in quantity, though ever
uniform mode of action of this or that changing in form and distribution.
force, is a platitude of natural science.
Since we have seen reason for associat
Said Professor Dewar in his Presidential ing matter and force so closely, it is
Speech: “ When the scientist speaks of necessary to combine the two axioms
‘ a law of nature ’ he simply indicates a likewise. The great fundamental reality
sequence of events, which, so far as his
is constant or permanent amidst all its
experience goes, is invariable, and which qualitative changes. That is the first
therefore enables him to predict.” But and firmest law or feature of the monistic
the “law,” or mode of operation, of an
substance.
agency is so closely connected in our
We have now seen that Professor
minds with the agency itself that we fre Haeckel is in full accord with the latest
quently substitute the one for the other.
scientific teaching in his doctrine of the
It is strange to hear that this deceives
unity of the visible world. We have
any one.1 When a scientist speaks of the
seen(i) that matter and force are
law of gravitation, or the law of evolution,
realities; (2) that there is at bottom one
producing or compelling certain results,’
supreme form of each; (3) that there is
he invariably means the force of gravita no reason for holding them to be
tion or the agencies of evolution.
distinct realities, and so we unite them
We come, finally, to what Mr. Ballard as aspects of one substance or reality;
strangely calls Haeckel’s “ irrational law and (4) that this substance is, as far as
of substance.” The law of substance is extended observation goes, constant and
one of the most undoubted truths of indestructible in its quantity. We may
modern science. It is merely the union
now proceed to consider the evolution of
in one sentence of two of the proudest this matter-force reality into the infinite
results of modern physics, the inde complexity of the visible universe.
structibility of matter and the conserva{( 1 Does any one quarrel with us for saying that
“the law” compels us to pay taxes, and so
forth ?
1.'^s 10 t^le difficulty alleged to rise from
radio-action, Sir O. Lodge says there was
“never any ground” for concern about the
theory.
�THE EVOLUTION OF THE INORGANIC WORLD
29
Chapter III
THE EVOLUTION OF THE INORGANIC WORLD
Dr. Iverach says, or it may have been one
hundred or more, as others think—the
part of space we occupy was filled with
a cloud (not necessarily a “ fire-mist ”) of
infinitely attenuated matter. By the
action of its inherent and natural forces
this nebular matter entered upon a pro
cess of condensation and disruption.
Portions of it—whether or no they were
cast off in the form of rings, which
broke into irregular masses—condensed
into the several planets of our system,
and were set in revolution round the
central mass. This central mass, the
sun, is still condensing and pouring out
the heat which its compression causes.
The smaller masses, such as the earth,
cooled in time and formed a solid crust
at their surface. This outline is
accepted by all educated people to-day.
Quibbles about the details of the pro
cess are best left to expert astronomers
to deal with.
Our solar system is as a single snow
flake in a shower, but we have already
seen that it in every verifiable way
resembles its fellow flakes. It is of the
same stuff as they, and is ruled by the
same laws or forces. We have un
deniable ground to extend our nebular
theory to other worlds than ours, and
take it as the key to the formation of
all the stars that fill the immeasurable
heavens.
Indeed, we find worlds in
every stage of development, as required
by the theory, when we sweep the sky
at night.
We find nebulse stretching
sometimes over billions of miles (as
the nebula in Orion), and patches cut
out of them, as it were, to form stars.
We find clusters of thousands of stars
(as the Pleiades) with the remnants
still clinging to them of the gigantic
nebula they were developed from. We
1 Theism in the Light of Present Science and
find nebulse and stars illustrating almost
Philosophy, p. 35.
Where shall we begin in a descrip
tion of the growth of the universe?
Can we go back' to a stage beyond
which the imagination cannot penetrate
with its ceaseless questioning? It is
impossible for us to hope ever to do
this. Wherever we start in our con
struction, we shall start with positive
building material, and the imagination,
if not reason, will ask endless questions
about its previous history. All that we
can do is to set out from a definite and
recognised point, the nebula from which
our particular solar system has been
formed. From this, once we have
traced the broad lines of the evolution
of our sun and planets, we may, in. the
light of the discoveries and speculations
of modern science, look back into the
appalling abysses of past time and out
over the boundless panorama of the
universe.
With what is known as the nebular
hypothesis we need not linger. Haeckel
has sketched the outline of the theory,
and there is no relevant criticism of it.
“ There is no doubt,” says Dr. Iverach,
“ that some form of the nebular theory
is true.”1 There are clerical writers
who seem to think it profitable in some
obscure way to point out defects in the
theory, or to prove that the evidence for
it is not overwhelming. What they
gain by such efforts is not clear. The
question has long since passed beyond
the sphere of theology. Catholic
astronomers like Miss Agnes Clerke
accept it as eagerly as atheists. No
man of science entertains the smallest
doubt to-day that it correctly describes
in outline the formation of our solar
system. Once upon a time—it may
have been fifty million years ago, as
�3o
THE EVOLUTION OF THE INORGANIC WORLD
every step of the process.
We find
dark stars, extinct suns, which point
to the complete accomplishment of
such a process.
Astronomers are of
late years disposed to think the number
of these extinct suns is enormous.
Moreover, at times a new star flames out
in the sky, announcing the recommence
ment somewhere of the familiar drama
of world-formation.
In a word, the evidence of astronomy
forbids us to look upon the evolution
of the material universe as a continuous
process in a straight line of which we
might picture a definite beginning
and for which we might anticipate a
definite end.
The life-force of the
great substance only dies down in one
corner of space to be relit in another.
The dark stars which indubitably have
run their million-year long course are
only waiting to be reanimated by collision
or some other cosmic accident.
The
nebulae are embryonic worlds before our
own eyes. The blue-white stars are in
the prime of life. The red stars (with
certain peculiarities) are slowly dying,
but may rise again any day from their
tombs. Science, as Dr. Mivart said in
Truth, “ points to no beginning.” Nor
does it help us to approach the subject
from another point of view. We have
not only the evolution of cosmic masses
to explain, but the evolution of the
chemical elements themselves, or of
ponderable matter, from the finer
medium from which all physicists
believe it has been developed. If we
had any scientific evidence which
justified us in going back to a stage
when ether (or whatever the “ prothyl ”
may turn out to be) alone existed; and
could then show how atoms of ponder
able matter arose by condensation of it,
or by the formation of vortices in it;
and could see these atoms being
grouped into the complex atoms of
oxygen, gold, sulphur, &c.; and could
further, trace their aggregation into
meteorites, and the meteorites into
nebulae, and the nebulae into solar
systems—even then we should in
reality be no nearer the beginning.
The “ prothyl ” (or “ first matter,” a
name which does very well to designate
the much-sought elementary substance)
might very well be only the last term of
a previous universe-drama. The cyclic
process may have gone on for ever as
far as science can tell. But in point of
fact the universe does not as yet give
indications of any such continuous
process.
The universe is developed
piecemeal, star by star. The hundred
millions that we see shining to-day are
by no means “the universe.”
We have here a drama of life and
death on an almost inconceivable scale,
but the point I want to bring out is that
even the most daring speculations of
science bring us no nearer to a begin
ning than we are to-day. Dr. Haeckel
has been roundly abused for speaking of
the universe as eternal. I think it is
quite clear that, if we confine ourselves
to scientific considerations, he is using a
very proper kind of language. Here is
a matter-force reality which is constant
and indestructible in its ultimate quan
tity ; and though we can go back millions
of years on solid evidence, and billions
of years on fair speculation, we find no
more suggestion of a limit in time than
we did in regard to space. Certainly,
the greatest number of billions of years
we could imagine would not be nearer
to eternity than a day is. I merely say
that if any one suggests a limit in time
for the cosmic process he will not find
the shadow of a justification in science.
Critics seem at times to employ a curious
logic in dealing with this question.
“Finiteness” and “infinity” are words
with a strong odour of metaphysics about
them. Let us take it that it is a question
simply whether the universe had a be
ginning.
Now, some critics naively
assume that it is our place to prove that
the universe, or matter, or force, or
motion, never had a beginning. That
is a novel kind of logic. Here is the
universe given, and if any one makes the
very pregnant and formidable assertion
that there was a time when it did not
�THE EVOLUTION OF THE INORGANIC WORLD
exist, and that it came into existence
out of nothing, he must have. a very
positive and firm ground for his asser
tion. As far as scientific experience of
matter and force (or motion) goes, they
are not entities that slip in and out of
existence, but are constant. Yet we
have Mr. Rhondda Williams talking of
“ the mystery of the primitive push ” as
having always been the great difficulty
of mechanism. He tries at first to make
a scientific difficulty of it: “ Galileo,
the founder of physical science, laid it
down as the first principle of dynamics,
that every movement of matter could
only be explained by another movement
of matter, and that has been a recognised
principle of science ever since.” 1 Well,
that looks like a very strong confirma
tion of Haeckel’s thesis that matter and
motion must be eternal. But Mr. Wil
liams goes on : “ The difficulty was to
explain how matter began to move, what
caused the first movement, what gave
the primitive push ? ” But science, we
have seen, knows nothing whatever about
any “ primitive push.” It is a purely
gratuitous assumption. Dr. Horton might
refer us to “ the matchless revelation of
Genesis,” and we might suggest that the
Babylonian astronomers of 6,000 years
ago are not very safe guides. Mr. Wil
liams is content to assume the fact of
this “primitive push” without saying
why he thinks there was one. More
than that, he is greatly excited because
Haeckel declines to attempt to explain
it until some good reason has been
shown for thinking there ever was such
a thing. He tell his admiring audience
that Haeckel says “ the origin of move
ment is no difficulty because it never did
originate, he explains by simply denying !
What evidence does he adduce ? Abso
lutely none.” Dr. Haeckel, one would
think, can hardly be expected to spend
time in finding scientific proofs for the
first chapter of Genesis. His position is
negative. Eternity is a negative concept.
We do not prove negations in logic, or
1 Does Science Destroy Religion? (p. 13).
31
in real life. Mr. Williams further says
he has no objection to Haeckel holding
this “as a belief,” but he “does object
to his contention that this type of monism
is based upon empirical investigation.”
This is an unfortunate confusion. The
essence of Haeckel’s position is negative.
But he goes beyond the agnostic chiefly
on the ground of (1) the astronomical
evidence, and (2) the constancy of
matter; and those constitute empirical
evidence.
But to take them as more
than suggestions, and to ask empirical
proof that the world is eternal is rather
funny.
Finally, Mr. Williams says
Haeckel is equally unsatisfactory, about
the origin of consciousness. This just
illustrates Mr. Williams’s essential con
fusion. We know that consciousness
had a beginning, so there is no analogy ;
and in point of fact Haeckel, as we shall
see, devotes whole chapters to the origin
of consciousness.
Now this is a fair illustration of the
dreadful confusion which rules in the
minds of the people who put on very
superior airs about Haeckel’s “ dog
matic ” affirmation that the universe is
infinite and eternal. They almost al
ways assume, often in sweet unconscious
ness, this most important thesis that
there was a time when matter or motion
was not. It is one of the largest asser
tions that was ever made on the poorest
of sophisms. The scientific evidence,
such as it is, favours Haeckel’s negative
attitude.1 Philosophy is equally mute.
1 It is true that Mr. Mallock thinks one might
plausibly infer from what is called the entropy of
the universe that it had a beginning. This is the
only case where Mr. Mallock allows that scientific
evidence even seems to help theism. But we
shall soon see that the theory of entropy is totally
unable to bear the strain of such an inference.
Sir J. W. Dawson, one of the scientists Mr. Bal
lard raises from the dead to answer the Riddle,
says science does not regard the universe as
eternal “because, when we interrogate it as to
the particular things known to constitute the
heavens and the earth, it appears that we can
trace all of them to beginnings at more or less
definite points of past time.” Even at the time
this was written it was false in fact and unsound
in logic.
�32
THE EVOLUTION OF THE INORGANIC WORLD
The Greeks held that matter was eternal.
“It is not more difficult,” says Mr.
Mallock, “to suppose an eternal, self
existing and self-energising substance
than it is to suppose an eternal and
self-energising God.” But Christian
scholars have, in the interest of dogma,
tried to prove that the universe must
have had a beginning. We have seen
how Dr. Dallinger skipped from “ bourne
less immensity ” to “ finiteness,” and
concluded that “ what is finite begins to
be.” The last link of his curious chain
is hardly better than the others. Dr.
Iverach suggests the argument, but
abandons it (Ch. I., Christianity and
Evolution}. Dr. W. N. Clarke says:
“The things that we behold, mutable
though magnificent, bear the marks, not
of original, but of dependent existence.
Somehow existence has been caused.”1
Such an argument could only be
elaborated with the aid of a mediseval
metaphysic which we do not take to-day
as a measure of things. Dr. Clarke,
indeed, retreats to the position that even
if it were eternal we should need a
“ character-giving Spirit ” along with it;
a point we shall discuss later.
To sum up: neither philosophy nor
science points to a beginning of the
scheme of things. In view of the con
stancy of matter and the inconceivability
of a creation out of nothing, very strong
evidence would have been required to
make us accept this beginning. As it is,
the only source of the assertion is the
first line of Genesis and a concern for
theistic evidence. Professor Haeckel
has preferred to be guided by the sug
gestions or indications afforded by
scientific evidence. “ Science points to
no beginning,” as Mivart wrote. “We
have no evidence of definite space and
time limits; quite the contrary. . . .
And when we pass to more purely
a priori considerations, the case against
a universe with fixed and finite limits is
equally strong.” 2 Every effort to assign
1 An Outline of Christian Theology, p. 109.
2 l’rof J. Ward, quoted previously.
a beginning fails. We should never have
heard of it but for “ the matchless reve
lation of Genesis.”
Let us now turn to consider whether
science has anything to say with regard
to the end of the universe. As far as
our solar system is concerned, the
teaching of science is firm. Our sun
can only sustain his terrible vitality by
shrinking a certain number of feet every
century. He is doomed, as far as
astronomy can see, to die, like the dark
stars that already lie in the vast cemetery
of space. The air and water will dis
appear from the surface of our planet,
and for a time the heat of the sun will
beat upon the white tomb of all the
hopes and all the achievements of
humanity. The moon is the skeleton
at our feast. Its yawning sepulchre
points out the fate that awaits us.
Thou too, oh earth—thine empires, lands, and
seas—
Least, with thy stars, of all the galaxies,
Globed from the drift like these, like these
thou too
Shalt go. Thou art going, hour by hour, like
these.1
Perhaps Jupiter and Saturn will even
then teem with life, and their astronomers
study nightly the scarred and silent face
of the planet we enliven to-day.2 But
from planet to planet the hand of death
will travel. Then one by one, astrono
mers believe, the planets will fall into
the shrinking bosom of the sun and eke
out its failing vitality. At last the
blood-red sun will die out, and continue
to speed through space at twelve miles
a second, a dark, solid, silent, and
gigantic sepulchre. Physicists talk of
ten million years. It is an hour in
eternity.
1 Mr. Mallock’s Lucretius.
2 When Prof. Lionel Beale says (Vitality,
p. 4) that “ the more recent discoveries as to the
constitution of our sun and the planets as well
as the fixed stars, render it most improbable that
life exists in these or other orbs,” one can only
gasp with astonishment. There is no truth
whatever in it; and the mere idea of people
living in the stars—at a temperature of several
thousand degrees—makes one uncomfortable.
�THE EVOLUTION OF THE INORGANIC WORLD
For this is only a relative end. The
whole hundred-million-year drama of our
history will be, in our present cosmical
perspective, only the subsidence of a
tiny ripple on the bosom of an illimitable
ocean. Millions of similar dramas had
been played out before ours began; and
when silence shall have fallen succes
sively on the planets of our system, the
great nebulae that lie against the back
ground of space will be but waking into
existence. Moreover, the dark stars, and
the new stars that appear at times in the
heavens, point to an indefinite prolonga
tion of the process. The colliding of two
of these extinct suns—two globes of per
haps 800,000 miles diameter (like the dark
companion of Algol)-—would generate
heat enough to reduce them to a nebu
lous mass, pouring out for millions, if not
billions, of miles ; and the force of gravi
tation would ensure a further condensa
tion and world-formation. Actual collision
is, indeed, net believed to be necessary ;
in cases an approach within a few million
miles is believed to have led to a stellar
conflagration. Moreover, there are stars
so stupendous (take Arcturus, for in
stance), and moving at such inconceivable
speed through the universe, that we can
only look upon them as destructive
anarchists.
The universe, taken as a
whole, has all the appearance and promise
of “ perpetual motion.”
Recent writers have, however, appealed
to the theory of entropy as a scientific
indication of an end of the process.
Briefly, all energy can be (and is daily)
converted into heat, but heat is not all
reconverted into electricity, &c. This
seems to forecast a time when all the
working energy of the universe will be
dissipated, or lost in a generally diffused
heat.
Mr. Mallock has pointed out
(though Lord Grimthorpe and others had
done so years ago) that if this were true
the universe cannot have been eternal.
We should have reached the final stage
long ago. Haeckel has described and re
jected the theory. It only remains for me
to show how the very latest pronounce
ments of science quite confirm his posi
33
tion. Physicists generally are by no means
disposed to allow that, because in our
laboratories a certain quantity of the heat
force cannot be reconverted, we may
jump to a cosmic conclusion on the
matter. Mr. Mallock admits that many
physicists reject it altogether, “ but
since others equally eminent maintain
that there is no escape from it—so far at
least as our present knowledge extends
—it is necessary to consider how it may
bear on the point at issue.”
The
parenthetic clause contains the essential
weakness of the theory. It assumes an
acquaintance with cosmic processes
which science is very far from possessing.
Sir O. Lodge deals with the point
incidentally in his recent Romanes
Lecture. “ So long,” he says, “ as there
is only a force of one sign at work it
would seem that ultimately the regenera
tive process must come to an end. The
repellent force exerted by light upon
small particles, however, must not be
forgotten ; and there are other possibili
ties.”
These possibilities have been
emphasised by the most recent discoveries
in physics, in connection with radio
action, so that Haeckel was more than
justified in declining to accept the hasty
and unwarranted conclusions of the
entropists.
Sir O. Lodge suggests an analogous
theory with regard to matter—a kind of
entropy of matter—but he suggests only
to reject it. He and many distinguished
physicists see in the phenomena of
radium, which have so greatly agitated
the world of physicists of late, an actual
breakdown of the atom. Electrons (units
of electricity) are detached from matter
at an electrode, and it is believed that
these electrons are really “ bits chipped
off” the .Acr'0 It is a “reasonable
hypothesis ” that an atom of ponderable
matter is made up of these electrons.
An atom of hydrogen is something like
the hundred-millionth of a centimetre in
diameter; yet an electron has only about
one-thousandth the mass of an atom of
hydrogen.
It is calculated that 700
electrons would go to make the hydrogen
c
�34
THE EVOLUTION OF THE INORGANIC WORLD
atom, 11,200 to make the atom of oxy
gen, and so on with the other elements.
Not that these electrons are to be pic
tured as locked in each other’s embraces
to form a solid atom. If the atom were
magnified to the size of the Sheldonian
Theatre, its constituent electrons would
be “ like full-stops flying about the
room.” They occupy the atom by their
forceful activity, not by bulk. These
electrons are thought to be the ultimate
units of which the atoms of ponderable
elements are built—though no doubt Sir
Oliver would allow that there remains
the question of the formation of these
electrons themselves from a continuous
medium.
But the most curious fact
is that in the experiments on radium
the atoms seem to disintegrate and give
rise to other forms of matter, which break
up in their turn. This seems to point to
a dissipation of matter into electrons cor
responding to the dissipation of force into
heat. But Sir O. Lodge reminds us at
once of the impropriety of founding such
large cosmic theories on our laboratory
experiments. ‘'‘There may be regenera
tion as well as degeneration,” he urges,
and he points to the analogy of the
collision of stars.1 Theoretical physics
is making rapid pace to-day—too rapid,
some physicists say. But the whole of
its recent discoveries and speculations go
to confirm those physical theorems which
Professor Haeckel took from the physics
of the time when he wrote (1890-5), and
built into the structure of his system—viz., the unity of matter and force, the
indestructibility of matter and conserva
tion of energy, and the evolution of the
ponderable out of imponderable matter
and its natural aggregation, by gravita
tion, into nebulae and solar systems.
Monism can easily acccrr.modace itself to
any rectifications of the details of these
theorems.
1 On the whole question see the Romanes
Lecture for 1903—which recalls the brilliant
expository work of Professor Tyndall—and the
proceedings of the Physical and Mathematical
Section at the meeting of the British Association,
September, 1903.
We are thus made acquainted with the
second great law of the universal matter
force reality—evolution. Avoiding meta
physical and abstract formulas, and keep
ing as closely as possible to the facts of
science, we learn from the study of in
animate nature that the life of this
great reality stretches as far behind and
before us in time as its substance
stretches over the abysses of space. We
find it in a condition of orderly and con
tinuous development. Chronologically,
we cannot reach back to any stage of the
process where we discover a continuous
and homogeneous form of matter and
force diffused through space.
But phy
sical analysis brings us almost within
sight of such a “ prothyl ” (first-matter)
and of the connecting link between
ponderable and imponderable matter.
If we can to-day witness the disintegra
tion of the atom, we are completely
justified in forming theories of its inte
gration ; and the theories find strong
empirical confirmation in the astro-phy
sical observations. We can trace the
upward growth of our “ prothyl ” into
the familiar chemical elements with their
immense variety of properties—and it
may be noted, in face of the recru
descence of old metaphysical theories
as to these new properties, that the new
elements (formed in radio-action, for
instance) sometimes only acquire their
distinctive qualities with very sensible
gradations. The titanic forces of the
universe—already differentiated into
heat, electricity, gravitation, &c.—mould
the new-formed matter into meteorites,
nebulae, stars, and solar systems. Man
looks about him on a vast and restless
ocean of being, on the surface of which
the life of his whole race is no more
than a momentary bubble.
There are two points to be considered
before we follow Dr. Haeckel into the
more contentious field of biological evo
lution in which he possesses an almost
unique authority.
We have to meet
the charge that Haeckel tries to bully
and depress us with the magnitude of
this “ cosmological perspective,” and we
�THE EVOLUTION OF THE INORGANIC WORLD
must see how far his opponents accept
this teaching of modern science. Mr.
Ballard declares that this “ latest pseudo
gospel from Jena is as miserably be
littling and depressing as it is intellec
tually invalid and practically unwork
able.” A^critic in the Daily Chronicle
expresses the same sentiment (as to
depression), and it has been repeated
by many of the reviewers. There is an
excellent English proverb about the
proof of a pudding which might have
saved these writers if they had heeded
it. Haeckel himself is by no means
depressed by his “ cosmological perspec
tive,” if he is saddened at times by the
slow progress of truth. No Rationalist
is ever heard to complain of or to betray
the faintest depression at his position.
Sometimes, indeed, with that marvellous
alacrity of his, the theologian flies to
the other extreme, and says the Ration
alist must infallibly come to the practical
conclusion to eat and drink and be
merry. It is curious that we, who are
credited at times with making too much
use of reason, should be held to make
so little use of it in the ordering of our
lives. Quite certainly one effect of this
perception of our infinite littleness in
the universe at large, with its yawning
cosmic sepulchres on every side, is to
make us eager to enjoy our present life.
Quite certainly we say to ourselves, in
the words of Omar,
“ Ah ! make the most of what we yet may spend
Before we too into the dust descend.
Dust into dust, and under dust to lie,
Sans wine, sans song, sans singer, and sans
end.”
«Ve have not the remotest idea of
being depressed or bullied by the im
mensity of the universe or its sepulchral
aspect. That would be folly, not ra
tionalism. Moreover, it would be equal
folly to plunge into those sensual depths
which are so strangely said to be the
alternative to depression. Life is too
precious a thing to be squandered on
every impulse. Its potentialities must
be reasoned out. The promise and the
35
prospect of developing its higher gifts
must be pondered. Science, art, litera
ture, social and political activity, refined
intercourse, and sweet homes—those are
the most precious gifts life offers to us.
We are rationalistic enough to prefer the
higher to the lower, to prefer gladness to
depression.
The objection is, in fact, a purely
captious one. Haeckel’s belittlement of
man is relative. It aims at discrediting
the traditional and arrogant doctrine of
man’s uniqueness, which has done so
much to obstruct the advance of truth
in the nineteenth century. Even if it
were depressing to learn that we are not
compacted of a special material, and that
the universe is not a toy-theatre for us to
play our parts on before the angels, we
should welcome the truth and speak it.
The code of morals that consults our
likes and dislikes does not find favour
amongst Rationalists. But depressing
the truth certainly is not; and it is only
belittling in a narrow, comparative sense.
One of Haeckel’s critics proceeds to
show that, “ if we look at evolution from
above downwards, man is still the chief
thing in the universe.” With a passing
reminder that we do not know the whole
of evolution—we do not know what the
process may have produced in other
planets—we need only say that here is,
of course, another aspect of the question.
But to suppose that it has been over
looked, and that the belittlement is other
than comparative, is quite gratuitous.
The last point we have to deal with
here is: What is the attitude of the
opponents of Monism on the teaching
we have seen thus far ? As far as the
inorganic universe is concerned, they
accept the teaching of science, and are
usually content to add to it a theistic
supplement. They generally deny, as
we saw, the infinity and eternity of the
universe; and we have discussed the
grounds of their denial. The more
impetuous and less informed of them
have some vague notion of rendering
service to religion by criticising (for the
edification of their followers) every
�36
*
THE EVOLUTION OF THE INORGANIC WORLD
advance of scientific theory. Even Dr.
Dallinger protests that the nebular
hypothesis is not “an undisputed and
established fact of modern science.”
Others, like Mr. Ballard, recommend the
study of sceptical writers like Stallo.
All these petty criticisms might profitably
be left out of religious controversy.
They tend to no conclusion now. There
was a time when theistic evidence meant
the detection of gaps in the scientific
view of the world, and a rush to fill up the
gap with supernatural action. It is be
ginning to dawn on the more enlightened
of our theists that this is weak in logic,
and dangerous in practice. Who could
number the gaps they have occupied
during the last two centuries—and
deserted ? They are beginning to see
at length—what they were begged to
consider from the beginning—that a gap
in scientific construction may only mean
our temporary (or even permanent)
ignorance, and does not necessarily
imply a real breach or defect in the
action of natural agencies. We shall
see more of this later. Meantime Mr.
Mallock says: “ If we compare the
evidences in favour of the monistic
doctrine generally with the objections
urged by religious dualists against it, the
great difference between the two is this :
that whilst the objections of the latter
are isolated, disconnected, casual, the ex
isting evidences of the former cohere and
dovetail into one another like numbered
stones designed for some vast edifice:
and whilst the missing evidences of the
monist are one by one being found, the
objections of the dualists are in daily
process of being discredited.” 1 Hence,
he says, “ educated apologists of all
schools accept evolution to-day,” and he
quotes Professor Ward as saying that, if
there has been any interference in the
cosmic process, it “ took place before the
process began, not during it.” And
Professor Le Conte, whom Mr. Ballard
recommends us to read, and who accepts
evolution from the atom to the human
mind, says: “ Evolution is no longer a
school of thought. The words evolu
tionism and evolutionist ought not any
longer to be used, any more than
gravitcitionism or grcivitationist; for the
law of evolution is as certain as the law
of gravitation.” 1
So theistic writers are beginning to
repudiate the theology of gaps. “ How
slow of spirit we have been to learn
that the Divine Spirit does not work
through gaps,” says Mr. Newman Smyth.2
Already we see a tendency to prove on
theological principles that the world
must have been evolved, from the
primary matter (and there is a disposition
to let this be eternal) up to the human
mind j that evolution is the one divine
process, and that the old idea of succes
sive interferences in the work is too
undignified altogether. This language
will be heard from every village pulpit in
fifty years’ time. We need not be spite
ful about it; but, on the other hand,
these advanced theologians, who know
it, might understand the irony and
humour of a great scientist who has
lived through the struggles of the last
fifty years. At present the spectacle we
witness is not unlike that of the competi
tors in a walking-match. In front are
a few laymen like Professor Le Conte
and Mr. Fiske (who have nearly
dropped their theism for greater lightness
on the way). Mr. Rhondda Williams
and Mr. Newman Smyth are not far
behind. Canon Aubrey Moore and Dr.
W. N. Clarke would be well in the
running if they were still here. Mr.
Ballard, who thinks “ Christian thinkers
have every reason for accepting evolution
as the general method of world-growth ”
(but makes a tremendous pother when
it comes to the evolution of life), and
Dr. Iverach, who is not anxious to
quarrel with evolutionary terms “ except
in so far as they become the symbols of a
mechanical evolution ” (but
raise much
dust as he goes along), are at a third
stage. Mr. Ambrose Pope, who thinks
*• Religion as a Credible Doctrine., p. 78.
1 Evolution and Religious Thought, p. 66.
2 Through Science to Faith, p. 20.
�THE EVOLUTION OF THE INORGANIC WORLD
“ the theory of evolution is a scientific
hypothesis, true only in the sense that it
explains all the facts to hand at present,
true in exactly the same sense in which
the theory of creation, as found
in Genesis, was at the time it was
written,” comes a bad fourth—in line,
however, with the average “ cultured ”
preacher and the leader-writers and
reviewers of the Tablet, Guardian, and
Church Times.
Then we have a
straggling line of Christian Evidence
Lecturers, tract-writers, preachers, and
leader-writers in the Methodist Luminary,
&c.; ending in bunches of suburban
curates and rural vicars, who are still
handicapped with heavy old copies of
the Bible.
All this puts a peculiar difficulty in
the way of the Rationalist. If he
attacks the attitude of the advanced
minority, Christianity at large repudiates
his criticism; if he tilts at the con
ventional beliefs, the little band of the
intellectuals use excited
language.
There is hardly a single question on
which we have anything like a solid
front to meet. This will be clearer as
we proceed. As regards the inorganic
universe, we may say that no Christian
scholar of any serious influence ques
tions its unity, its actual constancy (or
its first law—the law of substance), or
its formation by gradual development
(its second law—the law of evolution)
from a primitive matter. They rest their
dualism, as far as visible nature is con
cerned, on (i) the need for a creator of
matter and force, and (2) the need for a
directive intelligence. With the first
point—or with its groundwork—we have
already dealt, and will deal again in the
chapter on God. The second point
must be very clearly grasped. It is the
last conceivable quasi-scientific argu
ment for the existence of God. It will
confront us throughout the next three
chapters, and it will before long be the
only argument of “physical theology.”
In its general formula it runs:
Although science can assign the efficient
or physical causes of the complex
37
phenomena about us, it cannot say why
they produced just these phenomena and
not different ones ; and the more clearly
science shows that an elaborate pheno
menon—say, thought, or life—is only
the outcome of a long and intricate
evolutionary process, the more pressing
is the need to admit that the evolutionary
agencies were guided and controlled by
intelligence from the first. The argu
ment is not a new one, of course, but the
best-informed theistic apologists are
warning their colleagues to fall back on
it at once, and to abandon the defence
of temporary gaps and petty criticisms
of science. “We are not,” says Dr.
Iverach (though he will forget it later),
“of those who are constantly looking
about for imperfections in a mechanical
or other theory in order to find a chink
through which the theistic argument
may enter. If that were our position,
the argument for theism would soon be
a fugitive and a vagabond on the face of
the earth; each advance of science, each
discovery of law, would simply drive the
theistic argument to find a new refuge.” 1
So Mr. Newman Smyth says : “ The
assurance of faith cannot be maintained
from a fortified critical position outside
the province
of the evolutionary
science.” And
Mr.
R.
Williams
declares : “ I do not worship a God
who only fills gaps, nor hold a religion
whose validity depends on missing
links.” Teleology is the word. The
scientist will show you everywhere
certain forces co-operating to produce
certain complex results. Point out that
these “ blind ” erratic forces must have
been guided in their co-operation,
especially if the result is beautiful [or
orderly or beneficial or admirably adapted
to produce a certain further result.
The advantage of “ the new teleology ”
1 Christianity and Evolution, p. 26. Observe
the excellent description of what the theistic
argument has been for some time and the naive
proposal of this as a mere contingency. We
shall find, too, that the old Adam is still strong in
Dr. Iverach, and he is still keen on gaps in
practice.
Bishopsgate Institute*
�38
THE EVOLUTION OF THE INORGANIC WORLD
—which is the “old teleology” re
enamelled—is obvious. Science may
now strain its mechanical causes as it
pleases to explain the origin of life and
consciousness. The more stupendous
the results it claims for physical agencies,
the clearer will it be that there were
design, guidance, and control. More
over, the argument comes into play from
the very first step that evolutionary
science takes. The best illustrations of
its application will be found in Dr.
Iverach and Mr. Profeit.1 They follow
step by step the teaching of physics and
chemistry, and pause at the end of each
paragraph to admire the wisdom of the
creator with Paleyesque devotion. Be
hold the primitive matter mould itself
into electrons and atoms. Whence did
it get the power? How came a blind
force to put together the electrons in
such an orderly series of atoms with such
wonderful chemical adaptations to each
other? Behold the ponderable matter
grow into nebulae and solar systems.
Who distributed the elements so nicely
amongst the various nebulae ? Who
distributed the elements
the nebula,
and broke off the whirling rings at the
proper moment, and set the planets
going at the requisite speed, that a
system of perfect order resulted, and
was found to be just suited for the
sustenance of life ?
Now let us be perfectly clear. This
argument is to be the great reply to
Haeckel, and it will recur all through.
It thinks it differs from the old Paleyism
in this : it can grant science the power,
either now or in the future, to give a
complete explanation on physical lines of
the up-building of an atom or a world.
1 The Creation of Matter. Mr. Ballard tells
us this may count as a reply to the Riddle. It
has been published since the Riddle, but does
not seem to mention Haeckel’s book.
As it says, science may explain how
these things were done. It adds that
every thoughtful man must ask also
why—why the process took place at all,
and why it took this particular line, with
such a lucky termination for us, rather
than any one of a thousand others.
They say: Let Haeckel explain the
whole world-growth on mechanical
principles, from the formation of the
first atoms of hydrogen to the solidifica
tion of the last planet. That only tells
how natural forces built up the world :
we want to know why. So we can
allow the naturalist or mechanical view
to be complete in itself, yet leaving full
room for us. ■
In order to avoid the repetitions and
the confusion which this design
argument leads to, I propose to take the
hint offered and keep quite separate the
questions how the world was made and
why it was so made. In this and the
following three chapters we shall see
how the world was made ; in the seventh
chapter we shall discuss the teleological
argument in its principle. We shall see
that the theistic evolutionists are by no
means prepared in practice to allow that
science can explain how all things were
made, or to assign adequate efficient
causes
for
the
more
complex
phenomena. The first line of defence
had better hold as long as it can, in
case the second should be not quite
impregnable. As to inorganic nature,
however, there is no serious hesitation.
The inherent or native qualities of the
matter-force reality (I am not shirking,
but deferring, the question why it has
these qualities at all) are generally
admitted to be the adequate efficient
explanation of the formation of atoms
and stars. The first serious challenge
rings out when we come to the frontiers
of living nature.
�THE ORIGIN OF LIFE
39
Chapter IV
THE ORIGIN OF LIFE
No sooner do we pass from the con
sideration of inorganic nature to a
discussion of the origin of life than we
encounter in a severe form the per
plexity I have previously indicated. Do
theists or dualists deny that Haeckel
may legitimately extend the monistic
interpretation to the problem of life ?
At once we have to deal with a straggling
line of contradictory thinkers, instead of
the fairly solid front which we desire
to face.
A large number of the
authorities recommended to us as cor
rectives of Haeckel’s philosophy entirely
agree with him in his theory of the
spontaneous generation of life, and are
content to add, as before, the teleo
logical consideration. A large number
severely criticise his position—and
therefore that of their own advanced
colleagues—even from the point of view
of physical or efficient causation ; and
there is every grade of vacillation
between the two.
It will be interest
ing to see first how far the doctrine
of the first appearance of life by
abiogenesis is accepted by theistic
writers,
It is well known that Dr. Mivart
defended the doctrine with great ability
for the twenty years preceding his death.
To-day Father Zahm and other Catholic
scientists are no less willing to admit it.
That Professor Le Conte and Mr. Fiske
accept it goes without saying. Dr. W.
N. Clarke is disposed to grant it:
“Life, when its time came, may have
come in by direct creation; so may
human life or the life of other species;
or the whole process of unfolding may
have been continuous, impelled by only
one kind of divine movement from first
to last. Whether God has performed
specific acts of creation from time to
time is a question for evidence, which
lies outside the field of theology.”1
Mr. Newman Smyth admits that it is now
irresistible: “ While the fact is now
universally admitted that non-living
matter cannot now be organised into a
living form except through the prior
agency of life, on the other hand the
momentum of all our scientific know
ledge of the continuities of nature leads
modern biology to the assumption that
the organic substance at some time has
been raised and quickened from the
deadness of the inorganic world.” 2 Mr.
Profeit also is willing to admit the
evolution of protoplasm, though only
“as the result of working intelligence.” 3
Dr. Iverach, who is also anxious to
stress the teleological aspect, never
theless admits that life was “ implicit in
the whole ”; though we shall find him
raising superfluous difficulties later.
Thus in his allegation of the fact that
life was evolved out of non-life Professor
Haeckel finds himself in quite respect
able company. The sonorous philo
sopher of one of our dramatic and
sporting papers (the Referee} delivered
himself as follows some months ago
(March ist, 1903): “At the very
threshold of this great theme we
encounter the eternal question as to
how life began at all, and here the
scientist cannot help us.” It would be
1 Outlines of Christian Theology, p. 132.
2 Through Science to Faith, p. 17.
3 The Creation of Matter, p. 96 ; his proviso
is, of course, shared by all these evolutionists.
We are for the present concerned only with
efficient causation. When Mr. Profeit goes on
to tell us that when protoplasm appeared “the
stars clapped their hands for joy,” we can hear
the rustle of his surplice. The evolution must
have taken millennia, if not millions of years.
There was no psychological moment for applause.
�40
THE ORIGIN OF LIFE
interesting, and not a little enlighten
ing, for “Merlin” to investigate this—
under the circumstances—remarkable
phenomenon of a group of ardent
religious apologists subscribing to the
doctrine of abiogenesis. But “ Merlin ”
might quote a number of scientific men
(of ecclesiastical standing) who make
the same affirmation in yet stronger
language, and who denounce Haeckel
with some vigour for representing
abiogenesis as a scientific theorem.
There is Dr. Horton, the admirer of
Vogt and Buchner, who assures us
that “ no leading man of science treats
it [Haeckel’s theory of the origin of life]
seriously.” But the leading opponent
is Mr. Ballard, and we will treat his
criticism at respectful length. It will
lead us, sooner or later, into the heart
of the difficulty.
It will be remembered that in his
attack in the British Weekly, in which
he emulates the spirited Dr. Loofs in
literary manner, he devotes the bulk
of his articles (about twelve columns
out of thirteen) to preliminary obser
vations, and then turns, “ for sheer relief,”
to criticise Haeckel from the scientific
point of view. I will strike off super
fluous errors as I go along, and deal with
the essence of his objection afterwards.
“To begin with,” he says, “its funda
mental thesis is utterly unscientific, viz.,
the assumption of the actuality of spon
taneous generation.” To begin with, I
may repeat, this sentence contains three
grave and essential misrepresentations.
Spontaneous generation is very far from
being the “fundamental thesis ” (or the
“fundamental axiom” and “crucial
proof ” he elsewhere calls it) of the
Riddle, or of Haeckel’s system ; it is not
an “assumption,” but a serious conclu
sion ; and Haeckel does not claim that
spontaneous generation takes place to
day. It is preposterous to suppose that
Haeckel’s fundamental thesis should be
one that many Christian scholars accept,
and the reader will already understand
that, though it is necessarily involved in
Monism, it is no more “ fundamental ”
than ten other propositions. But Mr.
Ballard proceeds to make good his state
ment. He says Haeckel “frankly ac
knowledges that spontaneous generation
is ‘ an indispensable thesis in any natural
theory of evolution. I entirely agree
with the assertion that to reject abio
genesis is to admit a miracle.’ ” “ An,”
one may observe, is different from “the,”
and “ indispensable ” from “ fundamen-'
tai ” ; but that is a comparative trifle. No
page is given, but if you do look up the
passage (page 91) you find that Haeckel
is saying that Professor Naegeli represents
it as “an indispensable thesis,” and that
“the assertion” should be “his asser
tion.” It would not do, I suppose, to
let readers of the British Weekly know
that Haeckel does not stand alone, so
the quotation is manipulated. More
over, the phrase, “to reject abiogenesis
is to admit a miracle,” is quoted by
Haeckel from Naegeli, but the quotation
marks are omitted by Mr. Ballard. The
reader may judge if the fact of Haeckel’s
agreeing with Naegeli justifies this. I
know that Mr. Ballard quotes the passage
fairly in his Miracles of Unbelief My
second point, that it is not an “assump
tion,” will be clear when I come to resume
the evidence for it. The third point is
that if Mr. Ballard uses “actuality” in
the ordinary sense of the word, as the
ordinary reader will suppose, he gravely
misstates Haeckel’s position. That he
does imply that Haeckel claims spon
taneous generation to be “ actually ”
occurring is clear from his appeal to
those scientists (Tyndall, Pasteur, &c.)
who disprove no more than this. As a
fact Haeckel says (p. 91) : “ I restrict the
idea of spontaneous generation—also
called abiogenesis or archigony—to the
first development of living protoplasm
out of inorganic carbonates.” Further,
Haeckel refers the reader to his earlier
work for details, and Mr. Ballard himself
quotes therefrom that Haeckel only offers
the doctrine as “a pure hypothesis”
without experimental support.
Haeckel’s position is, then, properly
stated, that we have no evidence that
�THE ORIGIN OF LIFE
living things now arise by spontaneous
generation; that the monistic view of
the universe, which other scientific
evidence commends, requires the birth
of living things from non-living in the
beginning; that he finds no peculiar
qualities in the vital force which forbid
the extension of the law of evolution to
it; and that he therefore sketches a
purely hypothetical suggestion of the
mode of transition on broad lines. A
really careful and impartial inquirer
would see that the essential part of this
position, from the logical point of view,
is the third part of it—the conviction
that there is no peculiar feature of the
vital force which forbids us to assume
its evolution. Evolution is a known
law of the cosmos—or “ the general
method of world-growth,” as Mr.
Ballard says. We apply it until we are
pulled up by some phenomenon of a
specific nature that seems impossible to
have been evolved. But Mr. Ballard
utterly disregards this chief strength of
Haeckel’s position (supported by the
whole of this chapter of the Riddle),
proceeds to flourish weapons which do
not reach that position at all, and con
cludes that Haeckel is “ utterly without
scientific warrant,” or, as he has previously
said, he “ sets at defiance the latest and
most exact findings of science, and cuts
the Gordian knot by sheer assertion of
that which is essential to his hypothesis,
but is itself undemonstrated, and, we
may venture to add, on good authority,
undemonstrable.” His procedure is
so typical of the usual confused dis
cussion of the subject that we may
follow him to the end.
After saying that Haeckel offers no
proof—which we will discuss presently—
he goes on to overwhelm him with the
“ conclusions of experts.” G Between
the inorganic and the organic, there is,
according to all the facts now known
and the consensus of modern science
concerning them, a stage in which, to
quote Mr. Wallace, ‘ some new cause or
power must necessarily have come into
action.’ ” We are defending a gap after
4i
all, you see; though Mr. Ballard says it
is not essential to do so. Further, it is
not only “utterly without scientific
warrant,” but “ emphatically ” contra
dicted by “the conclusions of such
experts as Tyndall, Pasteur, Drysdale,
Dallinger, Roscoe, Kelvin, Beale, &c. ” ;
and “for modern science, speaking
generally and carefully, spontaneous
generation is as dead as Huxley’s
Bathybius.” One’s mind goes back
involuntarily to those clerical spontane
ous generationists and the horrible
levity with which they have deserted the
gap. The truth is, as those who know
anything of the controversy will have
seen long ago, Mr. Ballard is throwing
dust. He knows perfectly well that the
only point on which scientists are
agreed—and Haeckel is quite with them
—is that abiogenesis does not take place
to-day; that is a thesis which Haeckel
has explicitly disavowed. The experi
ments of Pasteur never purported to
prove anything else, and never could.
His favourite Professor Beale admits his
own solitude : “ Physicists and chemists
look forward with confidence ” to further
experiments, and “think to acquire a
knowledge of the manner in which the
first particle of living matter originated.”1
He cannot quote a single biologist to
say that his science is against Haeckel’s
“ hypothesis ” of abiogenesis in the past.
I will presently quote more than one in
favour of it, in the sense of endorsing
Haeckel’s most important point—that
there is no essential difference between
vital force and non-vital force. He, a
bachelor of science, has blurred the
distinction between actual abiogenesis
and archigony, which is essential, and
which has been pointed out for twenty
years by men of science. And this is
the culmination of his attack on Dr.
Haeckel, and, I suppose, the chief justi
fication for the gross epithets he has
showered on one of the most venerable
figures in the scientific world.
Mr. Mallock says : “ It was formerly
1 Vitality, p. 7.
D
�42
THE ORIGIN OF LIFE
supposed that they [life and manj were Mr. Ballard and others so confusedly
produced by isolated creative acts; but represent as opposed to Haeckel.
we now know that they are the results of Science draws no inference, and logic
an orderly process of evolution. The can draw no inference, with regard to the
theist of to-day admits this as fully as primeval origin of life from this negative
anybody.” Unfortunately, we see that evidence. This has been pointed out
there are theists, who are held to be men time after time, as it was by Sir W.
of scientific culture and liberality, who do Turner in his Presidential Address in
not admit it, and we must discuss the 1900.
subject patiently. This is largely the
Haeckel’s second point (in my analysis
result of people like Mr. Ballard, in their of his position) is that we have ample
eagerness to draw up a long list of reason to regard evolution as a law of
“ sound ” literature, recommending all substance, or a law of nature. We
kinds of antiquated works. For instance, have seen how completely scientific
one of the authors he urges us to read this thesis is.
“ Evolution,” said
on this question, “ Principal Chapman,” Canon A. L. Moore, sixteen years ago,
assures his readers that Buchner and “may fairly claim to be an established
Haeckel assert “life now can be repro doctrine.”1 And we have quoted the
duced out of inorganic conditions,” and Rev. Newman Smyth’s opinion that “ the
attacks the “asserted possibility of arti momentum of all our scientific know
ficially producing organic compounds” ledge of the continuities of nature leads
—which are produced artificially by the modern biology to the assumption that
score to-day ; whilst his general culture the organic substance at some time has
may be measured by his giving the been raised and quickened from the
motto of the Buchner school as : “ Ohne deadness of the inorganic world.” As a
Phosphor ohne Gedank.” This does matter of scientific procedure, then, we
not tend to the advancement of truth. are bound to assume that life arose by
Let us have a clear idea what the real evolution until it has been proved that
position of Haeckel’s theory is in the vital force is something specifically
science.
distinct from physical force, and could
I have stated it in four theses, and not have been derived from it. That is
will deal with these separately. In the both the scientific and the logical way of
first place, scientists of all schools are looking at the question. The scientist
agreed that we do not know a single case does not depart from his ordinary
of abiogenesis taking place to-day. methods without grave reason; nor does
Curiously enough, religious philosophers nature. Nature evolves, wherever evolu
in the Middle Ages believed that any tion is not impossible. The really im
number of highly organised forms of life portant point is, then, this question
(such as bees) were produced daily by whether there is something so peculiar
spontaneous generation. It was science about vital force that we cannot suppose
that first opposed them. However, a it to have been evolved; and we find
few decades ago a group of materialistic accordingly that Haeckel devotes several
scientists made a stand for abiogenesis as pages to the point. I will not repeat,
an actual occurrence, and there was a but only supplement these from other
fierce controversy. It was a purely scientists; though, as we will discuss the
scientific quarrel, Tyndall opposing them question of the nature of life more fully
as firmly as the semi-vitalist Pasteur. It later (in the chapter on Lord Kelvin’s
was abundantly proved that no living intervention), I will not say more than is
thing we are acquainted with to-day is necessary for our purpose here.
developed without living parentage.
This is that “ teaching of science ” (to
1 Science and the Faith, p. 162: one of the
which Haeckel fully subscribes) which works Mr. Ballard recommends to us.
�THE ORIGIN OF LIFE
Let me begin by quoting this admir
able warning to those who affirm that
nature could not have evolved life with
out a divine interference : “ In spite of all
present-day scientific generalisations, and
these based on the widest inductions
possible to us, we have no warrant what
ever for the assumption that the possi
bilities of the universe end where our
human apprehension of nature has
reached its ne plus ultra! Does Mr.
Ballard recognise the words ? They are
taken from his own preface to his
Miracles of Unbelief. A theistic phi
losopher, Professor J. Ward, also says:
“ Of the origin of life, if it ever did
originate, we have absolutely no know
ledge. But, on the one hand, there is
no definite limit to the possible com
plexity of mechanical processes, nor any
definite limit on the other, to the possible
simplicity of life.”1 These are timely
warnings to the theist not to build on
gaps in biology. Yet Dr. Horton tells
his trustful congregation that science has
“ not discovered what is that vast bridge
which spans the regions which, to the
eye, appear so near.” And a reviewer in
the Church of England Pulpit says the
gap between the living and the non-living
is “now wider than ever.” If you seek
the authority for these assertions, you are
generally met with a reference to Pro
fessor Lionel Beale. Now, Prof. Beale
is an able scientist and original worker,
and we will examine his claims about
protoplasm in a later chapter. Mean
time, we may recall that it was he who
so pathetically protested in the agony
column of the Times that Haeckel’s as
severations in this chapter were not in
accord with the teaching of science, and
later referred the anxious world to his
little work on Vitality. Now, when we
peruse Vitality we are given to under
stand almost from first page to last that
1 Naturalism and Agnosticism, ii, 262. Pro
fessor Ward, therefore, assumes life was evolved.
The Words, “if it ever did originate,” must be
understood in the idealist sense ; and the em
phatic denial of knowledge is grounded rather
confusedly on the Pasteur experiments.
43
Professor Beale is nearly contra mundum.
“ It must be admitted,” he says (p. v),
“ that few scientific men are quite satis
fied that vital phenomena may not yet
be otherwise explained ”; and we have
already quoted his admission (p. 7) that
“ physicists and chemists ” look forward
to a mechanical explanation of the origin
of life.
And in point of fact one can quote a
string of the ablest authorities against the
claim that vital force has so specific a
character that it could not have been
evolved. Says the theistic (or pantheistic)
evolutionist, Professor Le Conte, one of
Mr. Ballard’s chief authorities: “ Vital
forces are also transmutable into and
derivable from physical and chemical
forces . . . Vital force may now be re
garded as so much force withdrawn from
the general fund of chemical and physi
cal forces ... If vital force falls into the
same category as other natural forces,
there is no reason why living forms
should not fall into the same category in
this regard as other natural forms.”1
Says Professor J. Ward, another of Mr.
Ballard’s authorities : “ The old theory of
a special vital force, according to which
physiological processes were at the most
analogous to—not identical with—•
physical processes, has for the most part
been abandoned as superfluous. Step
by step within the last fifty years the
identity of the two processes has been
so far established that an eminent
physiologist does not hesitate to say
‘that for the future the word vital, as
distinctive of physiological processes,
might be abandoned altogether.’ ” 2 The
“ eminent physiologist ” is Sir J.
Burdon Sanderson, another able author
ity. In the article on zoology in the
Encyclopcedia Britannica, Professor Ray
Lankester says : “ It is the aim or busi1 Evolution and Religious Thought, p. 36.
2 Naturalism and Agnosticism, ii, p. 9. Ward
and Le Conte, while admitting the mechanical
theory as the explanation of “ efficient ” causa
tion, claim the action of a guiding intelligence.
That is a point we have reserved, and it does
not affect the present question.
�44
THE ORIGIN OF LIFE
ness of those occupied with biology to
assign living things, in all their variety
of form and activity, to the one set of
forces recognised by the physicist and
the chemist,” On the physical side Sir
A. Rucker, in his presidential speech of
1901, spoke of the recent rise of Neo
Vitalism as merely the result of “some
outstanding difficulties ” in biology, and
he protested that “the action of physical
and chemical forces in living bodies can
never be understood, if at every diffi
culty and at every check in our investi
gations we desist from further attempts
in the belief that the laws of physics
and chemistry have been interfered with
by an incomprehensible vital force.” His
successor in the presidential chair also
protested that science was “ not debarred
from speculating on the mode in which
life may have originated,” and he quoted
this splendid expression from Lord
Kelvin’s (then Sir W. Thomson) presi
dential speech in 1871: “Science is
bound, by the everlasting law of honour,
to face fearlessly every problem which
can fairly be presented to it.
If a
probable solution, consistent with the
ordinary course of nature, can be found,
we must not invoke an act of Creative
Power.” And, finally, when Lord Kelvin
recently declared that he understood
biologists were coming again to entertain
the notion of a specific vital force, he
was, as we shall see (or the reader may
see now in Chap. XI.), emphatically
contradicted by the representative biolo
gists of this country.
The authority of Dr. Haeckel himself
on this point is paramount.
He has
made a life-long study of it. But I have
shown that his conclusion is in accord
with the general scientific attitude to-day,
and that he is not giving us the “ science
of yesterday,” as the dilettanti of the
Pall Mall Gazette express it. I will
only add here a few further considera
tions that tend to make clearer the ques
tion of the primitive origin of life, and
will reserve the discussion of Neo-Vitalism until we come to deal with Lord
Kelvin and his critics.
It is a matter of some importance to
remember that we do not know the nature
of the earliest organisms. Living things
had to proceed very far in their develop
ment before it was possible for their
remains to be fossilised and preserved.
Palaeontology can give us no aid what
ever. It is generally assumed that the
monera and such simple forms—mere
tiny globules of protoplasm—were the
earliest in point of time. That they
must have been the earliest of existing
forms is obvious, but, as Professor Ward
suggests, it is conceivable that there were
many simpler forms of life before the
moneron. We had to wait for the
microscope to discover the protists. We
may make other discoveries yet; or there
may have been earlier forms too un
stable to persist. These are “ may be’s,”
but remember Lord Kelvin’s advice that
we must exhaust the possibilities of
nature before we invoke “ an abnormal
act of Creative Power.” Canon Aubrey
Moore said long ago in connection with
the evolution of species : “ In this pro
cess of evolution there are things which
puzzle us, though it would be quite true
to say there is nothing half so puzzling
as there was, if we had only thought
more about it, in the old theory of
special creation.” .That is peculiarly
applicable to the question of the origin
of life. The notion of a “ creative
act ”—the notion that, at the mere ex
pression of a wish on the part of some
infinite being, particles of “ dead ”
matter scrape themselves together with
out any physical impulse, and, though
they are incompetent to see the design
they are to execute or the end of their
individual movements, build themselves
up into the intricate structure of living
protoplasm—is a perfect world of mys
teries, instead of being an “explana
tion.” We can only have recourse to it
when every conceivable effort has been
made to explain the phenomenon by
the physical impulsion of the atoms by
natural forces and by a very slow and
gradual development; and science, we
saw, is by no means inclined to admit
�THE ORIGIN OF LIFE
that its possibilities have been exhausted
yet.
But if we cannot get any nearer to the
origin on the biological side, it may be
possible to do something on the chemical
side; and from this side, in point of
fact, the “gulf,” as preachers call it
(compare Huxley’s article on Biology in
the Encyclopedia, Britannica}, between
the organic and the inorganic is being
bridged. If you take down one of the
apologetic works of the last generation
(even some of those Mr. Ballard recom
mends to-day), you will find that the
writers lay great stress on the inability of
the chemist to produce artificially certain
compound substances which were then
only made by the living organism. To
day a large number of these are produced
by the chemist in his laboratory. This
branch of chemistry is advancing every
year, and last year was able to announce
the artificial synthesis of so complex an
organic substance as albumen. The
“gulf” is narrowing; it is very far from
being “wider than ever.” Dr. Iverach,
one of those hesitating teachers who are
continually criticising scientific results
with some vague notion of serving
religion, says these chemists only “ac
complish at great cost and labour and
with many appliances what life is doing
easily every moment.” Very true ; but,
pray, how long was nature in fitting up
her laboratory and making her appli
ances ? Possibly millions of years in
making the protoplasm of the first
moneron; certainly many millions of
years in evolving those higher organisms
which the scientist is set to emulate.
One does not see what liberal-minded
and scientific men gain by strewing the
path with little obstacles of this kind.
There are other writers who say che
mistry may produce organic substances
without number, but it cannot produce
an organism. Well, on the theisticevolution hypothesis, which the abler
apologists adopt to-day, it took God
hundreds of thousands, if not millions,
of years to make an amoeba, with all the
resources of nature completely known to
45
him. And man, with his dim knowledge
of natural forces, is to make one in a
few weeks, or years! Science is ad
vancing. Let us be patient.
We are now in a position, then, to
estimate the criticisms that have been
directed against this section of Dr.
Haeckel’s system. There are two aspects
of his position. On the one hand there
is the negative side, that we are not
justified in rushing into the present gap
(such as it is) of scientific knowledge
with a “ vital force ” or a “ creative
power,” which are specifically distinct
from the natural forces we have hitherto
studied; and there is, further, the posi
tive attempt to sketch a theory of the
way in which protoplasm was evolved.
The first part is essential to monism ;
the second is not, and may vary with
the progress of science. Both parts
are scientifically justified. How widely
Haeckel’s first position is shared by men
of science, and how it is forced on us by
the axioms of men so different as Lord
Kelvin and Canon A. L. . Moore, we
have already seen. It is the only logical
attitude. When science assures us that
it has acquired a perfect knowledge of
vital force on the one hand and physical
force on the other, and that the two are
so widely separated that it cannot con
ceive the one to have been evolved from
the other; then there will be time enough
to talk of gaps and gulfs and creative
power. In the meantime logic forbids
us to multiply agencies without need.
There is a plausible kind of critic—
usually a preacher—who says: Well,
Haeckel may enjoy his opinion as long
as he likes, and the agnostic may wait
eternally for the last word of science, but
I find this creator-idea very satisfying,
and you may keep your logic for the
school. That is the practical man—the
man who would think you a fool if you
reasoned like that in business. It must
be remembered that we are not playing
a parlour game with conventional rules.
It is a question of truth or untruth,
reality or unreality. It is a huge asser
tion, this of creative action, It at once
�46
THE ORIGIN OF LIFE
brings a new element into our cosmos.
We see that the material universe exists.
We must not recklessly affirm the exist
ence of anything beyond it; or if we do,
we have no guarantee of the truth of our
statements.
Now, until science has
shown that physical force and vital force
are not transmutable, and that no exten
sion of the former, even into the most
elaborate complication, could produce
the latter, you cannot extract from the
appearance of life a particle of evidence
fo,r an interfering cause other than
nature.
But Haeckel does not cease to speak
as a scientific man when he goes on to
offer a positive suggestion as to the
origin of life. Science advances com
monly by projecting hypotheses in
advance of its solid and established
positions, and if ever we are to under
stand the mode of the origin of life it
will be by such a procedure. No living
scientist is better acquainted with the
conditions of the problem than Haeckel,
and it would be preposterous to suppose
that he has not framed a theory con
sistent with the known facts. His theory
is directly grounded on the established
facts of the chemistry of protoplasm.
The only possible justification for the
criticism offered by scientists like Dr.
Horton would be if Haeckel had put it
before us as a sort of photographic
description of the primeval dawn of life.
As Mr. Ballard reminds us, Haeckel
only offers it as “a pure hypothesis,”
consistent with the facts as we know
them, and capable of any modification
new discoveries may entail.
Thus, when we have shaken off this
group of not very enlightened critics,
we see that we have advanced a step
in the evolution of the monistic uni
verse.
We had already followed the
great matter-force reality in its develop
ment as far as the formation of planets
with firm crusts, with heated oceans
and an enveloping atmosphere, and
provided by a shrinking central luminary
with a powerful flood of heat, light,
and electricity. Some time in the pre
Cambrian epoch living things appeared
in the primeval oceans. This was not
a sudden and dramatic entrance on the
stage of time, at which the morning
stars might clap their incandescent
hands ; it was the final issue of a long
course of evolution. It was the matter
force reality slowly groping upwards
through more and more elaborate com
binations of the
formed chemical
elements until a stage was reached
when a substance sufficiently plastic to
exchange elements with the environing
fluid and sufficiently stable to maintain
its integrity was formed. To-day this
substance (living protoplasm) is marked
off by several remarkable properties
from inorganic matter. Professor Beale
talks much of its “ structureless ” cha
racter. In view of the known extreme
complexity of its molecular structure, it
would be a miracle if it did not exhibit
functions widely removed from those of
simpler compounds. But the finding of an
actual divergence to-day is no obstacle
to our entertaining a theory of evolu
tion. No serious scientist questions to
day the evolution of the human body
from that of a lower animal species.
Yet the connecting links have disap
peared. It is a scientific truth that
intermediate forms do tend to disappear.
We see here, then, only another phase
in the unfolding of the cosmic substance,
or nature. Neither scientific evidence
nor logic compels us yet to admit a
fresh reality, a new form of being. We
are still monists. Whether nature has
needed the guidance of intelligence in
this evolution we need not consider
yet. First let us establish the fact that
nature evolves, from the first union of
electrons into an atom to the develop
ment of man, by means of its inherent
forces, and then we will consider
“ whence ” it got these forces and
whether they must have been guided.
Now, given the first tiny globule of
living protoplasm, there is no further gap
for the theologian to defend until we
come to the human mind. For the fifty
million years which extend from the
�THE ORIGIN OF LIFE
Laurentian epoch to the early Pleisto
cene we witness the natural evolution of
the cosmic substance without any plau
sible interference. Naturalists “ have
accepted Darwin’s idea,” Sir W. Turner
tells us in his presidential speech; and
he speaks with respect of Haeckel’s
great share in constructing our ancestral
tree. Huxley said a long time ago that
he “ refused to run the risk of insulting
any sane man by supposing that he
seriously holds such a notion as special
creation.” Canon Aubrey Moore wrote
sixteen years ago that “ every competent
man of science believes in the origin of
species by progressive variations.”1 “All
living nature is of one descent and con
stitutes one relationship,” says Mr.
Newman Smyth. “ Evolution as a law
of derivation of forms from previous
forms ... is not only certain, it is axio
matic,” says Professor Le Conte. “ The
immutability and separate creation of
species . . . are doctrines now no longer
defensible,” says Professor Ward. And
Professor Flower (to whose qualifications
Mr. Ballard devotes ten lines—much
more than Professor Flower ever devoted
to theology) told the Reading Church
Congress twenty years ago (1883) that
the doctrine of the evolution of species
was even then “almost, if not quite,
universal among skilled and thoughtful
naturalists of all countries,” and advised
the clergy not to burn their fingers again
with it.2 We might fill a book with such
quotations.
Happily, there is no longer the need
to do so. Darwin lies in Westminster
Abbey, and episcopal lips utter his name
without a tremor. No one now questions
the fact that the species have been
formed by evolution; but there are still
ecclesiastics who take this occasion to
show that they are of a critical rather
than a credulous temper. They quarrel
with the agencies which science assigns
to the task of the formation of species,
or with the mode in which science con
ceives those agencies to have acted.
1 Science and the Faith, p. 165.
2 Recent Advances in Natural Science.
47
They express an opinion that natural
selection and sexual selection could
not do this or the other; that the
question of the transmission of acquired
characters is very unsettled, and so
forth. Now, it is in itself a healthy sign
of the times that our theologians take an
interest in these scientific questions, and
as scientific men. But the cause of
truth and progress, and the placidity of
scientific workers, would be best con
sulted by keeping these criticisms out
of Christian evidence treatises, with
which, logically, they have 'nothing to
do. Thus Dr. Iverach discusses the
question at great length in his Theism in
the Light ofPresent Science and Philosophy.
He thinks that natural selection may
act on variations, but cannot initiate
them, and cannot show why some
organisms remain unicellular and others
become multicellular.
Biologists do
not, he urges, prove the indefinite ex
pansiveness of species, and do not
explain the special causes which check
expansion. In strict logic this has nothing
to do with “Theism.” If biologists
have not adequately explained the pro
cess of evolution, we must wait until
they have further knowledge.
His
point is, of course, that the triumph of
evolution only means “ to transfer the
cause from a mere external influence
working from without to an immanent
rational principle.”
He is pleading
again for that “ incomprehensible vital
force,” as Sir A. Rucker calls it, which
we have already discussed and will dis
cuss later.
If it is sufficient to admit natural
(physical and chemical) forces in the
first formation of protoplasm, we meet
nothing to turn us aside from these with
any plausibility until we come to con
sciousness, which I will treat in the
next chapter. With that reservation
Haeckel’s mechanical explanation of the
derivation of species is accepted. Pro
fessor Ray Lankester says, in the article
on zoology in the Encyclopedia Britan
nica : “ It was reserved for Charles
Darwin in the year 1859 to place the
�48
THE ORIGIN OF LIFE
whole theory of organic evolution on a
new footing, and by his discovery of a
mechanical cause actually existing and
demonstrable, by which organic evolution
must be brought about, to entirely
change the. attitude in regard to it of
even the most rigid exponents of scientific
method.” The recent letters of Pro
fessor Ray Lankester to the Times,
which I will quote later (Chap. XII.),
show that he has not departed from this
position. Dr. Croll also admits of the
derivation of species: “ At present
[1890] most evolutionists regard the
process as purely mechanical and physi
cal, the results of matter, motion, and
force alone.”1 And Mr. Fiske says:
“The natural selection of physical
variations will go far towards explaining
the characters of all the plants and all
the beasts in the world.” 2
But do not let us lose our way amidst
conflicting authorities. Two objections
are formulated, more or less vaguely,
against this phase of Haeckel’s position ;
or the two objections may be combined
into the general statement that the
mechanical explanation leaves some
aspects of the derivation of species
unaccounted for; and so we must admit,
besides the evolving matter-force reality,
a telic or purposive principle in the
organism and a general controlling in
telligence, or at least the latter (Fiske,
Ward, Le Conte, &c.). The second
opinion does not really conflict with our
present purpose, because it assumes that
this directing intelligence never takes the
place of physical agencies. It always
acts through mechanical causes, so that
science is quite right in expecting to
build up a perfect mechanical scheme of
the development of the world-substance.
With its further contention that this
mechanical scheme points to an initial
designer, we will deal later. It is only
the first opinion—that which postulates
a purposive principle in the organism—
which conflicts with the monistic view
at this stage. And this second opinion
1 The Philosophical Basis of Evolution, p. 2.
2 Through Nature to God, p. 81.
is, frankly, a philosophy or a theology
of gaps. It lodges in the breaches, or
supposed breaches, in our knowledge of
the evolutionary processes, and naively
takes these to be breaches in the cosmic
scheme itself. Remember Mr. Ballard’s
wise injunction that “we have no
warrant whatever for the assumption
that the possibilities of the universe end
where our human apprehension of
nature has reached its ne plus ultra ”—
for the time being, let me venture to
add. Which attitude is the more logical
and scientific, and the best accredited
by experience—this defence of gaps, or
the resolution to admit no aquosities or
vitalities, or other immaterial entities
until science has given a definite and
fully-informed decision ?
Professor Haeckel adopts the latter
attitude, and proceeds to reconstruct the
wonderful paths that nature has followed
in her journey from those ancient
Laurentian waters to the achievements
of man. We have three convergent and
consonant lines of evidence : the docu
ments of palaeontology, or the science of
fossils, the documents of zoology (to
speak of animals only), and the docu
ments of embryology. From them, as
from three synoptic gospels, we retrace
the upward growth of living nature.
The simplest organisms we can definitely
picture to ourselves are simple granules
of protoplasm, or structureless morsels
of an albuminous matter. In time some
of these are formed which live on their
fellow-protists, and the distinction of the
animal from the plant is adumbrated.
Later, some of them develop a nucleus
and form definite cells ; the cells cling
together in colonies and form multi
cellular organisms; these cells are dis
posed in a layer or skin with a central
cavity, and develop fine hair-like pro
cesses by which they can travel through
the water. As the ages advance some
of these beings fold their cell-layer in
wards and form the primitive gut. From
these, probably, the flat worms are
developed, with a primitive nervous
system and reproductive apparatus.
�THE ASCENT OF MAN
Higher worms arise with primitive
vascular and excretory systems, and at
length with a rude kind of breathing
apparatus. At the next stage the rudi
ment of a spinal cord appears, and
continues to develop until the lowest
vertebrates (such as the lampreys) are
seen, with their primitive crania, suctorial
mouths, and advancing ears. Then
comes a great development of fishes
with strong dermal armour and in
creasingly acute organs of sense. _ Am
phibious animals link the fishes with the
reptiles, which soon prowl over the
us
49
earth in huge and terrible forms.
Mammals,
or
warm,
red-blooded
animals, next appear in the Jurassic
strata, and slowly advance through the
forms of marsupials and placentals until
the lowest lemures, in the lower Eocene
strata (computed to be 3,000,000 years
old), bring us within dim and distant
vision of the human form. The man
like apes appear in the Miocene period
(about 850,000 years ago).
Some
600,000 years later the pithecanthropus,
or erect man-ape, is found to herald the
approach of our own race.
Chapter V
THE ASCENT OF MAN
When the third International Zoo
logical Congress met at Leyden in 1895
a Dutch military physician produced two
or three bones that he had discovered in
Java the previous year, which created a
lively sensation amongst the assembled
anthropologists. They were merely the
skull-cap, a femur, and two teeth of some
animal form that had been buried in the
upper Pliocene strata nearly 300,000 years
ago. The modern zoologist can recon
struct a skeleton almost from a single
bone, and the complete outline of the
being to which these scanty remains had
belonged was quickly restored. Science
found itself confronted with the long
sought missing link between man and his
pithecoid ancestors. The powerful form,
standing five feet and a half high when
erect, yet still much bent with the curve
of its prone ancestors : the great cranial
capacity (about 1,000 cubic centimetres),
much greater than that of the largest ape,
yet lower than that of man, and associ
ated with prominent eye-brow ridges and
heavy jaws; in a word, all its features
pointed very emphatically to a stage half
way between man and the earlier species
from which he and the apes had
descended. A loud and long discus
sion followed Dr. Dubois’ address. The
celebrated Dr. Virchow stubbornly op
posed the conclusion of Haeckel and his
colleagues, and was driven from point to
point by his opponents.1 In the end
twelve experts of the Congress gave a
decision on the remains. Three of them
held that they belonged to a member of
a low race of man ; three held that they
1 See the account of Virchow’s pitiful and
transparently prejudiced resistance to evolution
in Buchner’s Last Words on Materialism, p. 97.
At a scientific congress in the preceding year,
one of Virchow’s colleagues observed that his
behaviour was “quite enough to justify us in
paying serious attention no longer to the great
pathologist on this question.” In effect, Vir
chow’s opinions on the matter have died with
him.
�so
the ascent of man
had belonged to a huge man-like ape;
and six were convinced that they be
longed to an intermediate form, which
was rightly called the pithecanthropus
erectus (erect ape-man). The opinion of
the majority has now become the general
opinion in anthropology.
This was a dramatic intervention in
the standing controversy with regard to
the origin of man. Ever since Darwin
had, as Professor Dewar says, “ illumined
the long unsettled horizon of human
thought” with his theory of selection
and descent, anthropologists had foreseen
the extension of the doctrine of evolution
to man. Haeckel and Darwin had soon
effected that extension in theory. Now
the discovery of the pithecanthropus came
as a remarkable crown to the enormous
structure of evidence in its favour. But
a distinction had already been drawn
between the evolution of body and the
evolution of mind. Thinkers like Dr.
Wallace and Dr. Mivart offered no re
sistance, or, indeed, strongly defended,
the doctrine that man had inherited his
bodily form from a lower animal species,
but affected to see a gulf in mental
faculty which forbade us to derive man’s
mind from that of any animal. Since
those days the evidence for the evolution
of the mind has accumulated until it is
at least equivalent to that for the evolu
tion of the body. In the Riddle of the
Universe Professor Haeckel gives a mag
nificent summary of the evidence for
both theses, for the development of man,
mind and body, from an animal ancestor,
through which he is closely related to
the apes. The subject is one that be
longs to the science of which Haeckel is
one of the acknowledged masters. It was
thought that all serious criticism of the
work—all criticism that had the moral and
constructive aim of ensuring the triumph
of truth—would centre upon these first
ten chapters dealing with evolution. The
critics have acted otherwise, and we shall
see that there is little serious resistance
to our extension of the principle of
natural evolution to man, and bringing
him within the unity of the cosmos.
Let us see first, however, what is the
attitude of cultivated thought generally
on the subject. We have seen how the
defenders of gaps have surrendered the
inorganic world to the monist, how a
mere handful remain to defend the
dualistic theory of the origin of life, and
how they have fled before the advance
of the Darwinians. We shall now find
that they are fast deserting this last
breach in the evolutionary scheme. A
quarter of a century ago Tyndall shook
the world with his famous : “ We claim,
and we will wrest from theology, the
whole domain of cosmological theory.”
‘‘ His successors,” said Professor Dewar,
in the same city, last year, “have no
longer any need to repeat those signifi
cant words . . . The claim has been
practically, though often unconsciously,
conceded.”
Canon Aubrey Moore,
whose work Mr. Ballard recommends
us to read, urged his colleagues to
admit the claim nearly twenty years
ago. Wallace’s idea, he said, “has a
strangely unorthodox look.
If, as a
Christian believes, the higher intellect
who used these laws for the creation of
man, was the same God who worked in
and by these same laws in creating the
lower forms of life, Mr. Wallace’s dis
tinction of cause disappears.” Again :
“We have probably as much to learn
about the soul from comparative psychology, a science which as yet scarcely
exists, as we have learned about the
body from comparative biology.”1 He
concludes that the question has nothing
to do with religion. Dr. W. N. Clarke
is no less clear. “The time has come,”
he says, “ when theology should remand
the investigation of the time and manner
of the origin of man to the science or
anthropology with its kindred sciences,
just as it now remands the time and'
manner of the origin of the earth to
astronomy and geology . . . anthropo
logy and its kindred sciences will give
an evolutionary answer.” Again : “ But
though there is no reason against
1 Science and the Faith, pp. 203 and 211.
�THE ASCENT OF MAN
5i
an infirmary in travelling by rail across
admitting it if it is supported by facts,
special creation, whether of the spirit of Switzerland. Observations on the beauty
man or of other new elements of the of the mountains led to a discussion of
advancing order, may come to appear their natural growth, and the nun—little
improbable. The larger the sweep of suspecting his identity—informed him
one great progressive method, the more that she had obtained her sensible and
probable does it become that the method modern views from Haeckel’s Natural
is universal. The idea of unity in God’s History of Creation / We shall see in
the end that the religious opposition to
work and method is an idea that tends,
Haeckel’s teaching—his real teaching—
when once it has been admitted, to
is crumbling year by year. On our pre
extend over the whole field.”1
Dr.
Iverach and Mr. Newman Smyth desert sent question of the evolution of the
the gap, and refer us to science for the human mind, one may gather from this
solution; though, as before, we shall very general agreement of the cultured
find Dr. Iverach raising subsequent and defenders of Christianity that scientific
irrelevant difficulties.
Professor Le and expert opinion can be little short of
Conte and Mr. Fiske, whom we are unanimous. Dr. Wallace, with whose
views we shall deal separately, does in
told to read, are emphatic evolutionists.
Says Le Conte : “ I believe the spirit of deed stand out with a strange obstinacy
man was developed out of the anima or in the world of science—stands out as
conscious principle of animals, and that Virchow so long did in Germany, as
this again was developed out of the Cuvier did in France—but the doctrine
of the evolution of mind is now
lower forms of life-force, and this in its
turn out of the chemical and physical generally accepted by psychologists.
Professor J. Ward says “ the unanimity
forces of nature.” 2 Mr. Fiske sketches
with which this conclusion is now
a theory of natural evolution in his
accepted by biologists of every school
Through Nature to God (p. 94). Dr.
Dallinger allows it is “ not by any means seems to justify Darwin’s confidence a
other than conceivable that science may quarter of a century ago.”1 Another
psychologist, Professor
be able to demonstrate the actual distinguished
Miinsterberg, is equally scornful of those
physical line of man’s origin” (quoted
by Mr. Ballard). Even Mr. Rhondda who still linger in this breach.2 Sir W.
Williams believes “ evolution is com Turner closed his Presidential address
plete from the jelly-fish up to Shake to the British Association in 1900 with a
confident assumption of the general
speare” (p. 26), and says (p. 40):
“When evolution reached man she acceptance of the doctrine3—so far,
seemed not to be content with making indeed, as to evoke from a conservative
writer in the Athenceum a lament that
bodies, and devoted herself to the
development of intelligence and the he “ carried the evolutionary idea to its
logical conclusion with a most uncom
noblest feelings.”
Haeckel is, therefore, once more in promising materialism.” In fact, a cul
tivated and hostile reviewer in the Man
excellent and edifying company. He
chester Guardian dismisses the first and
tells in his latest work (Aus Insulinde)
how he found himself a few years ago
1 Naturalism and
p. 7face to face with the religious director of Ward is speaking ofAgnosticism, ii, doctrineDr.
the complete
of
1 An Outline of Christian Theology, p. 225.
2 Evolution and Religious Thought, p. 313.
And elsewhere he says that until recently “ the
grounds of our belief in immortality were based
largely on a supposed separateness of man from
the brutes—his complete uniqueness in the whole
scheme of nature. This is now no longer
possible” (The Conception of God, p. 75).
development.
2 Psychology and Life, p. 91.
3 I shall quote his words presently to show
that he held not only evolution, but evolution in
the same sense as Haeckel. I shall also quote
similar language from the speech of the President
of the Anthropological section at the Congress of
1901.
�52
THE ASCENT OF MAN
chief part of Haeckel’s book with an
assurance that “ nowadays you cannot
startle even the man in the street by tell
ing him the soul has been continuously
evolved from the souls of unicellular
protists.” For my part, I am not pre
pared to assign Dr. Wallace, or even
Dr. Horton, to a lower level of culture
than that of the man in the street. But
it would be difficult to draw up to-day
even a slender list of capable biologists
or anthropologists who deny the ascent
of man from the rest of the animal
world.
. This very general agreement of scien
tific men, accepted, as it is, by the ablest
theistic writers of the day, has a formid
able support in the facts and the justified
assumptions of science. Once it has
been proved that the whole development
of nature, from the formation of atoms
up to the formation of species, has pro
ceeded in a continuous manner; and
when it is known, as we do know to
day, that this law of natural evolution
applies also to the most elaborate of our
thoughts and institutions, to our art, our
language, and our civilisation; it becomes
clear that there is so strong a presump
tion for the natural evolution of man
that only the most explicit proof of
man’s uniqueness could prevent us from
applying the law to explain his origin.
When we find further that man is akin
to the lower species in a score of ways
which point to derivation, and are quite
unintelligible on any other theory, the
onus of proof lies heavier than ever on
those who resist. We should be scien
tifically and logically justified in assuming
the evolution of man, unless and until
some grave hindrance is pointed out
in. the nature of man’s structure or
spiritual powers. . But, as I said, the
positive evidence is enormous. As far
as structure is concerned we have no
reply to meet.
The proofs which
Haeckel has marshalled so ably in
Chapters II.-V. of the Riddle have
passed unchallenged; nor is there any
serious “answer by anticipation” which
we should be expected to consider. The
analogy of man’s structure and his phy
siological functions with those of other
mammals, the significant course of his
embryological development, and the
atrophied organs and muscles that are
still transmitted from mother to child,
have convinced a stubborn world at
length. . That gap has been deserted.
It is still thought by some that a gulf
remains between the mind of man and
that of the other animals, and that here
at least they still find their treasured in
tervention of an external power in the
orderly development of the universe.
They think that man’s mental powers,
and what he has achieved with those
powers, mark him off too sharply
from the psychology of the lower
animals for us to admit evolution.
Let us see first what distinctions are
alleged in support of this assertion,
and then we may study the force
of. the psychological evidence for evo
lution.
Now, when we turn to the critics of
the Riddle—either explicit critics or
critics “ by anticipation ”—we find we
have to deal with a very meagre group
of. not very clear or well-informed
thinkers. Such phrases as those which
Mr. Blatchford quotes from a sermon
delivered by Dr. Talmage as late as
1898, that the evolution of man is “con
trary to the facts of science,” and that
“natural evolution is not upward but
always downward ’’—only show the kind
of stuff that can be safely delivered
in tabernacles. Dr. Horton, another
preacher, complains that Haeckel “has
not been able to explain the origin of
consciousness,” or “how the rational
life we call spirit has been produced by
the physical ”; which is a complete
ignoring—probably ignorance—of" the
mass of evidence Haeckel has presented,
as we shall see.
Mr. Ballard hides
behind the respectable figure of Dr.
A. R. Wallace, though at other times he
seems indesirous to press the objection.
We are, in fact, left to face a medley of
small points made by the Rev. Rhondda
Williams (who admits the evolution of
�THE ASCENT OF MAN
the mind), Dr. Iverach, and the Rev.
Ambrose Pope.
Mr. Pope, you will remember, holds
that Haeckel collected the basic material
for his system during three “half-day
excursions.”
He himself admits the
sufficiency of evolution until we come
to the human mind, and then says:
“This is psychology, and, like all psy
chologists, Haeckel starts with certain
metaphysical hypotheses.
His hypo
thesis is that mental phenomena are the
effects of physical phenomena.” This,
he says, “ looks like an innocent assump
tion ”—to whom, we are not told—but
it contains the fatal conclusion, and is
“ opposed by nearly every psychologist of
repute in the world.” These men are
“ expert psychologists,” whereas Haeckel
is only making a “ half-day excursion ”
from his own province into “ another
subject entirely.” One really begins to
suspect that it was during “ a half-day
excursion ” that Mr. Pope studied
Haeckel.
A grosser travesty of his
system it would be difficult to conceive.
Serious students will not expect an
analysis of it, but I will briefly point
out its absurdities. This subject is as
much within the province of compara
tive zoology, of which Haeckel is one of
the greatest living masters, as it is in
the field of psychology. It is a border
question. There was, therefore, no ex
cursion.
Indeed, it is not too much
to say that this tracing of the upward
growth of mind has been one of
Haeckel’s most absorbing studies ; and
now his conclusion, based on a long
life of study and research, is to be
flippantly represented as an “assumption”
ignorantly and hastily stolen from a
province “ entirely ” different from his
own—a province, moreover, where we
are assured it did not exist. Further,
of the seven “ psychologists of repute ”
whom Mr. Pope quotes—Windt (Wundt),
Hoffding, Ward, Sully, Stout, Dewy,
and James—six at least admit the evo
lution of mind by purely natural pro
cesses. I have already quoted the ablest
ot them, Professor Ward, as a witness
53
to the unanimity of this conclu
sion.1
With the difficulties alleged by Dr.
Iverach we will not linger. He seems
not to insist on the impossibility of
evolution, but urges that man is actually
separated from the animals by several
marked prerogatives. One of these is
language; but as Dr. Iverach admits this
is “ manifestly a social product ”—that is
to say, evolved—one wonders why it is
adduced at all. Another difference is
in his relation to his environment, which
he can modify and turn to service ; that
also is clearly an acquired or evolved
faculty. Finally, Dr. Iverach urges man’s
distinction in the way of science,
religion, morality, civilisation, and so on.
Experts are agreed, and many theo
logians are with them, that these are all
evolutionary products. They did not
exist 300,000 years ago. Nor does Dr.
Iverach seriously urge them as objections
to the theory of evolution. On the other
hand, Mr. Rhondda Williams, who
“ believes ”—though it is “not proved
that man was evolved, soul and body,
makes a prolonged onslaught on
Haeckel’s position. Before we follow
him into his storm-cloud of rhetoric, let
us make clear what he hopes to gain by
it. He admits the fact of evolution.
He claims, of course, that the evolution
ary process was divinely or pantheistically
guided; a point we discuss later. The
only practical question is : Does he, or
does he not, admit that the agencies at
work in the uplifting of the human
species are the same agencies which we
have hitherto dealt with ? If he does, it
is of no real consequence to us that he
finds Haeckel’s theory of consciousness
or of memory at fault. The main point is
the exclusion of the new kind of force
which was supposed to enter the world
with the human mind. It is important
to remember—he seems to forget it
himself sometimes—that Mr. Williams
does not postulate the entrance of a new
1 In so far as Mr. Pope means that they differ
from Haeckel as to the actual relation of brain
and mind we shall meet the point presently.
�54
THE ASCENT OF MAN
force into the cosmos, but, like Le Conte to “ psychoplasm ” for more “conjuring.”
and Fiske, sees only a further unfolding
Haeckel is represented as “calling in
of the universal spirit. At the bottom
psychoplasm to account for what proto
his quarrel with Haeckel is not about the plasm could not do”—which is false;
evolution of the human soul, or the
psychoplasm being the same thing as
agencies which evolved it, but as to the protoplasm, but in a different relation,
relation of all soul to brain.
just as Dr. Lionel Beale speaks of
He promises us, then, that he is going
“bioplasm”—and then as saying that
to convict the distinguished scientist
“ what springs from it is declared to be
of “jugglery,” and to find him in only a name for what protoplasm does.”
“a perfect muddle,” and so on. The Mr. Williams foists on Haeckel a
first “conjuring trick” is produced by fictitious distinction, and then invites
a little conjuring on the preacher’s his admiring audience to make merry
own part. He cuts in two Haeckel’s over the confusion it involves. Any
reference (p. 94) to “ the transcendental student with a desire to understand,
design of the teleological philosophy of rather than to score rhetorical points,
the schools,” inserts a full-stop after will see at a glance that Haeckel’s termin
“design,” and then asks us to admire ology is perfectly consistent with itself
the stupidity or desperateness of a man and the facts.
Protoplasm is the
who first excludes purpose from the material substratum of all life; but
universe—“in order to shut out God” when it takes on the form of nerve
—and then finds it in the organic world tissue and becomes the base of nerveand calls it “ mechanical teleology.” If,
life (which we all agree to call psychic
moreover, Mr. Williams cannot see that life) it is described as psychoplasm.
the word “design” or “purpose” is Just as Mr. Williams’s procedure would
used only in a figurative sense in the be called clever from the intellectual
second application, he would do well to point of view, but by a different name
re-study the passage. A similar con from the moral standpoint.
fusion is found in his criticism of
As a last instance of this poor
Haeckel’s treatment of consciousness
“jugglery” I will quote one more
and memory. He labours to prove that passage. Haeckel, he says, “speaks of
Haeckel must take the word memory
certain parts of the brain as ‘the real
figuratively in its lower stages—which organs of mental life; they are those
is precisely what Haeckel obviously highest instruments of psychic activity
means. But the justification of apply that produce thought and conscious
ing the word “ memory ” to the function
ness ! ’ Look at the contradiction in
of a cell and to the human faculty lies
that statement. Certain parts of the
in the whole mass of proof Haeckel has brain are said to be at once the instru
accumulated to show that they are the ments and the producers of conscious
same function, and that the one passes
ness 1 Talk about a doctor using
gradually, as the nervous system develops,
instruments if you like, but do not talk
into the other. That is one of the
of the instruments producing the doctor;
most superficial truths of comparative and especially do not speak as if both
statements could be true at the same
psychology.1 Then Mr. Williams turns
time.” This is a bewildering sort of
1 We may compare Mr. Ballard’s eagerness to
point out that, whereas Haeckel grants zis no
souls or wills, he ascribes these even to the cells
and atoms. It is the same curious and wilful
misconstruction. Haeckel maintains that the
force associated with the atom or the cell is the
same fundamentally as that which reveals itself
in our consciousness. That is the logical con
clusion of all his proofs of continuous, natural
development. He is, therefore, logically correct
in speaking of the “soul” of the atom if we
insist on speaking of the “soul” of man. The
sensation and will he attributes to atoms are
obviously figurative, and merely reminders of his
doctrine of the unity of all force or spirit—a
unity which Le Conte and Fiske and even Mr.
Williams (when he is consistent) also admit.
�THE ASCENT OF MAN
criticism.
Organs, instruments, and
producers are clearly used by Haeckel
in much the same sense. None but a
pedant, or a desperate critic, would
abuse us for saying that the stomach
was the instrument and producer of
digestion; certainly no one would
misunderstand us. Thought is not a
substantial entity like a doctor. The
simile is totally misleading.
Happily, Mr. Williams finds we have
arrived at last at the crucial point, and
he says that it is : “ Does the mind use
the brain as an instrument, or does the
brain really produce the mind ? Haeckel’s
position is the latter. But do not sup
pose for a moment that he has any
scientific proof of it.” Anyone who is
acquainted with modern psychology is
aware that neither of the positions Mr.
Williams puts is held by anybody of
consequence nowadays.
Spiritualist
philosophers do not speak of the mind
using the brain; and Haeckel, when
you pay serious attention to all he says,
does not hold that the brain produces
the mind. Matter, he has said from the
beginning, never produces force or spirit.
They are two aspects of one reality, as
Mr. Williams himself holds (p. 8). The
sole question with Haeckel is whether
this force we call the human mind is one
with the force revealed in the animal
mind and also in inorganic nature. That
is naturally the first concern of a monist.
Force, it is a truism in science, varies with
its material substratum. When hydrogen
and oxygen are united the resultant force
has vastly different properties from what
it had before. When water unites with
fresh chemical substances, force takes on
again a wholly new set of properties ;
and the more elaborate the material
compound, the more elaborate the force.
Protoplasm is a most highly elaborate
chemical compound with a most intri
cate molecular structure. It is quite
natural to expect the force-side of it to
be very distinctive and peculiar; so we
agree to connect life with the lower
forces. But when protoplasm becomes
psychoplasm, the complication greatly
55
increases; the force varies in the same
proportion. The psychoplasm or proto
plasm of the higher animal brain ad
vances still further in complexity, and,
moreover, organic structure of the most
intricate kind is added. Hence in the
human brain, on physical principles, we
must expect a manifestation of force
vastly different from all that we find else
where. We find mind.
Haeckel, on
the strength of this very clear and
scientific reasoning, and of all the facts
as to the intimate dependence of mind
on nerve-tissue which he gathers into
several chapters, and all the facts as to
the gradual unfolding of this force we
call mind in exact correspondence to the
growth in complexity of the nervous
system, concludes that he sees no reason
for thinking that the mind-force is
specifically different from any other kind
of force. I will return to this very im
portant point presently. Meantime we
see what there is in Mr. Williams’s state
ment of Haeckel’s position and his
assertion that it is an idle assumption.1
1 I dare not risk fatiguing the reader with a
further analysis of Mr. Williams’s criticisms under
this head. I have treated them at some length,
because this is the chief section of his criticism
of Haeckel, and because, though this is the chief
section of Haeckel’s book, no other critic devotes
more than a paragraph to it. But I will briefly
point out some further instances of Mr. Williams’
peculiar method. He says that, “ as far as science
goes,” we are “quite free” to conceive the rela
tion of mind to brain as that of “ the musician
and his instrument.” That is gravely misleading.
Science permits no such substantial independence
of each other as there is between musician and
organ. The only proper metaphor science would
allow is the relation of music to the instrument;
which is by no means so accommodating to the
dualist. With the petty quibble about “ truth
I will not delay. But on the next page (23) you
will note how Mr. Williams quotes Haeckel’s,
saying that ‘ ‘ man sinks to the level of a placental
mammal ” (which no one questions, in substance),,
and in the next paragraph turns this into the
grotesque doctrine ‘ ‘ that human nature sinks to.
the level of tie lowest placental mammal ” (a,
very lowly beast)! Then he grumbles that
Haeckel is “ inconsistent in his estimates of
man ” ; though he must know that Haeckel only’
belittles man relatively to the old theology.
Then (p. 24), after a pedantic effort to make
Haeckel say the mind of Shakespeare may have:
rivals in the animal world, he credits him with.
Bishops gate Institnta?
�56
THE ASCENT OF MAN
Mr. Williams and his colleagues may
be advised to take to heart the words of
one of the ablest American psycho
logists, Professor Miinsterberg, who is
by no means a materialist. “ The
philosopher,” he says, “ who bases the
hope of immortality on a theory of brain
functions and enjoys the facts which
cannot be physiologically explained,
stands, it seems to me, on the same
ground with the astronomer who seeks
with his telescope for a place in the
universe where no space exists, and
where there would be undisturbed room
for God and eternal bodiless souls.”1
All this criticism is neither more nor less
than an attempt to defend gaps. If Mr.
Williams replies that it is rather an
attempt to point out gaps in Haeckel’s
system, the reply is obvious. The
essence of Haeckel’s system is monistic
or negative. Any positive theories he
may advance as to the relation of brain
to memory or cell to consciousness are
scientific theories, grounded on the best
available evidence, but not final and
unchangeable. If they prove inade
quate, or if fresh facts discountenance
them, they will be modified. But the
essential part of his position remains.
“The whole momentum of our know
ledge of biological continuities,” as
Mr. Newman Smyth says, the whole
momentum of our knowledge of cosmic
processes, indeed, impels us to suppose
the human mind was evolved. Where
are the obstacles to such an assump
tion ?
Where are the specifically
different—not merely very different, but
the opinion that the difference between the mind
of Plato and the animal is “slighter in every
respect than that between the anthropoid ape
and a bird”; whereas Plaeckel had said “be
tween the higher and the lower animal souls,”
which may mean the gorilla and the amoeba.
Then he finds a difference between the animal
and the human embryo in the fact that the
embryo will become a man and ‘1 the highest
animal never will ” ; which is begging the whole
question whether the highest animal has not
actually done so. Such is the farrago of rhetoric
opposed to us as the only and adequate reply to
the most important section of the Riddle.
1 Psychology and Life, p. 91.
different in kind—contents of the
human mind which forbid us to suppose
it ? They are disappearing one by one
as the sciences of comparative psycho
logy and comparative philology and
comparative sociology and comparative
ethics and religion unfold their several
stories. Everything has been evolved.
To talk blandly of the “vast difference ”
between mind and matter is “ an appeal to
the imagination ” and “ an insult to the
understanding,” says Mr. Mallock. He
goes on to censure the dishonest
practice of contrasting the mind of the
highest man with that of the lower
animals. That is not truth-seeking.
The truth-seeker will take the highest
animal intelligence (as discovered by
the observations of Darwin, Romanes,
Lloyd-Morgan, Lubbock, and so many
others) and the lowest human intelli
gence (as seen in the Veddahs or
Hottentots, or as indicated by pre
historic human skulls) and ask himself
whether he finds here a gulf which
evolution could not be supposed to
have bridged in something like 500,000
years. But if animals have the germ,
ask some, why can you not raise one to
a higher level ? Setting aside the actual
results of training, let us ask : Did it,
on the theistic-evolution theory of man’s
origin, take God 300,000 years or more
to raise the highest animal species to the
miserable level man occupied 50,000 or
100,000 years ago ? And do you ask
man to do more than this in a year or
two ?
But, though it is well to remember
that the essence of Haeckel’s position is
the reasoned exclusion of any new force,
we are bound to give serious attention to
the positive evidence he has accumu
lated.
The verbal quibbles of Mr.
Williams have not touched the structure
of evidence given in Chaps. VII.-X.
of the Riddle, and no other critic is in the
field. To resume it briefly, we have a
fourfold gradation of psychic force, or a
fourfold exhibition of the growth of
mind. In the first place, we may arrange
J all known organisms, from the moneron
�THE ASCENT OF MAN
to man, in a scale of mental faculty, or
vital faculty leading up to mental, and we
find a sensibly graduated development
of mind, corresponding rigidly. to the
growth of structure in complexity. In
the second place, we study the growth
of the individual human mind from the
impregnated ovum, and we find the
same gradual formation of nerve and
brain and the. same proportionate
unfolding of consciousness. In the
third place, we learn from palseontology
that living things have been developed
from each other in the order in which
the zoologist arranges his subjects, and
which is confidently anticipated by the
embryologist. In the fourth place, if we
arrange the brains of all known men in
a similar hierarchic scale, we find the
same rigid correspondence of function
and structure, or of mind-action and
brain. Then there are supplementary
and complementary lines of research.
There is the life of the sub-conscious
self, which Professor James says is a
great world we are only just beginning
to explore. Already the explorations
show conscious action to be only a
small area of mental action ; the larger
area is mostly mechanical, and the
conscious area passes gradually into it
and out of it. As Mr. Mallock says:
“ The human mind, like an iceberg
which floats with most of its bulk sub
merged, from its first day to its last, has
more of itself below the level of con
sciousness than ever appears above it.”
There are the facts of double and
abnormal consciousness, the. various
kinds of mental paralysis resulting from
lesion of the brain, the phenomena of
somnambulism and narcotic action and
artificial unconsciousness. There are
the voluminous determinations
of
psycho-physics as to the exact correspon
dence between purely physical and
chemical changes in the brain and
changes in thought or emotion. There
are the zealous investigations of the
modern students of child-life and child
brain, showing the same exact relation
of development. And there are the
57
most recent and largely successful
efforts to localise mental functions in
different parts of the brain.
Now, let us be perfectly clear what
this enormous mass of convergent
evidence really means. When we study
the stomach or the lungs in comparative
zoology, and perceive the close cor
respondence, from the lowest to the
highest forms, of structure and function,
we do not dream of concluding only
that the two have a very close con
nection : we say at once that they are
in the relation of organ and its function :
we say that the digestive force or the
respiratory-force is the same throughout,
and we can at the lowest end of the
scale connect it with ordinary natural
forces. Yet when we have this stupen
dous mass of evidence converging along
a dozen lines to the conclusion that the
mind-force is continuous throughout the
animal kingdom, and is rigidly and
absolutely bound up, as far as every
particle of scientific evidence goes, with
the nerve-structure., and is, at the lower
end, continuous with the ordinary force
of the universe, we are told we must
draw no conclusion whatever. We are
asked to believe that this mass of
scientific evidence is quite consistent
with a belief that some extraneous force,
distinct in kind from the ordinary force
of the cosmos, is “ using ” the nerve
tissue to manifest itself; and that the
highly complex force which must result
from the intricate molecular texture of
the human brain is nowhere discoverable.
On scientific principles “these facts,” as
Mr. Mallock says, “totally destroy the
foundation of the theist’s arguments.”
They teach us that, as he says again,
“each mother who has watched with
pride, as something peculiar and original,
the growth of her child’s mind, from the
days of the cradle to the days of the
first lesson-book, has really been watch
ing, compressed into a few brief years,
i the stupendous process which began in
the darkest abyss of time and connects
our thoughts, like our bodies, with the
primary living substance—whether this
�58
THE ASCENT OF MAN
be wholly identical with what we call
matter or no.”1 If it were not for the
presence amongst us of certain religious
traditions about the nature of man’s
“ soul,” or mind-force, no scientist would
ever hesitate for a moment to draw a
conclusion which would be justified by
every canon of logic and science—the
conclusion that in this vast hierarchy of
facts we see the world-force ascending
upwards until it grows self-conscious in
the human brain. Haeckel’s attitude is
the strictly and purely scientific attitude.
But, it is further urged, this is only a
description of the manner of growth, not
of the causes. “ Thus,” says Professor
Case, “ in presence of the problem which
is the crux of materialism, the origin of
consciousness, he first propounds a
gratuitous hypothesis that everything has
mind, and then gives up the origin of
conscious mind after all.” I have ex
plained in what sense Haeckel attributes
mind to “ everything ”—though a skilled
metaphysician might be expected to see
that. To the second point I reply that
the whole of this evidence is an explana
tion of the origin of mind. The whole
evidence points to the conclusion that
conscious mind is an outgrowth of un
conscious, and that this is the generally
diffused cosmic force. But you cannot
derive the conscious from the uncon
scious, say several critics. The objection
is childish. If we are to explain any
thing, as Sir A. Rucker said, we cannot
explain it in terms of itself: the conscious
must be derived from the unconscious.
And as a fact, Mr. Mallock points out,
you do get consciousness out of the
unconscious every day—in the growth of
the infant; or, as Lloyd Morgan puts it,
in the development of the chicken from
the egg. In any case, the critics plead,
you are only saying how and not why
mind was evolved. Now, in so far as
this is a plea for teleology, we remand it,
1 Religion as a Credible Doctrine, p. 77. The
last phrase is superfluous. No one “wholly
identifies ” the primary living substance with
“ matter.” Matter and force are two aspects of
it, as brain and mind are.
as before. If it is anything more than
this, it is a plea for gaps and breaches in
the mechanical scheme of the universe,
building. fallaciously (as usual) on the
present imperfection of science. Take
the development of the embryo. We
certainly can do little more as yet than
describe its stages. But no one now
doubts it is a mechanical process. The
assumption that some non-mechanical
force was grouping and marshalling the
molecules of protoplasm, according to a
design of which it was itself totally un
conscious, only plunges us in deeper
mysteries than ever. Moreover, the facts
of heredity, the transmission of bodily
marks and features and peculiarities,
point wholly to a mechanical or bodily
action. The development of the mind
on a cosmic scale is still more clearly
mechanical. There is not a single fact
that compels us to go outside of the range
of familiar cosmic forces to seek an
explanation.
I will add one or two illustrations from
recent science to show how its progress
tends more and more to confirm Haec
kel’s position. Sir W. Turner closed his
presidential address to the British Asso
ciation three years ago with these words
(which were duly censured as “ material
ism ”): “ At last man came into exist
ence. His nerve-energy, in addition to
regulating the processes in his economy
which he possesses in common with
animals, was endowed with higher
powers. When translated into psychical
activity, it has enabled him throughout
the ages to progress from the condition
of a rude savage to an advanced stage
of civilisation.” Thus is the very lan
guage of Haeckel used on our supreme
scientific solemnity. The following year
Professor D. J. Cunningham (M.D.,
D.Sc., LL.D., D.C.L., F.R.S.) was the
president of the Anthropological Section
of the Congress, and his presidential
address was devoted to “ the part which
the human brain has played in the evo
lution of man.” The whole speech was
a vindication of the purely mechanical ex
! planation of the rise of man. Instead of
�THE ASCENT OF MAN
seeking the influence of external powers,
Professor Cunningham looks for more
prosaic changes that may have led to the
segregation of man. The reader who is
only accustomed to rhetorical and
spiritualistic treatment of the theme will
learn with a shock that the mere forma
tion of a habit of setting the hands free
for other purposes than locomotion pro
bably had a profound effect on the brain
and intelligence. “ So important is the
part played by the human hand as an
agent of the mind, and so perfectly is
it adjusted with reference to this office,
that there are many who think that the
first great start which man obtained on
the path which has led to his higher
development was given by the setting
of the upper limb free from the duty or
acting as an organ of support and loco
motion.” It hardly needed divine inter
vention or guidance to suggest this
change. The hand-centre in the brain
is located in such a region that its de
velopment must react on the cortex.
Further it is “ the acquisition of speech
which has been a dominant factor in
determining the high development of the
human brain.” The centre for facial
expression is contiguous to that of the
hand, and, as communication began to
grow between the primitive men, much
facial expression would be used, giving a
still further stimulus to the brain. In
fine, not only is language shown by the
philologist to be an evolutionary product,
but the physiologist finds that the dis
tinctive structures in the human brain
(though they may occasionally be fairly
traced in the brain of the anthropoid
ape) which are connected with speech
are the outcome of “a slow evolu
tionary growth.” Thus is science coming
to determine the physiological line of
evolution which gave the first distinction
of brain-power, on which natural selec
tion has fastened so effectively.1
1 Let me quote Professor Cunningham’s con
clusion : “ Assuming that the acquisition of
speech has afforded the chief stimulus to the
general development of the brain, therebygiving it a rank high above any other factor
59
Thus are the mechanical methods of
science bridging the supposed gulf.
There is no longer serious ground for
claiming a unique position for man, and
it is not surprising to find the leading
theologians sounding the retreat once
more. We are, in fact, beginning to
realise that the dualist theory of man
never did afford any “ explanation ” of
anything. The connection of soul and
body was always incomprehensible;1
nor is there the slightest intellectual satis
faction in covering up the whole mystery
of the mind with a label bearing the
word “ spirit.” Psychology has deserted
its old ways and become a science.. The
theologians will do well not to wait until
they are again ignominiously splashed
by the advancing tide of scientific re
search. Their efforts to “ show cause ”
why we should not apply the mechanical
process of evolution (whether divinely
guided or not) to the growth of man
have hopelessly failed.
But before we leave the question it
is necessary to consider for a moment
the question of the liberty of the will.
Here Haeckel’s opponents are content
to appeal to what Emerson calls “the
cowardly doctrine of consequences.”
We shall consider the moral outlook of
a monistic world in a later chapter, but
which has operated in the evolution of man, it
would be wrong to lose sight of the fact that
the first step in this upward movement must have
been taken by the brain itself. Some cerebral
variation—probably trifling and insignificant at
the start, and yet pregnant with the most farreaching possibilities—has in . the stem-form of
man contributed that condition which has
rendered speech possible.
This variation,
strengthened and fostered by natural selection,
has in the end led to the great double result.of
a large brain with wide and extensive associa
tion-areas and articulate speech, the two results
being brought about by the mutual reaction of
the one process on the other.”
1 Compare Professor Herbert’s desperate pre
dicament in his Modern Realism Examined,
which we are urged to read : “We may regard
the material world as real, but if we do we must
deny the existence of all but Creative Intelligence.
... If the material world is as it seems, it
contains no minds” (p. 148). Mr. Mallock
points all this out to Father Maher.very forcibly
in his Religion as a Credible Doctrine.
�6o
THE ASCENT OF MAN
may observe in passing that all this kind
of reasoning is futile and insincere. It
will not make the least practical differ
ence to life whether psychologists do
or do not agree to leave unimpaired the
old formula of “ the liberty of the will.”
A man can control his actions to a great
extent, and will to that extent be re
sponsible for them. On that we have
the witness of consciousness. How this
apparent power of choice arises in a
mechanism like the mind we can hardly
expect to understand until the new
psychology has made some progress.
But the old idea of a “ self-determining
power of the will ” is now “ an unthink
able conception,” as Dr. Croll (who
is on the list of the sound scientists)
emphatically says. Mr. Mallock also
thinks that “every attempt to escape
from the determinism of science by
analysis or by observation is fruitless.”
No sooner do we begin to look closely
into our free-will than we find the sup
posed area of its action shrinking
rapidly : we find ourselves in a perfect
network of determining influences.
Our will is the slave to our desire; we
cannot will what we do not desire, nor
what we desire the least or the less.
Our desire can always be traced to
our circumstances, our education, our
character and temperament. And our
character and
temperament — here
modern science has had a great deal
to say—are determined by heredity and
environment. The attempt to break
through this network with a cry of alarm
about consequences is futile. There
will be no practical consequences of an
evil character; and the consequences
for good of the scientific attack on the
old doctrine, from the days of Robert
Owen down, have been incalculable.
The community is a self-conscious
determinism. Now that it knows how
much heredity and environment have to
do with character and desire, and with
the healthy balancing of desires, it will
take action. The whole of education
and social reform have benefited enor
mously by the overthrow of the old
scholastic notion of the will. Such
“ freedom ” as we now find we have—if
we may still use the word—is not differ
ent in kind from that which a cat or a
dog evinces every day.
We conclude, then, that Haeckel’s
opponents have shown no plausible
reason why evolution should not extend
to the origin of man. The great achieve
ments which distinguish man to-day from
the animal world—art, science, philo
sophy, religion, civilisation, language—•
are known to have been formed, from
very rudimentary beginnings, by a long
process of evolution. At their root, in
the men whose skulls and bones and
rude implements are unearthed to-day,
we find only a somewhat more elaborate
brain, with deeper furrows and more con
volutions, a somewhat higher grade of
intelligence and emotion, than in the
higher animals about us. There is no
gulf, no gap: but there is a period of
some 300,000 years for natural selection
to work in. Comparative anatomy is
beginning to trace the steps—quite
natural, if not at first casual, steps—by
which man ascended in this direction. A
chance variation in the use of the limbs
could, it seems, greatly stimulate the
most important part of the brain. Any
increase of brain-power would prove of
enormous advantage, and would be
“ selected ” and emphasised at once. In
any case the momentum of continuity
and the mass of evidence for actual con
tinuity are enormous. It is no less
scientific than philosophical to see in the
growth of the human mind a further ex
tension of the life-force of the cosmos, a
further embodiment of the great matter
force reality which unfolds itself in the
universe about us and in the wonderful
self-conscious mechanism of the mind.
�THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL
Chapter
61
VI
THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL
Until a few centuries ago a belief in have the same fate. Man now sees in
the immortality of the soul harmonised the universe at large no shadow of
so well with the prevailing conception support for that promise of unending
of the world at large that men were life he has entertained so long.
content with but slender rational proof “What! shall the dateless worlds in dust be
of it. Even then, it is true, the tragedy
blown
Back to the unremembered and unknown,
of death seemed to the eye so final—And this frail Thou—the flame of yesterday—
the curtain seemed to be rung down so
Burn on forlorn, immortal, and unknown ? ”
inexorably on the conscious soul—that
sceptics were not wanting. The Sad
Death is the law of all things. It is
ducees amongst the Hebrews, the true that the great reality that shapes'
Epicureans amongst the Greeks, and itself in a million forms never dies.
the materiarii of early Christian times, That is its first law. But of every
rejected the belief entirely. Some of single embodiment of its restless energy,
the ablest of the mediaeval schoolmen of every individual being that pours out
(such as Duns Scotus) went so far as to of its womb, the path is measured and
deny that any rational proof could be the fate is written.
devised in support of the belief. But ‘
“ Life lives on.
for most men the belief was credible
It is the lives, the lives, the lives, that die.”
enough, and not unwelcome. Immor
So rhe position of the belief in per
tality was a familiar idea to them. Not
only God and the angels had that sonal immortality has changed. The
prerogative, but the very stars they pretty thoughts that supported it, or
looked on night by night were believed accompanied it, in the mind of a Plato
to be of immortal texture. In a world or an Augustine, crumble beneath the
where the immortal outnumbered the burden some would lay on them to-day.
mortal, man could well convince him The cosmic odds are against it. It is
self that the tradition of his own immor now the assumption of a stupendous
privilege on the part of one inhabitant
tality was true.
But the world has grown into a of the universe, who flatters himself he
universe to-day, and from end to end of is exempted from the general law of
it comes only the whisper of death. death. We look up now to no immortal
The stars, that had been regarded as ■i stars for reassurance as we turn sadly
fragments of immortal fire, are known from the truthful face of the dead. The
to be hastening to a sure extinction. angels have retreated far from the ways
The moon stands close to us always of humanity. God has shrunk into an
as a calm prophet of death. Such as it intangible cosmic principle. If belief
is, the corpse of a world, will our earth in immortality is to be anything more
one day be. Such will our sun finally than a despairing trust, it must appeal to
become; and after him, or with him, the presence in man of some unique
the hundred millions of his fellows in power and promise. But we have seen
the firmament. Countless dead worlds that modern science completely dis
already lie on the paths of heaven ; and credits the “ supposed separateness of
the millions that are yet unborn will man from the brutes,” to use the words
�62
THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL
of Le Conte. The thinking force in him
is the same force that reveals itself in
the industry and ingenuity of the ant or
the affection of the dog. Why shall it
survive the corruption of the brain
in this case, yet in their case die
away as surely as the light dies when
the sun sets ? It would seem that it is
not so much a question of examining
Haeckel’s disproofs, as of asking where
we are to look for the ground of this
stupendous claim.
We shall fully consider both points in
the light of the criticisms passed on
Haeckel’s chapter on immortality and
the works on the subject which are
opposed to him. The actual criticisms
will detain us very little, for an obvious
reason. Haeckel has already destroyed
the ground for any claim of a unique
character of the human mind. We have
seen with how little success his oppo
nents have tried to impede or retard his
progress from point to point of the
evolutionary scheme. The very latest
researches of science confirm his theses.
The ablest Christian apologists yield
their arms and desert the long defended
breaches. We have been borne along
by the flood of scientific evidence,
philosophically considered, as far as the
closing thesis of our last chapter. Man
is the latest and highest embodiment of
the universal matter-force reality.
It
would seem that the acceptance of this
thesis is equivalent to an abandonment
of the belief in immortality, but we shall
see that evolutionists like Fiske, and Le
Conte, and Mr. Newman Smyth still
erect feeble barriers. Meantime, let us
dispose of the less advanced critics;
those who reflect the ideas of the average
church-goer and strive to offer some
defence of them.
There is Dr. Horton, for instance,
who pleads much for “ the naive, but
essentially correct, conceptions of our
ancestors.” Dr. Horton seems to think
it most effective to urge that men who
do not share the belief in God and im I
mortality live on “ bestial levels,” and [
are “ shrunk in soul, warped in mind, i
and degraded in body.” The “intel
lectual strain ” of Haeckel’s scientific
work is kindly said to relieve him
personally from these consequences, but
one gathers that we who are not great
scientists fall under Dr. Horton’s merci
less logic. “Accustom yourselves,” he
says, “ to believe that God and freedom
and immortality are hallucinations;
accustom yourselves to the idea that
this stupendous order of being in which
we live is not a rational order at all, but
the mere fortuitous concourse of atoms
[! ], and by an inevitable logic, as our
anarchist friends see, when you have got
rid of the first lie, which is God, you
quickly get rid of the second lie, which
is righteousness, and then you get rid of
all the other lies, which are love, and
truth, and peace, and joy, and civilisa
tion and progress generally, and poetry,
and life.” We will not stay here to
discuss this insincere rhetoric. It is too
great a libel on Dr. Horton himself, if
we take it seriously, and too insulting to
the intelligence of his readers—who,
one may assume, happen to know a few
agnostics. Nor need -we be detained
with the various criticisms in Light.
The chief of these articles states that
Haeckel relies on “physics ” to disprove
the immortality of the soul; more curi
ously still, a second writer in Light (Jan.
19th, 1901) does rely on physics (the
conservation of energy) to rehabilitate
the belief. The second writer, more
over, completely ignoring Haeckel’s de
liberate words, assures his readers that he
“is terrified at the thought of life beyond
the grave,” and adopts the grotesque
title of “ A Frightened Philosopher.”
We shall not get much light from that
side.
Most of the critics we have already
passed, attempting loyally to defend one
or other of the supposed breaches in the
evolutionary doctrine, so that they make
little resistance here. When, in the
course of the next ten years, they have
fallen back on this last position—probably discovering that, on theological
principles, man must have been evolved
�THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL
—they will begin to repeat the argu
ments of Fiske and Le Conte, which we
shall presently consider. But there are
several critics who, setting aside the
question of evolution as not essential to
defend, formulate their objection thus.
Science proves up to the hilt that brain
and mind are correlative. As brain
develops, the mind opens—and in strict
est proportion. Lesion or other affection
of the brain proportionately mars the
mental or emotional life.
Psycho
physical observations show that the in
tensity of brain-action quite corresponds
to the intensity of mind-action. Let us
grant all this. But, they say, all this
throws no light whatever on the question
whether the mind may not outlive the
brain.
“ It’s logic! ” exclaims Mr.
Brierley, contemptuously, when he
comes to this part of Haeckel’s scheme.
Mr. Williams and Dr. Horton, and
others, make the same reply. Indeed,
as accomplished rhetoricians, they offer
Haeckel a pretty figurative way of con
ceiving the relation, which may help his
sluggish imagination and correct his
logic. Mind-action is like the music a
master evokes from the piano or violin.
A musical instrument maker would, like
the psycho-physicist, find an exact cor
respondence between the ailments and
defects of the violin and the disorders of
the music, or between the violence of
the molecules of string and wood and
the intensity and tone of the music.
But—Haeckel has forgotten the player !
Brain and thought are instrument and
music. Where, in Haeckel’s philosophy,
is the instrumentalist?
A very singular omission on the part
of one of the keenest observers in the
world! Let us examine the matter.
We have seen in the preceding chapter
the immense mass of scientific evidence
which goes to show that there is an
exact correspondence between brain
action and soul-life. The correspondence
is just the same in man as in the ape or
the dog. As the shadow varies with the
object which projects it, so does thought
vary with the quality and action of the
63
brain. There is no dispute about this.
No induction is based on a wider and
more varied range of observations.
This correspondence is the same as we
find in the case of the heart and its
function, the stomach and digestion, or
the lungs and respiration. Now, in all
these analogous cases we do not seek an
instrumentalist.
The instrument is
automatic. For its formation we look
back along a process of natural evolution
which stretches over 50,000,000 years.
Whether the evolutionary agencies were
divinely guided or no will be considered
presently, but at all events in the heart
and lungs we have automatic instruments,
and we never dream of looking for a
present instrumentalist. It is the same
with the brain of the dog. When the
dog dies, we do not ask what has become
of the instrumentalist now that the
instrument (brain) is broken and the
music (thought) is silent. We never
dream of there being a third element.
But the mind of man is the same mind
more fully developed.
In a sense there is a third factor—
both in the stomach, the canine life, and
the human life—and this is the only
truth there really is in this very mislead
ing figure of rhetoric. I have already
mentioned a critic who endeavours to
deduce the immortality of the soul from
the conservation of energy, and this
gives us the clue. Critics very stupidly,
or very wilfully, represent Haeckel as
saying that thought is a movement of
the molecules of the brain, just as they
say he resolves all things into matter.
They ignore the fact that he lays as
much, if not more, stress on force than
on matter. He holds, of course, that
there is fundamentally only one reality,
but it is most improper to call that by
the name of one of its attributes (exten
sion). Thus we have, in a sense, three
elements : the instrument, the music, and
the soul or energy associated with the
brain. When Haeckel speaks of thought
as “ a function of the brain,” he means
the living brain—the incomparably intri
cate structure of material elements and
�64
THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL
the natural forces associated with them,
in which thought arises. We have no
scientific or philosophical ground what
ever for . postulating any further element
to explain the music. Is it scientific to
make an exception of this living brain,
and say it is the only non-automatic organ
in the body ? Does its relation to the
rest of the body give the least support
to the notion ? Is it scientific to say the
living brain is automatic in the whole
animal world, but cannot be so in man
because the music is finer and more diffi
cult ? Does embryology favour the idea ?
Does philosophy step in, and bid us sus
pend the scientific method and admit a
breach in the scientific continuity ?
Probably it is to philosophy they will
appeal. These ideas, Dr. Horton says,
“rest on the region of thought and con
sciousness ” to which Haeckel “ studi
ously closes his eyes.” By all means let
us go to philosophy. Kant will tell us
that these psychological proofs of immor
tality are quite discredited. Schelling
and Hegel and Schopenhauer will give us
the consolation of disappearing in the
world-process. Hume and Mill and Spen
cer will prove more than sceptical. Most
modern philosophers will tell us, as
Miinsterberg does, that “ the philosopher
who bases his hope of immortality on a
theory of brain-functions . . . stands
on the same ground as the astronomer
who seeks with his telescope for a place
in the universe where no space exists,
and where there would be undisturbed
room for God and eternal bodiless souls.”
Certainly one can quote thinkers who
wish mind and brain movements to be
left parallel, with the relation of the two
undetermined. But they advance no
reasons which arrest the application of
scientific method. Here in the mind
life are phenomena that we can examine
from two sides—from without and from
within. This may seem at first to give
a certain uniqueness to the soul-life.
But the only soul-life we can examine
from within is our own individual experi
ence. Every other man’s soul is a
matter of objective examination to us;
and by much of the same evidence which
convinces us of his similar experiences,
we are forced to extend conscious mental
action to the brutes. So the uniqueness
once more disappears. Philosophy will
not help or hinder us. Referring to the
work of Professor Royce, a distinguished
American philosopher and Gifford Lec
turer, Professor Le Conte says: “He
gives up the question of immortality as
insoluble by philosophy. Well—perhaps
it is.” i
Thus (reserving some further philo
sophic arguments for the moment) we
return unembarrassed to our scientific
procedure ; and “ science,” Prof. Miinsterberg says, “ opposes to any doctrine
of individual immortality an unbroken
and impregnable barrier.”2 The rigid
relation determined by psycho-physics,
the rigid relation observed in the evolu
tion of the thinking animal, the rigid
relation that is recorded by pathology
and ethnology, and that lies on the
very surface of life, means something
more than parallelism.
It is easy to
quote Huxley and Tyndall in opposition
to Haeckel’s formula. The one was an
idealist in metaphysics: the other has
said much more in the monistic sense
than he ever said in the agnostic. Pro
ceeding on realistic and scientific lines,
we are driven by the rules of induction
to regard thought as wholly bound up
with brain, and to look for no third
element beyond the matter and force of
which the brain is so intricately con
structed. The mysteries that still linger
about consciousness and memory, just as
about embryonic development, for in
stance, are scientific mysteries. To build
on them would be to repeat the discre
dited old tactics.
If the theories of
them which Haeckel offers are unsatis
factory, wait for better ones. They are
the light bridges of the monistic system,
forecasting the scientific advance. But
that, in whatever way, mind-force is an
evolution of the general cosmic-force,
1 The Conception of God, p. 752 Psychology and Life, p. 85.
�THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL
and that it therefore affords no more
promise of immortality in the individual
human mind than it does in the indi
vidual motor-car, is a scientific induction
resting on a mass of evidence and drawn
up in observance of the most rigid
rules.
Let us now consider the arguments
brought forward in favour of the belief
in immortality by 'those who have not
lingered to defend any evolutionary gap,
but who freely admit the evolution of
the human mind. These are the “ replies
by anticipation” which, we are told,
should have withheld Professor Haeckel
from his extreme conclusions. Let us
see how puny and fruitless are the efforts
they make to overleap the “ unbroken
and impregnable barrier ” that Professor
Miinsterberg speaks of. Miinsterberg
himself offers a curious example of the
way modern philosophers, especially
idealist philosophers, lend a nominal
support to religious doctrines, yet are
found to mean something totally different
from what the world at large understands
by those doctrines. As the words I
have quoted show, he is as hostile as
Haeckel to any belief in personal im
mortality. “ Only to a cheap curiosity,”
he says again, “ can it appear desirable
that the inner life, viewed as a series of
psychological facts shall go on and on ”;
and again : “ The claim that the deceased
spirits go on with psychological existence
is a violation of the ethical belief in
immortality.”1 Thus he rejects the only
notion of immortality which is in any
plausible way connected with those
moral consequences that are so much
urged upon us. However, he speaks of
an “ ethical belief in immortality,” and
so is gathered by controversialists into
the imposing category of “scientists
opposed to Haeckel.” The immortality
he promises us is no more consoling
than that offered by Comte or by
Haeckel himself. “Life lives on.” It
is a natural expression of his idealism.
“ For the philosophic mind,” he says,
1 Psychology and Life, p. 280.
65
“ which sees the difference between
reality and psychological transformation,
immortality is certain; for him the denial
of immortality would be even quite
meaningless.
Death is a biological
phenomenon in the world of objects in
time; how then can death reach a reality
which is not an object but an attitude,
and therefore neither in time nor space ? ”
He meets the scientific evidence by
getting rid of the body and death, and
the material world altogether.
Professor W. James, another able
American psychologist whom
Mr.
Ballard and Mr. Williams and several
ecclesiastical papers urge us to read, has
made his profession of faith at the close
of his recent Gifford Lectures, pub
lished under the title of Varieties of
Religious Experience. We shall see that
it does not include a belief in God.
On our present question it is little more
helpful to the Christian. Professor
James is convinced as a spiritist that
there are non-human intelligences in
existence, but he is not yet convinced
that these external intelligences are the
souls of men and women who have
“ passed beyond.” So far he lends no
real support to the doctrine of immor
tality. Professor J. Royce, another
distinguished American thinker whom
the Gifford Trust has invited amongst
us, “givesup the question of immortality
as insoluble by philosophy ”; so
Professor Le Conte assures us.
Mr. Le Conte himself, we saw,
follows this statement with a candid
admission that “perhaps it is.” But
he is not disposed to yield entirely as
yet. Where does so thorough an
evolutionist find ground for ascribing
this unique prerogative to the human
soul ? He professes to find it precisely
in the “evolutionary view of man’s
origin.” If that view of the world
process which we have hitherto sustained
is correct, it follows, he says, that the
human mind-force is “a spark of the
Divine Energy ” and a “ part of God.”
So is the force of a motor car, on his
principles. But, he says, the universal
E
�66
THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL
spirit (Haeckel’s universal substance on
its force side) has worked its way
upward through the hierarchy of evolu
tion, so that it (or God) “ may have, in
man, something not only to contem
plate, but also to love and to be loved
by ” ; and in view of that project, which
is not supposed to be a temporary pro
ject, man must be immortal.1 The
frailty of the position is obvious. It
assumes that the “ Divine Energy ”
(which is Haeckel’s substance) was
intelligent and had “designs” from the
beginning.
We shall consider the
grounds of this assumption in the
next chapter. But, granting it for the
sake of the argument, we are asked to
conceive this eternally intelligent prin
ciple going through a laborious process of
evolution in order to reach consciousness
in the human mind and admire itself,
and love and be loved by itself, in that
form; for the mind zs God, on these
pantheistic principles. Moreover, sup
posing that we could gather this remark
able project, it contains no promise
whatever of immortality for the in
dividual ; the “ Divine Energy ” is
incarnated in so many forms, and will
be throughout the eternal world-process,
that the perishing of one form or of one
world will hardly diminish its contempla
tion or its admiration. Further, if man
z's God, how comes he to be ignorant of
the project ?
What becomes (theo
retically) of moral distinctions ? But
this fantastic theory bristles with diffi
culties.
Mr. Fiske’s conclusion is very similar
to Professor Le Conte’s, as will be
expected from the similarity of his
premises. The doctrine of evolution,
he says, does not destroy our hope of
immortality. “ Haeckel’s opinion was
never reached through a scientific study
of evolution, and it is nothing but an
echo from the French speculation of the
eighteenth century ” ; and “ he takes his
opinion on such matters ready-made
from Ludwig Buchner, who is simply an
echo of the eighteenth century atheist
La Mettrie.”1 How Fiske could ever
pen such an egregious statement about
either Haeckel or Buchner is one of the
mysteries of religious controversy. After
our review of Haeckel’s arguments it
may very well be ignored. And when
Fiske has come to the end of this petty
and petulant criticism of Haeckel we
find him presenting a conclusion almost
less satisfactory than that of Le Conte.
The substance of his argument is that
“ there is in man a psychic ele
ment identical in nature with that
which is eternal” (p. 170). On the face
of it, that is just what Haeckel says.
Man’s mind-force is a little eddy or
focus in the eternal cosmic force.
There is no ground whatever for assum
ing that as such it will be eternal, and
will not simply sink back into the
eternal stream, like all other temporary
concentrations. The only difference is
that Fiske takes the eternal principle to
be conscious and intelligent from the
first—a point we discuss in the next
chapter.
There remains only the argumentation
of Mr. Newman Smyth in his able but
pathetic attempt to reconstruct Christian
belief on a scientific base.2 The argu
ment itself is an old one, but it is put
with some freshness.
He points out
that the evolutionary process has just
reached an important stage. Evolving
nature has at length passed beyond mere
animal life and reached the threshold of
the spiritual life. Since, then, we dis
cern an upward purpose in evolution, it
is impossible to suppose that the process
will end now that so promising a stage
has been reached. To this we need
only reply that, whether or no “ purpose ”
is discernible in nature (which we shall
deny), this further evolution will take
place in the race taken collectively. This
is so clear that Mr. Smyth makes a des
perate effort to apply his argument to the
individual. He says the “ last word of
organic development is the individual
1 The Conception of God, p. 77-
1 Through Nature to God, p. 144.
2 'Through Science to Faith, p. 265 and foil.
�THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL
and his worth,” and he appeals to
“nature’s increasing estimate of indi
viduality in comparison with the species.”
Now, if we take this in the only sense
in which it could be conceived to help a
belief in personal immortality, it is totally
opposed to the scientific evidence. The
only way in which nature seems more
concerned about the individual is in the
perfection which she gives to the indi
viduals of the later species; but this is
absolutely necessary if the species itself
is to advance. In all other respects
nature, as ever, is indifferent to the indi
vidual—or, for the matter of that, if we
take a long enough perspective, to the
species itself.
The
supplementary
consideration
which Mr. Smyth submits is still feebler.
He contends that, though evolution is
generally continuous, it shows what he
calls “critical periods.” He instances
the changes which take place in a drop
of water as it sinks to freezing-point or
rises to the point of evaporation. He
thinks science does not preclude the
possibility of some analogous “ critical
period ” for the human soul. Nay, he
says, getting bolder, biology favours such
a view.
Look how “very slight and
easily changed” is the connection be
tween mind and organism at certain
times—at conception, in sleep, and when
we near death. Biology, he says, shows
that “ the mind does not need for its
birth and its coming to its inheritance a
whole body, a complete brain, a fullyformed organ of sense, or so much as a
single nerve ; a few microscopic threads
of chromatin matter in the egg are
enough.” Hence, if at both ends of
life the bond that links mind and body
can wear so thin, it is conceivable that
it may be dispensed with altogether.
Now, this is a most perverse piece of
reasoning. At conception, and long after
conception, we have no right to say that
the mind is there at all. It appears and
grows with the brain—that is all the
evidence says.
The facts point to a
conclusion diametrically opposed to that
of Mr. Smyth.
They show complete J
67
and slavish dependence. As to heredity,
it is gratuitous to say it is the mind, and
not the body, that inherits. Even Dr.
W. N. Clarke (who, with many modern
theologians, does not believe that the
“soul” is transmitted from parent to
child) says the facts of heredity point to
the mechanical, not the spiritual, theory.
At death we see the same rigid depend
ence of mind on organism, instead of
finding anything like a token of an in
dependent mind. The mind flickers and
goes out—as far as evidence goes—in
exact proportion to the last spluttering
and extinction of the physical life of the
body. At both ends of life, as through
out its course, the correlation of mind
action and brain-action is rigid and ab
solute. And, finally, what Mr. Smyth
unfortunately calls “ critical periods ” in
nature have not the least analogy to the
notion of the mind-force existing apart
from its material substratum. A differ
ent grouping of the water-molecules
naturally gives rise to different properties ;
so does a different grouping of brain
molecules (in fever, under opium, &c.)
give rise to different mental qualities.
When we find a case of the properties
or forces of a substance parting company
from, or changing independently of, the
material substratum, we shall have found
some ground in nature for the conception
of a disembodied soul; but not until
then.
Such are the feeble defences which
are to-day set up by the apologists
who have scientific attainments in the
Christian body. On the strength of
these ethereal speculations we are asked
to resist the weight of the scientific
evidence as to the relation of body and
soul, and to admit for man a privilege
that is unknown from end to end of the
universe. We are asked to believe that
with the aid of a fantastic and desperate
philosophy such as this we can overleap
science’s “unbroken and impregnable
barrier.” We are asked to call Haeckel
“an atrophied soul” and “a child in
spiritual reasoning ” because he will not
abdicate his scientific method and
�68
GOD
procedure in the face of such specula
tions as these. I have not, it is true,
examined the argument for a future
life from the alleged exigencies of the
moral order; but this is little urged
to-day, and we shall see, when we come
to deal with the monistic ethics, that
it rests on a false conception of moral
’trw.1
I have sought, in particular, and
stated with perfect fidelity, the argu
ments of those modern scholars who
are opposed to him as being equally in
formed in science and equally convinced
of evolution. The reader may judge
whether he or they are the more
philosophic, logical, and scientific in
procedure.
Chapter VII
GOD
We now enter upon a new and almost
the final stage of our direct vindication
of monism. If we have succeeded so
far in warding off the objections which
have been urged against Haeckel’s
position, if we have shown that the very
latest scientific research increasingly
confirms his position, it is clear that we
have covered considerable ground. We
have discerned in the stupendous process
of cosmic evolution the growth or the
unfolding of one great reality that lies
across the immeasurable space of the
universe. An illimitable substance, re
vealing itself to us as matter and force
(or spirit), is dimly perceived at the root
1 Neither have I, it will be noted, referred to
the empirical or spiritistic evidence for the per
sistence of mind, which gains increasing favour
to-day. This is not due to any lack of respect
for the distinguished scientists who have admitted
such evidence, or for the sobriety and judgment
of so many about us to-day who receive it. It is
due to the utter futility of discussing evidence of
this kind. It is of such a nature, resting so
largely on delicate moral considerations, that it
must in my opinion be left entirely to personal
examination in the concrete. But that Haeckel
is right in saying the subject is obscured with
much fraud and triviality is admitted, not only
by life-long students like Mr. Podmore, but by
many earnest spiritists.
of this evolution as a simple and homo
geneous medium (prothyl), associated with
an equally homogeneous force. Then the
continuous prothyl, by a process not yet
determined, forms into what are virtually
or really discrete and separate particles
—electrons: the electrons unite to
build atoms of various sizes and
structures, and the rich variety of the
chemical elements is given, the base of
an incalculable number of combinations
and forms of matter. Meantime the
more concentrated (ponderable) elements
gather into cosmic masses under the
influence of the force associated with
them : the force evolving and differen
tiating at equal pace with the matter (with
which it is one in reality). Nebulse
are formed: solar systems grow like
crystals from them: planets take on
solid crusts, with enveloping oceans
and atmospheres. Presently a more
elaborate
combination of material
elements, protoplasm, with—naturally—■
a more elaborate force-side, makes its
appearance, and organic evolution sets
in. The little cellules cling together
and form tissue-animals, which increase
in complexity and organisation and
centralisation until the human frame is
�GOD
produced, the life-force growing more
elaborate with the structure, until it
issues in the remarkable properties of
the human mind.
The tracing of this picture is the ideal
that science set itself a quarter of a
century ago.
The success has been
swift and astounding. We are still, as
Sir A. Riicker said, living in the twilight;
but no man of science now doubts that
what we do see is the real outline of the
universe and its growth. But other and
different cosmic speculations held the
field, and these were ultimately con
nected with the powerful corporations
and the intense emotions of religion.
As science advanced theology began a
long process of adaptation to the new
thought. The ambition of science was
to cover the whole ground with a scheme
of mechanical and orderly explanation,
because the instinct of science felt that
the universe was an orderly and con
tinuous structure. The ambition of the
theologian was to detect and exult over
gaps and breaches in this mechanical
scheme, and introduce his supernatural
agencies by means of them. We have
seen that many of the ablest theistic
apologists of our day (Ward, Smyth, Le
Conte, Fiske, Clarke, &c.)—almost all,
indeed, of those who have scientific
equipment—grant the ability of science,
now or in the near future, to cover “ the
whole cosmological domain ” with its
network of mechanical causation. We
have seen that there is a general dis
avowal of “ a theology of gaps ” or of the
desire to build on the temporary igno
rance of science.
But a few heroic
souls still linger in the familiar trenches,
and we have fully considered what they
have to say. With Smyth, Le Conte,
and Fiske, we have been forced to con
clude that so far we have seen in the
cosmic process the orderly unfolding of
one sole all-diffused matter-force reality,
which we commonly call Nature.
But we have throughout, for the sake
of clearer procedure, reserved one con
sideration that these advanced evolution
ists have been urging on us at every
69
step—that is to say, the claim that the
evolutionary process must have been in
telligently set going and intelligently
directed. Haeckel is quite right, they
say, in claiming that science can give or
adumbrate a mechanical interpretation
of the whole process. Quibbles about
his particular way of conceiving the first
formation of life, or of consciousness,
and so on, are irrelevant and distressing
to the serious thinkers, as is the diver
sion of the issue by discussing his taste,
or his knowledge of history, or his
optimism or pessimism. The important
point is that he has proved his case so
far in its essentials. But he must now
meet this last position of his opponents.
Was this monistic cosmic process con
ceived and designed from the beginning,
and guided throughout, by an intelligent
being, or no ? 1 This is the question of
the hour, and especially of the coming
hour, in apologetics.
As I write a
journal reaches me containing an inter
view with Mr. Ballard. Asked whether
he thinks “the rehabilitation of religion
would come from the scientists,” he
replies: " I think that the theistic basis
of Christianity will have scientific support
more than ever.
Modern science is
pledged to evolution, and Christianity
can only be justified scientifically on
evolutionary lines.” And Professor Le
Conte says: “ Here is the last line of
defence to the supporters of supernatu
ralism in the realm of Nature ... it is
evident that a yielding here implies not
a mere shifting of line, but a change of
base: not a readjustment of details
only, but a reconstruction of Christian
theology.
This, I believe, is indeed
necessary.”2
And we have already
seen passages from Ward and others to
the same effect.
Here is a dramatic simplification of
the controversy, which every thinker
1 Let us note in passing that this is not neces
sarily a question of monism or dualism. Mr. R.
Williams and others expressly state they are
monists, that God is not distinct from Nature.
More about this presently.
2 Evolution and Religiozis Thought, p. 295.
�7o
GOD
will welcome. Theology will, as before,
spread itself over the whole cosmos, but
it will be with the repetition of a single
formula. There will no longer be cease
less quarrels as to whether science can
explain this or that phenomenon with
its natural or mechanical causes. The
new attitude. is that this mechanical
explanation is precisely the work of
science, and if it cannot give a mechani
cal explanation of a thing—say, con
sciousness—to-day, we will wait patiently
till to-morrow.
But, the new theolo
gians say, we want to know in addition
how these mechanical causes came to
co-operate in producing such remarkable
structures.
With this science has
nothing to do, so we close our thirty
years’ war and sign an eternal truce.
Nay, if we look at the matter rightly,
these theologians of the twentieth cen
tury say it is very desirable that science
should complete its mechanical interpre
tation of the cosmos.
An automatic
universe, evolving by inherent forces
from electrons to minds, would be the
most marvellous mechanism ever con
ceived. The mind would be forced to
look for the engineer. Those ancient
theologians who scoffed at Tyndall for
his Belfast address were too hasty; so
were those who caused Huxley to com
pare their dread of the mechanical
scheme to the terror of savages during
an eclipse of the sun; so are those who
beat their wings in vain against Haeckel’s
structure to-day. The materialist will be
the truest auxiliary of the theist. If he
can only show that the universe is the
unfolding of one form of matter and one
force (or one matter-force reality), he
has put before us one of the most
stupendous machines that ever bore the
mark of intelligence.
We are then, it seems, approaching
the psychological moment in the great
drama of the conflict of science and
religion. That I am indicating a true I
tendency will be perfectly clear from the •
preceding chapters.
We have rarely |
found men of ability or of complete i
scientific equipment defending the old !
trenches that barred the advance of the
mechanical system of science. We have
constantly heard impatient denials of a
love for “ gaps.” But before I proceed
to show how Haeckel has met this teleo
logical position, let me quote a few
recent writers, both to show that the
formula is as simple as I said, and that
concentration on this position is the
order of the day.1 I have quoted Pro
fessor Ward’s opinion that, “ if there has
been any interference in the cosmic pro
cess, it must have been before the process
began.’( Dr. Croll, in his Basis of Evolu
tion, distinguishes between producing
(mechanical) and determining (directive)
forces, and tells the theologian of the
future to confine his attention to the
latter : “ The grand, the difficult, though
as yet unanswered, question is this:
What guides the molecule to its proper
position in relation to the end which it
has to serve ? ” With Mr. Newman
Smyth the supreme question is: “ Is
evolution without guidance or with guid
ance ?” Mr. Fiske says: “There is in
every earnest thinker a craving after a
final cause . . . and this craving can no
more be extinguished than our belief in
objective reality.” 2 Dr. Dallinger says
that, if the mechanical philosophy is
true we have “ a more majestic design
than all the thinkers of the past had
ever dreamed.”
And the sermon
preached on the last Association Sun
day at Southport by the Bishop of Ripon
points unmistakably to the same tendency
—even to a pantheistic identification of
God with the forces at work in Nature.
1 There may be a few fond and admiring
souls who are looking out for a reference to Mr.
Ambrose Pope’s third criticism. Briefly, he
finds that Haeckel has got rid of God by a third
“half-day excursion,” in the course of which he
discovered a system of “ physiological monism,”
which, as before, contains the fatal germ under
an innocent exterior. The joke may be given
for what it is worth, but it gets stale. Mr. Pope
goes on to say that when you ask Haeckel about
the substance he puts instead of God, he says he
is not sure whether it exists. Tableau, and
exeunt omnes, of course. We have met this
point in the second chapter.
2 The Idea of God, p. 137.
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GOD
The new teleology flatters itself it
differs very scientifically from the old;
for “ teleology ” had fallen into disrepute
during the period of “ gap ” theology
which followed the break-up of Paleyism.
It is true that there are differences.
Aubrey Moore points out that we now
do not forget the past (the evolution) of
the organ. Dr. Iverach observes that
the new teleologist. does not think so
much of an “ external artificer ” as of an
immanent directive principle, and that
we do not now attempt to deduce scien
tific knowledge from the “ purpose ” of
a thing. These differences, however, do
not alter the essential structure of the
argument, which remains the same as
when Kant rejected it and Paley drove
it to death. We may state it briefly in
abstract form to this effect: Wherever in
Nature we find several agencies co
operating in the production of a certain
result which is orderly or beautiful, we
see the guidance of mind. The under
lying assumption is that the unconscious
forces of the universe will only produce
chaos unless they are guided. Pre-con
ceived design followed up by directive
control, or else a “ fortuitous clash of
atoms,” is the alternative put before us.
The process of evolution taken as a
whole has been so orderly, and had such
marvellous results, that we must admit
the agencies at work in the process were
intelligently guided. To suppose that
this process should chance to culminate
in the appearance of man is said to be
incredible. So throughout the whole
process we find co-operations, adapta
tions, orderly and beautiful operations,
which speak eloquently of design and
control. From the very first step, the
making of the atom, to the last, the
making of man’s brain, we see the finger
of God.
A few extracts and references will
show that this is a correct summary. As
regards the inorganic universe a little
work recently published by the Rev. W.
Profeit well illustrates the argument.
The author starts with the principle that
“every form of being must act according
to its nature,” and goes on to say that
“ the particles of matter have not in them
conscious intelligence, and consequently
have not of themselves the power of
arranging, and so of producing complex
order.”1 He then reviews the teaching
of modern physics at length, pausing at
every few paces, in the familiar manner,
to admire the ways of the Creator.
“ To deal with every particle of matter
in the universe, so as to make it of a
special type, to order all, so that they
might come under types so few and
compact, demanded an amount . of
thought and work of overwhelming
greatness, and could not be the result of
chance.” Chemistry is “crowded with
adjustments, packed with adaptations.”
The moulding of matter into solar
systems of such marvellous symmetry
and adaptability to life occasions another
outburst. In short, theology can easily
run to volumes by repeating “ Great are
thy works” at every forward step in
evolution. Chance is out of the ques
tion. “ Ah ! what foolery it is to deem
that a mighty world has been produced
by chance.” Happily, there are no fools
of that particular type amongst us. But
“necessity” is equally impotent. “No
sane mind ’’—the young theology keeps
up the literary tradition, you see, which
made even Fiske exclaim against “the
intellectual arrogance which the argu
ments of theologians show lurking
beneath their expressions of humility ” 2
—“no sane mind can for a moment
imagine that from the nature of things it
was an eternal necessity that the seventy,
or thereby, different kinds of atoms
should all exist, or be formed in the
numbers and proportions of numbers, in
which they help to form our great system
obeying the orb of day.” So it is to be
either “ fortuitous concourse ” or mind ;
and as the universe is not a chaotic
mess, -we must admit it was presided
over by intelligence from the first.
Dr. Dallinger offers us the same
1 The Creation of Matter, p. 6.
2 Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy, p. 451.
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GOD
dilemma of chance or control, and urges
that to adopt chance “ is surely to trifle
with the fundamental principles of our
reasoning powers.” Rationalists, we
may say in passing, had a concern for
our “ reasoning powers ” in days when
doctors of divinity looked upon them as
mischievous.
Dr. Croll argues in the
same .way. Some principle, he says,
must determine why a natural force
takes direction A instead of direction B
or C. The determination of planetary
orbits is not so much due to gravitation
as to the way in which gravitation acted.
So in the formation of crystals or
organisms. “ Out of the infinite number
of different paths, what is it that directs
the force to select the right path ? ”
Dr. Croll seems to fancy that in this he
has suggested a new idea to the world.
Dr. Iverach, both in Christianity and
Evolution and in Theism, follows the
same line. For the pre-atomic mass to
be made atomic, and to produce the
orderly and periodic system of elements
with their affinities, the forces at work
must have been guided.
The argument does not differ in sub
stance when we pass to the organic
world, but, naturally, the notes of ex
clamation and edifying observations
increase. Biological science, says Dr.
Iverach, “must admit purpose in the
magnificent adjustments it points out.”
Mr. Newman Smyth gives an admirable
sketch of the evolution of the eye, and
pleads that the forces which have
gradually constructed it did not any the
less need guidance and control because
they took millions of years to do it.
Mr. Ballard takes the evolution of the
eye in the foetus, and says that if a child
were to repeat “ that God caused it so
to do, it is utterly beyond the power of
all modern science to contradict.”1
Embryology is, it is true, as yet very
imperfect.
However, other passages
make it clear that, though Mr. Ballard
may here be building on a “gap,” he
generally offers us the usual dilemma,
1 Miracles of Unbelief, p. 51.
design or “fortuitous concourse of
atoms,” and characteristically tells us
the latter is “fatuous.” In fact Mr.
Ballard tells even the agnostic, who
thinks there is not enough evidence
either for or against teleology, that his
hesitation is mere “childish fatuity.”
The Rev. R. Williams—not to neglect
him—tells his weaver-admirers that “the
solar system is really more wonderful
than a loom,” which is obviously de
signed, and that organisms are more
wonderful still. And Dr. W. N. Clarke
says “it is not probable that the most
significant elements in a world came
into it without having been entertained
during the process as character-giving
ideals.” He says Darwinism has modi
fied, but not destroyed, teleology. We
now know that needs, and contrivances
to supply them, “ grow up within the
universe,” but this power of adaptation
must have been given to organisms by a
purposive intelligence.1
The argument, therefore, on which
the fate of theism is finally to be deter
mined is now tolerably clear. Leave
Haeckel free to perfect his mechanical
monism ; when he has completed it, we
shall point out to the astonished pro
fessor that he has been proving the
existence of God all the time. If this
force which he traces for us in its
marvellous ascent through the atom, the
nebula, the cell, and the organism, was
unconscious from the start, and if it has
achieved all this progress in so orderly
and determined a fashion, it must have
been guided. Well, let us see whether
Haeckel is quite so naive and antiquated
as these good people assure the world.
To begin with, the flavour of antiquity
is quite clearly on the other side.
“ Chance ” and “ fortuitous concourse
of atoms ” are phrases which you will
not find outside theological schools for
the last 2,000 years. The early Greeks
used them. The constant reiteration of
them in our time is a grave piece of
insincerity, or else ignorance. How Mr.
1 Outlines of Christian 1'heology, p. 116.
�GOD
Profeit and Mr. Ballard come to use
these phrases in the year of grace 1903
is best known to themselves. Professor
Haeckel deals clearly with the point
(p. 97), and explains—as has been ex
plained innumerable times—the only
sense in which science admits “ chance ”
events. Mr. Profeit rightly indicates a
third alternative, necessity; and Dr.
Dallinger somewhat vaguely suggests it.
Haeckel and his colleagues hold that
the direction which the evolutionary
agencies take is not “ fortuitous ” : that
they never could take but the one
direction which they have actually taken.
A stone has not a dozen possible paths
to travel by when you drop it from your
hand. You do not seek any reason why
it follows direction A instead of direction
B or C. So it is, says the monist, with
all the forces in the universe. Some
day science will be able to trace a set of
forces working for ages at the con
struction of a solar system, or at the
making of an eye. The theist says the
ultimate object must have been foreseen
and the forces must have been guided,
or they would never have worked
steadily in this definite direction. The
monist says that these forces no more
needed guiding than a tramcar does;
there was only one direction possible for
them. Here is a clear issue, and in the
present state of apologetics, an important
one. It is useless to talk, as Fiske does,
of the “ teleological instinct.” “ The
teleological instinct in man,” he says,
“ cannot be suppressed or ignored. The
human soul shrinks from the thought
that it is without kith or kin in all this
wide universe.” This is not only “an
appeal to the imagination ”: it is utterly
opposed to the facts of life. Mr. Fiske
ascribes his own peculiar temperament
to the universe. The matter must be
reasoned out.
Now, it seems clear that if a man
asserts that the forces of the universe are
naturally erratic, and may go in any one
of a dozen directions unless they are
guided, he must show cause for his
Opinion. The man of science has never
73
discovered an erratic force yet. Force
always acts uniformly, always takes the
same direction. If you say this is only
because the natural forces are guided
and controlled, and is not their proper
and inherent nature, the man of science
naturally asks: How do you know ?
Science sees nothing in nature to suggest
such an idea. “ When we consider the
movements of the starry heavens to-day,”
says Mr. Mallock, “instead of feeling
it to be wonderful that they are ab
solutely regular, we should feel it to be
wonderful if they were ever anything
else . . . We realise that order, instead
of being the marvel of the universe, is
the indispensable condition of its
existence—that it is a physical platitude,
not a divine paradox, ”1 That is certainly
the feeling the universe inspires in men
of science. What is the ground for this
notion of the essentially erratic character
of natural forces ? One seeks it quite in
vain. Dr. Croll says : “ Though our
acquaintance with the forces of nature
were absolutely perfect, the question as
to how particles or molecules arrange
themselves into organic forms would
probably still remain as deep a mystery
as ever, unless we knew something more
than force.” 2 But he does not offer us a
single consideration to convince us of
this “ probability.” When Mr. Profeit
tries to bully us into admitting that “ no
sane mind can for a moment imagine
that from the nature of things it was an
eternal necessity that the seventy, or
thereby, different kinds of atoms should
all exist,” we timidly venture to inquire :
Why not ? Force, as far as our ex
perience goes, acts necessarily, inevitably,
infallibly. There could be no science if
it did not.
The only attempt made to escape this
initial difficulty of the teleologist is to
appeal to a number of totally false
analogies. The favourite is that vener
able and imposing sophism, that if you
cast to the ground an infinite (or a finite)
number of letters, they might after
1 Religion as a Credible Doctrine, p. 162.
a The Basis of Evolution, p. 24.
F
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GOD
infinite gyrations make a word here and
there, but we should think the man an
enthusiast who expected even a short
sentence, and a fool if he expected
them ever to make a poem. It is
absurd to offer us this as an analogy
to-day; or else it is begging the
whole question.
Take the case of
the eye. Quite certainly this is an
evolutionary product. Forces acting on
matter during millions of years have
evolved it. Each step in the process is
perfectly complete and intelligible in
itself. It is wholly arbitrary to suppose
the eye was in view when protoplasm
was first formed: or when the first
sensitive cells appeared on the surface of
the primitive animal body: or when
pigment-cells were developed at the fore
most part of the body : or when a sensi
tive nerve was formed under the skin;
and so on. Each structure was useful
in its turn ; and on that very account
natural selection fastened on it. It is
sheer imagination to suppose that the
ultimate form was foreseen: and it is sheer
scientific untruth to say the ultimate
form must have been foreseen or else the
earlier structures would be unintelligible.
Here is a plexus of natural forces acting
on matter, without, as far as we can see,
the possibility of their acting otherwise;
only one result was possible. And we
are asked to regard this as curious,
because, in the case of the imaginary
throw of type, natural forces will not lose
their uniform character and act miracu
lously. Finally, it is a colossal petitio
principii, because the question is pre
cisely whether Virgil’s Aeneid or Shake
speare’s Hamlet is not an evolutionary
product.
It seems, then, that the initial diffi
culty of the teleologist is insuperable.
He cannot give us a shadow of proof of
his assertion that natural forces are erra
tic. Haeckel is completely within the
right of science in speaking of the uni
verse as, in Goethe’s phrase, “ ruled by
eternal, iron laws ” (or forces). They
have wrought out a certain result—the
world we form part of. Until some good
reason is shown for thinking they could
have acted otherwise, we see no need for
designer, or guide, or engineer. Let us
put it another way. To an extent the
teleologists are playing on the present im
perfection of science, as Dr. Croll
innocently betrayed. Let us take them
at their word, and suppose science will in
time give a complete mechanical expla
nation of everything, for the good reason
that God, as they say, created a machine
that needed no mending or re-starting.
And let us suppose that he designed the
ultimate form of the cosmos. Is this
design communicated to the unconscious
atoms and their forces ? Clearly not; no
one would say that. Are these forces
which build up and impel the atoms
supernaturally inflected or modulated at
each step ? Again, no one would say
this. The only possible conception of
telic action on a cosmic scale is, when
we descend from grandiose phrases to
practical ideas, that from the start the
matter-force reality was of such a
nature that it would infallibly evolve into
the cosmos we form part of to-day. Any
other conception of “ guidance ” and
“control” is totally unthinkable. And
as a fact theists are settling down to
formulate their position in that way.
The interference, as Ward says, took
place before the process began.
But before we take up this last point
it is necessary to glance at another side
of the question. Haeckel has pointed
out that, not only do we see no ground
for believing in the presence of some
primitive design, but we see very con
siderable reasons for rejecting it. The
world is crowded with features which
forbid us lightly to admit a controlling
supreme intelligence. There is no an
swer to this. “ The fact stands inex
orably before us,” says Mr. Fiske, “ that
a Supreme Will, enlightened by perfect
intelligence and possessed of infinite
power, might differently have fashioned
the universe, though in ways inconceiv
able by us, so that the suffering and the
waste of life which characterise nature’s
process of evolution might have been
�GOD
avoided.”1 As to the waste, Dr. Iverach
ventures to say that “infinite precision
at one point is inconsistent with bad
shooting ”; but the infinite precision is,
we have seen, an assumption, whereas
the bad shooting is ubiquitous. At
every sex-act millions of spermatozoa are
wasted. Others say the glorious final
issue puts all right. But as Mr. Mallock
says, “ Whatever may be God’s future,
there will still remain His past.” Most
ideologists retreat into mystery. One
might unkindly remind them of their
great disinclination to let the monist
leave anything unexplained, but it is
better to say that when all the tangible
evidence is on one side and none on the
other, we do not regard it as a fair
dilemma. Listen to the impression of
a cultured defender of religion after a
study of the evolutionary process in
nature : “ We must divest ourselves of
all foregone conclusions, of;all question
begging reverences, and look the facts
of the universe steadily in the face. If
theists will but do this, what they will
see will astonish them. They will see
that if there is anything at the back of
this vast process with a consciousness
and a purpose in any way resembling our
own—a Being who knows what He
wants and is doing his best to get it—
he is, instead of a holy and all-wise God,
a scatter-brained, semi-powerful, semi
impotent monster. They will recognise
as clearly as they ever did the old familiar
facts which seemed to them evidences of
God’s wisdom, love, and goodness; but
they will find that these facts, when taken
in connection with the others, only sup
ply us with a standard in the nature of
this Being himself by which most of his
acts are exhibited to us as those of a
criminal madman. If he had been blind,
he had not had sin; but if we maintain
that he can see, then his sin remains.
Habitually a bungler as he is, and callous
when not actively cruel, we are forced to
regard him, when he seems to exhibit
benevolence, as, not divinely benevolent,
1 Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy, p. 462.
75
but merely weak and capricious, like a
boy who fondles a kitten, and the next
moment sets a dog at it. And not only
does his moral character fall from him
bit by bit, but his dignity disappears
also. The orderly processes of the stars
and the larger phenomena of nature are
suggestive of nothing so much as a
wearisome Court ceremonial surrounding
a king who is unable to understand or
to break away from it; whilst the thunder
and whirlwind, which have from time
immemorial been accepted as special
•revelations of his awful power and ma
jesty, suggest, if they suggest anything of
a personal character at all, merely some
blackguardly larrikin kicking up his heels
in the clouds, not perhaps bent on mis
chief, but indifferent to the fact that he
is causing it. . . . A God who could
have been deliberately guilty of them
[the evolutionary processes] would be a
God too absurd, too monstrous, too mad
to be credible.” 1
No one who has studied biological
evolution can fail to recognise these
facts. They make it impossible for us
to see a divine presence and guidance at
least during the process. The only
plausible theory is that God set the
machine going and left it to itself. If
we hold that he is guiding molecules to
“their proper place ” in the construction
of the tiger’s eye, we must hold that he
has some control of the molecules in the
cruelty-centre of the tiger’s brain. A
universe without carnivora is conceivable
enough. Professor Kennedy and others
would divert us from a consideration of
these facts to contemplate the beauty and
sublimity the universe exhibits. But the
beauty of the starry heavens is only the
effect of distance and position; the
beauty of the Bay of Naples could be
1 Mr. W. H. Mallock, Religion as a Credible
Doctrine, p. 177. Mr. Mallock has throughout
life been one of the ablest opponents of agnosti
cism, and he has been nothing less than scornful
of a profession of atheism. Does he not see
how natural and logical atheism seems when one
sweeps aside all theistic proof on the one hand,
and recognises these dark features of the uni
verse on the other ?
Bishopsgate InstitutSi-
�76
*
GOD
shown by science to be a purely acci
dental outcome of the action of natural
agencies. The beauty of the diatoms
that are brought from the lowest depths
of the ocean, the beauty of the radiolaria
that swarm about the coast, and the beauty
of a thousand minute animal structures,
are obviously not designed and purposed
beauties. They were unknown until the
microscope was invented : the polariscope
reveals yet further beauties : the tele
scope yet more. The idea of these
things being designed for our, or for
God’s, entertainment belongs, as Mr.
Mallock says, “ to a pre-scientific age
. . . an age which had realised the
spectacular unity of the cosmos, but had
very imperfectly realised the nature of
its mechanical unity : and which, more
over, had never grasped the fact that the
forces in virtue of which material things
move, such as energy, attraction, repul
sion, and chemical affinity, are as much
a part of the material things themselves,
and as much amenable to scientific ex
periment, as extension, or shape, or mass,
or softness, or hardness, or visibility.”
Once more we are thrown back on the
efficient, mechanical, producing causes.
The point we have reached, then, is
this: the notion that molecules are
“ guided ” to their “ proper position ” by
any other than a mechanical force—'the
notion of “guidance ” or “control ” dur
ing the cosmic process is unproved, is
unthinkable when examined in detail,
and is opposed by an appalling mass of
facts (waste, cruelty, suffering, &c.). It
starts from an assumption—the assump
tion that natural forces are erratic in
action—for which it does not offer any
justification, and which is directly op
posed to scientific experience. It rests
on a number of fallacious analogies and
poetical expressions, on a fallacious
application of the term “ blind ” to
natural forces, and on the as yet imper
fect condition of our scientific knowledge
of the construction of organisms. All
that remains, then, is to examine the
position of the really consistent evolu
tionary theist, who does not build his
belief on the temporary ignorance of the
scientist. This position, to which all
apologists are tending, is that “ the only
interference was before the cosmic pro
cess began ”: that God created a matter
force reality in the beginning of such a
nature that it should evolve spontane
ously into the universe we know and of
which we are a part. This is the ideal
and final position of the apologist.
Science will drive him back pitilessly
decade by decade until he adopts it.
Many of the best-informed apologists
already adopt it.
Let us see, then, where Haeckel and
what remains of his opponents are now.
Both admit that the universe is a
mechanical system, a great machine that
has worked from the first without control,
in virtue of its inherent character. But
the dualists say such a machine must
have been most skilfully designed and
constructed : it is, in Dallinger’s words,
“a more majestic design than all the
thinkers of the past had ever dreamed ”
—and therefore it will commend itself
more and more to theists.
The
position is—it is very important to
understand clearly—that God only
creates any particular content of the
universe—say Plato’s mind—in the
sense that he imparted to the primitive
nebula, or ultimate prothyl, a natural
force to evolve it.
The germ of
everything, the capacity to evolve every
thing, is in the great matter-force
reality.
Now, we have seen in the
third chapter that “ science points to no
beginning.” It is perfectly consistent
with the scientific evidence to say that
the universe is eternal. We saw that
those who attack Haeckel’s ascription of
infinity and eternity 1 to the basic sub
stance show no cause why he should not
proceed candidly on the astronomical
evidence. No better evidence is forth1 Note the remarkably different treatment of
Haeckel and Mr. Spencer. Mr. Spencer’s First
Cause cannot be distinguished from Haeckel’s.
Yet when he speaks of it With capital letters, as
an Infinite and Eternal Power, we hear nothing
but admiration.
�GOD
coming here. Dr. Croll says : “ If any
man should affirm that the succession of
events had no beginning, but has been
in operation from all eternity, it would
be difficult indeed to prove him to be in
the wrong; but, on the other hand, it
would be far more difficult, nay, utterly
impossible, for him to prove his as
sertion.” 1 But, as we saw, the scientific
evidence and the rules of logic and truth
seeking put the burden of proof dis
tinctly on the man who asserts there was
a beginning. Professor Ward attempts
to infer a beginning from the theory of
entropy; but we saw that this is dis
credited by the latest pronouncements of
physicists. “Our experience,” as Pro
fessor Ward says himself elsewhere,
“certainly does not embrace the totality of
things; is, in fact, ridiculously far from
it”; and so entropy is a “ridiculously”
hasty conclusion.
No, there is no proof whatever that
the machine ever began to exist at all.
As far as we can see, it has eternally
possessed those forces and properties
with which we have agreed to credit it,
and has been eternally evolving them.
And, as a fact, apologists are rapidly
moving on to the identification of God
with Nature, which means an abandon
ment of the idea of creation. A curious
symptom falls under my notice as I
write. An editorial article in the Daily
News, the distinguished organ of the
Nonconformist Churches, commenting
on the Bishop of Ripon’s sermon at
Southport, endeavours to reconcile
science and religion.
The laws of
science, it says, reveal the working of
force, and it goes on to ask: •“ What is
that power ? May it not be the syn
thesis of all the various forces and
vitalities which the universe contains;
and may not that synthesis be God ? ”
That is precisely what Haeckel says ; in
fact, in a late German edition of the
Riddle he calls his system “ the purest
monotheism.” So close are we to
“ reunion ” ! Take, again, the Anticipa1 The Basis of Evolution, p. 167.
77
lions of Mr. H. G. Wells. Looking
about on the cultured thought of our
time, he says that before the end of this
century educated men will have ceased
to believe in “ an omniscient mind ”—
“ the last vestige of that barbaric theology
which regarded God as a vigorous but
uncertain old gentleman with a beard
and an inordinate lust for praise and
propitiation ”—and a supreme “ moral
ist ” and prayer ; and will know God
only as “a general atmosphere of im
perfectly apprehended purpose.” Mr.
Rhondda Williams assures us that “it
is not for dualism I am arguing. I
believe in the unity of the world, and a
kind of monism is probably the truest
solution of the riddle ; but I must find
the unity in spirit, not in matter.” That
means, if it means anything, not only a
complete misconception of Haeckel,
but an identification of God with Nature.
Professor Le Conte says : “ God may be
conceived as self-sundering his energy,
and setting over against Himself a part
as Nature. A part of this part, by a
process of evolution, individuates itself
more and more, and finally completes
its individuation and self-activity in the
soul of man. . . . Thus an effluence
from the Divine Person flows downward
through Nature to rise again by evolution
to recognition of, and communion with,
its own source. . . . And the sole
purpose of this progressive individuation
of the Divine Energy by evolution is
finally to have, in man, something not
only to contemplate, but also to love
and be loved by.” 1 In another place
he says : “ The forces of Nature are
naught else than different forms of one
omnipresent Divine energy or will,” and
“ In a word, according to this view,
there is no real efficient force but spirit,
and no real independent existence but
God.”2 We have seen how Mr. Fiske
1 The Conception of God, p. 77. Le Conte
tells us, moreover, that he is almost using the
language of another “theistic” writer, Mr.
Upton, the Hibbert lecturer.
2 Evolution and Religious Thought, p. 301.
He frankly allows that he is here close to the
opinions of Berkeley, and even Swedenborg.
�78
GOD
claims immortality on the ground that
“ there is in man a psychic element
identical in nature with that which is
eternal ” ; and man’s psychic element is,
he allows, an evolutionary outcome of
natural force. Professor Royce, a recent
Gilford lecturer and distinguished Ameri
can thinker, says, when he comes to
distinguish man from God : “ We there
fore need not conceive the eternal
Ethical Individual, however partial he
may be, as in any sense less in the grade
of complication of his activity or in the
multitude of his acts of will than is the
Absolute. ... It may be conceived as
a Part equal to the whole, and finally
united, as such equal, to the Whole
wherein it dwells.”1 Professor W.
James, another Gifford lecturer, rejects
the title of theist altogether, and says
“we must bid a definite good-bye to
dogmatic theology.” The metaphysical
attributes of God (omnipotence, omnis
cience, omnipresence, eternity, &c.)
are, he thinks, “ destitute of all intelligible
significance,” and “ the metaphysical
monster they offer to our mind is an
absolutely worthless invention of the
scholarly mind.”2
We are advancing rapidly. To this
does a knowledge of science bring the
theologian. It is true that some of
these evolutionary theists, like Mr.
Rhondda Williams, regard it as a great
gain that science has destroyed the idea
of a “ transcendent ” God and forced
theology to recognise his “ immanence ”
in nature. This is very misleading.
The “ immanence ” of God in nature
has been consistently taught in Roman
Catholic theology for the last thousand
years. You will not find a single Roman
Catholic theologian who locates God
outside the universe. It is a common
place with them that God is more closely
present in every part of nature than
ether is, for instance. Nor do the great
1 The World and the Individual, vol. ii,
P-451Varieties of Religious Experience, pp. 445-8.
He adds that the “ moral attributes ” are just as
indefensible.
Anglican divines speak differently.
What, then is the new feature ? It is
that these modern apologists have been
driven to deny that there is any real
distinction between God and nature.
They talk of God “ sundering ” himself
and of nature being “ part ” of his sub
stance— which has a strange resemblance
to various ancient and mouldy Oriental
speculations (Brahmanic, Gnostic, and
Manichean)—but the gist of their posi
tion is that God and nature are one.
God is the “ pervading spirit ” and the
“ unifying force ” of the cosmos, or the
“Eternal and Infinite Energy” behind
phenomena, as Sir Henry Thompson
puts it. This is the kind of theology
which generally lies at the back of the
few theistic utterances which our anxious
bishops can wring out of men of science
to-day. It is the last page of a remark
able history. Man’s first idea of deity
was animistic and pantheistic, according
to one school of hierologists. In the
course of ages the shape of God was
disentangled from visible nature and
dramatically set against it. Now God
slowly sinks again into the life of nature.
Great Pan is alive once more.
How does this position compare with
that of Haeckel? We will not be so
rude as to suggest that if Haeckel used
capital letters, like Mr. Spencer, they
would greet him as a brother. Nor, on
the other hand, can we admit that, as
Mr. Williams claims, they find the unity
of the universe in spirit, while Haeckel
bases it on matter. We saw that
Haeckel does nothing of the kind.
Matter and spirit are to him two aspects
of one reality, and the unity of the
cosmos is the unity of that reality.
Spirit-force or energy emerging finally
as human thought-force is admitted by
Haeckel as freely as by Mr. Williams.
An idealist like Ward would very
naturally say that the unity of the world
consists in spirit, but we assume Mr.
Williams admits the existence of matter
and corporeal fellow-creatures. But
there is one further sense in which the
unity of the world could be said to
�GOD
consist in spirit, and in this lies the
final difference between Haeckel and
his critics on these cosmic speculations.
These theistic, or rather pantheistic,
monists hold that the cosmic energy is
essentially and from the beginning, or
from eternity, conscious and intelligent.
Haeckel holds that consciousness only
arises when a certain stage of nerve
formation appears. What evidence do
they offer for this? We may note in
passing that, when the real difference
between Haeckel and those scientific
writers who are the most zealously
pitted against him is so small, it would
have been better for his critics to say so
outright.
The average reader who
wades through the surging flood of
rhetoric will probably learn with aston
ishment that the chief champions of
reasoned Christianity to-day stand so
close to Haeckel’s position that only
one frail npetaphysical bridge divides
them.
Let us examine this last
division.
It is clear, in the first place, that the
evidence for the position of these evolu
tionary theists is not of a scientific
nature. Science does not find intelli
gence in the cosmos until a fairly
advanced stage of animal organisation is
reached. In fact, science finds conscious
ness so completely and rigidly bound
up with nerve-structure that it can only
listen with astonishment to the theory
of a vast consciousness existing apart
from nerve-structure and before it was
developed. One wonders, therefore,
what Mr. Ballard means when he
assured his anxious interviewer that
“the theistic basis of Christianity will
have scientific support more than ever.”
The reasons alleged for postulating this
intelligence at the “ beginning ” of
things are metaphysical. Mr. Rhondda
Williams formulates them more or less
clearly, as they are invented by
Dr. W. N. Clarke and Dr. Ward and
Le Conte. He says first—and this, I
believe, is an original contribution—that
science finds “ law ” in the cosmos ; but
“ law ” is a mental concept: ergo, science
79
finds mind in the cosmos. We will over
look that little weakness, and come to
the plausible arguments he has borrowed.
He says (after Ward) that the universe
must be the work of intelligence
because it is intelligible. The axiom
he rests on is that “ what is intelligible
must either be intelligent or have in
telligence behind it.” Now, on idealist
principles this is quite time; there being
no material world at all, if anything
exists, mind clearly exists. But, apart
from this denial of' a real ’world, the
axiom has no sense whatever; it is
simply an audacious assertion. Dr
Iverach {Theism) uses much the same
argument, and tries to give it a respect
able realistic air. “ A system,” he says,
“ which at this end needs an intelligence
to understand it must have something
to do with intelligence at the other.”
Many other writers say the same. To
show the inanity of the assertion, one
has only to ask Dr. Iverach whether
even a chaotic and disorderly uni
verse would not need “ an intelli
gence to understand it.” If he
means by “ intelligible ” that it is
orderly and systematic, he is simply
begging the whole question, and asking
us to swallow his position in the form of
an axiom, because he cannot prove it.
He says elsewhere {Christianity and
Evolution) that “ if thought has come out
of the universe, if the universe is a uni
verse that can be thought, then thought
has had something to do with it from
the outset.” That is the favourite form
of argument that “you cannot get out of
a sack what is not in it.” It is a longdiscredited fallacy. We have seen how
out of a simple matter and force have
come an immense variety of things.
These things were only implicitly in the
primitive prothyl. Similarly, the evolu
tion of thought only shows that thought
was implicitly in the first cosmic princi
ples. Moreover, consciousness evolves
out of the unconscious every day—in
embryonic development. Mr. Williams
finally urges that a thing which has not
been made by intelligence should be
�8o
SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY
reversible, and says : “ But it is the
essential principle of science that things
are not reversible; that they must be
where they are, as they are; the order
of nature is the greatest scientific dis
covery.” This is a curious confusion.
It is difficult to see why a thing con
structed by mechanical forces should be
immediately reversible, in any sense
which does not apply to an intelligent
construction; and in the long run the
cosmic process will be reversed, and
begun again, if the scientific evidence
counts for anything.
It is on the strength of such verbiage
and sophistry as this that Haeckel’s
critics assume airs of spiritual superior
ity and spatter his “ godless ” system with
contempt. He has followed up the
scientific evidence with a close fidelity.
He has not forgotten for a moment that
the unseen may be gathered from the
seen by valid reasoning (as he himself
has gathered many truths by inference
from the facts observed); he has not ex
cluded the sober and accredited use of
the speculative imagination. Professor
Henslow has recently, in a letter to the
daily Press, suggested that Rationalists
deny the existence of God because
it does not fall under observation or
experiment.
The
writer
Professor
Henslow quoted has himself repudiated
this interpretation of his words; and
certainly Haeckel has repeatedly en
dorsed the procedure of passing beyond
observation, when the inference is firmly
based on the facts and is logical in form.
Whether he is not justified in rejecting
as unsound these pseudo-metaphysical
arguments we have been considering,
the reader may judge for himself.
Whether his procedure is not more
scientific, more logical, and more philo
sophical than that of his opponents—
whose arguments I have, as far as possi
ble, given in their own words—may now
be determined. And if his procedure
so far is correct, and the objections of
his critics futile, we have established the
bases of monism. We have followed
the great matter-force reality through its
cosmic development until it breaks out
in the glory of the human mind and
emotions. And we have seen no reason
for suspecting the existence of any prin
ciple or agency distinct from it, or for as
cribing to Nature itself any feature that
would justify us in transferring to it the
title or prerogatives of the dying God.
Chapter VIII
SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY
As we have previously seen, the
cosmic speculations of the Monist find
themselves in antagonism with a set of
cosmic speculations
which
already
occupy, not merely the mind, but the
heart of a large number of people.
Whilst older religions, such as Confucian
ism and, to an extent, Buddhism, have
succeeded in effecting a separation
between ancient cosmological notions
and religion proper, so that the educated
Japanese, for instance, does not confound
theistic controversy with religion, Chris
tianity has retained the belief that man
is immortal, and that the universe has a
supreme controller as essential parts of
its framework.
Naturally, Christian
thinkers who are alert and informed are
�SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY
ity ; as if his critics were somehow
beginning to deny this. .Mr. R. J.
unable to understand a pure love of
Campbell, for instance, insists. that
truth or regard for its moral and social
Christianity is “not dogma, but life a
stimulus. However, it is on this
life lived in conscious union with a
chapter of his work that critics have
Divine Person.” But that is somewhat
fastened most eagerly and most ardently.
bewildering. In one phrase dogma is
Now, one cannot but protest in pass
disavowed, and in the next a dogma of an
appallingly metaphysical character is ing against the foolishness of such a
made essential to the definition.
A procedure. All the world knows that
Professor Haeckel is not an expert in
similar inconsistency is found in almost
every other ecclesiastic who speaks of ecclesiastical history. If he felt himself
constrained to warn his readers that he
removing the emphasis from dogma.
had no expert acquaintance with physics,
The two dogmas of God and the future
life are still essential to Christianity, and lest he might innocently induce the
it is precisely these dogmas which uninformed to attach undue weight to
conflict with the monistic conception of his judgment in that department, he
the universe. The few advanced think might in return expect from, them a
ers we have encountered represent, on reasonable sense of the proportion of his
book.
His authority lies chiefly in
the whole, only a small cultured minority.
The great bulk of the faithful cling to zoology. We saw that he built some of
the most important parts of his system
the old ideas in the old form. And it. is
because this mass of conventional belief on the facts of zoology, or biology, and
still exists that preachers find it possible it is to these that the honest critic will
and advisable to bespatter the reputa mainly address himself. We saw how
few of the critics did so. But the book was
tions of fearless and sincere speculators,
who seek to spread their views amongst intended, as he says, to stand in some
measure for the complete system of his
the people.
Such a thinker as Haeckel, who has thought, which he feared he could now
never give to the world. It, therefoie,
found his faith obstructed throughout
life in the supposed interest of Christian contained an expression of his opinion
ity, naturally turns to consider that great on a multitude of topics which it is not
religion when the solid frame of his essential for a Monist, as such, to pass
In this he naturally
monistic system is compacted. He judgment on.
challenges the criticism of his opinions,
finds four dogmas chiefly responsible for
and must meet it. But he had a right
that strong attachment to Christianity,
to expect that his book and his system
which seems to him to prolong the life
of the errors he has criticised and the of thought should be judged essentially
diversion of men’s interest to another by their essential positions; he had a
world. These are, briefly— a belief in the right to expect that no one who would
supernatural character of the Bible; a be likely to read ten pages of such a
book would be so unintelligent as to
belief in the divinity, or . the unique
extend his zoological authority into the
character, of Christ; a belief that there
domain of ecclesiastical history.
is something preterhuman about the
Further, no one who takes the trouble
historical progress and moral power of the
to understand Haeckel’s system of
Christian religion; and a belief in the
infallibility of the Pope. He therefore thought would expect him to devote very
considerable time to an examination of
seeks to discredit those beliefs, in order
to prepare the way for an impartial con the dogmas I have enumerated. If his
previous conclusions are true, these
sideration of the new conception of life
dogmas must be false. That is a logical
which he regards as true and valuable.
At once, of course, he is credited, with and proper attitude. The man who has
some mysterious “ hatred” of Christian ) spent a life in deciphering the message
�82
SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY
of the cosmos, and has been compelled
characteristic portion of his work. But
to. interpret it in a monistic sense, and it has been sought to bring the full
reject entirely the dogmas of God and
weight of expert, historical scholarship to
immortality, has reached a conclusion bear on this episodic chapter on Chris
which he may apply to Christianity with
as strict and full a right as the historian tianity, and to make any defect dis
who has devoted his life to the direct covered in it the occasion of a bitter
and violent attack on Haeckel’s general
study of it.. Theistic writers are too apt authority. The. trained thinker sweeps
to forget this. When a man has reached
aside such tactics as an impertinence.
a conviction that God is a myth, he is But the untrained and uninformed
neither logically, nor morally expected to
millions of the Churches are assured
ask . himself seriously whether Christ or that. Haeckel’s authority has been dis
Christianity is divine. And it is per credited. They are taught that his
fectly obvious to any one who reads this
rejection of Christian beliefs is traceable
seventeenth chapter of the Riddle that
to a “childish credulity” (Dr. Horton)
this has been Haeckel’s attitude. He
and is supported by “mendacities”
merely skims the surface of a vast his (Mr. Ballard). However, let us examine
torical subject. He abandons the rigid the allegations on which the grossest
method of the earlier part, with its diatribes against Haeckel have been
accumulations of evidence. He hesitates supported.
to “devote a special chapter to the sub
The Achilles of the critics in this
ject,” and refers to other works. He then department is Dr. Loofs, professor of
decides to “ cast a critical glance ” at it, ecclesiastical history at the University of
protesting that it is only the hostility of Halle, and from his Anti-Haeckel we
the Churches which provokes him to do
gather the most formidable censures.1
so. He is mindful of “ the high ethical This work I have already qualified as
value ”. of pure Christianity and “ its
one of the coarsest and most painful
ennobling influence on the history of publications that have issued from a
civilisation.”
But it still clings to modern university. The story of its
beliefs which Haeckel (and large num writing runs thus. Dr. Loofs tells us
bers of its own theologians) believe to
St. Bernard has the same artistic
have no more than a legendary founda exordium to his attack on Abe'lard—
tion, and which nevertheless give it an that he was dragged into the arena by
incalculable influence on the minds of friends and colleagues in Germany. He
millions. Haeckel, therefore, gathers read the seventeenth chapter of the
from a group of German works or trans Riddle, and at once wrote an “ open
lations (all of which are indicated in the letter ” to Dr. Haeckel on the errors it
German edition) points of criticism in contains. This “ open letter ” first saw
regard to these dogmas, and briefly, with the light in the pages of an Evangelical
a light satire that evinces the absence of weekly, Die Christliche Welt, which circu
prolonged research in this department, lates amongst some 5,000 pious readers
fires them at the popular beliefs.
in Germany, and is hardly likely to
These considerations, which will penetrate into a university. Its tone
readily occur to the impartial student, was bitter and scurrilous. However, it
are prompted by the tactics which have was copied by other periodicals, and
been largely employed in the criticism of Haeckel wrote a brief reply in a
the Riddle. What value there is in the scientific and serious review, the editor
attack on its main position we have of the review, Dr. E. Bischoff, supportalready seen. The epithets that have
1 An English translation is promised, but has
been showered on the distinguished
scientist recoil on their authors where not appeared at the time of writing. It will, no
i
doubt, temper the extreme coarseness and ugli
there is question of the essential and ness of the German original.
�SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY
ing Haeckel with his expert knowledge
and with a very plain but dignified
comment on Loofs’s procedure. At this
Dr. Loots seems to have lost all sense
of either humour or dignity, and
included these documents with his
reply in the brochure we are about to
examine. Its pages sparkle with in
candescent phrases, which are, more
over, usually italicised. “ Incredible
ignorance,” “crass stupidity,” “pure
folly,” etc., are amongst the milder
of these phrases. When, towards the
close, he looks back on his virulent
italics (or that larger type that serves
for italics in German), he says de
liberately: “It is not the ‘point of
view,’ not the ‘system,’ of Professor
Haeckel, but his scientific honour, that I
have attacked; and I have done it so
unmistakably that any court will convict
me of libelling my colleague of Jena, if
I cannot support my charges.” In a
word, he tells us (3rd edit., p. 52) that
the Press has ignored his precious
diatribe, and that a libel action.(though
he declines to “ provoke ” it) will bring
his grievance before the public. Such
is the famous rejoinder to Haeckel
which our ecclesiastical journals have
praised so highly.
After all this the reader will expect to
find that Haeckel has been convicted of
one of the most remarkable series of
controversial frauds and literary delin
quencies that a university professor to
say nothing of a man with four gold
medals and seventy honorary diplomas —ever stooped to. The reality would be
amusing if it were not for the vulgarity
and coarseness in which it is enveloped.
Leaving aside the pedantic discussion of
minor points (the date of the Council of
Nicaea, the authorship of the Synodicon,
and so on), and granting that Dr. .Loofs
abundantly proves that Haeckel is not
an expert in ecclesiastical history (if
there be any who did not know it),
we find that the two chief points are the
criticism of Haeckel’s observations on
the formation of the canon and on the
birth of Christ,
83
Haeckel, it will be remembered, states
that the canonical gospels were, selected
from the apocryphal by a miraculous
leap on to the altar at the Council of
Nicaea. At this the indignation of our
professor of church-history flashes forth.
Mr. J. Brierley alludes to this, saying :
“ He gives the story as though it were
the accepted Christian account of the
admission of the four gospels to the
canon. It is difficult to chaiacterise this
statement.” Well, it is foitunate that
some rationalistic Dr. Loofs does not have
to characterise this statement. Haeckel
does exactly the reverse of this. He
gives the “ leap ” story as a correction of
the “ accepted Christian account.” “ We
now know,” he says, in introducing his
version. Further, he gives the state
ment candidly on the authority of the
Synodicon j though he should have said
this was only edited by Pappus. His
own honesty in the matter is perfectly
transparent ; if his acquaintance with
ecclesiastical history is very far from
complete. The story in the Synodicon
is not to be taken seriously. The canon
of the gospels was substantially settled
long before the Council of Nicaea. It
is true that Dr. Loofs is himself accused
of error by Dr. Bischoff for stating that
the Nicene Council did not discuss the
canon, but we will keep to the main
issue. The story taken from the
Synodicon is not worthy of consideration
as an account of the forming of the
canon.
The reader will remember Haeckels
pointed warning in his preface that, not
only are his conclusions on all matters
“subjective and only partly.corrrect,
but his book contains “studies of un
equal value,” and his knowledge, of some
branches of science is “ defective.
In
the face of those repeated expressions it
is ludicrous to suppose that Haeckel
wished to employ his great authority as.a
man of science to enforce opinions in
ecclesiastical history. Here is, on the
face of it, a department of thought where
no one will suspect him to have spent
much of his valuable time, and the di§-
�84
SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY
covery of defects in this chapter was value of the Gospels.
He will learn
almost a matter of course. He has
with surprise that Dr. Loofs by no
acknowledged those defects, and has in
means shares the conventional rever
serted in the cheap German edition of his
ence for the New Testament.
The
work a notification that the authority he synoptic Gospels were written, he
followed on this and the following thinks, between the years 65 and 100,
question was unsound. That authority and the Gospel of “ St. John ” before
was an English writer, who had had a
I?5;
That is the general opinion of
theological training, and whose work had
biblical scholars to-day; but it is by no
been translated into German. Haeckel
means the general opinion of the readers
had been, wholly misinformed as to his
of Die Christliche Welt, or of religious
standing in this country, and thus had people in this country. What is more
been betrayed into a reliance on what he important, Dr. Loofs, as we shall pre
understood to be his expert knowledge.
sently see, rejects as worthless, if not
In the case of a writer who claimed dishonest, interpolations some of the
infallibility, or at least a uniform weight,
most treasured and familiar passages of
for the whole of his book, such a defect the New Testament. Let us remember
would be more or less serious. Whether what is really at stake in these con
it was in point of fact one-tenth as
troversies.
serious as some of the procedure of his
To come, then, to the cardinal offence
critics which we have reviewed, whether of Haeckel’s book—we will take a few
it is a matter for violent discussion at all,
detailed criticisms later—we find it in
and not one that might have been the statement that Jesus was the son
pointed out by a colleague without loss of a Greek officer of the name of
of dignity—I leave it to the reader to Pandera. Now let us approach the sub
say. The section in which the passage ject with some sense of proportion. For
occurs shows a fair average acquaintance
Haeckel it is (legitimately) a foregone
with its subject, but it is clear from the
conclusion that Jesus was a human being,
authorities explicitly mentioned in it
born in a normal manner. The conclusions
(Strauss, Feuerbach, Baur, and Renan)
he has already so laboriously reached
that it was written, or prepared, years
compel him to assume this. If there is
ago. Any modern expert would find it no God, Jesus was a man—a “noble
defective. Whether this defect is a prophet and enthusiast, so full of the
fitting.ground for Dr/Loofs’s structure of love of humanity,” Haeckel generously
rhetoric and scholarship may be called
describes him.. This is a standpoint
into question. But whether it is either which Haeckel is by no means alone in
sensible or honourable to seek to dis taking to-day.
The vast majority of
credit Haeckel’s earlier positions in
the cultured writers of every civilised
science, which we have reviewed, by a
country share it with him. It is very
microscopic examination of such a
largely held within the ranks of the
section as this, cannot long remain un Christian clergy themselves. Mr. Rhondda
decided.
Williams preaches it openly. The posi
Before we pass to a consideration of tion of our own Broad Church theolo
the second chief charge, there is one
gians is known.
Even Dr. Loofs—
more point that it is highly expedient
remember well—holds as frankly as
to make clear.
The average inexpert
Haeckel does the natural human parent
reader, about whom our ecclesiastical
age of Jesus, and has formulated his
writers have suddenly grown so con opinion, as the opinion of the average
cerned, will be apt to suppose that this
cultured theologian, in a German theo
deadly attack by the spirited theologian
logical encyclopaedia. He angrily resents
of Halle is prompted by a devotion
the imputation that he believes in the
to the current belief in the unique
virgin-birth, and says no historian of
�SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY
dogma can entertain it.
He affirms
that the birth-story in Matthew and
Luke is a late interpolation in the
Gospel, and is quite discredited.
What then is the great difference
between the two ? It is that Loofs
awards the paternity of Christ to Joseph,
and Haeckel assigns it to the Greek
officer of a Roman legion. Our average
Christian neighbour will probably feel
that in substance it is a case of the devil
and the deep sea.
Further, it is easy to see in what
frame of mind a scientist like Haeckel
would approach such a matter. . The
birth of a Saviour-God from a virgin is a
legend that we find in all kinds of
religions anterior to Christianity.
We
know that in all these cases the prophet,
or god—supposing his historical reality
—was awarded this distinction by later
admirers to enhance the repute of his
divinity. When, therefore, Haeckel is
commenting on the dogma of the Im
maculate Conception,1 he turns aside for
a moment to discuss the question of
paternity. Not attaching an overwhelm
ing importance to the question, Who was
Christ’s father? he does not make a pro
found inquiry into it. But in one of his
authorities—the English writer whom I
have mentioned—he finds the curious
statement that the father was a Greek
officer, and it seems to harmonise with
the other statements. He finds that the
Gospels emphatically exclude the notion
that Mary was at that time married to
Joseph, or that Joseph was the father.
He finds, too, that as a matter of history
these miraculously born children were
generally illegitimate. In fact, the intro
duction of a Greek strain would help not
1 Which he misunderstands. The dogma of
the Immaculate Conception does not refer to the
conception of Christ by Maty, but to the concep
tion of Mary by her mother. Dr. Horton is
astonished at Haeckel’s ignorance. For my part
I am astonished at Dr. Horton’s knowledge.
The version Haeckel follows is quite the ordinary
non-Catholic version of the dogma. You will
find it even in Balzac (£<z messe de PathPe}.
Nay, even Mr. Ballard, B.D., thinks it is
correct {Miracles of Unbelief, p. 348).
85
a little to interpret the scriptural figure
of Christ, if it is taken to be historical.
It has long been an argument for the
divinity of Christ that the figure de
picted in the New Testament is so very
un-Hebraic in many of its features. We
who know the composition of the Gospels
understand this Greek element, But the
supposition that Christ had a Greek
father is not a little attractive in the cir
cumstances. When, therefore, Haeckel
learns from his authority, or supposed
authority, that in one of the apocryphal
gospels (the Gospel of Nicodemus)
Jesus was said to be the illegitimate son
of a Greek officer, and that this is con
firmed by the Sepher Toldoth Jeschua, he
at once embraces it as the most plausible
explanation of the “ high and noble
personality” of the Galilean.
These
apocryphal Gospels are, he tells the
reader, no less and no more reliable in
themselves than the canonical Gospels,
but this version of the birth seems to
accord best with the general situation.
Now this is a perfectly honest pro
cedure for a man who makes no pre
tension to expert knowledge or research.
Haeckel has again been misled by his
authority, it is true. The sentence, he
quotes from “ an apocryphal gospel ” is
not found in any of those books in that
form. The Gospel of Nicodemus merely
states that the Jews declared Christ to be
illegitimate. The Sepher ToldothJeschua,
which gives the story, is an early
mediaeval Jewish work of no authority.
The story can, indeed, be traced back
well into the second century (to about
130 a.d.), since Origen gives it as being
told to his opponent Celsus by the Jews,
in his Contra Celsum (I, 32); but this
was unknown at the time to Haeckel
and his authority. Further, it is mis
leading to say “the official theologian”
burks the story. It is perfectly true that
the Sepher Toldoth Jeschua is little com
mented on, but it is a worthless docu
ment; and Strauss, the author of the
Zz/e ofJesus, had contemptuously rejected
the story. These are undoubted errors
on Haeckel’s part. But, after all, the
�86
SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY
radical error is that he took a superficial
and unreliable author as his authority.
To have been misinformed as to the
weight and qualifications of a foreign
writer on a subject completely outside
his own territory, and to have neglected
to verify his information, is the full
extent of Haeckel’s delinquency. Dr.
Horton, who gives Vogt and Buchner as
shining lights in the spiritualist firma
ment, pompously tells us this was
“childish credulity.” Mr. Ballard, who
deals in such a remarkable fashion with
Haeckel’s observations on the pyknotic
theory and abiogenesis and determinism,
says he is “ ashamed to put such men
dacities into print,” and that if Haeckel
is not ashamed of himself he has not
developed “ an elementary degree of
morality.” Dr. Loofs calmly pours out
such a stream of invective that he thinks
it well to remind Haeckel of the text and
section of the German law which covers
the case ! He is afraid, he says, that
Haeckel will not be stung into dragging
the matter into court, and so he
continues to the end to dredge up
the. strong sediment of the German
dictionary.
A more ludicrous situation it would be
difficult to conceive. Haeckel frankly
states that in his opinion this is a subject
on which none of the evidence is worth
much. But he finds one legend more
plausible than that given in the canonical
gospels, and he points out that it seems
to be the most plausible. There is not
the slightest deception, as he openly
relies on the intrinsic plausibility of the
story, and openly states the immediate
and the ultimate sources from which he
takes it. No doubt he should have
examined more closely into the subject,
and should have looked into more
weighty and more recent literature. He
would then have found that the pas
sages which deny Joseph’s paternity
“belong to the least credible of New
Testament traditions,” as Dr. Loofs
says.1 But that his opponents should
1 American Journal oj Theology, July, 1899.
attack him with this virulence and
viciousness on that account is one of
the most disgraceful episodes of this
dreary controversy.
. The other defects which Dr. Loofs
discovers with his microscopic eye in
this chapter of the Riddle are mostly
pedantic rectifications of minor state
ments, or corrections with which only an
expert would concern himself, and as to
which opinions sometimes differ. Many
of them are quite paralleled by Dr.
Bischoff’s examination of Loofs’s own
statements. The year of the Council of
Nicfca and the number of bishops
present are incorrect; the number of
apocryphal gospels and of the genuine
Pauline epistles is not according to the
latest vagary of the critics; the statistics
of religion are not up to date; the
Immaculate Conception and Immaculate
Oath are improperly described. These
are the other points of the indictment.
The reader may judge for himself
whether there is anything more than a
lack of expert knowledge in these things;
and whether Haeckel ever claimed, and
did not rather disclaim from the outset,
such expert knowledge.
But we now turn to another aspect of
the matter. Haeckel, I said, set out to
discredit four dogmas which he found
hindering the progress of scientific know
ledge amongst the people at large. The
serious reader, impatient of all this dust
throwing and mud-throwing, will ask
how far the substance of Haeckel’s
attack on these dogmas survives this
scrutiny, and how far it is supported by
sound historical research. The dogma
of the infallibility of the Pope does not
appeal to the sympathies of these
Protestant critics, so that Haeckel’s
attack on the papacy is allowed to stand.
Let us consider his position with regard
to the other points—the uniqueness of
the Bible, of Christ, and of the history
of Christianity. Whether Haeckel is
infallible or not is hardly a subject for
prolonged discussion, provided his
“ scientific honour ” and “ scientific
conscience ” are not involved in the
�SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY
manner that Dr. Loots would have the
readers of Die Chnstliche Welt to be
lieve. The serious question is : Can we
sustain his attack on these dogmas,
apart from the incidental errors into
which his unfortunate reliance . on
“ Saladin ” has betrayed him ? This is
a study in Church History, in the full
sense in which that science is under
stood to-day.1 We shall see that the
substance of Haeckel’s position is com
pletely supported by our present know
ledge of the subject.
In the first place, that implicit reli
ance on the statements found in the
Bible, which Haeckel set out to impugn,
is now wholly discredited. We need
not consider the Old Testament, and
Haeckel does not discuss it. _ The
cosmological speculations of Genesis are
now known to have been borrowed from
earlier religions : the historical books
are so full of error that we can only
trust them when we have independent
verification; whole books (Daniel, Es
ther, Tobit, etc.) are given up as wholly
unhistorical. This can be learned from
the works of Christian scholars to-day.
The Old Testament remains a work of
surpassing interest, containing some fine
literature and some of the highest moral
teaching of the ancient world. But it
no longer obstructs the path of the
scientist or the historian. As to the
New Testament, the work of recon
struction is not equally advanced.
Writers like Archdeacon Wilson confuse
the issue by taking “verbal inspiration ”
to be the butt of the rationalist attack.
No doubt one will still find many simple
believers in verbal inspiration, but that
is not the serious difficulty. The
opinion that the rationalist seeks to dis1 As a fact, the real secret of Dr. Loofs’s
bitterness and animosity seems to be that
Haeckel has laid a strong charge against Church
History. Apart from one historian, whom he
mentions by name, there was no reason for
thinking he included advanced writers like
Harnack and Loofs. But that his charge
against conventional Church History was solidly
grounded is well known to every student of
history, and will presently be fairly established.
87
credit—the opinion of the majority of
Christians to-day (solemnly propounded
to the world only a few years ago by
the official head of the Church of Rome)
—is the belief that the Bible contains
no error. Once the infallibility of the
Bible is abandoned, it ceases to be a
barrier to progress. The infallibility of
the Old Testament is not now held by
any Christian scholar; and the infalli
bility of the New Testament is rapidly
being expelled from the cultured Chris
tian mind. We have seen how Dr.
Loofs himself rejects the account of the
virgin-birth (Matt, i., Luke ii.) which
had worn itself into the very heart of
Christianity. “No well-informed, and
at the same time honest and conscien
tious theologian, can deny that he who
asserts these things as indisputable facts
affirms what is open to grave doubts,”
he says, significantly enough, in his
article in the American Journal of
Theology. In his article (“ Christologie
Kirchenlehre ”) in the Real-Encyclopadie filer Protestantische Theologie he
talks freely of “layers of biblical tradi
tion ” and their relative trustworthiness.
This statement, which has been taken
throughout the Christian era to be the
most characteristic and one of the most
important statements of the New Testa
ment, is now relegated to “ one of the
latest and least reliable ” of these
“layers.” The article on the Gospels
in the Encyclopedia Biblica, which re
flects the condition of cultured biblical
thought in England, is written entirely
in the same spirit; the author finds only
nine texts in the Gospels which are
“ entirely credible,” and without which
“ it would be impossible to prove to a
sceptic that any historical value what
ever was to be assigned to the Gospels.”
The inexpert reader is often misled by
statements to the effect that the critics
are returning on their traces, and are
denying the late dates assigned by the
Tubingen school to the Gospels and the
fewness of the genuine epistles of St.
Paul. The second point is not important
for our purpose, but the first statement is
�88
SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY
gravely misleading. When an ecclesias
tical journal or a tactical apologist re
produces Harnack’s saying that recent
criticism is vindicating “the essential
truth of tradition” about the Gospels,
one can only regret that one is incom
petent to borrow some of the phrases of
Dr. Loofs. The simple believer is en
couraged to think that the miraculous
life of Jesus is being fully rehabilitated.
The composition of the Gospels is being
put back to the period 65-125 : that is
to say, 65-70 for Mark, 70-75 for
Matthew, 78-93 for Luke, and 80-120
for John. It is not thought proper to
explain that the critics by no means
refer to the Gospels as we have them
to-day, and that these Gospels consist
of earlier and later “layers”—in plain
English, interpolations. It is not con
sidered necessary to explain that the
return to the Gospels only means, in
the words of Loofs, “ a return to the
sayings of Jesus in the synoptic gospels,”
and that the miraculous legends may be
sorted out as unprovable and incredible.
Well may the Christian World com
plain of “the lack of honesty” in
theological literature ! The truth is that
the historical value of the New Testa
ment is shattered, and Christian scholars
are, as in the case of the Old Testament,
retreating upon its ethical value. Thus
the putting back of the composition of
the synoptic Gospels into the first cen
tury does not save that popular reliance
on their legends which Haeckel solely
regarded.
This brings us to our second point,
the consideration of the person of Christ.
In this, as a matter of fact, Haeckel takes
up an exceedingly moderate position, and
falls far short of the advanced position
of many of the ablest recent Rationalist
writers. He assumes not only the his
torical character of Christ, but also that
we know enough about him to speak of
“ his high and noble personality ” and
to describe him as “ a noble prophet
and enthusiast.” He denies the divinity
of Christ, the miraculous powers that
are assigned to him in the Gospels, and j
the. originality of some of the chief
ethical sayings attributed to him. This
is not merely a position that will readily
be endorsed by numbers of Christian
theologians, but it is one that many theo
logians, to say nothing of non-Christian
writers, will regard as granting too much
to the religious tradition. How widely
the divinity of Christ is rejected to-day
few can be ignorant. The vague and
fluid phrases in which even the belief in
it is expressed very commonly now mis
lead only the inexpert. The older
Rationalistic attitude as to Jesus—that
we might omit the supernatural portions
of the Gospel narrative and take the
rest as historical—is giving way to a more
scientific procedure, and the figure of
Christ is dissolving into a hundred
elements. Comparative religion traces
numbers of the Gospel legends, such as
the virgin-birth, if not all the features of
the birth-story, to pre-Christian religions.
The death and burial, many incidents of
the life, and very much of the teaching,
are not more difficult to trace. Whilst
Christian scholars are separating the
Gospel-story into “layers of tradition”
(thus explaining the obvious contradic
tions), the study of the Greek, Egyptian,
Mithraist, and other religions, which
prevailed at the time and in the place
where the Gospels were written, is assign
ing their proper sources to the “ later
layers.” 1 The virgin-birth, which has
been so prominently brought before the
mind of English readers through the
famous denial on the part of a dignitary
of the Church of England, is only an
illustration of the process of dissolution
that is going on. When that process is
complete we shall see how little will be
left of the figure of the Crucified that
has been graven on the heart of Europe
for nearly 1500 years. Most assuredly
Haeckel’s position is a modest one. And
1 Read the able and learned efforts to trace
many of the gospel-elements in Mr. J. M.
Robertson’s Pagan Christs and Christianity and
Mythology. For the analysis of the Gospels read
especially Dr. Schmiedel’s article in the Encyclo-.
padia Biblica.
�SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY
to conceal the strength of his position (as
opposed to the conventional position) by
the dust of a heated conflict as to
whether Christ’s father was Joseph the
carpenter or Pantheras the Greek is only
another specimen of “the lack of honesty
in apologetic literature.”
The third point to which Haeckel ad
dresses himself is the belief that there
has been anything unique about the
history or power of the Christian religion.
Here not only is Haeckel’s position very
moderately expressed, but the belief he
attacks is dissolving more rapidly than
the preceding beliefs. The term “unique ”
is—people so often forget—a relative or
comparative term; yet nine-tenths of
the ordinarily educated Christians who
talk of the uniqueness of the Bible have
never read a line of the Babylonian,
Persian, Egyptian, Hindoo, or Chinese
religious literatures; nine-tenths of those
who talk of the unique character of
Christ are totally ignorant of the work
and (traditional) character of Zoroaster,
Buddha, Lao-Tse, Kung-Tse, Apollonius,
or the Bab ; and nine-tenths of those
who think the history of Christianity is
“ unique ” have never studied, even in
the most general way, the growth and
work of Buddhism, or Confucianism, or
Parseeism, or Manicheeism, or Moham
medanism, or Babiism.
They have
trusted their ecclesiastical historians—
not men like Loofs and Harnack, but
the “ popular ” writers and the apologetic
writers of the Churches. Through this
literature most of us have waded at one
time or other; we can appreciate the
justice of the heaviest censure that can
be passed on it. It is one of the most
questionable implements in the employ
ment of the modern Churches. Com
plaint is frequently heard that rationalist
writers are ever seeking to belittle and
besmirch a religion which, with all its
defects, has had, in Haeckel’s words,
“ an ennobling influence on the history
of civilisation ” (p. 117). The reason is
found in the gross mis-statement and
perversion of the moral and religious
life in Europe during the last 1500 years
89
which the ecclesiastical historians have
been guilty of.
I will take in illustration one of . the
most characteristic and interesting periods
of this history of which I chance to have
expert knowledge—the fourth century.
Not many years ago I taught in a semi
nary, and preached from a Catholic
pulpit, the conventional theory of a
spiritual conquest of the Roman world
by Christianity—of “Rome, oppressed
by the weight of its vices, tottering to
embrace the foot of the crucifix.” That
is the historical theory you will hear from
almost every pulpit in this land to-day,
and will find, not merely in Christian
Evidence and S.P.C.K. and R.T.S.
Tracts, but in Sheppard and Milman
and Villemain and Dollinger and other
standard authorities. It is a ridiculously
false picture. Schultze has shown1 that
in some of the most important provinces
of the Empire not more than two and a
half per cent, were Christian at the
beginning of the fourth century. The
old religion had almost lost all serious
influence, and a number of Oriental re
ligions were pervading the Empire with
an ascetic and spiritual gospel. Of these
religions Christianity was one—not the
most ethical or spiritual or most success
ful. When the persecutions ceased, and
the Christians came out into the light of
day, their spiritual poverty was—with few
exceptions—a notable feature. Until 323
they proceeded quietly with their proselytic work, like the Mithraists and the
Manicheans, whom they closely re
sembled, when the conversion of Con
stantine to Christianity suddenly gave
them an immense advantage.
The
emperor’s “ conversion ” is not claimed
to have been important either as an in
tellectual or a spiritual phenomenon, but
it was supremely important in the poli
tical sense. Courtly senators followed
his example. It became, as Symmachus,
one of the last of the great pagans, says,
“ a new form of ambition to desert the
altars ” of the gods. Successive Christian
1 Geschichie des Untergangs des Heidenlhums.
�90
SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY
emperors sat on the Western throne, but
preserved a political neutrality, so that
Christianity advanced slowly. The short
reign of Julian showed how far Chris
tianity was from a triumph, and his suc
cessors, though Christian, still declined
to interfere politically in the rivalry of
religions.
By the year 380 the overwhelming
majority of the people and “ nearly the
whole of the nobility ” (St. Augustine
says) were still Pagan ; and the letters
of St. Jerome show that the Christians
were less spiritual than ever. But in 382
the “ triumph of Christianity ” began ;
within twenty years it became the
religion of the Empire. How ? From
the accession of Gratian (aged sixteen)
and Valentinian II. (aged four) there was
a succession of youthful, weak, and
religious emperors in the West. The
court was at Milan; its spiritual director
was St. Ambrose, one of the finest,
strongest, and most ambitious (for the
Church) of the fathers. He used his
influence, threatened the boy-emperor
with excommunication, and soon decree
after decree went out in favour of
Christianity. The pagan revenues were
confiscated: then the pagan temples
were destroyed or sealed up : finally any
who dared to cultivate any other than the
Christian religion were fined, imprisoned,
and threatened with death. At the same
time the Christian Churches adopted, or
had already adopted, all the attractions'
of the temples. They had gorgeous
vestments and ceremonies and pro
cessions, aspersion with water, incense,
banquets and dancing in the Church on
feast-days (generally ending in drunken
revelry), and all that the Roman cared
for in “religion.” The pagan merely
walked over to the Christian temple,
when he found his own barred by soldiers
or razed to the ground, and took
with him his music and flowers and in
cense and wine and statues. There was
no great moral reform, no great spiritual
conversion, except in a few distinguished
cases like that of St. Augustine.1
This gross misrepresentation of his
torical truth by ecclesiastical writers is
the sole reason for the Rationalist’s
playing “ the devil’s advocate.” Almost
the whole period of Christian history has
been treated with similar untruthfulness.
The good has been greatly exaggerated :
the evil suppressed or denied. The
belief in the uniqueness of the growth
of Christianity and of its moral and
civilising influence rests on a mass of
untruth and of calumny of other religions
and sects. Christianity and its sacred
books take their place in the great world
process. We see them growing naturally
out of the older religions and literatures,
and linking us with thoughts of other
ages. When theological literature has
ceased to offend us and to mislead the
people with its “ lack of honesty,” we
will study them with impartial interest,
and seek to establish their influence for
good as well as their share in the de
gradation of Europe from the first
century to the twelfth. Until then the
work of the Rationalist historian is
bound to seem destructive and one
sided.
1 Fuller details may be found in the author’s
St. Augustine and His Age: or in Boissier’s
Fin du Paganisme, Beugnot’s Histoire de la
Destruction dit Paganisme, or Schultze’s Geschichte des Untergangs des Heidenthums.
�THE ETHIC AND RELIGION OF MONISM
9i
Chapter XI
THE ETHIC AND RELIGION OF MONISM
Mr. H. G. Wells, the accredited
prophet of these latter days, predicts in
his well-known Anticipations that by the
end of the present century Christianity
will have been wholly abandoned
by people of culture. There will be,
he thinks, “a steady decay in the
various
Protestant
congregations,”
whilst Catholicism will increase for a
time, but only amongst “ the function
less wealthy, the half-educated, in
dependent women of the middle class,
and the people of the Abyss.” Another
recent writer, Sir Henry Thompson,
says in his essay on The Unknown
God\ “The religion of Nature must
eventually become the faith of the
future; its reception is a question for
each man’s personal convictions. It is
one in which a priestly hierarchy has no
place, nor are there any specified
formularies of worship. For ‘ Religion
[in the words of Huxley] ought to mean
simply reverence and love for the
Ethical ideal, and the desire to realise
that ideal in life. ’ ” Recently, too, Mr.
J. Brierley wrote one of his widely-read
articles in the Christian World on the
theme that there is impending “ a more
radical and more effective attack on
Christianity” than any that have pre
ceded. Mr. Rhondda Williams says that
“ already it is the fact that the cultured
laity on the one hand, and the great
bulk of the democracy on the other, are
outside the Churches.” It is true that
Mr. Ballard wrote in the British Weekly,
in July of this year, that Christianity “ is
at all events larger in quantity and
better in quality than ever before, and has
a brighter promise than in any previous
period of its history.” But within two
months we find him expressing himself
as follows : “ The outlook is a serious
one ; but I am not a pessimist, although
too many of my colleagues regard me as
such. I am only sensitive to the danger
of the day. What they call pessimism
I call open-eyed honesty. We are enter
ing on a very grave and probably pro
longed struggle, as Dr. Flint has recently
stated. The modern atmosphere is in
general tending away from rather than
towards all that is distinctive of Chris
tianity.” 1
Many things happened during the
course of the last summer to elicit or to
confirm these vaticinations. Haeckel’s
Riddle of the Universe was circulating to
the extent of some eighty thousand
copies in this country alone. Ecclesi
astics affected to believe that it was only
ignorant and thoughtless workers and
clerks who were deluded by its show of
learning, but they must have known
that it was being eagerly read by tens of
thousands of thoughtful artisans and
middle-class readers.2 Letters began to
trickle into the religious Press, telling of
increasing secessions and expressing ex
treme alarm. Within twelve months the
Rationalist Press Association, labouring
under the usual disadvantages of an
heretical publisher, put into circulation
nearly half a million of its publications ;
1 See interview by Mr. Raymond Blathwayt
in Great Thoughts.
2 So much pity is expressed in this connection
for the poor artisan that I must make this
observation. I have had intimate knowledge of
the clergy—Roman Catholic clergy, who, as a
rule, have had more definite philosophical instruc
tion than their Protestant colleagues—and have
lately, in the course of lecturing and wandering,
made a fair acquaintance with the working and
lower middle-class readers, who so largely pur
chase sixpenny editions. I do not hesitate to
say that there are tens of thousands of the latter
in England who can read Haeckel more intelli
gently than the majority of the Catholic clergy.
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THE ETHIC AND RELIGION OF MONISM
and almost every journal in England was
disturbing the peace of the faithful with
a reminder that there was a riddle of the
universe.
A Socialist journal, the
Clarion, made a drastic and sustained
attack on Christianity, in spite of threats
and jeers, and immediately found itself
in touch with the predominant sentiment
of its readers.
Other working-class
organs found it equally safe to open fire
on the Churches.
Two independent
and rigorous inquiries were conducted
into the religious condition of London,
where the Churches display incalculable
wealth. Both inquiries—that conducted
by Mr. C. Booth and that conducted by
Mr. Mudie-Smith for the Daily News—
proved that the Christian Churches in
London do not attach to themselves
more than a quarter of the population,
and that the great majority of their
adherents are women. A census taken
in Liverpool was equally depressing;
and observations made in several small
provincial towns showed that the con
dition was very general in the country.
At the Trade Union Congress at
Leicester the representatives of several
million workers declared for the ex
clusion of religious instruction from the
schools. A superficial inquiry at New
York discovered the same condition in
America, and the latest Australian
census also showed a decay of the
Churches, especially the Catholic Church
and the Salvation Army. M. Guyau dis
covered that in Paris not one in sixteen
of the population attended church, and
Protestant ministers have reported that
scarcely 8,000,000 of the population of
France remain under the obedience of
the Roman Church. The Belgian elec
tions show that half the population of
that “Catholic” country has definitely
ranged itself against the Church. The
success of the Social-Democrats in
Germany, and the reports from Spain
and Italy, point to the same general
defection of the people from Church
influence.1
1 One of the points in which Dr. Loofs joins
issue with Haeckel is in relation to religious
With the various sources of consola
tion which the clergy point out to each
other we are not concerned. The chief
of these seems to be hope; and a com
plete ignorance of the grounds on which
it rests prevents me from discussing it.
We know that the Churches have enor
mous wealth; one secondary denomination
having recently collected a sum of a mil
lion guineas, and another having erected
a cathedral at a cost of a quarter of a
million.
We know that no odium
attaches to the defence of Christianity, if
a scientist or historian be disposed to
defend it. We know that no intrigue
or menace is directed against the pub
lication or circulation of Christian litera
ture.
We know that the wealthier
journals of this country and the general
cultured sentiment is averse to attacking
even when it does not believe. We know
that the clergy have made enormous
concessions to the secular spirit of the
age, until in places their definite reli
gious ministration can only be timidly
and apologetically slipped in between a
cornet solo and a phonographic entertain
ment. Yet “ the outlook is serious,”
and “the cultured laity and the great
bulk of the democracy are outside the
Churches.”
Mr. Ballard has made
merry over the fact that Haeckel opens
his work in a despondent strain, and
yet his translator prefaces this with “a
paean of triumph.” He forgets that
there is an interval of several years
(not two months, as in his own case)
between the two passages.
The
twentieth century opened with—most
Rationalists considered—a brighter pros
pect for the Churches. Already this
statistics. Haeckel had given (from another
writer) the number of Christians as 410,000,000.
Dr. Loofs quotes two recent authorities who give
the figures as 535,000,000 and 556,000,000,
respectively. This is a fair illustration of the
“ victories ” of our apologists. Everyone knows
that these figures are obtained by lumping
together the populations of what are called
“Christian countries.” So France and England
are each credited with about 40,000,000 Chris
tians instead of 10,000,000. Belgium and Italy
and other countries are similarly treated. The
figures are totally worthless.
�THE ETHIC AND RELIGION OF MONISM
has wholly faded, and it seems impos
sible for the Churches ever to regain a
foot of the lost territory.1
This is not a “ paean of triumph,” but
a statement of fact. In the days when
a profession of unbelief involved social
ostracism and malignant calumny, when
men were thrown into prison with the
dregs of society for selling critical litera
ture or uttering critical sentiments, when
nearly every advance of science was
opposed by ignorant clergymen, when
women were bade to see their husbands
and sons in Hell for refusing to fre
quent the church, and the mind of
England was enslaved to dogmas that
all abhor to-day, the attack on Chris
tianity was necessarily predominantly
negative and destructive. Growth was
impossible until the iron bonds were
broken. To-day Rationalism, still rightly
militant and critical, has a conspicuous
constructive side. It has a sociological
outlook and an idealist gospel. After
all, the life of Europe has rested on
doctrinal foundations so long, and has
grown so accustomed to the stimulus of
religious thought, that some idea must
be substituted for the sources of inspira
tion that are rapidly exhausting. Haeckel
turns, therefore, at the close of his
cosmic speculations and his historical
glance at the Christian Church to con
sider this question of the successor of
Christianity.
Years ago he offered
Monism as “ a connecting link between
science and religion ”; as a system that
could unite harmoniously the finest
ethical truths of the Christian religion
1 Mr. Campbell makes a rhetorical point by
challenging a comparison between the census of
church-goers and a census of “ all the professedly
atheistic assemblies in London, all the Hyde
Park atheistic platforms, and the people who
are listening to atheistic propaganda.” Such a
quibble is unworthy of a serious speaker. 1 lie
limitation to “professedly atheistic” gatherings
makes the comparison ludicrous and unmeaning.
Let me in turn issue a challenge. Let the
figures of the circulation of the sixpenny Chris
tian publications be honestly compared with an
equal number, in an equal time, of the Rational
ist sixpenny works. Rationalism, Mr. Campbell
knows quite well, is almost entirely unorganised.
93
with the unshakable truths of modern
science. Even the believer in Christianity
must at times contemplate with misgiving
the practice of grounding the moral life
on beliefs which are to-day disputed and
attacked in every workshop in the land.
The child who has been trained to
honesty and sobriety on the ground
of supernatural reward or punishment,
or on the mere ground of giving offence
to an injured deity, must be of a singu
larly robust character to withstand
entirely the sneers at Hell and Heaven
and the open disbelief in God that
will presently assail his ears. If it be
desirable to have a humane, temperate,
and honourable community, it behoves
every thoughtful man to cast about for
some other ground for the commenda
tion of these moral qualities than an
enfeebled and disputed dogma. In
creasing stress is, therefore, laid on the
ethical and religious aspect of Monism.
One result of this is that, although the
Churches of our day profess a tolerance
which would have outraged the feelings
of their earlier leaders, their apologists
have by no means ceased to gird at the
alleged disastrous consequences of ma
terialism and agnosticism. Mr. Ballard,
who is supposed to have studied “un
belief” and “unbelievers,” introduces
his study (Miracles of Unbelief} with this
amiable quotation:
“ Hold thou the good : define it well:
For fear divine philosophy
Should push beyond her mark and be
Procuress to the Lords of Hell.”
Mr. Rhondda Williams says “ ideal has
no place in Haeckel’s philosophy ”; and
that on his principles “ over the crimes
of a Csesar Borgia you must write a great
‘Can’t help it.’ . . . The sweater who
grinds the faces of the poor can’t help
it.” Dr. Horton says that “men who
have no belief in God and immortality
sink to the level of the brutes,” and
“ come down to the level of the stocks
and the stones ”; that their “ soul is
shrunk, the mind is warped, and the
very body must carry its marks of degra-
Bishopsgat® InfititutaJ
�94
THE ETHIC AND RELIGION OF MONISM
dation.” Mr. R. J. Campbell says that
if the soul is not immortal, then the
right philosophy is to “eat and drink
and be merry ”; that the real obstacles
to Christianity are the thirst for money,
sensual pleasure and entertainment; and
that atheism is “ the gospel of destruc
tion, disease, and death.”1 This senti
ment is repeated weelily from scores of
pulpits all over the country; it is a
commonplace of ecclesiastical literature
and of a certain type of fiction.
Such tactics are malignant and dis
honourable.
I remember reading an
article in the Daily News some months
ago by Mr. Quiller Couch—a religious
author writing in a journal with a pre
ponderantly religious following.
He
touched on the current calumny of the
man without belief in God and immor
tality, and he urged that his readers
knew as well as he that when they
wanted a man of honour and humanity
to confide in they most probably looked
to an agnostic. Without claiming so
much as this, without enumerating the
Stephens and Morleys and Harrisons
that for years have adorned our letters
and our public life, one asks oneself
whether these cultivated clergymen can
have had an experience of their fellows
so different from that of this candid
novelist and essayist that we can at least
credit them with sincerity. It is impos
sible. The statement is an argument, a
stratagem, a flimsy piece of theorising.
It overrides for the moment every gentle
manly impulse, and closes its eyes to the
pain and the heart-burn that many a
gentle Christian mother will suffer as
she broods over it and thinks of her
wandering son. It is a mighty palliative
—I will not say justification—of the
violent language which often returns to
these gentlemen. Did you ever meet a
Christian who felt a moment’s anxiety
about his own character in the event of
his ceasing to believe in Christian teach1 Sermon in -the Christian Commonwealth,
July 30, 1903. This was Mr. Campbell’s first
sermon in the City Temple, and must be regarded
as an exceptionally deliberate utterance.
ing ? I never did. They could not face
their fellows with an avowal that they
were humane (when not defending the
faith) and honourable only or chiefly
because of reward hereafter, or because
God willed it. They are proud of their
own manliness. Their anxiety is ever
for the welfare of others, for “the
people.”
What, then, is the ethic of Monism
which these rhetoricians so completely
ignore ? One does not need a profound
or prolonged research to find it. It
rises out of the very ground on which
they base their ignoble appeal. They
would have us retain the outworn creed
of Christianity because it has been an
inspiration to character-forming, and
because character and a quick sense of
honour are amongst the most valuable
qualities of life. They do not see that
if honour, and sobriety, and high aims
are of value in and for themselves,
humanity will not lightly part with them,
whether or no it reject the miraculous
setting of them which the preacher com
mends. If “ to eat and drink and be
merry,” to extinguish all ambition of
spirit, to forego the visions of an Emerson
or a Mazzini, to pour one’s whole energy
into money-making and sensual pleasure
—if all these are social dangers and
personal misfortunes, humanity will see
to it that they are restrained. The issue
is plain. If moral qualities may dis
appear without the faculties of man being
stunted and the grace and glory of life
being endangered, they will disappear.
No power on earth will prevent it, now
that man has begun to reflect. But if
justice, and honour, and truthfulness,
and self-control, and kindness are
qualities that enrich and gladden the
personal and the social life, they will be
cultivated on that account. And as a
fact, if we take a broad and true survey,
the world was never richer in those
qualities, yet the influence of dogma was
never less. What does the humanitarian
movement mean ? What the movement
for the extinction of the flames of war,
the increase in philanthropic effort, the
�THE ETHIC AND RELIGION OF MONISM
growing social service of the rich, and a
score of other movements ? What has
shattered the barbaric doctrine of hell,
and extinguished for ever the fires of
persecution? A development of men’s
moral and humane feeling, which has
proceeded simultaneously with a decay
of belief.
But, we are told, you are still so near
to the age of universal belief that the
Christian ethic is in your blood in spite
of you. You are severed twigs that are
still green with the sap of the tree. I
reply, firstly, that it is the modern
rationalist and humanitarian movement
that has reformed Christianity. Compare
the degraded condition of Spain, where
the Church has been able to stifle criti
cism, with England and Germany, where
a century of criticism has been directed
upon Christianity from the otitside. And
I reply, secondly, that we are perfectly
conscious that the sap of Christianity is
in our moral fibres. 11 We firmly adhere
to the best part of Christian morality,”
says Haeckel (p. 120): and “ the idea of
the good in our monistic religion co
incides for the most part with the
Christian idea of virtue.” Why should
we be so foolish as to set aside the moral
experience of the last 2000 years ? It is
the heritage of the race. We have been
lifted above that petty sectarian attitude
that distinguishes the church-member.
We survey the whole moral and religious
life of humanity as one broad stream.
Christianity is a stage, a phase, in the
continuous history of the world.
It
borrowed its ethic from Judaea, from
Greece, and from Egypt. It was made
in Alexandria, the centre at that time of
the civilised world, and the converging
point of three great spiritual streams.
There is not a single ethical element in
primitive Christianity that cannot be
traced to its predecessors. Moreover,
the notion that the Hebrews had a
“genius for morality” has no longer
even the semblance of plausibility.
Read the 125th chapter of confessions
or protestations in the Egyptian Bible,
and you will find, a great Egyptologist
95
(Budge) says, a system of morality
“second to none among those which
have been developed by the greatest
nations of the world.” And this chapter
was compiled, from very much earlier
teaching, fifteen centuries before Christ
appeared, and at a time when the
Hebrews were yet uncivilised. The
Book of the Dead, as Dr. Washington
Sullivan says, is so lofty that “ if every
vestige of Christianity were obliterated
from the earth, it would provide an ad
mirable ethical outfit for the reorganisa
tion of morality in Europe.” Further, we
have within the last two years discovered
the very source of that lofty morality with
which the Hebrew prophets lifted their
nation from its barbaric level. At a date
when the Hebrews were sacrificing
human victims to their idols, two thousand
years before the decalogue in the Old
Testament was written, the Babylonians
(from whom the Hebrews obtained their
wisdom and civilisation) were living at a
very high level of moral idealism. The
Code of Laws of Khammurabi—laws
promulgated between 2285 and 2242 B.c.
—is seen to be the foundation of the
“ Mosaic legislation.” We now know,
Dr. Washington Sullivan says, that the
Hebrews “ were positively the last of all
the peoples of remote antiquity to dis
cover those high truths of the moral life
which constitute the unchanging founda
tion of society.”1
But, while, in taking over from
Christianity the moral heritage of
humanity, we owe it gratitude for new
development in some directions, we
must with Haeckel acknowledge that it
has overlaid moral truth with false ideals
that must be set aside. I am not
speaking merely of those mediaeval
horrors which all Christians avoid and
evade to-day. I am thinking of some of
the most distinctive features of the
composite Christ-ideal. When Mr.
1 Ancient Morality. The reader will find in
this admirable booklet a fuller account of this
and the preceding point. It can be obtained at
a moderate price from “ The Ethical Religion
Society,” Steinway Hall.
�96
THE ETHIC AND RELIGION OF MONISM
Campbell
says that Christ “ has
manufactured more nobleness than all
the moral codes in all the world put to
gether,” we see at a glance how little he
knows of “all the moral codes” and
what they have done. We who watch
the advance of comparative religion and
ethics, and of the criticism of the New
Testament, know what will eventually
become of this kind of Christianity
which stakes its existence on the
historical truth of the Gospels. Christ
is dissolving year by year. But even
when apologists have removed the stress
from the (largely, at least) legendary
person of Christ to that moral teaching
which appears in the first century as
“primitive Christianity,” we still join
issue with them. Haeckel has indicated
several features of the Christian ethic
which we cannot receive. Some of
these features are already abandoned
by our Christian neighbours. There is
the ascetic principle, one of the most
prominent elements of the Christ-teaching, which even the Catholic Church is
quietly dropping. There is the Gospel
of opposing violence by submission and
Hooliganism by emptying your pockets,
which one honest Anglican bishop has
pronounced “ impracticable.” There is
the contempt of art and nature, which
follows from the ascetic principle. There
is the commendation of virginity, which
no one regards to-day, with its implica
tion of the inferiority of marriage, so ex
pressly preached by the Church fathers.
There is the suppression of woman, in
spired by the Old Testament teaching,
which, as Mr. Lecky has shown, put
back her emancipation (which the
Romans were initiating) for more than a
thousand years. All these were errors
of the enthusiastic but ignorant com
pilers of the Christ-ideal, and the modern
world agrees to abandon them.
We claim, further, that this moral
teaching must be set once for all on a
purely humanist ground.
“ With eyes
fixed on the future,” says the great
Mazzini, “ we must break the last links of
the chain which holds us in bondage to
the past, and with deliberate stages move
on. We have freed ourelves from the
abuses of the old world; we must now
free ourselves from its glories. . . To-day
we have to found the polity of the nine
teenth century—to climb through philo
sophy to faith ; to define and organise
association, proclaim humanity, initiate
the New Age.” The doctrine of Hell
and Heaven is no longer a fitting founda
tion for moral conduct, as most edu
cated Christians recognise to-day. But
the personality of God or the personality
of Christ is just as little fitted. Have
you ever seen how the little-minded
villagers, along those parts of our coast
where the sea is steadily invading the
land, build time after time close to the
edge of the cliff? “ My grandfather lived
there,” some old man will tell you, point
ing his lean finger out into the sea. And
he knows that in twenty years more the
cottage he has himself built will be un
dermined and swept away. That is
the procedure of those theologians who
base their ethic on the successively dis
solving dogmas of Christianity. Their
grandfathers staked the moral condition
of the community on a belief in Hell;
their fathers grounded it on faith in the
supernatural character of the Bible.
They are basing it to-day on belief in
God and the historical reality of Christ.
And year by year the waves of criticism
and the tunnels of research are under
mining their position. Let us retreat
once for all from the land of dogma.
Morality is too important a matter to be
left at the mercy of scientific or historical
controversies. Cling to your beliefs if
you must—if you can ; but in view of the
controversy that surrounds them, and
will soon thicken about them a hundred
fold, do not seek to bind up the moral
tone of the community with so frail a
speculation.
People who imagine that this pro
posal to transfer the moral interest
from the care of the Churches has a
violent and unnatural character are
little acquainted with the history of the
subject. The leading writers on com-
�THE ETHIC AND RELIGION OF MONISM
parative religion assure us that, in the
words of Professor Tiele, “ in the be
ginning religion had little or no con
nection with morality.” In other words,
morality had a quite different and inde
pendent origin from theology. It was
only at a fairly advanced stage in the
development of priesthood that the
notion was advanced of the gods being
the authors and the priests the guardians
of the moral law. We have seen how
Babylon had the decalogue and an
elaborate moral code centuries before the
supposed giving of the tables to Moses
on Mount Sinai. The existence of a fullydeveloped moral sentiment can thus be
discovered ages before the first claim of
a revelation. If, further, we study the
moral feeling of the lowliest tribes, and
ascend gradually through the semibarbaric peoples known to history, such
as the ancient Mexicans or our own
forefathers, we can trace clearly enough
the growth of the moral ideal. When
men began to live in community they
discovered that certain restraints must
be placed on individual impulses. They
saw the enormous advantages to each of
a communal life, of co-operation and the
division of labour, of mutual help and
service, of substituting trial or arbitration
for bloody combats, and of being able to
trust each other. In other words, they
discovered that, if they were to advance
in the construction of social life, which
promised so many advantages, certain
new habits or rules or qualities were
necessary.
Justice, kindness, respect
for age, care of youth, truthfulness,
sobriety, and self-control were necessary.
In proportion as they acquired these
qualities their social life was healthy and
effective.
The individual gained far
more than he had relinquished in the
occasional restraint of his impulses.
And in proportion as they fell away from
this ideal their social life was enfeebled
and disturbed. Thus there grew up a
sense of the importance of the moral
ideal—such a sense as we find, for
instance, amongst the ancient Germans
long before their contact with Chris
97
tianity. In this way the decalogue came
to be written. Man was its author.
The experience of 200,000 years was
his inspiration. And to-day, when we
see how vitally necessary moral fibre
is for progress in the exacting race of
our national and international life, it is
hardly likely that we shall return to the
lawlessness of prehistoric life. There came
a stage in the evolution of the moral ideal
when men considered it so wonderful
a thought that they hailed it as a gift of
the gods, just as the Hebrews did when
they composed, or borrowed, the legend
of the giving of the law on Sinai. In
this way morality became intimately
associated with theology. It is probable
that, whilst this association has hindered
moral development in some ways—com
pare the stagnancy of the “ages of
faith ” with the great ethical advance of
this “ age of unbelief ”—it has in other
ways greatly promoted it.
However that may be, the time has
come for humanity to claim its own from
the gods. There is an obvious danger
that, as the theological structure with
which morality has so long been asso
ciated breaks up, morality may suffer for
a time. Scepticism about the one natur
ally leads to scepticism about the other.
To say that we should on that account
refrain from hastening the dissolution of
theology is the very reverse of wisdom or
statesmanship. We must insist on the
formation of a purely humanitarian ethic.
We must jealously remove this deeply
important interest from the arena of
controversy. Our children must not be
taught, as they are still taught, to restrain
their impulses to lying, stealing, and
unhealthy practices, merely on the ground
of certain religious beliefs. In a few years
they will hear those beliefs ridiculed and
torn to shreds on every side, and it may
be that the whole structure of their
moral habits will be shaken to the ground.
This is a grave social and humanitarian
problem.
Our educational authorities
insist that moral training shall be given
by the teacher only in connection with
' the legends of the Old Testament, which
G
�98
THE ETHIC AND RELIGION OF MONISM
are not taken to Be historical by clerical
Scholars themselves to-day, or with the
stories of the New Testament that are
being rapidly reduced to myths. The
child is too unsophisticated to see what
is called a “symbolic truth” in these,
and it is well known that the teachers in
our schools, often with great repugnance
to their own feelings, have to treat these
stories as historical, or leave them to be
considered historical.
It is a pitiful
situation, and ought not to be tolerated
even by those who still adhere to
religious beliefs.
An organisation has been created to
meet this situation; to agitate for the
introduction of purely humanitarian
moral instruction for the children in our
elementary schools, and to formulate
schemes of such teaching and provide
model-lessons and expert teachers to
show its practicability. Already several
local educational authorities have adopted
the ideas of this organisation. But over
the country at large the moral instruction
of our children is still totally bound up
with that teaching of the Bible which is
to-day so seriously controverted. Every
man, and especially every woman, who
is alive to the folly and the danger of
our present system should consider the
aim and work of this organisation.1
A more difficult question arises when
we turn to consider moral culture
amongst the adult portion of the
community. Dr. Haeckel is of opinion,
as are very many rationalist writers, that
we need look forward to no substitute
for the Churches in this respect, except
for a certain minority of the community.
“The modern man,” he says, “who has
‘ science and art,’ and therefore ‘ re
ligion,’ needs no special church, no
narrow, enclosed portion of space. For
through the length and breadth of free
nature, wherever he turns his gaze, to
1 I am referring to the Moral Instruction
League. Its central office is at 19 Buckingham
Street, Strand, Loudon, W.C. ; any inquiries
addressed there will be promptly answered by
the secretary. Branches of the League have
been formed in various parts of the country.
the whole universe or to any single
part of it, be finds indeed the grim
struggle for life, but by its side are ever
1 the good, the true, and the beautiful ’
his church is commensurate with the
whole of glorious nature. Still, there
will always be men of special tem
perament who will desire to have
decorated temples or churches as places
of devotion, to which they may with
draw.” No doubt, - 'when we have
introduced an adequate scheme of
purely natural moral instruction into our
primary and secondary- schools instead
of leaving this most important section
of the child’s education to the casual
observations of a reluctant and untrained
teacher in the course of a Bible lesson,
there will not be the same need for
church-assemblies in later life. But it
would seem that the tendency to form
new groups and organisations for moral
and humanitarian culture is on the
increase. Already there is in the field
an important “ Ethical movement,” with
branches in America,' England, France,
and Germany, and with an international
organ (The International Journal of
Ethics) and international congresses.
The English branch includes some
fifteen societies in London and the
provinces, most of which are gathered
into a Union of Ethical Societies,1 and
is spreading rapidly. It has an organ
of its own (Ethics, one penny weekly),
and takes an active part in all social and
humanitarian work. There is also the
Positivist Movement; and there are num
bers of Humanitarian, Tolstoyan, and
other societies with similar aims. Even
churches and chapels are slowly casting
off their raiment of dogma and specula
tion, and restricting their aim to moral
culture. In many parts of England
this transformation has already com
pletely taken place. The tendency
everywhere is in the direction of an
abandonment of dogma, and a relin
quishment of cosmic speculation to the
philosopher and the scientist. Some
1 Central office at 19 Buckingham Street,
London, W.C.
J
�THE POSITION OF DR. A. R. WALLACE
day our Churches will perceive at length
that the belief in God is itself a cosmic
speculation, exposed: to a hundred
hazards of discovery and controversy.
Then, in the words of. Emerson, “there
will be a new Church, founded on moral
science ; at first cold and naked, a babe
in a manger again, the algebra and
mathematics of ethical law, the
Church of men to come, without
shawms, or psaltery, or sackbut, but it
will have heaven and earth for its beams
and rafters, science for symbol and
illustration; it will fast enough gather
beauty, music, picture, and poetry.”
That Haeckel is right in this, his final
judgment and expectation, none will
question who have long observed the
development of religious thought and
church life. Strong and eloquent voices
plead already within the Churches for
the elimination of dogma, for an ex
clusive concern for moral culture. If the
modem art of anticipation have any
validity, it is certain that theological
speculation and moral culture are
severing their long association. We are
taking the step that some of the great
religions of the world took ages ago.
Buddha, wiser in this than the founders
of Christianity, pleaded solely for moral
reform, and coldly discountenanced
theological speculation.
Enlightened
Buddhists hold to the spirit of his
teaching, though Buddhism has, as a
j
'
■ .i . J
99
whole, been unfaithful to his spirit. But
another great Oriental religion, Con
fucianism, the religion of the cultured
Chinese and Japanese, had taken the
step we are taking to-day centuries before
Christ was born. The followers of
Kung-Tse have for ages maintained
moral culture without dogma. Their
Bible, the Bushido, is the model
Bible of the world. It is the turn of
Christianity to make religion “ the service
of man ” instead of “ the service of God.”
If there be a God, he needs not the
sacrifices, and he must disdain the flattery
and adoration, of' a poverty-stricken
humanity. We must turn at length from
the land of shadows, where the super
natural lurks, and pour the whole intense
stream of religious emotion into the task
of uplifting ourselves and our fellows.
We must free the religious and moral
ideal from every entanglement of contro
verted dogma, and set it on a natural
base. Then will cease the long anxiety
and the foolish resistance to every ad
vance of thought. Then each new
discovery will shed new light on our
ideal, and science will be. eagerly
pursued.
“ Oh Science, lift aloud thy voice that stills
The pulse of fear, and through the conscience
thrills—
Thrills through the conscience with the
news of peace—
How beautiful thy feet are on the hills ! ”
Ji
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v
Chapter X
THE POSITION OF DR. A. R. WALLACE
The reader will probably remember
a famous passage in one of Huxley’s
essays where the anxiety that theologians
betray, as the mechanical interpretation
of the universe advances, is compared to
the terror which savages exhibit during
an eclipse of the sun. Whether Huxley
had had a rude experience of that
D 2
�IOO
THE POSITION OF DR. A. R. WALLACE
ecclesiastical rhetoric, of which we have
seen so much under the name of
“ criticism ” of Haeckel, and had yielded
to a malicious impulse in his choice of
an analogy, we need not inquire. We
have seen that the apologists are still
eager to. throw every obstacle they can
suggest in the way of the advance, or of
the acceptance, of the mechanical view.
We have encountered them at every step
in our course. Sometimes, indeed, we
have found ecclesiastics with scientific
qualifications desperately recommending
us to read criticisms that aim at dis
crediting scientific procedure; as when
Mr. Ballard tells his readers to study
Stallo s Concepts of Modern Physics, a
work “the.most of which,” says Sir O.
Lodge, “is occupied in demolishing
constructions of straw.” But these
tactics have long ago ceased to be
effective. Science has won too solid a
position in modern life to be shaken by
the ill-informed criticism of Stallo or the
academic subtleties of Professor Ward.
Nor is the general reader greatly moved
by the efforts of our modern theologians
to sit in judgment on science in its own
domain. The obvious plan for the
Churches to adopt with the largest hope
of success was to obtain, and give a wide
publicity to, utterances by prominent
scientists that tend to rehabilitate
theology. I am not suggesting that
these distinguished scientists only speak
out under a strong pressure from the
clergy. On the part of Sir O. Lodge, for
instance, and Dr. A. R. Wallace, there
is a very clear concern for religion,
which is entitled to our full respect.
But it cannot be denied that the use
which is made by the clergy of these
occasional utterances is gravely mislead
ing.
We have already seen this in
the case of those German scientists to
whom Haeckel refers as having changed
their views. The only statement that
Haeckel makes is that they have ceased
to defend the positive views which he
expounds in the Riddle • yet almost
every clerical writer represents them as
having, to use Dr. Plorton’s words,
“ come to recognise spirit as the author
of consciousness ”—this in spite of the
fact that Haeckel expressly mentions
Du Bois-Reymond’s agnosticism on this
point (p. 6). Dr. Horton, with his
inclusion amongst the elect of the most
notorious materialists that ever lived,
has a title to leniency, in a sense, because
of his obvious ignorance of the entire
subject. The position of those apologists
who have some scientific culture is more
serious. These German scientists—
Wundt, Baer, Virchow, and Du BoisReymond — are
agnostics. Professor
Haeckel assures me that in Germany the
clerical writers call them “atheists.”
They lend no support whatever to even
the. most advanced and liberal form of
theism.
Writers who so thoroughly
mi-lead the English public as to their
position have little right to discuss
the taste of Haeckel’s analysis of
his. colleagues’ views.
The oriental
saying about straining at the gnat
and. swallowing the camel is painfully
pertinent.
We have now to examine those utter
ances on the part of English men of
science which are so much quoted of
late, and we shall find how little support
they really give to the religious position.
Of the later views of G. J. Romanes I will
speak later, when we come to deal with
the somewhat similar ideas of Mr. W.
Mallock. Romanes saw to the end the
terrible strength of the scientific position.
It was only by an appeal to “extrarational ” and unscientific testimony
that he sought to evade it. With Sir O.
Lodge we need not deal in detail. His
chief line of argument is of a teleological
nature, and is exposed to the difficulties
we have already indicated. Nor do I
propose to deal with the spiritist convic
tions of Sir O. Lodge or Dr. Wallace, or
(if they still exist) Sir W. Crookes, or
(in a degree) Professor James. Spiritist
evidence is a subject for personal investi
gation. We may also hold ourselves
dispensed from dealing in detail with
the views of the late Dr. St. George
Mivart. They are not urged upon us to-
�THE POSITION OF DR. A. R. WALLACE
day.1 But there have lately been published
two remarkable pronouncements by dis
tinguished English scientists, Dr. Wallace
and Lord Kelvin, and these it is incum
bent on us to examine. It is chiefly on
the strength of these utterances, that
clerical apologists talk of a reconciliation
of science and religion, if not of “a
rehabilitation of religion. by science.”
These utterances have, in their bald
and misleading outline, been published
throughout the country. We shall see,
in this and the following chapter, how
wholly ineffectual they were, how swiftly
they were torn to shreds by the proper
experts on the subjects involved, and
how clearly the episodes show that the
science of to-day is overwhelmingly
favourable to the positions we have
defended against Haeckel’s critics.
Dr. A. R. Wallace, one of the most
distinguished naturalists of our time, has
long been famous for his opposition to
the doctrine of the evolution of the
human mind. This opposition, main
tained in face of a remarkable and
increasing consensus of scientists and
scientific theologians, is ceasing to im
press inquirers as it once did. The
opinions of a man of such ability, expert
knowledge, and candour, must always be
examined with respect. But we have
seen that the problem is very different
to-day from what it was thirty years ago.
To-day we all admit that evolution is a
cosmic law: Haeckel says it is “ the
second law of substance,” and the theo
logians say it is God’s way of making
things. We all admit the evolution of
matter and the evolution of solar
systems; and most of us admit the
evolution of life and the evolution of
species. On the other hand, we trace
back the distinctive human institutions
of to-day—art, civilisation, science, phi1 Had Mivart lived, the public would have seen
a sensational development in the exposition of
his later opinions. He told me, some years
before his death, that he intended to speak out
fully before he quitted the stage, and he frankly
admitted that his scepticism was deep and his
concern for religion little more than a belief in
its moral efficacy.
IOI
losophy, religion, moral codes, and lan
guage—along a line of evolution to very
primitive beginnings. Grant a glimmer
of intelligence and reason in early man,
and we can very well conceive the natural
development of these institutions in the
course of the last 200,000 years. We
must, indeed; because we know that the
prehistoric man, whose remains we un
earth to-day, had not these things. We
have, therefore, only to bridge the interval
between the brain of the Neanderthal
man and that of the anthropoid ape,
between the mind of the highest animal
and that of the lowest man. The dif
ference is one of degree, not of kind.
Comparative psychology finds in animals
the same emotions and reasoning power
as in man, only less highly developed.
Further, we have a period of at least
600,000 years in which the advance
might be effected. The anthropoid apes
appear in the Miocene period (about
900,000 years ago). Man is not held
to be developed from them, but from a
common ancestor with them; so that
from that period to the time when we
find unmistakable trace of man (250,000
to 220,000 years ago) natural selection
must have been at work.
Finally, we
have lately discovered a most important
link in the chain of development (the
pithecanthropus), and the study of the
brain is, as we saw, suggesting some very
remarkable and illuminating possibilities.
If Canon Aubrey Moore could say that
Mr. Wallace’s view “ had a strangely un
orthodox look ” sixteen years ago, it has
certainly not lost its singularity in our
day. When Dr. Haeckel went to Java,
two years ago, on a scientific expedition,
the Press assured us that he had gone to
search for more bones of the pithecan
thropus. As a fact, though his researches
and travels took him within a hundred
miles of the spot where Dubois found
the famous remains in 1894, he did not
go there. The evidence for the complete
natural development of man is so great
that such discoveries are unnecessary.
But Dr. Wallace has very recently
I entrenched his position with a very
�102
THE POSITION OF DR. A. R. WALLACE
remarkable attack on current scientific
conceptions. He purports to undo a
large and important section of the scien
tific procedure of our earlier chapters,
and we must enter upon a thorough
examination of his statements.1
He
says that the “ new astronomy ” entirely
disciedits that “ cosmological perspec
tive ” which we have taken from Haeckel
and supported with recent evidence.
Instead of finding indications of infinity,
he says, modern astronomers have dis
covered very definite limits to the
material universe. Instead of our sun
being a . neglected and unimportant
element in the stellar universe, it is the
very centre, or near the centre, of the
whole system. Instead of our earth
being a very ordinary fragment of matter,
torn, in some way, from the central mass,
and forming a casual crust at its cooled
surface, it. is a unique body in the uni
verse ; it is fitted to support life in a way
that no other planet of our system is,
and that most probably no other planet
in the universe is. Thus, instead of
man being a mere casual product of
natural development, he is the very
centre and culmination of its processes,
a unique creation, for whose production
the whole universe seems to be one vast
and orderly mechanism, set up for that
purpose by a Supreme Intelligence.
If this is true, it is one of the most
startling and dramatic discoveries ever
made. Let me point out at once that if
all this (except the last line) were estab
lished to-morrow it would not add one
grain of evidence to the religious position,
and would not break a line in the essen
tial structure of Monism. The universe
would still be a mechanism, with no
indication of ever having begun to exist;
and Dr. Wallace’s teleological plea for a
guiding intelligence would be as illogical
as we have seen that argument to be.
This new discovery would greatly impress
(because it would greatly unsettle) the
1 The book he announces is not published as
I write, so that I follow the two articles he wrote
in the Fortnightly Review (March and Sep
tember, 1903).
imagination, but would have no philo
sophical significance. Dr. Wallace says
we could no longer attribute the appear
ance of life to chance ; but we do not
attribute it now to “chance.”
We
attribute it to a mechanism which is not
erratic, but fixed, in its action. Setting
aside the imagination and the emotions,
there is no more philosophic significance
in the fact of the materials and conditions
of life being found in just one cosmic
body than in a million. Dr. Wallace
seem(> to make much of the “ re markable: coincidence” of these curious
privileges of our planet with the actual
appearance of life on it. Most people
will think there would be some reason
to use the word remarkable if the con
ditions were here and the life was not
forthcoming.
There is no religious
significance in all that Dr. Wallace urges.
But it is- in direct opposition to much
that we have established in the earlier
stages of .Haeckel’s position, and we
must examine the evidence adduced in
support of it. If it is true, Monism can
assimilate, it without strain. We shall
see that it is not only not proved, but
the attempt to prove it only shows again
the correctness of even Haeckel’s minor
positions, r
It is, naturally, to astronomy that Dr.
Wallace turns for evidence. He is not
an expert, in that science, but, of course,
every philosophic thinker must borrow
material from many different sciences.
The truth is, however, that no sooner
were Dr. Wallace’s views published than
there was immediately a loud and unani
mous condemnation of them on the part
of astronomers. The astronomers of
France and Germany were frankly cynical
about, them, two of the leading French
astronomers writing to combat them in
Knowledge. Our chief English astrono
mers, of all schools, at once repudiated
the alleged evidence. Professor Turner,
the Savilian Professor of Astronomy at
Oxford, said that Dr. Wallace had “ not
suggested, anything new which was in
the least likely to be true. He seems to
me to have unconsciously got his facts
�THE POSITION OF DR. A. R. WALLACE
distorted, and to indicate practically
nothing wherewith to link them to his
conclusion.” Dr. Maunder pronounced
the new theory “a myth,” and was not
sure if Dr. Wallace intended the article
to be taken as “a serious one.” A
number of other astronomers joined in
the discussion, and, apart from one or
two details in his evidence,,not a single
expert undertook to defend him. But
we must examine his several positions in
succession, so as to bring out once more
the fact that Haeckel is supported by
the most recent science.
The first point, and the most interest
ing for our purpose, is the contention
that the new astronomy discovers the
universe to have a d.efinite limit. We
have urged that Haeckel was in harmony
with the evidence when he spoke of the
universe as “ infinite,” so that here is a
clear contradiction. It need not be said
that the validity of Monism is not at
stake in the matter. Whether the uni
verse is limited or unlimited, it remains
a Monistic universe. The question is
whether Haeckel has misread the evi
dence of astronomy on this incidental
question of limit or no limit. It is well
to remember that “ infinity ” is a nega
tive idea. It merely denies that there is
a limit to the scheme of things. What
we have to see, then, is whether the most
recent investigations of astronomy point
to the existence of such a limit or not.
The evidence for a limit on which Dr.
Wallace lays most stress is, instead of
being a study in “ the new astronomy,”
a very old and threadbare fallacy.
Flammarion says1 it was “ the subject of
long and learned discussions during the
course of the eighteenth century and up
to the middle of the nineteenth,” and he
adds that “ it would not be difficult to
settle it to-day.” The argument is that
if the number of luminous stars were
infinite the sky would be at night as
bright as it is at noonday. The infinite
number would compensate for the dis
tance. But the actual star-light is only
1 Knowledge, June, 1903.
103
about one-fortieth the light of themoon,
and that is only a five-thousandth of the
intensity of the light of the sun. Dr.
Wallace has taken this specious calcula
tion from Professor Newcomb, but has,
as Dr. Maunder points out, omitted two
conditions which Newcomb carefully
gives, and which make the speculation
totally inapplicable to the actual uni
verse. Newcomb’s calculation assumed
that no star-light was lost in transmission,
and that “ every region of space of some
great but finite extent is, on the average,
occupied by at least one star.” Neither
of these conditions is found in our uni
verse. Light is absorbed in its passage
to us; and the stars are distributed with
nothing approaching the uniformity
which the speculation demands. The
second point needs no proof.
The
irregular structure of our stellar system
is familiar enough; and there is not the
slightest scientific difficulty about sup
posing that other stellar worlds may be
separated from ours by immeasurable
deserts of space. As to the absorption
of light, a number of causes are pointed
out. In the first place, we now know that
there are dark as well as luminous stars.
No astronomer supposes that these are
less numerous than the light stars. Sir
Robert Ball thinks they are so much
more numerous that to count the stars
by the light and visible spheres would be
like estimating the number of horse
shoes in England by the number of
those which are red-hot at a given
moment. These dark stars must inter
cept the light of their incandescent
fellows.1 Dr. Maunder says that if we
take them as a basis of our calculation
1 In his second article Dr. Wallace replies
that Mr. Monckhas shown that, even if the dark
stars were 150,000 times more numerous than
the light ones, the sky would, if these were in
finite, be as bright as moonlight. Once more
Dr. Wallace omits a condition stipulated by his
authority, who says this would be so- if they
“were distributed in anything approaching a
similar density.” For that we have no assurance
whatever. Moreover, Dr. Wallace almost ignore
the other and more important sources of absorp
tion.
�104
THE POSITION OF' DR. A. R. WALLACE
we could prove that “we are shut in by
a veil wnich no light from an infinite
distance could pierce.”
But in addition to these incalculable
dark stars there are other sources of
absorption. The astronomer to whom
Dr. Wallace appeals, Mr. Monck, holds
that ether itself absorbs light. At any
rate we know that space is full of cosmic
dust—meteorites, etc.—and that this
must be an important source of ab
sorption. Mr. Monck says that, “ if
sufficiently remote, the star would thus
for all practical purposes be blotted out.”
And Sir N. Lockyer also emphasises this
factor. Moreover, we have just learned
a further source. Before Newcomb’s
latest work was published, in February,
1901, a new cosmic element was dis
covered in the shape of a dark nebula.
Certain peculiarities of a new star led to
the discovery that it was surrounded by
a nebula that reflected its light. Thus,
we have the presence in space of another
and powerful screen in the shape of dark
nebulae, the number and distribution of
which we are unable to conjecture. Our
universe is something infinitely removed
from that theoretical system to which
Professor Newcomb’s calculations might
apply. Ihus, once more, does the very
latest science come to our assistance.
We may add that, even apart from the
absorption of light and the irregular dis
tribution of the stars, the calculation is
enfeebled by another possibility. We
have no proof that ether is continuous
throughout infinite space. There may
be several galaxies or stellar systems,
unconnected by ether, so that one would
not be visible to another. Assuming
that (according to a calculation of Lord
Kelvin’s) there are a thousand million
stars in our system, “there may be,”
says Flammarion, “ a second thousand
beyond an immense void, or a third, or
fourth or more.” And, finally, Professor
Pickering has shown that, even with a
continuous infinite ether, our present
star-light is quite consistent with the
existence of an infinite number of
luminous stars, “ if the distance between
the stars becomes (on the average)
greater the farther we go from the solar
system,” if we assume this to be central.
Thus the most emphatic of Dr.
Wallace s proofs has been absolutely
riddled by expert astronomical opinion.
It is “ founded,” says Dr. Maunder, “ on
a careless reading of Professor New
comb s book,” and cannot be sustained
for a moment.1 Nor is his other line of
argument more capable of defence. He
urges that, although up to a certain point
an increase in the power of the telescope
reveals new worlds in greater number,
this increase is not sustained in the case
of our largest telescopes; and, in the
case of photographs of the stars, an
exposure beyond three or four hours does
not bring us into touch with an increas
ing number of worlds. From this he
would infer that the powerful instru
ments we use to-day have exhausted the
universe and brought us to its extremities.
If the number of stars were infinite, an
increase of power or exposure should
always reveal new worlds. Once more,
Dr. Wallace has drawn his conclusion
too precipitately. In the first place, as I
said, there is the possibility of other
systems being cut off from ours by
empty space. But there is a simpler
and readier answer to his argument. The
fact to which he appeals—in so far as it
is fact; a study of the long-exposure
photographs of Dr. Isaacs by no means
sustains it 2—really means that we are
approaching the limit of the effective
range of the telescope, not the limit of
objective reality. Every increase in the
aperture of a refracting telescope means
1 Nor is Professor Newcomb’s book itself above
dispute, great as is the authority of the writer.
Mr. R. A. Gregory, reviewing it in Nature
(March, 1902), says that “ the outlook described
is not only limited, but imperfect,” and points
out a number of errors in it.
2 In his second article Dr. Wallace appeals to
these photographs, but makes it clear that he
has in mind photographs of nebulae and star
clusters. It is obvious that there must be a limit
to the number of stars in a given cluster or
nebula; but the eight-hour exposure photo
graphs of other parts of the heavens read
differently.
�105
THE POSITION OF DR. A. R. WALLACE
an increase in the absorption of light by
the lens itself. We are, Dr. Maunder
says, approaching the limit beyond which
the absorption will neutralise the advan
tage of a large objective. So in the case
of stellar photography, it is only when
we deal with “ medium luminosities ”
that a longer exposure avails. Thus Dr.
Wallace not only exaggerates the fact—
Mr. Monck, for instance, speaks of
“ the constant detection of additional
stars by more powerful instruments ”—
but he misinterprets its significance. He
has not, says M. Moye, “brought any
convincing proof against the universe
being infinite.”
“ Space cannot be
otherwise than infinite,” says M. Flammarion; a limit to either space or time
is unthinkable. The latest researches
of astronomers bring us no nearer than
ever to a limit of the material universe.
Dr. Wallace’s second point, that our
planet occupies a significant central
position in the universe, collapses of
itself when he fails to prove that that
universe is finite. There is no centre
in infinity. But, as Dr. Wallace has
committed the radical error of “ reason
ing from the area we see to the infinite,”
it is at least interesting to examine how
far our sun may be described as occupy
ing a central position in the vast stellar
combination we call the Milky Way.
Now, it has long been obvious that our
sun is roughly in the centre of this huge
system. We have only to glance at the
great belt of light the system forms around
us in the heavens to see this.
But
astronomers once more totally reject the
expression of this fact which Dr. Wallace
presents.
The system is so irregular
in structure that we could not with pro
priety assign a definite centre to it if our
knowledge were greater than it is. You
may talk of the centre of a bowl, says
Professor Turner, but you cannot talk of
the centre of a saucepan ; and there is
a projection of the system visible in the
southern heavens which answers to the
“handle” in this figure. Flammarion
believes there are clusters in the heavens
that do not belong to our system at all.
Moreover, even if we consent to speak
of a “ centre ” of this irregular structure,
with its clefts and projections, it is wholly
inaccurate to say that our sun is awarded
that position by astronomy. Mr. Monck
doubts “ if any astronomer could go
within one thousand light years of the
centre of the star system as at present
known ” ; that is to say, in non-technical
language, no astronomer would venture
to assign a centre within the broad limit
of 6000 billion miles ! Other astronomers
think it clear that we are nearer one side
of the system than its opposite, and
point out that if the motion of our sun
(about ten miles a second) is in a curve
determined by gravitation (as it surely is)
round the centre of gravity of the solar
system, it must be at an enormous dis
tance from that centre, as we can learn
from the analogy of motion in a globular
cluster.
All agree that we have no
greater right to consider ourselves in a
central position than are fifty other suns,
the nearest of which is twenty-five billion
miles away from us.
Thus Dr. Wallace has once more
considerably strained the evidence in
order to vindicate a central position for us.
But there is a further consideration
which must be taken into account.
Our sun is calculated by astronomers to
be travelling through space at about ten
miles per second. Dr. Wallace seeks to
enfeeble this doctrine of astronomy,
when it is turned against him, by urging
that the motion is relative; it may be
the stars that move while we remain
stationary. That is to say, he would
suggest an anomalous character for our
sun without a shadow of proof and
in direct opposition to the law of gravita
tion, which he himself invokes at other
times. The idea of a vast central sun,
round which all the stars in the Milky
Way would revolve, as planets do round
a sun, has been long since rejected by
astronomers. Its mass would have to
be incalculable; and the mass of our
sun is small compared with that of its
measurable neighbours. To save itself
) _ from being sucked in (or impelled
H
�106
THE POSITION OF DR. A. R. WALLACE
towards) its gigantic double and triple
neighbours it must move. It is probable
that it follows a curved path round the
common centre of gravity of our system
(not a central mass). In any case the
curve of its path is so great that
astronomers can as yet detect no curve
at all. It follows that, if to-day we
happen to occupy a central position, it is
only a temporary occupation. Many of
Dr. Wallace’s critics argued on the sup
position that our path lay in a straight
line through the universe, but others
pointed out the probable curve, so that
Dr. Wallace does not escape the point
by rejecting rectilinear motion. He had
argued that the special advantages which
this supposed central position gave to
our sun had been enjoyed by it during
the whole period of the evolution of
life. Astronomy wholly discredits that
assumption even when we bear in mind
all that he urges as to the relativity of
cosmic movements.
Let us next examine the advantages
which our planet is supposed by Dr.
Wallace to possess in the way of habita
bility. The conditions of life which he
enumerates are the usual conditions of a
certain temperature (say, between o° C.
and 75° C.), a circulation of water, and
an atmosphere of proper density and
extent to effect this. Our own distance
from the sun, with an atmosphere and
tidal movements to equalise the distri
bution of heat and cold, ensures a
moderate temperature. Our deep, per
manent oceans hold a supply of water,
which is admirably circulated by the
heat of the sun, controlled by the atmo
sphere, and assisted by the dust which
our deserts and volcanoes largely con
tribute.. Thus we have, he thinks, in
the position of our planet, its distribution
of land and water, its atmosphere, its
satellite, and its physical features, a com
bination of favourable circumstances
that is not likely to be found elsewhere,
The distance of the other planets from
the sun is either too great or too little.
Atmosphere is largely determined by
mass, and so Mars is in this respect dis
qualified. Venus has no moon, and
this “ may alone render it quite incapable
of developing high forms of life.” We
know, he says, with “ almost complete
certainty” that this combination of
favourable conditions is not found on
any other.planet in our solar system.
To this series of affirmations the
expert astronomical critics oppose a very
decided series of negatives. “In our
solar system,” says Flammarion, “this
little earth has not obtained any special
privileges from Nature.” M. Moye re
gards our earth and sun as “ very or
dinary orbs, having no special character
istics, and as no more suitable for life
than innumerable other suns and
planets.” Mr. Mo.nck has “sufficient
faith in the principle of evolution to
think that man might accommodate
himself to the conditions of life on
almost any of the planets, provided that
the change were sufficiently gradual, and
a sufficient time were allowed to elapse ”
It is true that Miss Clerke says, “ Dr.
Wallace’s contention, that our earth is
unique as being the abode of intellectual
life, corresponds in a measure with the
recent trend of astronomical research.”
Miss Clerke, it is not impertinent to
observe, approaches the subject with the
same prejudice as Dr. Wallace about the
uniqueness of man, but the phrase “ in
a measure ” saves the passage from in
accuracy.; and she later makes an ex
ception in favour of Mars. But the
whole, idea of seeking identical condi
tions in other planets is erroneous. “ To
limit the work of Nature to the sphere of
our knowledge is,” says Flammarion,
“to reason with singular childishness.”
They are of the same material as earth,
and have been evolved by the same
forces; there is likely to be a general
likeness of features, and that is enough
for our purpose, when we remember the
infinite adaptability of the life force.
M. Moye examines in detail the condi
tions Dr. Wallace lays down, and points
out many errors. To say that Mars is
disqualified on account of its smaller
mass than the earth is “ a purely
�THE POSITION OF DR. A. R. WALLACE
gratuitous assumption.” Aqueous va
pour has been detected by the spectro
scope in the atmospheres of at least
Venus and Jupiter. Tidal motion is
caused by the sun as well as the moon,
and may be so caused in Venus ; nor is
it essential to life. “ The distance from
the sun to the earth in the general, plan
of Our solar system is not peculiar or
extraordinary in any way.”
While,
as to deserts, each of the other planets
must, on Wallace’s theory, be one
vast desert; nor have we any ground
for thinking that deep, permanent
oceans are a peculiar feature of our
planet.
It would, of course, be no more than
an interesting discovery, of no grave
consequence to Monism, if our planet
were proved to be the only habitable
body in our solar system; but astronomers
utterly discountenance-the idea. “Life
is universal and eternal,” says Flammarion, almost in the words of Haeckel.
“ Yesterday the moon, to-day the earth,
to-morrow Jupiter . . . Let us open the
eyes of our understanding, and. let us
look beyond ourselves in the infinite
expanse at life and intelligence in all its
degrees in endless evolution.”
Professor Turner points out that Dr.
Wallace has completely failed to show,
after all his laborious proof of our central
position, that this would give our earth
any advantage in the way of habitability.
He says that Dr. Wallace, “with the
deftness of a conjurer,” has substituted
for this question a discussion of the
impossibility of there being life at the con
fines of the universe. It is true that Dr.
Wallace has since admitted that he had
no proof to offer at the time, but will
present one in his forthcoming work.
However, we may profitably close with a
glance at his attempt to prove that, life
is impossible towards the imagined
limits of our system. Even his fellow
io7
spiritualist, Miss A. Clerke, protests that
“ it cannot be reasonably supposed that
the conditions of vitality deteriorate with
remoteness from the centre ; and Dr.
Wallace has been forced to admit that
the reasons he suggested were ill-con
sidered and erroneous. He surmised
that gravitation might be less at the
verge of the system; which is not only
“ a pure assumption,” but is opposed by
our knowledge of the most distant
double stars. He compares the move
ments of the stars with the molecules of
a gas, and is eventually compelled to
acknowledge that “ there is probably no
justification for the idea.” And he quite
gratuitously supposes that. the action of
electric and similar rays is different at
the edge of our stellar system than it is
elsewhere.
■
We may conclude, then, that Dr.
Wallace’s excursion into astronomy has
been singularly and painfully disastrous.
In general and in detail his theory is
shattered to fragments by the criticisms
of all the experts who join in the discus
sion. The idea of man’s spiritual unique
ness obtains no support whatever from
the great cosmic investigations of ‘ the
new astronomy.” On the contrary, the
most recent discoveries and speculations
confirm the “ cosmological perspective
which Haeckel urges in his Riddle of the
Universe. We have no ground in
scientific evidence for assigning limits of
time or space to the material universe,
we have no ground for believing that
man is a unique outcome of natural
evolution, and that “ the supreme end
and purpose of the vast universe was
the production and development of the
living soul in the perishable body of
man”; and we have no. ground for
thinking there is so peculiar a combina
tion of circumstances in our planet as
to force us to appeal to a Supreme
Intelligence.
�LORD KELVIN INTERVENES
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Chapter
XI
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LORD KELVIN INTERVENES
Whilst this storm of astronomical
indignation was beating about the luck
less pronouncement of Dr. A. R. Wallace,
the second intervention on behalf of
religion, of which I spoke, took place.
Once more, it is important to observe,
the intervention consisted of a declara
tion by a distinguished scientist that
some science other than his own tended
to support conventional religion by its
recent investigations. Dr. Wallace, the
naturalist, purported to speak for as
tronomy ; and we have seen what the
astronomers themselves made of his
declarations. Lord Kelvin, the most
distinguished living physicist, assured
the world that biology was coming to
recognise a field of phenomena with
which it was so incompetent to deal that
it was retreating to the old notion of a
“vital principle” and the action of
“Creative Power.” We have now to
see what our biologists had to say about
this statement of their attitude.
The circumstances of Lord Kelvin’s
pronouncement will be easily recalled.
Certain of the students of the University
College, London, have formed them
selves, or been formed, into a “ Christian
Association,” and have lately set about
“ converting ” their less religious fellows
to the belief in their particular cosmic
speculations. A series of lectures was
arranged for the spring of this year, the
Botanical Theatre of the University
College was somehow secured, and a
certain show of scientific names was
scattered over the programme. The
first lecture was by the Rev. Professor
Henslow (M.A., F.L.S., F.G.S.), and
a vote of thanks was accorded to the
lecturer by Lord Kelvin for his “ examina
tion of Darwinism.” The second lecture,
on “ The Book of Genesis,” was given by
the Dean of Canterbury, and the chair
was taken by Sir Robert Anderson
(K.C.B., LL.D.). The Rev. Professor
Margoliouth gave the third lecture, on
“The Synoptic Gospels,” and was sup
ported by a distinguished physician (Sir
Dyce Duckworth) and a military man.
The other two lectures were also given
by reverend lecturers, and were supported
by Sir T. Barlow, M.D., and Mr.
Augustine Birrell. Lord Kelvin was the
lion of the display, and his few closing
words were at once published from end
to end of England. He claimed that
“modern biologists were coming once
.more to the acceptance of something,
and that was a vital principle.” He
asked : “ Was there anything so absurd
as to believe that a number of atoms by
falling together of their own accord
could make a crystal, a sprig of moss, a
microbe, a living animal?” And he
concluded that this was an appeal to
“creative power.” On the following day
he re-affirmed his opinion, with a distinc
tion, in a letter to the Times. He wrote :
“ I desire to point out that while ‘ fortui
tous concourse of atoms ’ is not an inap
propriate description of the formation of
a crystal, it is utterly absurd in respect
to the coming into existence, or the
growth, or the continuation of the
molecular combinations presented in the
bodies of living things. Here scientific
thought is compelled to accept the idea
of Creative Power. Forty years ago I
asked Liebig, walking somewhere in the
country, if he believed that the grass
and flowers which we saw around us
grew by mere mechanical forces. He
answered, ‘No, no more than I could
believe that a book of botany describing
them could grow by mere chemical
forces.’ ”
�LORD KELVIN INTERVENES
The echo of this sturdy utterance is
still reverberating through the provinces,
soothing the anxious feelings of thou
sands of believers, and being triumph
antly quoted against the unbeliever. In
London its echo was quickly drowned in
a chorus of condemnation.
Lord
Kelvin’s letter was at once followed in
the Times by letters from three of our
most eminent experts on the subject he
had ventured to touch, as well as by
letters from Mr. W. H. Mallock, Profes
sor Karl Pearson, and Sir O. Lodge.
The three experts unanimously con
demned Lord Kelvin’s statement, as did
also Mr. Mallock and Professor Pearson ;
and even Sir O. Lodge said that “ his
wording was more appropriate to a
speech than a philosophical essay,” it
had a “subjective interest,” but he
“ would not use the phrase himself.” Sir
W. T. Thiselton-Dyer, our most dis
tinguished botanist, complained that
Lord Kelvin “ wiped out by a stroke of
the pen the whole position won for us
by Darwin,” said that the reference to a
fortuitous concourse of atoms was
“ scarcely worthy of Lord Kelvin,” and
“ denied the fact ” that “ modern biolo
gists were coming to accept the vital
principle.” Sir J. Burdon-Sanderson,
the Regius Professor of Medicine at
Oxford, while resenting the strong terms
of Sir W. T. Thiselton-Dyer’s censure of
Lord Kelvin’s personal procedure, said
that it had been demonstrated to the
satisfaction of physiologists that “ the
natural laws which had been established
in the inorganic world govern no less
absolutely the processes of animal and
plant life, thus giving the death-blow to
the previously prevalent vitalistic doctrine
that these operations of life are domi
nated by law$ which are special to them
selves.” Professor Karl Pearson was
astonished that an institution with
accredited professors in biology “ should
open its doors to irresponsible lecturers
on ‘ directivity,’ ” and said that “ if Lord
Kelvin wishes to attack Darwinism, let
him leave the field of emotional theo
logical belief and descend into the plane
109
where straightforward biological argu
ment meets like argument.”
'
Professor E. Ray Lankester, from the
side of zoology, said : “ I do not myself
know of anyone of admitted leadership
among modern biologists who is showing
signs of ‘ coming to a belief in the exist
ence of a vital principle,’ ” and that “we
biologists, knowing the paralysing in
fluence of such hypotheses in the past,
are unwilling to have anything to do
with a ‘ vital principle,’ even though
Lord Kelvin erroneously thinks we are
coming to it,” and “ we take no stock in
these mysterious entities.” Sir O. Lodge,
drawn by an allusion to his belief in
telepathy, took occasion to disclaim and
deprecate Lord Kelvin’s use of the
phrases “ creative power ” and “ fortui
tous concourse of atoms.”
With these weighty and emphatic
pronouncements from some of the ablest
biologists in this country—without. a
single line in defence of Lord Kelvin,
either by himself or by any known ex
pert—we might dismiss Lord Kelvin’s
intervention as the most unfortunate
episode of his career, and as a pitiful
failure to give the slenderest support to
the reverend lecturers of the Christian
Association. But an appeal to authori
ties is a fallacious and unsatisfactory
settlement. We shall better vindicate
the strength of Haeckel’s position by a
brief analysis of this most recent attempt
to demolish it.
Let us see, then, first what truth there
is in the statement that “ modern biolo
gists are coming once more to a firm
acceptance of the vital principle.”
This three of our most representative
biologists, Sir W. T. Thiselton-Dyer, Pro
fessor Ray Lankester, and Sir J. BurdonSanderson, flatly deny. Clearly Lord
Kelvin was guilty of the gravest impro
priety in saying that “ modern biologists
are coming,” &c., and “scientific thought
is compelled,” &c. The implication of
these phrases is obvious, and it is totally
untrue. When Professor Ray Lankester,
one of the most distinguished biologists,
tells us he does “ not know of anyone
�IIO
LORD KELVIN INTERVENES
of admitted leadership among modern
biologists” who is accepting the vital
principle, it is clear that the statement
was gravely misleading. That there is
a certain revival of vitalistic ideas is
another matter. The clergy need not
have waited for Lord Kelvin’s assurance
to that effect. In the fourteenth chapter
of the Riddle of the Universe Professor
Haeckel long since informed us of that
revival. It would not be surprising—
ironic as the circumstance would be—to
learn that Lord Kelvin obtained the grain
of fact which underlay his assertion
from Haeckel’s book. In all countries
there have been of late years a few
scientific men of secondary rank who
have urged the acceptance of something
more or less resembling the old vital
force. Professor Lionel Beale and Dr.
Mivart are well-known advocates of
“ vitality” in this country; several French
biologists still speak of the vague idee
directrice which Pasteur imagined to
control the growth of the organism; in
America, Cope and Asa Gray advocate a
form of vitalism ; in Germany it is urged
by Nageli, Bunge, Rindfieisch, Dreisch,
and Benedikt, in Italy (more or less) by
Gallardi, in Denmark by the botanist
Reinke. The ideas of these writers
differ considerably, but they agree in
holding that some directive or “domi
nant ” principle must be superadded to
the physical and chemical forces of the
organism.
We have seen in an earlier chapter
how “modern biologists” as a class,
and “ scientific thought ” as a whole,
wholly reject the vitalistic hypothesis,
and maintain that we have no reason to
go beyond ordinary natural forces. We
have seen what Professor Le Conte,
Professor Ward, Sir A. Riicker, Sir J.
Burdon-Sanderson, Professor Dewar, and
others, say of the condition of “scientific
thought.” “For the future the word
vital, as distinctive of physiological pro
cesses, might be abandoned altogether,”
said Sir J. Burdon-Sanderson, and our
recent authorities fully concur with him.
Professor Beale is one of those scientists
who would sing a joyful Nunc Dimittis
if he saw any important sign of the
revival of vitalism. But if Lord Kelvin
consults his most recent publications
he will find only a deepening of the
pessimism which Professor Beale has
expressed on the matter for the last
twenty years. In Vitality— V, published
two years ago, he tells us the very
reverse of the assurance of Lord Kelvin.
“Probably no hypotheses or doctrines
known to philosophy or science,” he
says in his preface, “have been so
generally favoured, and more persistently
forced on the public by ‘Authority,’ and
therefore widely accepted and taught by
educated and intelligent persons, than
doctrines of physical life and its origin
in non-living matter ” (p. vii); and later
he says: “Purely mechanical views of
life are again, possibly for the last time,
becoming very popular” (p. 5). Further
on he quotes Professor Dolbear as say
ing (in his Matter, Ether, and Motion)
that “ there is little reason to doubt that
when chemists shall be able to form the
substance Protoplasm it will possess all
the properties it is now known to have,
including what is called life; and one
ought not to be surprised at its announce
ment any day”; and he refers us to the
appendix of Professor Dolbear’s book
for a long list of weighty pronounce
ments in favour of the mechanical hypo
thesis. We may, therefore, dismiss once
for all the attempt to commit “ modern
biologists,” as a class, to a belief in vital
principles and creative powers as a
serious, though unintentional, misstate
ment—one that it is painful to find over
the name of Lord Kelvin.
Haeckel was perfectly right. He
awarded a larger proportion to Neo
Vitalism than any of our own biologists
(even Dr. Beale) are prepared to do, but
he rightly claimed that the mechanical
view of life was the predominant one in
biology to-day. Sir W. T. ThiseltonDyer, writing of Huxley {Nature, June
5th, 1902), said: “Huxley was firmly
imbued with what is ordinarily called a
‘ materialistic conception’ of the universe.
�LORD KELVIN INTERVENES
I think myself that this is probably a
true view.” The representation that
Haeckel is alone, or almost alone, in his
view of life is a gross and audacious misrepresentation.
And when we come to examine on its
merits this revival of vitalism—such as
it is—we find it has no promise what
ever of gaining wide scientific recogni
tion, because it rests essentially on a
familiar fallacy. The reader who wishes
to study the grounds of it may consult
Professor Beale’s various editions of his
Vitality, or Reinke’s Welt als That, or
Dreisch’s Die organischen Regulationen,
where all the evidence of the NeoVitalists is ably mastered. Happily it is
not necessary for us to cover the whole
ground of this evidence even superfi
cially. As we saw in the case of teleology,
the principle of the argument is one,
however infinite may be its applications;
and it is the principle itself that lacks
logical validity. There are, the NeoVitalist urges, scores of features of the
life of the animal or plant that the
biologist cannot explain by chemical and
physical forces ; therefore we must have
recourse to a non-mechanical or new kind
of force—an idee directrice, a “ domi
nant,” a “ vital power,” and so forth.
What these inexplicable phenomena are
we need not consider at any length;
they are such phenomena as—the pro
cesses of segmentation and differentia
tion in the growth of the embryo, the
selection of food from the blood or sur
rounding media, the replacing of tissues
or organs that have been cut away (in the
hydra, the newt, and even higher
animals), the formation by an animal of
a protective anti-toxin, the acquisition of
protective mimicry, the power of adapta
tion in organs to changes in environ
ment, and so on.
There are, every
biologist admits, scores of phenomena
which are not as yet capable of ex
planation by mechanical forces ; and the
new vitalist urges that these point to the
presence of a specific principle in the
animal or plant. “ Up to this day,”
says Professor Beale, “ no cause, no ex
in
planation, can be found, and therefore
we attribute those vital phenomena to
Power—to Power which is special and
peculiar to life only, power which we
know cannot be derived from matter.
Is it not, therefore, perfectly reasonable
to believe that all vital power has come
direct from God?”1
The reader will at once recognise the
principle of the argument. It is that
familiar sophism which has made the the
istic doctrine “ a fugitive and vagabond”
(to borrow the words of Dr. Iverach) in
scientific territory for the last century or
more. It is the sophism that Laplace
expelled from astronomy, Lyell from
geology, Darwin from phylogeny, and
that we have found desperately clinging
to every little imperfection of our scien
tific knowledge of the universe. It is a
philosophy of “ gaps.” It is the familiar
procedure of taking advantage of the
temporary imperfectness of science. It
is an argument that has been wholly
discredited by the advance of science,
sweeping it from position after position;
it is as superficial philosophically as it
is unsound in logic and prejudicial in
science. “The action of physical and
chemical forces in living bodies can
never be understood,” said Sir A. Rucker,
“ if at every difficulty and at every check
in our investigations we desist from
further attempts in the belief that the
laws of physics and chemistry have been
interfered with by an incomprehensible
vital force.” “ The revival of the vitalistic conception in physiological work,”
said the president of the physiological
section (Prof. Halliburton, M.D., F.R.S.)
at the British Association meeting of
1902, “appears to me a retrograde step.
To explain anything we are not fully
able to understand in the light of physics
and chemistry by labelling it as vital, or
something we can never hope to under. )
1 Dr. Beale’s last conclusion is not, of course^
shared by the continental Neo-Vitalists. Even
if we were forced to admit a specific vital prin
ciple, it would not “come from God” any more
than other natural forces. But the analogy with
I Lord Kelvin’s vague phraseology is noticeable.
�112
lord kelvin intervenes
stand, is a confession of ignorance, and,
what is still more harmful, a bar to
progress. ... I am hopeful that the
scientific workers of the future will
discover that this so-called vital force
is due to certain physical or chemical
properties of living matter, which have
not yet been brought into line with the
known chemical and physical laws that
operate in the inorganic world. . . .
When a scientific man says this or that
vital phenomenon cannot be explained
by the laws of chemistry and physics, and
therefore must be regulated by laws of
some other nature, he most unjustifiably
assumes that the laws of chemistry and
physics have all been discovered.” “We
think,” says Prof. Ray Lankester, “ it is
a more hopeful method to be patient
and to seek by observation of, and ex
periment with, the phenomena of growth
and development to trace the evolution
of life and of living things without
the facile and sterile hypothesis of a
vital principle.” If we accepted it,
says Weismann, “we should at once
cut ourselves off from all possible
mechanical explanation of organic
nature.”
It is very difficult to reconcile Lord
Kelvin’s present attitude with the prin
ciple he laid down in 1871, and pre
sumably still holds. . “Science,” he said,
“is bound by the everlasting law of
honour to face fearlessly every problem
which is presented to it. If a probable
solution, consistent with the ordinary
course of nature, can be found, we must
not invoke an abnormal act of Creative
Power.” Prof. Dewar reproduced this
passage in this very application in his
presidential speech of last year; and
within a few months we find Lord Kelvin
approving the attitude of those few
biologists who depart from that principle
to-day, and, impatient at the slow growth
of our knowledge, rush to the conclusion
that science must abandon this portion
of the cosmological domain to the
theologian once more. Lord Kelvin
quotes Liebig, who was not a biologist,
and who lived in an earlier scientific
period.1 But immense progress has been
made since Liebig’s day in the mechani
cal interpretation of life.2 Lord Kelvin
also would have us think that the only
alternative to the “vital principle” is “the
fortuitous concourse of atoms.” Even
Sir O. Lodge is stirred to protest against
this descent from the level of science to
the level of Christian Evidence lecturing.
We have seen that science discovers
only the work of fixed, determinate
forces, not erratic and confused agencies.
“The whole order of nature,” says Prof.
Ray Lankester, “ including living and
lifeless matter—man, animal, and gas —
is a network of mechanism.” There is
nothing “fortuitous” whatever in the
concourse of atoms.”
We have, then, to set aside the un
fortunate and undefended utterance of
Lord Kelvin, and the claims of old3 It is not a little amusing to find that this
famous German chemist, whom Lord Kelvin
introduces as a friend to Christian Associations
in England, was regarded as an atheist by similar
bodies in Germany in his own time. When
Bishop Ketteler urged the Grand-Duke of Hesse
to take restrictive measures against materialists,
the Grand-Duke pointed out that Liebig had
recently undertaken to refute them. “ Don’t
make too much of that, your highness,” said
Ketteler; “ Liebig is a materialist himself at
the bottom of his heart.” (Buchner’s Last Words
on Materialism, p. 42.)
2 Dr. Horton assures us, about Haeckel’s
carbon-theory, that “ no leading man of science
treats it seriously, and it only has its whimsical
and uncertain place in the rationalist Press which
gulls the ignorance of the public.” One wonders
what it is not possible to say from a pulpit.
Compare the words of the expert reviewer of
Professor Ver worn’s Biogen-hypothese in Nature
(February 26, 1902): “ It seems quite clear from
the results of numerous investigators that, what
ever the nature of the sequence of chemical
events, the carbohydrates are proximately the
substances that are most intimately affected.”
Let me add here also a reference to a letter from
Sir O. Lodge to Nature (December 4, 1902)
in which he points out the possibility of germs
being preserved intact in the cold of space. It
was thereupon shown, not only that Lord Kel
vin’s old hypothesis of the origin of life assumed
a new importance, but that, as W. J. Calder
said, “if it is proved that vitality can survive
for a protracted period in such circumstances,
the conclusion that it is a molecular function
seems inevitable.” The most recent experiments
of life at very low temperatures confirm this.
�LORD KELVIN INTERVENES
11.3
those laws.” Thus life becomes “ some
thing the full significance of which lies
in another scheme of things, but which
touches and interacts with the material
universe in a certain way, building its
particles into notable configurations for
a time—oak, eagle, man—and then
evaporating whence it came.”
The objections to Sir O. Lodges
theory (which seems to be not unlike
that vaguely suggested by Pasteur.) may
be well indicated by following his own
words. He will not admit that life is a
form of energy (thus rejecting both the
old Vitalist and the Monistic theories)
because “ energy can transform itself
into other forces, remaining constant in
quantity, whereas life does not transmute
itself into any form of energy, nor does
death affect the sum of energy m any
way.” The sentence is hardly consis
tent. If death has not affected the sum
of energy it must have transmuted it, for
most certainly the energies in the dead
body differ from those of the living. To
assume that the energies are the same,
but that which differs is not. energy, looks
like a begging of the question. Indeed,
it is impossible to conceive life otherwise
than as energy. We might regard the
structure as a static force in. Sir Oliver’s
sense, but there must be a living energy
in addition. The death of the animal is
like the death of the motor-car. The
energy has been transmuted, or has re
turned into the elemental forms belong
ing to the several parts of the now irre
parable structure. Then,.as a later writer
in Nature points out, it is the place and
the ambition of science to explain the
direction or determination of working
energy as well as the origin of the energy.
Sir Oliver gives the illustration of a stone
falling over the cliff; it may make a
harmless dent in the sand, or it may be
guided to the firing of a charge of
1 At the eleventh hour I discover a lengthy
dynamite. So with the passage of a pen
reference to the Riddle of the Universe in an
over paper ; it may make a series of un-,
obscure corner (p. 65) of Dr. Beale’s Vitality ■ V.,
meaning daubs (if it rolls mechanically)
so that the announcement in the I'imes was not
or it may be guided in the signing of a
wholly in vain. But as the notice does not con
tain a line of definite and tangible refutation of
treaty of war or peace. But it is in each
any statement in the Riddle I am compelled to
one of these cases the function of scien-
fashioned Vitalists like Dr. Beale1 and
Neo-Vitalists like Reinke. Our knowledge
of vital phenomena, and of chemical
and physical forces, is as yet.very imper
fect. The vitalist hypothesis supposes
that our knowledge is complete, and that
we clearly see certain features of life to
be beyond the range of mechanical
explanation.
We see ourselves how
illogical and temporary such a position
is, and we are not surprised to find the
leading biologists standing solid with
Prof. Haeckel for a mechanical interpre
tation and mechanical origin.
Sir O. Lodge, the persuasive and able
and ever courteous leader of the
Birmingham University, offers another
version of Neo-Vitalism which it is
proper to consider. In a paper which
he read to the Synthetic Society at
London on February 20 of this year
(published in Nature, April 23) he
observes that “ if guidance or control
can be admitted into the scheme by no
means short of refuting or modifying the
laws of motion, there may be. every
expectation that the attitude of scientific
men will be perennially hostile to the
idea of guidance or control.” He there
fore proposes a theory of guidance (to
apply to the divine guidance of the
world, the human will, and the vital
principle) without interference. He dis
tinguishes between force and energy—or
static and dynamic power. A column
supporting a building, or a channel guid
ing a stream, is a force, but does not
produce energy. The action of life is to
be conceived as that, “of a groove, or
slot, or channel, or guide.” “ Guidance
and control are not forms of energy,
and their superposition upon the scheme
of physics perturbs physical, and
mechanical laws no whit, though it may
profoundly affect the consequences of
forego the pleasure of dealing with it.
Bishopsgate InstitntOo
�ii4
MR. MALLOCICS OLIVE-BRANCH
tific explanation to trace the energies
which determine the line of motion as
well as to trace their origin and proper
motion. We cannot conceive of energies
being directed except by energies. In
the case of the upbuilding of an organism
it is impossible to conceive the particles
being guided to their several places, or
the energies being impelled to put them
in their several places, by something
that is not an energy. In the parallelism
which Sir Oliver suggests we can only
see “ life ” as a superfluous partner. If
the mechanical scheme is complete, as
he seems to suggest it will be, it must
contain an explanation of the direction
of energy. To say otherwise is to declare
again the inadequacy of mechanical
theory (solely because its ever-growing
material is as yet comparatively scanty)
and to court the “perennial hostility”
of men of science.
Thus the second attempt to prove that
Haeckel’s views rest on “ the science of
yesterday,” and are contradicted by the
science of to-day, fails as ignominiously
as did that of Dr. Wallace. Our leading
biologists declare emphatically that they
and their science accept the mechanical,
if not (as Sir W. T. Thiselton-Dyer says)
the materialistic view of life. This inter
pretation of life must for some time to
come leave unexplained considerable
tracts of vital phenomena. Haeckel has
never pretended that he “ has explained
everything.” But so far as our know
ledge goes, we find only ordinary natural
forces at work in the living organism,
and we should be wholly unjustified in
the present condition of science in
assuming that they are incompetent to
explain the whole of life. We gain no
thing whatever philosophically by simply
sticking the label “vital” on these
mysterious phenomena, and we are
forbidden by the elementary laws of
logic and scientific procedure to bring
in such entities as “creative power”
and “vital principles” as long as
“a solution consistent with the or
dinary course of Nature ” can be
suggested.
:
• fl!
Chapter XII
MR. MALLOCK’S OLIVE-BRANCH
The last critic of Haeckel’s position
last, that is to say, in the logical order
which it seems expedient to follow—is
the distinguished essayist, Mr. W. H.
Mallock. Professor Haeckel, it will be
remembered, intended his work to be,
not only a comprehensive statement of
his views, but a summary of the issues
of the. many conflicts between religion
and science in which he had played so
conspicuous a part during the nineteenth
century. Mr. Mallock, declaring that
neither theologian nor scientist was
competent to analyse those issues quite
impartially, undertook, as a neutral
observer, to balance the controversial
ledgers of the departed century on his
own account. It may be granted that
Mr. Mallock occupies a position of some
advantage for the discharge of this
function. . He is adequately informed,
philosophic in temper, and neutral in
the sense that he clearly does not
believe in theology, yet strongly opposes
the final conclusions of the scientists.
To use an expressive colloquial phrase,
�MR. MALLOCK'S OLIVE-BRANCH
he has sat on the fence throughout the
last forty years, and shot his sharp
criticisms at the combatants on both
sides with a certain impartiality. . But
those who are acquainted with his at
tractive writings know that he has really
only riddled the theologians for their
ultimate advantage ; whilst he has at
tacked the Agnostics in the interest of
religion. However, an analysis of his
last publication, Religion as a Credible
Doctrine, will serve not only to clear up
the popular mystery about his position,
but to show us an interesting plea for
the retention of theology, even admitting
that we have fully established the theses
of the preceding chapter.
Mr. Mallock emphatically rejects the
idea of hampering scientists on their
own territory, and he fully admits that
H the whole cosmological domain ” is
their territory. ? He would have no
sympathy with efforts, like those of
Dr. Wallace and Lord Kelvin, to restrict
the ambition of the mechanical theory,
Or to try to wrest some shred of evi
dence for theism out of the teaching of
science. We shall see that he falls away
from his ideal here and there, but in his
deliberate mood he fully accepts the
conclusion that, on scientific and philo
sophic evidence, “the whole world”—
in the words of Huxley—“living and
non-living, is the result of the mutual
interaction, according to definite laws,
of the powers possessed' by the mole
cules of which the primitive nebulosity
was composed.” I have, in fact, freely
drawn upon Mr. Mallock s excellent
book for support in the vindication of
Professor Haeckel. He takes the Riddle
of the Universe as the finest summary of
the scientific hostility to religion. He
accepts Haeckel’s statement that the
three essential propositions in religion
are the belief in a personal God, the
liberty of the will, and the immortality
of the soul; and he assures Haeckel’s
critics, often in more vigorous language
than Haeckel presumes to use, that their
arguments are utterly fruitless and their
positions untenable.
After devoting
115
eight chapters to the struggle over these
doctrines, he concludes (p. 217): “The
entire intellectual scheme of religion—
the doctrines of immortality, of freedom,
and a God who is, in his relation to our
selves, separable from this [cosmic]
process—is not only a system which is
unsupported by any single scientific fact,
but is also a system for which, amongst
the facts of science, it is utterly im
possible for the intellect to find a place.
Yet Mr. Mallock has announced that he
is going to prove that these fundamental
doctrines of religion are “worthy of a
reasonable man’s acceptance.” How
will he accomplish this?
In the first place he does not intend
to evade the difficulties by an appeal to
the “ religious feelings ” or “ religious
instinct
at all events, not primarily ;
he is going to appeal to us “ as perfectly
reasonable beings.” He quite realises
that the growing habit of taking refuge
in the emotions is little more sensible
than the fabled practice of the ostrich.
He devotes three chapters to a closely
reasoned plea for the retention of the
doctrines, as to which he has so far
cordially endorsed Haeckel’s arguments.
Before entering on a careful analysis of
his reasoning I will state his.argument as
concisely as is compatible with justice to
it. These beliefs are to be retained on
the ground of their moral and spiritual
value to humanity. They are the chief
source of all higher aspiration and
effort, and are essential for the mainte
nance of our mental, moral, and social
progress. So far the argument is more
familiar than Mr. Mallock imagines.
The peculiarity of his position is that he
says they may be true, although they are
flatly and most properly contradicted by
science.
And he justifies this by
attempting to show that our accepted
doctrines, even in science, freely contra
dict each other, and that such contradic
tion is not at all an indication of falsity.
We may, and must, accept all that
Haeckel says, and then add to it all that
Dr. Horton says, without his “ worthless
and hopeless arguments.”
■!•.<
�MR. MALLOCK'S OLIVE-BRANCH
In an age of scepticism like ours such
peculiar evasions of the advancing
criticism are not infrequent.
Mr.
Balfour’s famous attempt to show the
rest of the world an escape from Ag
nosticism is still fresh in the memory,
though already too antiquated to detain
us. The later thoughts of G. J. Romanes
we will consider presently, as they are
much quoted in opposition to Haeckel.
Other singular attempts at pacification,
of a less distinguished order, are met
almost monthly. There is somehow a
conviction abroad that Agnostics are
languishing for some rehabilitation of
their old beliefs, or that humanity at
large always excluding the peace
makers themselves—cannot maintain
its advance without religious belief.
Hence arises the singular spectacle of
sceptical writers constructing elaborate
defences of the conventional beliefs,
which they do not share. The reception
of Mr. Mallock’s book hardly suggests
the belief that his olive-branch will be
respected by either group of combatants ;
but its ability and interest, and its indi
cation of a possible ground for religion
when all we have advanced has been
fully established, compel us to examine
it with respect.
Mr. Mallock begins with his proof
that all our knowledge ends in contradic
tions when we analyse it, so that we
may reconcile ourselves to Haeckel’s
disproofs. He first shows this in the
teaching of theology, where, as he
observes, the Monist will cordially agree
with him. But he goes on to say that
Haeckel’s “substance” is no less con
tradictory, yet we accept it. The ele
mentary substance (ether or prothyl)
either consists of minute separate par
ticles, or it is continuous. If ether
consists of disjointed atoms, separated
by empty spaces, all action must be an
“action at a distance,” which science
rejects as absurd and impossible. If
ether is continuous, yet the atoms of
ponderable matter arise from it by con
densation, then we are postulating
condensation and rarefaction in a sub
stance which has no particles to be
pushed closer together or thrust wider
asunder. But the elementary substance
must be either one or the other, so that
in either case we accept a contradictory
proposition. Further, when we say that
the nebula with its varied elements was
evolved out of a homogeneous ether by
a rigidly determined process, we are at
once saying the ether was simple and
homogeneous, yet was of so specific a
structure as to grow into an elaborately
varied cosmos. Again, we say time is
infinite, yet an addition is made to
it every moment; and we say space
is infinite, yet it is divisible, and each
part must be infinite (and so equal
to the whole), or else we make up infinity
from a finite number of finite quantities.
Thus our scientific doctrines hold innu
merable contradictions. Therefore, the
contradiction between religious and
scientific teaching need not deter us
from accepting both.
Now, in the first of these illustrations
Mr. Mallock has devised a fictitious
contradiction ; in the second he is fol
lowing the vulgar fashion of building an
argument on the imperfect condition of
scientific knowledge; and in the third he
is giving us some familiar metaphysical
quibbling. Dr. Haeckel inserted in his
work the theory of ether which was in
favour amongst physicists at the time he
wrote. Physics is changing yearly as to
such theories; all is as yet tentative and
provisional. But this is certain ; physi
cists will never adopt any theory of
matter that is self-contradictory. If the
pyknotic theory, or the vortex-theory, or
the strain-theory, of the atom reveals any
such contradiction, it has no chance of
acceptance. It is thus quite false to say
we here complacently accept contradic
tories. It is, moreover, clear that Mr.
Mallock’s dilemma is “lame in one
horn,” at least. It supposes that these
discrete particles are at rest. Science
on the contrary supposes them to be
eternally in motion, so that the empty
space only facilitates their impact and
mutual interaction. In the second case,
�MR. MALLOCK'S OLIVE-BRANCH
Mr. Mallock is, as I said, merely drawing
our attention to the acknowledged fact
that we have as yet nothing more than
vague conjectures about the origin of
atoms ; but we embrace no contradic
tion whatever, and no theory will be
received that contains such.
The
prothyl is conceived by scientists (apart
from philosophers) to be just as simple
and homogeneous as the scientific
evidence will allow it to be. There is
no disposition whatever to credit it
with contradictory attributes.
In the
third case, Mr. Mallock is serving up to
us metaphysical arguments, for theism
from those very theologians whose
methods he has so severely denounced.
Almost any recent Catholic apologist
gives these subtleties of word-play. The
contradiction is fictitious. When we say
that, as far as the astronomic evidence
goes, the universe is unlimited, we . do
not expose ourselves to this metaphysical
antithesis of finite and infinite. Both
as to space and time (in the concrete)
the argument makes us say far more
than we do.
Mr. Mallock thus entirely fails to
show that we accept contradictory
propositions as true. On the contrary,
in scientific procedure the emergence of
a contradiction is at once greeted as an
indication of falseness, and is forthwith
acted upon by the rejection of one of
the contradictory theses. The ground
work and most essential and novel part
of his structure of reasoning is invalid.
He proceeds, however, to show (ch. xii)
that science is not the only source, or
the only test, of our convictions. There
are as good grounds for accepting these
particular contradictions as for admitting
those of science.
It is at once apparent that we have in
fact a large number of convictions which it
is not the function of science to establish
or examine. Our comparative judgment
of conduct, of beauty, of spiritual values
generally, is not tested by standards that
the scientific reason sets up. Our belief
in “ the sanctity of human life ” does not
rest on scientific grounds; and the
117
influence of religious ideas—the truth of
which science criticises—is also a
subject for non-scientific . judgment.
We might, indeed, complain at once
that Mr. Mallock has here com
pletely lost his accustomed lucidity.
If he means by “ science ” the dis
ciplines
which
to-day bear
that
name, it is true that many of our
judgments lie outside them. But what
will lie outside the range of the
science of to-morrow it would be
difficult to say. The science of aesthe
tics and the science of ethics are
obviously creeping over much of that
territory which Mr. Mallock holds to be
extra-scientific. As a matter of fact the
very question he is leading us to—the
question of the mental and moral
influence of religious ideas—is mainly a
question for ethics and sociology to
determine by objective and scientific
standards. If Mr. Mallock means that
the ethical standard is not scientifically
determinable, he is begging an important
question. However, let us hasten to
examine the vital part of his eleventh
chapter.
He says that it “ has never occurred
to Haeckel ” to ask himself whether the
ethic of Christianity, which he accepts,
may not chance to be inseparable from
its dogmas. In face of the nineteenth
chapter of the Riddle this is a hard
saying. Haeckel cuts away most of the
ethic which is at all peculiar to
Christianity, and finds that the valuable
remainder is a purely humanitarian ethic.
We have already seen this. But Mr.
Mallock is thinking of that great
problem of his whole career—the
problem of free will or determinism—
and he holds emphatically that on
Haeckel’s principles morality is abso
lutely impossible. Suppose, he says,
that we in theory set up a world with
a general belief in the determinism of
the will. From such a world all moral
condemnation and all moral . appre
ciation must disappear ; in it vice and
virtue are indistinguishable ; men and
women are no more responsible for
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MR. MALLOCK'S OLIVE-BRANCH
their characteristics than the apple is
for its colour or shape. Now one of
the most effective parts of Mr. Mallock’s
book is that in which he shows that
scientific determinism is absolutely
irresistible. The contradiction he would
ask us to accept is therefore the
sharpest conceivable.
He asks us
to accept
this
contradiction—this
irrefutable proof that the will is not
free and this equally irrefutable proof
that it must be free—on account of the
moral importance of the belief in
freedom. On the same ground we are
to admit the beliefs in God and immor
tality which the scientific evidence has
wholly disproved; the effect of our
rejecting them would be “a shrinkage
in the importance, interest, and signifi
cance which we are able to attribute to
human life in general, and to the part
played in it by ourselves in particular;
and with the growth of scientific know
ledge, and the habit of completely
assimilating it, the shrinkage would
become more marked, and its moral
results more desolating.” . Hence, since
we are prepared in other cases to
swallow contradictories, we must yield
to these grave reasons and embrace the
contradictory theses of science and
religion.
The second fallacy in Mr. Mallock’s
procedure seems to be worse than the
first. Let us grant, for argument’s sake,
that these religious beliefs had all the
efficacy Mr. Mallock claims for them
whilst they were uncontradicted by
science and philosophy, were sincerely
and serenely held, and were thought to
be based on tangible cosmic evidence.
It is surely a monstrous fallacy to suppose
they will retain that power when their
position is so seriously changed; when
men are assured that, in Mr. Mallock’s
own words, “ it is utterly impossible for
the intellect to find a place for them
amongst the facts of science.” We are,
in fact, invited to regard these beliefs as
efficacious because they are really held,
and then to hold them because they are
efficacious. To say that these considera
tions—if they are correct—should dis
suade us from promulgating or defending
Haeckel’s views is an arguable, though a
mistaken, position.
But Mr. Mallock
has just concluded one of the most
vigorous and skilful attacks on the
evidence for these doctrines that has
appeared of late years. Does he imagine
that people who read that attack will be
disposed to cling to these beliefs because
it would be morally beneficial to hold
them ? that people are so simple as to
accept moral efficacy as the guarantee of
the truth of doctrines which can only be
morally efficacious when they are believed
to be true ? It reminds one of the
American critic who said that J. S. Mill
negotiated a certain difficulty by getting
under himself and carrying himself across.
Surely the simplest and the only possible
procedure is to fasten on this very im
portance of moral idealism as a humani
tarian gospel, and to show the world
that it will taste a very real hell, here on
earth, if it allows moral culture to be
swept away along with the cosmic specu
lations with which it has so long been
associated.
The difficulty about the
freedom of the will may turn out to be
largely due to our slavery to language.
That which formerly went by the name
of freedom is disproved by science. But
the fact remains—and it is a scientific, a
psychological, fact—that we are con
scious of being able to influence our
character and our actions, and so
we cannot deny our responsibility
within limits.
It is for ethics and
psychology to determine those limits
and to re-adjust our terms and con
ceptions.
I have only granted for the sake of
the argument that these doctrines have
all that moral importance which Mr.
Mallock claims for them. He says this
is clear from the attempts of Agnostic
thinkers to find a substitute for them.
Their ethical reasoning is irreproachable,
but they recognise that they must also
make “an appeal to the moral and
spiritual imagination of the individual.”
Prof. Huxley does this with a plea for
�MR. MALLOCPCS OLIVE-BRANCH
■lreverence and love for the ethical ideal,”
and Mr. Spencer urges reverence for
the Unknowable and recognition of
our unity with it. Mr. Mallock is very
scornful about both, and he may be right
that reverence of this cosmic order will
pass away with the passing of theology.
Haeckel has not appealed to such rever
ence, so that he may contemplate its
disappearance without undue concern.
He has urged us to find the practical
ground for moral culture in the future in
the recognition of its value to humanity.
No one recognises this value more clearly
than Mr. Mallock. It is the chief support
of his whole argument. The loss of the
higher aspiration would, he says, spell
ruin to a nation, and the “ belief in
human nature is as essential to civilisation
as is a good circulation to the healthy
body.” Now, if all this is true, as it is,
it seems perfectly obvious that, when
men have got over the confusion and
reaction caused by the decay of ethical
theology, they will turn to moral culture
for its own sake. It is inconceivable
how a subtle thinker, who believes men
are capable of continuing to worship
God and dream of immortality because
it is useful to do so, though contradicted
by the most solid evidence, cannot see
the possibility of setting up moral culture
on a sociological base. Confucians have
done it for ages, and with quite as great
success, to say the least, as Christianity.
The bulk of cultured people, like Mr.
Mallock, have done so for several
generations.
Theoretically, we should expect that
the transition from a divine to a humani
tarian ethic will be attended with a
certain amount of moral disorder. But
as a fact, the change is taking place
without any such disorder. The working
class, which is irreligious to the extent of
nine-tenths to-day, is no worse than it was
a century or five centuries ago; it is, in fact,
far nearer to “a belief in human nature.”
The middle-class, still largely religious,
is hardly likely to deteriorate. The
educated class—to ignore the money-line
—is almost wholly without those beliefs
119
in a personal God and personal im
mortality which Mr. Mallock thinks
essential, yet will compare very favour
ably with its class in almost any former
age. In a word, if we consult the facts
of ‘life instead of theory, we find no
ground for supposing that moral culture
—not to speak of intellectual, artistic,
and social aspiration—is bound up with
certain “cosmic speculations.” Under
neath all the transcendental imagery
with which the Churches have clothed
morality, there has always been an in
stinctive feeling that it was a very human
affair, and this feeling asserts itself as the
theological imagery passes away. There
will be changes, of course. The proud in
tolerance and arrogance of the old moral
ists, with the horrible persecutions they
inspired, have gone for ever; the ascetic
contempt of “the flesh” is going and
must wholly disappear; humility and
meekness have no sociological value;
virginity is a matter of taste, but marriage
is a more virtuous condition; the stress
on chastity (in a transcendental sense)
has led to an appalling amount of real
immorality in every age, because few
were prepared to respect it; the old
classification of virtues and vices, as so
many rigid moral boxes to put other
people’s conduct in, must go; the old
antithesis of selfishness and altruism
will be replaced by an organic conception
of man’s relation to his fellows; the
relation of the sexes will be subject only
to a purely rational ethic, grounded on
justice, not sentiment, and so there may
be at length some hope of putting an
end to hypocrisy and vice. When
writers like Mr. Wells, or Mr. G. B.
Shaw, or Mr. Karl Pearson, talk of the
disappearance of ethics, they are thinking,
of one or other of these changes. But.
ethics will only gain by such changes.
“ Many are called, but few are chosen,”
said the founder of Christianity. It was
a profound anticipation of the influence
of Christian morality throughout. the
ages. Apart from certain special periods,
apart from the relatively small areas that
could be reached. by a St. Bernard, or a;
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MR. MALLOCK'S OLIVE-BRANCH
St. Francis, Christian morality has been
a stupendous failure. It was too trans
cendental, too false to the natural moral
sense of the ordinary individual, to be
otherwise. The cultivation of a kindly and
humane disposition, of a sense of justice
and honour, of tolerance and broad
mindedness, of concern for health of
body and mind, of temperance and self
control, of honesty and truthfulness, is
what humanity really needs; and all this
it can and will have for its own inherent
worth.
Thus Mr. Mallock has failed to prove
that we anywhere complacently accept
contradictions in our beliefs; and that,
even if we did (to the utter confusion of
any notion of truth), there is any special
reason for retaining these theological
doctrines ; or that, if we did retain them
in the teeth of scientific teaching to the
contrary, they would be of the slightest
value. There are, however, one or two
confirmatory thoughts in his last chapter
which we may still consider. It follows,
he says, that our judgment deals with
two worlds, the cosmic and the moral,
the world of objective facts and the
world of subjective values. One is the
world of science, the other is reached by
some other faculty of mind. It would
be equally absurd to question the validity
of our judgment as to either. In fact,
there is, in the long run, a similarity in
the ground of judgment in both cases.
It is a mistake to suppose that in the
scientific world everything is “ proved.”
The fundamental belief, the conviction
that there is a material world at all, is
quite unprovable. If it is an inference
from our sensations, reason refuses to
ratify it. It is the outcome of “ an
original instinct”; and it is just such an
instinct that is at the root of our judg
ment of moral values. Science must
study the objective world; “ analytic
reason and a study of human character ”
must investigate the moral world. They
find these three beliefs essential to
progress, and their decision is as valid
as that of science in its own sphere.
The contradiction between the two need
not trouble us. The mind is limited,
and can “ grasp the existence of nothing
in its totality.” “We must learn, in
short,” is his closing sentence, “ that the
fact of our adoption of a creed which
involves an assent to contradictories is
not a sign that our creed is useless or
absurd, but that the ultimate nature of
things is for our minds inscrutable.”
. This reasoning is only a new formula
tion of the argument of his preceding
chapters, but one or two points call for
notice. In the first place, it is perfectly
true that all our convictions are not
capable of “proof,” because they cannot
all be inferences. Our knowledge must
ultimately be grounded on facts which
are directly intued. These are gathered
into general laws and principles, and
from these inferences are drawn. And
it is true that our perception of the
external world is—in its rudiments—
intuitive. It is not an inference from
our states of consciousness; it would
not be valid if it were. When meta
physics has grown tired of the current
idealism, it will probably tell us more
about this intuition. But Mr. Mallock’s
attempt to set up a number of little
oracles in the mind in the shape of
“ primitive instincts ” must be carefully
watched. Further, what he calls the
subjective or moral world is by no means
wholly subjective. It is useful for his
purpose to lead us on from sesthetic
judgments to moral. We may, fortu
nately, leave out of consideration the
difficulty of our sesthetic judgments,
because our moral judgment is purely
objective. The effects which Mr. Mal
lock anticipates from a Monistic ethic
are emphatically objective; and so are
the effects he claims for the Christian
ethic.
The determination of those
effects, and so of the relative value of
the two systems, is a study in objective
reality. “The sanctity of human life”
has nothing to do with it. The “ belief
in human nature ” is a conviction that,
of the various phases of life which
humanity has experienced—virtue and
vice, strength and enervation, social
�MR. MALLOCK'S OLIVE-BRANCH
order and anarchy, mental culture and
sensual dissipation—the former alter
natives are the most conducive to peace
and happiness, which we happen to
desire. That conviction is, therefore,
wholly based on an objective inquiry.
Hence the antithesis of the subjective
and objective worlds does not help Mr.
Mallock. And in point of fact the
sooner we apply scientific methods to
his second world, to the determination
of moral values, the better it will be for
us.
Finally, there is in Mr. Mallock’s closing
observations an important confusion of
ideas. That the mind is limited, that
we can only focus it on successive spots
in the great panorama of reality, is a
familiar truth. It is further true that
we may not be able to see the con
nection between our little areas of
knowledge, as they are often separated
by leagues of ignorance. In this passive
sense we may say we are unable to
reconcile ” them. But to admit two or
more statements that are clearly con
tradictory is quite another matter. To
do so in one single instance is to admit
the most radical and irreparable scepti
cism. Even the Catholic Church has
strongly denounced the principle that
“ a thing may be true in theology yet
false in philosophy.” If contradictories
may be true, we cannot rely on a single
affirmation of the mind. Some primi
tive instinct ” may yet find out that it is
also false. We should disci edit our
knowledge in its very source. Mr.
Mallock is likely to remain to the end a
Peri at the gate of Eden. Theology is
not more likely than science to give ear
to such a proposal.
I have said that Mr. Mallock’s theory
in some respects recalls the later
thoughts of Mr. Romanes, and as these
are much quoted in correction of
Haeckel’s procedure we may glance at
them in conclusion. In his later years
Mr. Romanes, once a thorough Monist,
jotted down some of his “ thoughts on
religion,” and they were published after
his ° death by Bishop Gore.
This
121
solitary “ conversion ” amongst the
scientific men of the last century has
naturally attracted some interest, but it
is not usually properly understood. In
the first place the works of both Mrs.
Romanes and Bishop Gore repel the
Rationalist inquirer by the offensive and
insulting insinuation that character had
anything to do with ■ the matter.
“ Blessed are the pure in heart for they
shall see God,” they both constantly
exclaim. The inference as to those
who do not see God is obvious. In the
second place, Mr. Romanes, though he
died in the communion of the Anglican
Church, seems to have reached a
theology of a very slender character.
His God is pantheistically immanent in
nature. All causation, he suggests, may
be Divine action, so that God melts into
the forces of the universe. The dis
tinction between the natural and super
natural he wholly rejects j and he thinks
the determinism of the will, established
by science, is consistent with the belief
that all causation is an act of Divine will.
And thirdly, without discussing the
illness which overcast the later years of
Mr. Romanes, these “thoughts, on
religion” contain some sorry sayings.
“ The nature of man without God is
thoroughly miserable,” he. says, pro
jecting his morbid condition on the
world at large; and “ there is a vacuum
in the soul which nothing can fill but
God.” Again, “ Unbelief is usually due
to indolence, often to prejudice, and
never a thing to be proud of.”. How
ever, let us examine his position in itself.
It may be said in a word that he
appeals to a religious instinct or intui
tion, which is independent of reason.
“If there be a God, he must be a.first
principle—-the first of all first piinciples
—-hence knowable by intuition and not
by reason.” Of the two temperaments
—the scientific or rational and the
“ spiritual ” or mystic—he says “ there is
nothing to choose between the two in
point of trustworthiness. Indeed, if
choice has to be made, the mystic
might claim higher authority for his
�122
MR. MALLOCK'S OLIVE-BRANCH
direct intuitions.” “ No one can believe
in God, or a 'fortiori in Christ, without
a severe act of will.” He shows how
often belief , is influenced by desire in
politics and is by no means an outcome
of reasoning, and adds: “ This may be
all deplorable enough in politics and in
all other beliefs secular; but who.shall
say it is not exactly as it ought to *be in
the matter of belief religious ? ” And,
speaking of “the continual sacrifices
which Christianity entails,” he says
“ the hardest of these sacrifices to an in
telligent .man is that of his own intellect.”
We will not do Romanes the injustice
of analysing in detail these sad reflec
tions of a suffering and diseased con
dition. . It is with reluctance that a
Rationalist approaches the question at
all, but it is forced on us. Just as I
write, an American correspondent sends
me a copy of the Literary Digest for
September 26.
It appears that Pro
fessor J. Orr, of the Glasgow Free
Church College, has been telling the
Americans that there is in England a
strong current from scepticism to faith.
He “claims to speak as an expert,” and
“ has in his possession a list of some
twenty-eight Secularist leaders in England
and Scotland who have become Chris
tians.” The truthfulness of this assertion
may be judged from the fact that he
only gives three names—Joseph Barker,
Thomas Cooper, and G. J. Romanes. The
former two were, I learn, men who were
associated with the Secularist activity
years ago, but were of no intellectual
standing and are hardly to be termed
“ leaders.” Romanes, he says, “ bit by bit
came under the power of the gospel, and
died a Christian in full communion with
the Church of England, avowing the
faith of Jesus, his deity and his atone
ment, and the resurrection of the dead,
and every other great article of our
faith.”1 We are thus forced to set in its
1 To finish with this miserable effusion—
quoted by the Digest from Zion's Herald—I
must add that he then goes on to speak of
Germany, where Haeckel’s Riddle “ has been
discarded for fully a quarter of a century” (the
true light the death-bed communion of
Romanes. As he says, it was by the
sacrifice of his intellect, by ignoring his
scientific temperament, by an effort of
will, that he succeeded in assenting to
what he calls “pure Agnosticism.”
In a sense, however, his idea of a
“ religious intuition ” is widely accepted
in the decaying Churches. Many dis
pense themselves on the ground of this
intuition or instinct from examining the
criticisms that are urged. We need only
make two observations on this last resort
of the theist. Firstly, this “ intuition ”
has, in the course of the last few thou
sand years, given men the most contra
dictory messages, and it is to-day sup
porting a hundred divergent beliefs
about. God and the future life. Its own
vagaries sternly condemn it as a channel
of truth. Secondly, modern psycholo
gists agree to regard instinct as an
inherited tendency or disposition.1 It
follows that if we have an “ original
instinct ” impelling us to accept religious
doctrines—I say if, because I am con
scious of no such instinct, nor is any
other person of whom I have inquired—
this is only the disposition towards them
which we have inherited, and has nothing
whatever to do with their truth or un
truth. It means, at the most, that our
fathers have accepted these beliefs for
many generations. We were aware of
that already.
first edition appeared a very few years ago).
Professor Orr says that “nearly all the great
scientific authorities that Haeckel quotes changed
their views some thirty or forty or twenty-five
years ago.” He will give “ the names of one or
two of them,” and out come the inevitable Vir
chow, Wundt, and Du Bois-Reymond. The
last-named “has reaffirmed the soul of man, re
affirmed the spiritual principle in man, and re
affirmed the supernatural element in man”—
compare what Haeckel does say of this Agnostic
writer on p. 6 of the Riddle. If these things are
not untruths, one wonders what is. One thinks
of poor Romanes’s awful statement that “ this
may be all deplorable enough in politics, but
who shall say it is not exactly as it ought to be
in religion ? ”
1 See Villa’s Contemporary Psychology, p. 292;
Sully’s Human Mind, I, 137 ; and Lloyd Mor
gan, Wundt, Ribot, and Masci.
�123
CONCLUSION
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CONCLUSION
We find, then, that the recent efforts
to evade the onward march of Monistic
science do not promise. any great
measure of success. Neither the specu
lations of Dr. Wallace, nor the assurances
of Lord Kelvin, nor the suggestions of
Mr. Mallock, provide a safe path of
retreat, if the positions of our earlier
chapters have been established.
As
long as scientists were willing to remain
silent on these cosmic speculations, it
was possible for ecclesiastical writers to
assume that they were not hostile, even
to assume that they were friendly, and so
to represent Professor Haeckel as a
Quixotic and isolated defender of an
extreme position which mature science
had deserted. It is certainly not pos
sible to do so with any regard for ac
curacy to-day. I have throughout sup
ported his positions with the most recent
utterances of scientific leaders, and the
excursions of Dr. Wallace and Lord
Kelvin have only served to show how
far science is to-day from lending sup
port to theology.
It may not be without interest, in conV eluding, to resume my work from the
point of view and in the order which one
finds in the Riddle itself. Chaps. II. to
V. are devoted to the proof that man is
descended, as regards his bodily frame,
from some earlier animal species. This
position is not now challenged by a
single anthropologist of the first or
second rank, and it is almost universally
admitted by cultivated theologians.
Chaps. VI. to X. are occupied with the
proof that the mind of man has been
developed from the mind of an animal
of an earlier species.
Dr. A. R.
Wallace is almost the only anthropolo
gist (if we may describe him as such) of
high rank who still questions that this
fact has been established, and we have
seen that theologians acquainted with
the facts began twenty years ago to
acquiesce in this truth. The majority of
the scientifically cultured apologists of
our day admit it. We have noticed the
overwhelming mass of evidence in favour
of it, and the fact that the most recent
researches of anthropologists tend to
elucidate it more and more. We have
seen that so critical a theist as Professor
J. Ward speaks of the doctrine of the
evolution of man, mind and body, being
“accepted with unanimity by biologists
of every school.”
When, however,
Haeckel goes on (Chap. . X.) to con
clude, in the purely scientific spirit, that
mind-force is therefore only an upward
and more elaborate extension of the
world-force that gradually advances from
the inorganic to the organic universe,
we find him denounced as “ crude ” and
“ unscientific.”
We have seen how
wholly logical and scientific his proce
dure is. When, further, he goes on to
say that this explanation of the origin of
the human soul leaves no room for those
claims of unique prerogatives on which
man once based his hope of immortality,
we again find the advanced company of
apologists at variance. Some think the
question is “ insoluble by philosophy ” ;
others elaborate novel speculations about
the aim of the cosmic process which we
have patiently considered.
The very
latest scientific researches, we saw, do
no tend to ascribe any peculiar signifi
cance to human life or to the planet we
inhabit.
Thus, in the first half of the book,
which deals with man, we find that all
Haeckel’s scientific assertions are sup
ported, almost without exception, by his
colleaguesin the anthropological sciences,
�124
CONCLUSION
and are admitted by most of the apolo
gists. . His conclusions from these facts,
touching the nature and the destiny of
the soul, are not denied by his colleagues
(who do not now, as a rule, trouble
themselves about the relation of their
knowledge to religious belief), but are
contested in the name of religion by the
theologians.. They appeal to philosophy,
and by philosophy we have judged
them.
The second half of the work deals with
a number of problems. Chaps. XII. to
XV. are occupied with the nature of the
cosmic substance, its unity, and its
evolution, through the inorganic world,
to the forms of living organisms. On
the nature of matter and force Haeckel
correctly gives the theories of the time
he wrote, and his system readily as
similates any modification of these which
the advance of physics may entail. The
unity he claims for inorganic nature is
undisputed, as is its evolution. When he
proceeds to unify the inorganic and the
organic worlds—to assume that life arose
by evolution, and that the life-force is not
of a specific or isolated character—he
has all the leading biologists and most
of the leading theists with him. We
have seen what befel Lord Kelvin when
he questioned this. He then (Chap. XV.)
attacks the question of the existence of
God. Here, save for a vague allusion to
a “creative power” or a “directive
principle” on the part of a few great
scientists and the fuller theology of a
small number of other Veil-known men of
science, he again advances beyond his
colleagues. Most of the scientists of our
day (including those German scientists
who are so much quoted) are Agnostics,
and do not concern themselves about
religion. Haeckel here speaks as a
philosopher. He is confronted with
certain metaphysical considerations which
purport to prove the existence of God.
We saw that for most of the cultured
apologists this merely means a principle
immanent in nature, and not distinguish
able from it.
In other words, the
ultimate question is : Is the evolution of
this Monistic universe of such a nature
that we are compelled to suppose there
was an intelligence guiding it from the
outset ? That is the problem on which
all forces are concentrating. The de
fence of gaps is falling into disrepute,
and, as a policy, is disdained by the very
men who practise it. We saw that the
forces which have evolved the world are
not erratic in their action, and so needed
no control; that science points to no
beginning of the scheme of things, and
so we need no creator; and that, on the
other hand, the cosmic process shows
many features which are inconsistent
with the existence of a supreme designer
and controller.
When Haeckel passes on to the moral
sciences, we saw that he is substantially
borne out by the latest research. Biblical
criticism and comparative mythology
have thoroughly shaken the belief in the
miraculous life of Christ; and whether
Haeckel has or has not the right version
of his paternity is not an important
matter. His judgment on the natural
growth and the limited influence of
Christianity is that of most historians.
His theory of a humanitarian ethic is in
harmony with the whole trend of ethical
discussion to-day.
We have seen, on the other hand,
how scattered and mutually conflicting
are the critics of Haeckel’s position.
We have been able, during quite twothirds. of our course, to silence the
majority of these critics with the weapons
of the minority. The majority of those
amongst them who have a wide scientific
culture are warning their smaller-minded
or less-informed colleagues to desert the
defence of gaps.
Almost the whole
library of apologetics up to within the
last ten years is useless to-day. The
apologists of yesterday mistook gaps in
scientific knowledge for gaps in the
course of natural development. A few
not very clear-minded theologians do so
still; and the old instinct is so strong,
and the fallacy appeals so strongly to the
imagination, that we have found even
the most advanced critics occasionally
�CONCLUSION
falling from grace. The tendency is,
however, to-day to allow that science
may build up a complete mechanical in
terpretation of the universe and all its
contents; the apologist is content to
hope that he may enter at the close with
his transcendental speculations on the sup
posed origin of the cosmic elements and
the alleged purpose of the cosmic process.
We have seen that already cultured and
sympathetic observers like Mr. Mallock
are telling them that this last position
will be no better than the first, and that
science allows them no foothold what
ever in the objective world.
That it is the ambition of science to
give a mechanical explanation of the
whole contents of the universe has been
made clear.
The dream of Tyndall
and Huxley is by no means abandoned.
For the inorganic universe no one
seriously doubts that this is only a ques
tion of time. And the angry resentment
by our leading biologists at Lord Kelvin’s
interference in their domain amply.shows
how little they are disposed to give up
the ideal of a mechanical interpretation
of life. So far the vast majority of the
leading scientists of the world are with
Haeckel. I do not say that they endorse
all his suggestions on points of detail.
His system, we saw, is not a rigidly
uniform structure, for all parts of which
he claims equal weight. He throws out
theories, and hypotheses, and suggestions,
in advance of the demonstrated conclu
sions. These are temporary and pro
visional.
That scientists reject or
dispute about any of these detailed
suggestions—whether it be on the evo
lution of ether, or the first formation of
protoplasm, or the fatherhood of Jesus—
does not affect his main position, or his
attitude towards religion. He frankly
says he may very well be wrong in these
details, and that he merely suggests that
the evidence so far seems to point in
this or that direction.
Whether the
advance of science proves or disproves
these suggestions does not affect the
main issue. The main issue is the unity
and evolution of nature. So far, as I
125
said, scientists in general are with him.
When he goes on to deal with conscious
ness, creation, design, and religion, it
cannot be said that they are with him.
But it is a gross deception to represent
that they are with his opponents. They
are Agnostics, as a rule. They prefer
not to concern themselves with these
subjects. They are Monists in the sense
that they accept the unity and evolution
of the cosmos, and refuse to see any
positive breach in the continuity of
nature. But they are, as Dr. Ward says,
“Agnostic Monists,” in the sense that
they are content with a negative attitude
on these later problems. The number
of great scientists who give a positive
and explicit support to personal theism
may be counted on one’s fingers.
In conclusion, I would respectfully
submit to these Agnostic men of science,
and the vast cultured following they
have in every educated country to
day, two considerations. The first is a
request that they will reflect on the spirit
and procedure of the apologists for con
ventional religion, as these are exhibited
in the attack on Dr. Haeckel, one of the
most distinguished and most honourable
of living scientists. If he cares to invade
every department of thought in search
of anti-theological arguments, and to
throw out scores of positive explanations
in the teeth of the theologians, he must,
of course, expect battle. It is just what
he desires. But he desires honourable
warfare. Truth is a frail spirit that must
be sought with patient and calm investi
gation. Its pursuit should be conducted
with dignity and especially with a scru
pulous honesty. We have seen that,
on the contrary, this campaign against
Haeckel’s views has been marked by
malignant abuse and persistent misrepre
sentation, by statements which cannot be
conceived as other than untruths, by
gross perversion of the teaching of modern
science, and by a score of devices and
stratagems that would disgrace the con
duct of a heated political campaign. It
is by these means that one-fourth of the
people are held attached to the old
�126
CONCLUSION
beliefs—people who, to a great extent,
would carry into the new humanitarian
religion a humane and proper spirit that
would enormously facilitate the transition
to a new inspiration. Is it conducive to
the interest of truth, or of science, or of
human welfare, that this corporation of
the clergy should continue in the twen
tieth century that mistaken conceit about
the truth of their cosmic views which
inspires them with such dishonourable
tactics ?
Secondly, I would ask whether it is
not too late in the history of the world
to be inventing fanciful theories for the
detention of the people in the Churches.
Three-fourths of the people are wholly
beyond the influence of the clergy, and
as these controversial devices become
known the defection is bound to increase.
It is too late to speak of the welfare of
the race depending on a religion which
the great majority have for ever aban
doned. Scepticism is in the atmosphere
of the world to-day.
The more we
educate the more we extend its influence.
If this is so the true humanitarian will
desire the change to be effected as
speedily as possible, and the moral ideal
to be swiftly disentangled from its decay
ing frame of dogma. In one respect the
world is in a pitiful plight to-day. Thou
sands of the clergy of all denominations
are only too eager to disavow the old
formulae and to devote themselves
to character-building alone. They are
prevented by the lingering concern of
the majority of church-members for
dogma. They are forced to utter un
truths (“ symbolically ”) at the very
moments when they are pleading for
truth, andhonour, and sincerity. We have
the spectacle of ecclesiastical scholars of
all denominations being forced to1
disavow the convictions which have
crept to their lips, and of Christian
journals complaining that the lack of
honesty is one of the most prominent?
features of theological literature. How
this state of things is held to be conducive
to the social good it is hard to imagine.
One of the great social needs of our
time is to sweep away the whole totter
ing structure of conventional religion and
worship. Whilst we talk of “ continuity ”
the world is deserting it altogether. The
moral tone of the clergy is lowered by
their corporate alliance with cosmic
speculations. The stream of enthusiasm
which has so long flowed through the
religions of the world is being dissipated.
Only one change will infuse new life into
the Churches and rehabilitate religion—
the swift abandonment to metaphysicians
of all these cosmic speculations. When
that revolution has been completed we
shall have given a new meaning to
religion that will change the present
contempt into concern. It will be an
affair of this world, a visibly important
element of this life. Men will turn their
eyes from the clouds to discover new
potencies in earth. That is the socio
logical basis of the work of the Rationalist
Press Association. Behind it are scores
of humanitarian constructive movements
ready to guide and inform the religious
or idealist ardour. Its work is the attack
on unthinking superstition, the war
against hypocritical professions, the
promulgation of a standard of intellec
tual honesty, the cultivation of a virile
and rational attitude on all the problems
of life.
It claims and deserves the sup
port of every man or woman who is sanely
and sincerely concerned for progress.
�INDEX
Christian World, the, 11, 12
Christianity, “triumph” of, 89, 90
Churches, advantages of the, 92 ;
decay of the, 92, 93
Clarke, Dr. W. N., 32, 39, 50, 67, 72 ;
on the origin of man, 50
Clarion, campaign of the, 11, 92
Colour, nature of, 27
Confucianism, 80
Consciousness, 54, 57, 58, 79
Constantine, conversion of, 89
Contradictions, alleged, in our know
ledge, Il6, 117, 121
Conversion of German scientists, 17 ;
Babylon, morality of ancient, 95
G. J. Romanes, 17, 121
Baer, K., 10, 17
Cook, Dr., 14
Bain, Prof., 16
Cooper, Thomas, 122
Balfour, Mr., 116
Creative action, 45, 77, 108, in, 124
Ball, Sir R., on dark stars, 103
Ballard, the Rev. F., criticisms of, 9, Croll, Dr. J., 14; on free-will, 60; on
the evolution of species, 48; on
10-14,16, 35, 36, 38, 46, 69, 79, 82,
teleology, 70, 72
85, 86, 93, 100; on determinism,
12 ; on evolution, 69 ; on physical Cunningham, Prof., on the evolution
of mind, 59
theories, 24, 25 ; on spontaneous
generation, 12, 13, 40, 41 ; on teleo
logy, 72 ; on the outlook of Chris Daily Chronicle, criticism of the, 33
Daily News, census of church-gomg,
tianity, 91
92 ; teaching Pantheism, 77
Barker, Joseph, 122
Beale, Prof. L., 14, 16, 32, 41, 43, 46, Dallinger, the Rev. Dr., 14, 23, 36,
70, 71 ; on Haeckel, 9; on the
iro; advertises in the Times, 13,
finite universe, 23, 32 ; on the origin
43, IX3
of man, 51
Beauty of the world, 75, 76
Beginning of the universe, 30-32, 76, 77 Dark nebulae, 104 ; stars, 30, 33, 103
Dawson, Sir J. W., 14, 31
Belgium, religion in, 92.
Design, 54, 58, 69-74 _
Belittling effect of Monism, 35
Determinism and morality, 117, 118
Berkeley, 21, 77
Bible, supposed uniqueness of the, Dewar, Prof., 28, 44, 50; on Dar
winism, 50 ; on idealism, 22
87, 88
Biologists and the vital principle, 199, Diplomas, Haeckel’s, 8
Dogma a dangerous base for morality,
iro
96 ; dangerous to religion, 15
Bischoff, Dr. E., 82, 83
Dolbear, Prof, (quoted), no
Blatchford, Mr., it, 13, 52
Dreisch, in
Blathwayt, Mr. R., on Haeckel, 6
Booth,Mr. C.,on religion in London, 92 Dualism, 20, 59
Brierley, the Rev. J. B., ri, 12, 63, Dubois, Dr., 49
Du Bois-Reymond, 10, 17
83, 9i
Duns Scotus on immortality, 61
Buchner, L., 10, 17, 19, 42, 49, 66
Buddhism, 80, 99
Ecclesiastical history, character of, 87,
Budge (quoted), 95
89, 9°
Burdon-Sanderson, Sir J., on Lord Egyptian Bible, the, 95
Kelvin, 109 ; on vitalism, 43, 109
Electrons, 33
Bushido, the, 99
Embryo, development of the, 58
Emerson (quoted), 99
Caird, Dr., 22
Encyclopaedia Biblica, the, 87
Campbell, the Rev. R. J., on Chris End of the universe, 32, 33
tianity, 81, 94, 96; on religious Entropy, theory of, 31, 33, 34, 77
statistics, 93
Epicureans, the, 61
Candour in the pulpit, theologians on, Eternity of the universe, 30-34
12
Ether, 24, 25, 30, 104, 116
Carbon-theory of Haeckel, 112
Ethic of Monism, the, 93-96, 117
Case, Prof., on Agnosticism and Ethical Movement, the, 98
Monism? 16 ; on consciousness, 58 ; Ethics, 98
on idealism, 22
Ethics, changes in, 119
Celsus on the fatherhood of Christ, 85 Evolution, 35-37, 41, 42, 101
Central sun, idea of a, 105
Eye, evolution of the, 74
Centre of the universe, 105
Chance, 71, 72-74
Facial expression, relation to mind, 59
Chapman, Principal, on the origin of Fiske, Mr., 14 ; admissions of, 48, 51,
life, 42
77 ; on immortality, 66 ; on teleo
Christian history, supposed uniqueness
logy 70, 73, 74
.
of, 89 ; morality, defects of, 96, 117 ; Flammarion on Dr. Wallace s views,
true conception of, 94, 96
103, 105, 106
Abiogenesis, 39-46
I
Action at a distance, 116, 117
j
Agnostic scientists, 16, 17, 20
_
|
Agnosticism, its relation to Monism,
16, 17, 20, 125
|
Ambrose, St., work of, 20
1
America, religion in, 92
Apes, the, and man, 49, 56, 101
Asceticism, 96
Atheism, 75
Atom, the, 28, 30, J3, 116
Australia, religion in, 92
Flower, Prof., 14 ; on evolution, 47
Force, unity of, 26
France, religion in, 92
Gaps, the theology of, 36, 37, 69, 124
Generelle Morphologic, the, 8
Germany, religion in, 92
Gore, Bishop, 121
Gospels, date of the, 84, 87, 88
Grimthorpe, Baron, 14, 16, 33
Haeckel, alleged dogmatism of, 11,
12, 23 ; pessimism of, 35 ; cardinal
offence of, 84; circulation of his
work, 91 ; early training of, 7 ; on
chance, 73; on Christian dogmas,
81 ; on Christian ethics, 96 ; on
the future of the Churches, 98 ; on
the person of Christ 84, 88; on
the validity of speculation, 80;
system of, 17-19
Halliburton, Prof., on vitalism, 111
Hand, connection of with the brain, 59
Harnack, 87, 88
Hebrews no genius for morality, 95
Henslow, Prof., 80
Herbert, Prof., 59
Heredity, 58, 67
Horton, Dr., criticisms of, 10, 17, 18,
40, 43, 46, 52, 62, 64, 82, 85, 86, 93,
100, 112 ; on Vogt and Buchner, 10,
17
Huxley, Prof., 16, 99
Idealism criticised, 21, 22, 120 ; and
Christianity, 21
Immaculate Conception, the, 85
Immanence of God in Nature, 78
Immortality of the sou , 61-68
Infinity of space and time, 116, 117
Infinity of the universe, 23,103-105, 116
Inquirer, criticism in the, 27
Instinct only hereditary disposition,
122
Intelligibility of the universe, 79
International Journal ofEthics, the,
98
Iverach, the Rev. Dr., criticisms of,
14, n6, 21, 29, 32, 36, 39, 45, 47, 50,
53, ?r, 72> 75> 79 > on idealism, 21
James, Prof. W., 14; on immortality,
65 ; on theism, 78
Kant, 26, 64, 71
Kelvin, Lord, 14, 44, 45 ; on vitalism,
108-114
Kennedy, the Rev. Mr., 14, 17, 75
Khammurabi, laws of, 95
Knowledge, review in, 9, 27
Language, 59
Lankester, Prof. E. Ray, 16, 43 ; on
Darwinism, 47; on Lord Kelvin,
109, in
Law, nature of, 28 ; of substance, 27,
28
Leap of the gospels, the, 83
Le Conte, Prof., 14, 50, 69 ; on evolu
tion, 36; on God and Nature, 77;
on immortality, 65 ; on life-force, 43
Leyden, congress at, 49
�128
Liberty of the will, 12
Liebig, 108, 112
Life, conditions of, 106 ; development
of, 48 ; in other worlds, 32, 106,
107 ; in space, 112 ; the nature of,
41, 42-44, 46; the origin of, 39-46
Light, criticisms of, 25, 62
Limits of the universe, alleged, 23,
103-105
Lodge, Sir O., 14, 24, 25, 28, 33, 100,
109, 112 ; on entropy, 33 ; on life
force, 113, 114 ; on the nature of
matter, 33
Loofs, Dr., criticisms of, 82-86; on
the birth of Christ, 85-87
Macalister, Dr. A., 14
Mallock, Mr. W. H., 9, 15, 20, 22, 31,
33, 4L 5.6, 73, 75 on design, 75, 76 ;
on dualist difficulties, 36; on free
will, 60 ; on Haeckel, 9, 15 ; on
science and religion, 114, 115; on
the credibility of religion, 115-121 ;
on the evolution of mind, 57 ; on
theological arguments, 15
Man, origin of, 50-60
Manchester Guardian, criticism in
the, 28
Manicheans, the, 89
Materialism, real nature of, 19
Materiarii, the, 61
Matter and force, 18, 19, 55; inde
structibility of, 28 ; nature of, 27,
28, 33, 116 ; unity of, 24-26
Maudsley, Dr., 16
Maunder, Dr., on Dr. Wallace’s
views, 103
Mechanism as the ideal of science,
48, 58, 68-70, 76, no, 125
Memory, 54
“ Merlin,” 40
Milky Way, the, 105
Mind and brain, relation of, 55, 5760, 63, 64, 67 ; evolution of, argu
ments for the, 56, 57, 101
Miracles of Unbelief, the, 11-13, 43
Mithraists, the, 89
Mivart, Dr., 32, 39, 50, 100, no
Moleschott, 19
Monera, 45
Monism, 17-20, 93
Moore, Canon A. L., 42, 45, 47, 51, 71 ;
on tbe origin of man, 50
Moral Instruction League, the, 98
Moral training for children, 97, 98
Morality of unbelievers, 93, 94, 118,
119; origin of, 97; real nature of,
94, 117, 118
Miinsterberg, Prof., 51 ; on immor
tality, 56, 64, 65
Music compared to thought, 63
Nageli, Prof., 40, no
Natural History of Creation, the, 8,
W
Natural selection, 47, 59
Nebular hypothesis, the, 28, 116
INDEX
Necessity, 71, 73
Neo-Vitalism, 42-45, 110-113
New Testament, criticism of the, 87, 88
Newcomb, Prof., 103, 104
Nicaea, Council of. 86
Species, origin of, 47-49
Spectroscope, the, 24
Spencer, Mr., 16, 76
Spiritism, 68
Spiritists, 25
Spontaneous generation, 39-46 ; in the
Middle Ages, 42
Old Testament, the, 87
Stallo, views of, 25, xoo
Organic substances produced, 45
Stars, distance of the, 23 ; distribution
Origin of Species, the, 7
of the, 104, 105 ; nature of the, 24,
Orr, Prof., on unbelievers, 122
6r ; number of tbe, 23, 104
Statistics of religion, 86, 92
Paganism and Christianity, 90; de Stettin, Congress at, 7
struction of, 90
Subconscious mind, the, 57
Paleyism, 71
Substance, the universal, 26, 116
Pandera, 84-86
Sully, Prof., 16
Pantheism of modern evolutionary Sun, motion of the, 105, 106
theists, 77, 78
Synodicon, the, 83
Pasteur, 41, 42
Pearson, Prof. Karl, 16; on Lord Tactics of religious apologists, 125
Kelvin, 109
Talmage, Dr., on evolution, 52
Phenomena and substance, 26
Teleology, 37, 38, 48, 69-74
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Rationalist Press Association, 91, 126
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Union of Ethical Societies, the, 98
Unity of the Universe, 24, 26, 27
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47> 5L 7°, 72 >on immortality, 66, 67 ;
77
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on tbe origin of life, 39
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Winchell, Dr., 14
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Sound, nature of, 27
Wundt, 17
Spain, condition of, 94
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�“ First man appeared in the class of inorganic things,
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�PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
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�i
CONTENTS
►
PAGE
Introductory
............................
9
PART I.—DESCRIPTIVE
CHAPTER
I.
The Universe : its Contents .
1. Matter................................
2. Motion................................
a. Force........................
b. Energy
................
II. Distribution of Matter in
Space ................................
III. The Sun and Planets ....
The Earth : General Features
IV. The Past Life-History of the
Earth................................
Character and Contents of Rocks
of—
1. Archaean Epoch ...
2. Primary Epoch ...
3. Secondary Epoch . .
4. Tertiary Epoch ...
5. Quaternary Epoch . .
V. Present Life-Forms...............
Physical Constituents and Unity
A. Plants................................
1. Flowerless....................
2. Flowering....................
B. Animals............................
1. Protozoa....................
2. Coelenterata................
3. Echinodermata .
. .
4. Annelida and Arthropoda . ....................
5. Mollusca....................
6. Vertebrata ................
12
12
14
14
15
18
20
21
24
27
28
31
36
40
44
49
49
5°
56
$6
59
61
62
66
67
PART II. —EXPLANATOR Y
VI. The Universe : Mode of its Be
coming and Growth ...
1. Inorganic Evolution I
Stellar Systems
J
2. Solar System ....
3. Earth............................
78
80
82
PAGE
CHAPTER
VII. Origin of Life..............................
83
Time : Place : Mode .... 83
VIII. Origin of Life-Forms ....
87
Priority of Plant or Animal . . 87
Cell-structure and Development. 89
IX. Origin of Species........................
93
Argument:
1. No two individuals of the
same species are alike ;
each tends to vary . . 93
2. Variations are trans
mitted, and tend to
become permanent . . 94
3. Man takes advantage
of them to produce new
varieties....................
94
4. More organisms are
born than survive . . 95
.
5. The result is a cease
less struggle for food
and place................
95
6. Natural selection tends
to maintain the balance
between living things
and their surroundings 98
X. Proofs of the Derivation of
Species................................ 105
1. Embryology.................... 105
2. Form................................ 106
3. Classification '
... 106
4. Succession in Time . . 107
5. Distribution in Space . 107
Objections............................ 111
XI. Social Evolution.................113
1. Evolution of Mind . . 113
2.
,,
Society . 115
3>,
Language,
Art, and Science . . 117
4. Evolution of Morals
. 118
5.
,,
Theology. 121
Summary................ ....
123
Index............................................125.
TABLES
PAGE
tabular statement of matter and
PAGE
....
44
..'....
56
EXISTING PLANTS AND ANIMALS
MOTION....................................................................
jy
geological epochs and typical life
forms .......................................................
succession of typical life-forms . .
22
CLASSES OF MAMMALS..........................................
74
43
RACES OF MAN..........................................................
75
SUB-KINGDOMS OF ANIMALS
�ILLUSTRATIONS
FIG.
1.
2.
34.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
PAGE
NEBULA OF ORION........Frontispiece
SUN-SPOTS ...
.
21
PHOTOGRAPH OF THE MOON....
22
FOOTPRINTS OF FOSSIL BIRDS ...
25
TABLE OF STRATIFIED SYSTEMS WITH
TYPICAL FOSSILS
................................
26
OLENELLUS (A CAMBRIAN TRILOBITE)
27
FORAMINIFER................................................
27
SECTION OF GRAVESEND CHALK . .
28
ORGANISMS IN ATLANTIC OOZE
. .
28
DIATOMS................................................................
28
CAMBRIAN CRUSTACEAN...........................
28
FOSSIL AND LIVING GANOID FISH . .
29
INSECTS IN AMBER.....................................
30
FOSSIL PLANTS FROM COAL BEDS . .
32
BELEMNITES.....................................................
33
FOSSIL SEA-LIZARD : PLESIOSAURUS .
34
FOSSIL
FLYING
LIZARD :
PTERODACTYLUS.....................................................
34
FOSSIL BIRD : ARCHZEOPTERYX ...
35
AMMONITE..........................................
. .
36
FOSSIL BONY FISH : PERCH AND SAL
MON
...............................................................
36
NUMMULITES
FROM
THE GREAT
PYRAMID...............................
37
FEET OF ANCESTORS OF THE HORSE .
38
STONE IMPLEMENTS : ANCIENT STONE
AGE
...............................................................
39
MAMMOTH, OR WOOLLY-HAIRED ELE
PHANT
................................................................. 40
PREHISTORIC PICTURES...........................
41
STONE IMPLEMENTS : NEWER STONE
AGE.............................................................
42
venus’s fly-trap..............................
46
DIAGRAM OF CELL...................................
48
DIAGRAM OF CELL AND NUCLEI ...
48
DIAGRAM OF OVUM OF MAMMAL
. .
49
DIAGRAM OF FLOWER.........................
51
FERTILISATION OF PLANT..............
51
CYCAD OR PALM-FERN.........................
52
FERTILISATION OF FLOWERBY INSECT
53
TRANSITION FROM STAMENS TO PETALS
IN WHITE LILY
.....................................
54
MONERA . . .....................................................
56
AMOEBA.........................................................
59
INFUSORIA . .....................................................
59
FIG-
I
i
I
i
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
4950.
51.
52.
53.
545556.
57.
58.
5960.
61.
62.
63.
64.
65.
66.
67.
68.
69.
70.
71.
72.
73.
74.
7576.
77.
78.
79.
PAGE
STRUCTURE OFSPONGE...........................
60
HYDRA....................................................................
6l
JELLY-FISH..........................................................
6l
SECTION OF SEA-ANEMONE...................
6l
CORAL . .
.....................................................
62
SEA-CUCUMBER...............................................
62
DIAGRAM OF ANNELID................................
63
SECTION OF WORM
.....................................
63
ROTIFER OR WHEEL ANIMALCULE . .
64
PERIPATUS..........................................................
64
GENERALISED INSECT................................
65
NERVOUS SYSTEM OF BEETLE ....
65
SECTION OF EYE OF INSECT
....
65
ANATOMY OF BIVALVE MOLLUSC
. .
67
SKELETON AND OUTLINE OF BAT . .
68
BALANOGLOSSUS
..........................................
69
SEA-SQUIRT
.....................................................
69
DIAGRAM OF SEA-SQUIRT..................... .....
70
DIAGRAM OF LANCELET..........................
70
MUDFISH
. . ................................................
71
GROWTH OF HAIR..........................................
72
DUCKBILL
..............................................
.
73
SPINY ANT-EATER..................... .....
74
SKELETONS OF MAN AND APES . . .
75
DIAGRAM OF LIFE-DEVELOPMENT . .
77
CHLOROPHYLL IN LEAF-CELLS . . .
88
CELLS OF ROOT OF FRITILLARY . . .
89
CELL............................................... .....
90
STAGES OF CELL-DIVISION.....................
90
MORULA OR MULBERRY-LIKE STAGE 91
GASTRULA OR PRIMITIVE STOMACH
STAGE...............................................................
91
EMBRYO STAGE...............................................
91
EMBRYOS OF FISH, DOG, AND MAN . .
92
LEAF INSECT.....................................................
97
WALKING-STICK INSECT...........................
97
GORILLA WALKING.......................................... IOI
BRAIN OF MAN AND CHIMPANZEE . . 102
EMBRYOS OF DOG AND MAN
.... I06
EMBRYO OF TORTOISE..................................... I06
ARM OF MAN, FORELEG OF DOG, AND
WING OF BIRD............................................... 107
FOSSIL
BIRD-REPTILE :
COMPSOGNATHUS............................................................... I08
GIGANTIC FOSSIL WINGLESS BIRD OF
NEW ZEALAND
IO9
��N O U LA OF ORION.
.Entartet freui a photograph taken
zZz’zw/ ¿y UA-. Cowzwo«
ÆzwzZzj/z^.
�THE STORY OF CREATION
INTRODUCTORY
victions regarding the mutability of
species, and finally to a solution of the
problem of their origin, which, after the
lapse of nearly a quarter of a century
spent in the testing of every fact and ar
gument telling in favour of or against his
theory, was published in the famous
“ Origin of Species.” That book is the
On the 27 th of December 1831, Charles imperishable record of the most momen
Darwin, then in his twenty-third year, tous advance in man’s knowledge of the
embarked at Plymouth as volunteer nat operations of nature since the publication
uralist on a five years’ voyage in the of Newton’s “ Principia.”
Beagle, a ten-gun brig, which was com
The pens of many experts, ready
missioned to survey the shores of South writers withal, have enriched our
America, and to circumnavigate the scientific literature with clear and charm
globe.
ing expositions of Darwin’s theory for
Few marked the departure of that the benefit of a public which runs so
ship; none could foretell what memor fast that it has little time to read. But
able results would follow from her voyage, that theory deals only with organic
or know that she carried the man whose evolution, i.e., with the origin of the
theory was destined to revolutionise or myriad species of plants and animals;
profoundly modify every department of and the prominence given to it in virtue
human thought and every motive to of its more immediate interest makes us
human action. But so it was.
The apt to overlook the fact that it is only a
true epoch-maker, never dreaming to : small part of an all-embracing cosmic
what far-reaching and momentous issue I philosophy. For whatever lies within
his work would lead, retired, some time the phenomenal—the seen or felt—and
after his return, to a quiet home in Kent therefore within the sphere of observation,
there to consider the significance of the experiment, and comparison, whether
materials gathered during his voyage. galaxy which only the telescope makes
The distribution of living things in known, or monad whose existence only
South America, and markedly in their the microscope reveals, is subject-matter
relation to those in the Galapagos of inquiry, both as to its becoming and
Islands, a group lying five hundred miles as to its relation to the totality of things,
from that continent, was among the
chief causes 1 which led Darwin to con from Pocket-book for 1837, Darwin!s Life and
Happy the man whose lot it is to know
The secrets of the earth. He hastens not
To work his fellows’ hurt by unjust deeds,
But with rapt admiration contemplates
Immortal Nature’s ageless harmony,
And how and when her order came to be.
Such spirits have no place for thoughts of
shame.
Euripides, Fragm. 902.
1 “ In July opened first note-book on Trans
mutation of Species. Had been greatly struck
from about the month of previous March on
character of South American fossils, and species
on Galapagos Archipelago. These facts (es
pecially latter) origin of all my views.”—Extracts
Letters, i, p. 276. Referring to the same matter,
Darwin says in a letter to Sir J. D. Hooker,
dated January 11, 1844, “ Gleams of light have
come, and I am almost convinced (quite contrary
to the opinion I started with) that species are
not (it is like confessing a murder) immutable.”
—Ibid. vol. ii, p. 23.
�IO
INTRODUCTORY
It is this more general conspectus of
evolution as a working hypothesis which,
if it does not explain every fact, is incon
sistent with none, that the following
pages are designed to give in clear and,
as far as possible, simple words.
Before attempting this it is desirable
to outline the phenomena which that
theory explains; and the first part of
this book will therefore describe such
matters as the stuff of which all things
are made, its combinations, affinities,
and distribution ; the relation, likeness,
and unlikeness between the stellar and
solar systems, and between the earth
and its fellow-planets; the varied forms
and conditions of past and present life,
and the relation between these and the
inorganic or non-living—in brief, what
ever makes up the visible universe.
Many facts will, therefore, be set down
which every schoolboy is supposed to
know, but which most folks whose
school days are long past have probably
forgotten. But the repetition may make
easier that which follows by way of
explanation, and, moreover, may foster
the growth of that feeling of an under
lying and indivisible unity between the
remote and near, the past and present,
the living and non-living, which is apt
to lie dormant when things in chemical
or vital relation are treated as separate,
or as differing in kind. Astronomer or
chemist, geologist or palaeontologist,
psychologist or physiologist, botanist or
zoologist, all are members one of
another, and none can say to his fellow,
“I have no need of thee.” The
astronomer captures the truant light
from the stars, and the chemist, decom
posing it, compels from it the secret of
their structure, even of the direction in
which they travel. The geologist rives
the strata asunder, and discloses their
succession and contents; the palaeonto
logist, disengaging the fossils embedded
in them, or altogether composing them,
finds the ancestral forms of living
species and the missing links in the
unbroken chain of life. The psycholo
gist may analyse and catalogue the I
operations of the mind, but the key to
understanding them lies in the study of
brain structure and function, of which
the physiologist is master; while the
botanist and zoologist alike miss the
significance of the phenomena of plant
and animal life if these are treated as
separate departments
of
biology.
Truly, as Emerson says, “the day of
days, the great day of the feast of life,
is that in which the inward eye opens to
the unity in things.”
Yet must we exclaim with the chorus
in the “ Antigone,” and in these days
with a deeper meaning, “Who can
survey the whole field of knowledge?
Who can grasp the clues, and then
thread the labyrinth?” For the mate
rial is so wide-ranging and varied that
only the barest outline is possible; and
in dealing whether with star or species,
the one must often represent the whole,
the individual the class. “ For the
purpose of getting a definite knowledge
of what constitutes the leading modi
fications of animal and plant life it is
not needful to examine more than a
comparatively small number of animals
and plants.”1 Our knowledge will,
however, thereby advance from the
particular to the general, and be
enlarged from a mere storage of facts
to an all-inclusive philosophy of things ;
so that although we may not escape
errors of detail, we shall be saved by
true apprehension of the universal.
The limits of this book demand the ex
clusion of reference to old cosmogonies,
and to attempts to square them with
facts. What this or that philosopher has
guessed, what this or that ancient manu
script or tablet records, about the
heaven and earth, “and all that in them
is,” has only an historical interest and
value. To deal with such matters here
would give them a false importance,
and, moreover, confuse things proved
with obsolete speculations. Still more
does this apply when the mechanical
explanation of the general and simple
1 Huxley’s American Addresses, p. 154.
�INTRODUCTORY
phenomena of the lifeless is extended to
the special and complex phenomena of
life in its ascending scale from moneron
to man, without pause wherein caprice or
chance could enter to disturb the sequence.
But caprice and chance are not: the
nebulous stuff of which the universe is
the product held latent within its diffused
vapours not only the elements of which
the dry land and the waters are built, and
from which the boundless varieties of
plants and animals have been evolved,
but aught else that, through work of man
for good or ill, has composed the warp
and woof of this world’s strange, eventful
story. Be it borne in mind, however, at
the outset, that although much is ex
plained by evolution, and although no
limitations to its application can be ad
mitted within the sphere of the pheno
menal, there remains much more than is
dreamt of in our philosophy unexplained,
around the impenetrable marge of which
imagination, and the sense of mystery that
feeds it, can play. “ Positive knowledge
does not and never can fill the whole
region of possible thought. At the utter
most reach of discovery there arises, and
must ever arise, the question, What^lies
beyond ? ” 1 The whence of the nebula
and its potential life is an abiding mystery
that overawes and baffles us. The begin
nings of the crystal are no less unknown
and undiscoverable than the beginnings
of the cell : the ultimate causes which
lock the atoms of the one in angular em
brace, and which quicken with pulsating
life the corpuscles of the other, lie beyond
our ken. And if of the beginnings
1 First Principles, p. 16, 3rd eel.
11
nothing can be known, so is it with the
things themselves, which affect us by their
colour, their weight, and movement. They
remain the unknown cause of sensations
which are themselves, as Helmholtz says,
and as Descartes said two centuries before
him, only symbols of the objects of the
external world, corresponding to them in
some such way as written characters or
articulate words to the things which they
denote. There is no greenness in the
grass; there is no redness in the rose;
there is no hardness in the diamond : that
which our sensations report to conscious
ness as colour and hardness being the
result of myriads of unlike motions, some
of which are repeated as often every
second as there are seconds in thirty mil
lions of years.
Thought and emotion have their ante
cedents' in molecular changes in the
matter of the brain, and are as completely
within the range of causation and as
capable of mechanical explanation as
material phenomena, but of them no
material qualities, as weight and occu
pancy of space, can be predicated. Heat
may be expressed in equivalent foot
pounds, light and sound and nervous
transmission in measurable velocities,
but these never. We cannot make the
passage from chemistry to conscious
ness, or transform motions of nerve-tissue
into love, reverence, and hate.
But let us, without further preamble,
advance to the matter in hand, since, to
quote the author of the Book of Macca
bees, “ it is a foolish thing to make a long
prologue and to be short in the story
itself.”
�PART I.—DESCRIPTIVE
Chapter I
THE UNIVERSE: ITS CONTENTS
The Universe is made up of Matter and
Motion.
i. Matter.—Under this term are
comprised all substances that occupy
space and affect the senses. Matter is
manifest in four states—solid, liquid,
gaseous, and ultra-gaseous in the form of
electrically-charged corpuscles projected
into space. It is probably also present
throughout the universe in the highly
tenuous form called ether.
Between the above states there is no
absolute break, matter assuming any one
of them according to the relative strength
of the forces which bind, and of the
energies which loosen, the component
parts of bodies ; in other words, accord
ing to the temperature or pressure. E.g.,
water becomes solid when its latent heat
or contained motion is dissipated, and
gaseous to invisibility when its particles
are driven asunder by heat.1
Since the ultimate nature of matter
remains unknown, we can only infer
what it is by learning what it does. The
actions of bodies, whatever their states,
are explicable only on the assumption
that the bodies are made up of infinitely
small particles which, in their combined
state as mechanical units, are called
molecules; and in their free state are
called atoms. The molecule is a com
1 In choosing water as an example, its peculiar
action in expanding -as it approaches the solid
state should be noted. Perhaps this is due to
the form in which, as in snow, its molecules
crystallise.
pound body reduced to a limit that
cannot be passed without altering its
nature.
The atoms, or so-called elementary
substances, number, as far as is known
at present, between seventy and eighty,
but many of them are extremely rare,
and exist in such minute quantities as to
be familiar only to the chemist. They
were called “atoms” on the assumption
of their indivisibility, but this has been
recently disproved. The atom is an ag
gregation of what are called “ electrons,”
which are in “ a state of rapid interlocked
motion,” and concerning which, Sir
Oliver Lodge says, “it is a fascinating
guess that they constitute the funda
mental substratum of which all' matter is
composed . . . On this view, the in
gredient of which the whole of matter is
made up, is nothing more or less than
electricity.”1 It is estimated that an
atom of hydrogen contains 700 electrons ;
an atom of sodium 16,000, and an atom
of radium 160,000. “The spaces be
tween them are enormous compared with
their size—as great relatively as are the
spaces between the planets in the solar
system.” An atom of matter possessing
an electron in excess is called an “ion,”
and it is the “ ions ” which act, a negative
charge causing the impulse to motions
of enormous velocity. Each atom may
be compared with the solar or stellar
1 Romanes Lecture (1903), Modern Views on
Matter, pp. 12, 13.
�THE UNIVERSE: ITS CONTENTS
systems as containing a number of bodies
moving in rapid orbits. But the com
parison fails when the age of the one
and that of the other is estimated, since
“ it is probable that the changes in the
foundation stones of the universe, the
more stable elemental atoms themselves,
must require a period to be expressed
only by millions of millions of centuries.”1
Eighty years ago, Dalton, working in
no luxurious laboratory, but with the
meagre apparatus of a few cups, penny
ink-bottles, and home-made thermo
meters and barometers, discovered that
atoms combine in definite proportions of
weight and volume with other atoms.
For example, whether we take water in
large or small quantities from the clouds,
or from the ocean, or from the fluids of
living things, and decompose or break
up its molecules, they will always be
found to contain sixteen parts by weight
of oxygen to two parts by weight of
hydrogen; whether we take salt from
the sea or from the blood of animals, its
molecules always consist of fixed propor
tions of chlorine and sodium, thirty-five
and a half parts of the one and twentythree of the other; in each and every
case any excess of either element remains
uncombined—left out in the cold for
want of a partner.
Dalton’s discovery changed chemistry
from a qualitative to a quantitative
science, giving an impetus to research
which at last promises to bring us within
sight of the fulfilment of Faraday’s
prophecy, that “ in the end there will be
found one element with two polarities.”
Many workers followed on the lines laid
down by Dalton, notably Prout, who
formulated the theory that the atomic
weights are multiples of the atomic
weight of hydrogen, the lightest of the
so-called elements, which he argued
might be regarded as the primordial
element, the materia prima, from which
the others are formed by successive con
densations.
1 Ibid, p. 25.
13
The researches of the past few years
establish the fact that certain of the
elements possess such strongly marked
likenesses as to warrant their classification
into groups, but these groups did not
appear to be connected with one an
other, nor to have any relation to the
far larger number of elements not fall
ing into groups. Recently, however, a
marked advance towards proof of the
common origin of all the elements has
been made by a Russian chemist, Mendelejeff,1 who, following Newlands, has
shown that if they are arranged, in the
order of their atomic weights, from
hydrogen as 1, to radium,2 the heaviest
yet known, as about 225,3 “the series
does not exhibit continuous advance, but
breaks up into a number of sections, in
each of which the several terms present
analogies with the corresponding terms
of other series. Thus, the whole series
does not run a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, &c.
&c., but a, b, c, d; A, B, C, D; a, ft, y,
8, and so on, in recurring similarities.”
In this we have a periodic law, as it is
called, which embraces all the elements
according to the increasing value of their
atomic weights, and which has restored
to their rightful place in the succession
certain elements for which no place in
any of the series of groups could be
found. More than this, and as evidenc
ing the fruitful play of the imagination,
Mendelejeff, finding certain gaps be
tween neighbouring elements, pointed
out that they could be filled only by
elements possessing chemical and
physical properties which he accurately
specified. And, sure enough, some of
these vacancies have been filled by the
discovery of elements with the properties
which Mendelejeff predicted they must
possess. This is as interesting a romance
as the discovery of Neptune, the exist
ence of which, it will be remembered,
1 Cf. Ad. Wurtz’s Atomic Theory, pp. 154-163.
2 “This strange substance, in which the
riddles of matter and energy seem to be
focussed.”—Edinburgh Reviezv, Oct. 1903, p.
387.
3 So Madame Curie computes it.
�14
THE UNIVERSE: ITS CONTENTS
M. le Verrier and Professor Adams in
dependently deduced from the anomalous
movements of Uranus, which “ swam
into the ken ” of Dr. Galle at Berlin
when he pointed his telescope to that
part of the heavens where the mathe
maticians told him he would find the
planet.
The elements seldom occur in a free
state, nearly all bodies being compound,
or formed by the union of two or more,
rarely
exceeding
four,
elements.
Oxygen, which is the most abundant
and important of all, and, when uncom
bined, a tasteless and invisible gas,
enters into nearly one-half of the crust
of the globe ; while of such limited
variety of stuff is the infinite complexity
of things in earth and heaven produced,
that the mass of matter in the universe,
as the spectroscopic analysis of light
radiated from the heavenly bodies
shows, is made up of about fourteen
elements. Living things are mainly
ctfrnposed of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen,
and nitrogen.
- Our knowledge of molecules, as of
atoms, is yet in its infancy, and it would
seem that particles which are beyond
the range of our most powerful micro
scopes to reveal may be as astoundingly
complex as the giant orbs of the
heavens—nay, as the universe itself.
Many ingenious experiments and cal
culations have been made to arrive at
their size and structure, but they leave
the problem where they found it. The
seven-hundred-millionth part of an' inch
is considerably under the thickness to
which, if it could be done, a plate of
zinc or copper could be reduced without
making it cease to be zinc or copper
as we know and handle them. The
film of a soap-bubble scarcely reaches
the millionth of a millimetre (’03937 of
an inch) in thickness. The size of a
molecule of water is about ■g’criy'ôînj'crôîy
of an inch in diameter ; that is to say,
if a drop of water the size of a pea were
enlarged to the size of the globe, the
molecules would be about as large as |
cricket balls. The number of mole
cules of albumen in a cube of
of an inch of horn is reckoned at
seventy-one billions; while the egg of a
mammal, which averages
of an inch
in diameter, may be estimated to
contain “so many molecules that, if one
were lost 01 developed in every second,
they might not all be exhausted until
after five thousand six hundred years.”1
But, as showing how only approximate
such estimates are, the highest optical
aid brings us no nearer a knowledge
of the ultimate structure of organic
bodies than we should be of the
contents of a newspaper seen with the
naked eye one-third of a mile off. It
is, however, impossible for the mind
to grasp the ideas which such figures
and comparisons are intended to give.
We have now reached a point when
the grounds for the assumptions made
concerning the nature of matter through
out space, whether in masses, large or
small; in molecules, atoms, electrons,
or in the tenuous ether, must be stated.
If atoms are changeable only in their
relations through combination with
other atoms, and in their distribution
in space, it follows that all changes are
due to motion.
2. Motion.—Motion throughout the
universe is produced or destroyed,
quickened or retarded, increased or
lessened, by two indestructible powers
of opposite nature—(«) Force, and (¿)
Energy.
(i?) For the present purpose, Force is
defined as that which produces or
quickens motions binding together two
or more particles of ponderable matter,
and which retards or resists motions
tending to separate such particles.
When Force acts between visible
masses of matter, large or small, distant
or near, it is called Gravitation ; when
it acts between the molecules compos
ing masses it is called Molecular
1 Cf. Mr. Sorby’s Presidential Address to the
Royal Microscopic Society, Microscopic lournal,
March, 1876.
�THE UNIVERSE: ITS CONTENTS
Attraction, or Cohesion; when it acts
between the atoms uniting them chemically;into molecules it is called Chemical
Attraction, or Affinity.
As Force inheres in, and can never
be taken from, ponderable matter, every
atom possesses the tendency to attract,
and, in the absence of any opposing
energy sufficient to overcome such tend
ency, the power to attract, every other
atom, as well as to resist any separating
power or counteracting energy. The
sum-total of Force is constant, and its
several qualities are grouped under
one doctrine, called the Persistence of
Force.
(¿) For the present purpose, Energy
is defined as that which produces or
quickens motions separating, and which
resists or retards motions binding to
gether, two or more particles of matter
or of the ethereal medium.
The sum-total of Energy in the uni
verse is a fixed quantity, but it is not,
like Force, bound up with matter so
that it cannot be transferred. It exists
whether it acts or not, and therefore it
can be stored up.
Energy is of two kinds, active and
passive, or, in the terms of science,
kinetic and potential. E.g., a stone
lying on a roof or on a mountain ; a
clock wound up but not going; a bed of
coal; a barrel of gunpowder; have
potential energy. This becomes kinetic
when the stone falls, the clock goes, the
coal burns, or the powder explodes. Not
only does the potential pass into the
kinetic, and vice versa, but the several
forms of kinetic energy pass into one
another—motion into heat, heat into
electricity, electricity into heat, light,
and chemical action ; a definite amount
of any one form of Energy passing into
an equivalent amount of the other, the
one disappearing as the other appears.
And the tendency of all passive Energy
is to be converted into active Energy
until a dead or uniform level is reached,
as in bodies of the same temperature,
wherein no differences of separating
15
power remain. The significance of this
will be apparent when the ultimate
destiny of the universe is considered.
These qualities of convertibility and
indestructibility are grouped under one
doctrine, called the Conservation of
Energy.
The Persistence of Force and the
Conservation of Energy may be grouped
together under the doctrine of the In
destructibility of Motion. Force is the
attracting or pulling power ; Energy is
the repelling or pushing power ; and by
the antagonism of these the work of
the universe is done. Every mass pulls
every other mass by the force of gravi
tation ; the earth the moon, the sun the
earth, some other star the sun, and vice
versa. And the moon would fall to the
earth, as also the earth to the sun, but
that the energy of their orbital motion
overcomes the force. When a loaded
wagon is pulled, especially uphill, the
muscular power which, in the form of
kinetic energy, is expended by the horgfe
overcomes the attractive power inherent
in the earth to draw the wagon towards
its centre and keep it there. When the
energy of heat which drives asunder the
particles of bodies, changing them from
the solid to the liquid or gaseous form,
is expended, then the particles resume
the solid form in virtue of the force of
cohesion.
If Force had unresisted play, all the
atoms in the universe would gravitate to
a common centre, and ultimately form a
perfect sphere in which no life would
exist, and in which no work would be
done. If Energy had unresisted play,
the atoms in the universe would be
driven asunder and remain for ever
separated, with the like result of change
less powerlessness. But with these two
powers in conflict, like the Ahriman and
Ormuzd of the old Persian religion, the
universe is the theatre of ceaseless re
distributions of its contents, whether in
the sweep of the stars and their atten
dant systems through space, or in the
pendulum-like vibrations of the invisible
�16
THE UNIVERSE: ITS CONTENTS
particles of every body, or in the throbs
of the ethereal medium. So rapid are
the motions, the rebounds between each
molecule in hydrogen gas numbering
seventeen thousand millions per second,
that even if the molecules were within
microscopic range we could not see
them; and yet these collisions are few
compared with the oscillations of light
waves, which number hundreds of mil
lions of millions in the same time.
Such action shows that just as there
are spaces or distances between the stars
measureless in their vastness, so there
are pores or spaces between the mole
cules of bodies, and between the atoms
which compose the molecules (to say
nothing of the spaces between the
electrons in each atom), measureless in
their minuteness. And if added proofs
of these intermolecular, interatomic and
interelectronic spaces were needed, we
find them in the contraction and expan
sion of bodies through the quickened
or retarded vibrations due to the sepa
rating energy manifest as heat; in
the compressibility, although slight, of
liquids; in the actual solidification of
air and of certain refractory gases under
extreme cold and pressure, nitrogen being
frozen and hydrogen liquefied by the
cold produced by their evaporation
under the air pump. But more than
this. These pores between invisible
particles, these spaces between star and
star, spaces so vast that the diameter of
the earth’s orbit, measuring one hundred
and eighty-eight millions of miles, seen
from the nearest star, is but a pin’s point,
are not vacant. Speaking of the force
of gravitation, Newton said that to con
ceive of one body acting upon another
through a vacuum is so great an ab
surdity, that no man wdio had “ in
philosophical matters a competent
faculty of thinking ” could ever fall
into it.
And the like applies to the transmission of light, heat, and other forms
of energy between bodies far and near.
Therefore for the explanation of these
varied and yet related phenomena it is a
necessary assumption that the minutest
intervals between atoms, as well as the
awful spaces of the universe, are filled
with a highly rarefied, elastic medium
called ether, which, ever tremulous with
unentangled vibrations, is the vehicle of
Energy alike from the infinitely great
and the infinitely small.
That matter should be unseen and
unfelt is no new conception to us. Its
existence in the ultra-gaseous state al
ready referred to ; its invisibility in air—
the vehicle of sound; in steam, and in
substances vaporised by the voltaic arc
—its extreme rarefaction in such bodies
as comets, the stuff of whose tails,
spreading across millions of miles, could
be compressed into a small vessel ;
prepare us to conceive unseen realities.
Thus, when the sensory organs are
powerless to report the facts, Science,
excluding no faculty from wholesome
exercise, bids Imagination use her larger
insight to make clear the significance of
the things which eye hath not seen nor
ear heard.
The value of the foregoing abstract of
the relations between Matter and Motion
will be proved or disproved in the degree
in which it squares with the phenomena
to be hereafter described and explained.
Meanwhile the subjoined tabular sum
mary may set the subject in a clearer
light.
�THE UNIVERSE: ITS CONTENTS
17
MOTION.
MATTER.
I
ENERGY.
I
FORCE.
Potential, or
Passive.
Kinetic, or
Active.1
Masses
Attraction between Masses,
or Gravitation
Separation of Masses (com
monly called
Visible
Energy of Position)
Ex. Stone on a roof
A head of water
Motion of Masses
Ex. Moon’s motion round
the earth
Stone falling
Water falling
Molecules
Attraction between Mole
cules, or Cohesion
Separation of Molecules
Ex. Steam
Motion of Molecules
Ex. Steam condensing into
liquid
Heat-vibrating particles
of a poker
Atoms
Attraction between Atoms,
or Chemical Affinity
Separation of Atoms
Ex. Atoms in a free state
Motion of Atoms
Ex. Atoms rushing to form ,
molecules
Electrons
Ionic charges
Paired electrons, i.e., equal
positive and negative
Extra negative
(ions)
Ether (?)
(No evidence of aggre
gating power inhering in it)
electrons
(All Kinetic Energy, ex
cept the small proportion
intercepted by bodies in
space, passes from matter
to the ethereal medium.
This is the doctrine of the
Dissipation of Energy)
1 Each kind of Kinetic Energy has separative, combining, and continuous or neutral motion. Example of
Separative—a stone thrown upwards ; example of Combining—a stone falling ; example of Neutral—a top spinning in
the same place.
...
,
,
,
,
.
. .
Note.—The foregoing reference to atoms and electrical units or electrons has to be taken in connection with recent
theories of atomic constitution propounded by Lodge, Crookes, Thomson, and other physicists.
Note—The foregoing reference to atoms and electrons has to be taken in connection with recent theories
of atomic constitution propounded by Lodge, Thomson, . Crookes and other physicists; theories which are
not to be regarded as final. In dealing with cosmic dynamics, the following quotation from Sir Ray Lankester s
fascinating Kingdom of Man may not be out of place : “ The discovery of the Hertzian waves and their application to
wireless telegraphy is a feature of this period. The power which we have gained of making an instrument oscillate in
accordance with a predetermined code of signalling, although detached and a thousand miles distant, does not really
lend anv new support to the notion that the old-time beliefs of thought-transference and second sight are more than
illusions based on incomplete observation and imperfect reasoning. For the important factors in such human
intercourse—namely a signalling-instrument and a code of signals—have not been discovered, as yet, in the structure
of the human body, and have to be consciously devised and manufactured by man in the only examples of thought
transference over long distances at present discovered or laid bare to experiment and observation.
(P. 88.)
�Chapter 11
DISTRIBUTION OF MATTER IN SPACE
Matter is both visible and invisible,
ponderable and imponderable. In its
ponderable form it is distributed through
out space in bodies of varying densities ;
in its imponderable form it fills the in
tervals between the particles composing
those bodies, as also the vast intervals
between the bodies themselves. The
most important of these—as the sand by
the sea-shore, innumerable—are the
“ fixed ” stars, so called from having no
apparent motion of their own, although
in reality travelling at enormous
velocities. Each of these, unless it be
an extinct, burnt-out sun, shines by its
own light, and is probably, like the sun,
which is itself a star, the centre of a
system of planets with their satellites or
moons and other bodies. “One star
differeth from another star in glory.”
Not, speaking broadly, in the stuff of
which all are made, for the light thrown
by the spectroscope on the chemistry of
the heavenly bodies has revealed their
general identity of structure. No matter
how distant the star, so long as the light
emitted is strong enough; broken on
prisms, it reveals through its spectrum
not only what elements are present in the
glowing vapour, but even the direction
of the star’s motion, i.e. whether it is re
ceding from or approaching our system.
The annual parallax (or the apparent
change of position as seen from opposite
points of the earth’s orbit) of the nearest
fixed star, Alpha Centauri, is nearly one
second of arc, giving a distance of
twenty millions of millions of miles. So
vast is the interval, that our solar system
would appear as only a point in space
when viewed from this star, the light
from which, travelling at the rate of one
hundred and eighty-six thousand miles
per second of time, takes nearly three
years and a half to reach us, so that we
see the star as it then shone.
The differences between the stars are
in their sizes, their brilliancy or magni
tude, and their colours, this last giving
some clue to their stage of development.
For there are stars young, middle-aged,
old, and decrepit; and there are stars
cold and dead, radiating no energy, and
whose existence can be known only by
their influence exerted through the force
of gravitation upon the proper motion of
other bodies, as, eg., of Sirius by its un
seen companion.
Astronomers have not yet arrived at
any certain conclusions regarding the
general distribution of matter in space.
But the combinations, as seen from our
system, are as varied as they are complex.
Besides double and multiple stars—their
apparent nearness to one another often
being due to their lying in nearly the
same straight line from our system—
there are the constellations, many of
the names of which are relics of that
animistic stage in man’s belief when
everything was personified. There are
also star-clusters, light, cloudy-looking
patches, made up of suns which, from
our point of view, lie densely packed
together in numberless galaxies.
Besides the fixed stars and their
�DISTRIBUTION OF MATTER IN SPACE
systems, straggling in scattered groups
on either side of the milky way or
composing its cloud-like arch, there are
the vast masses of glowing matter called,
in contradistinction to the stellar nebulae,
which the telescope has resolved into
stars, gaseous nebulae. These are of
regular and irregular shape, circular,
elliptical, and spiral; they are the raw
stuff of which suns and systems are
formed. There are also dark nebulae
capable of reflecting, and also of partially
obscuring, light.
These nebulae; the fixed stars, with
whatever appertains to them, and the
vagrant bodies known as comets, with
their more or less associated myriad
meteor streams, down to the fine cosmic
dust that falls on polar snows or sinks
into the deep ocean; comprise the
ponderable matter of the universe. The
sum-total of the radiant energy of all
luminous bodies, save the small pro
i?
portion intercepted by one from the other,
is in course of continuous transfer to the
imponderable ethereal medium.
The results of modern research into
the structure of the universe, in which
inquiry the late Richard Proctor took a
distinguished and important part, are
thus summed up by him in the article
on “Astronomy” in the last edition of
the Encyclopaedia Britannica :
“The sidereal system is altogether
more complicated and more varied in
structure than has hitherto been sup
posed ; in the same region of the stellar
depths coexist stars of many orders of
real magnitude ; all the nebulse, gaseous
or stellar, planetary, ring-formed, elliptical,
and spiral, exist within the limits of the
sidereal system; and lastly, the whole
system is alive with movements, the
laws of which may one day be recognised,
though at present they are too complex
to be understood.”
�Chapter III
THE SUN AND PLANETS
The Solar System comprises—i, the
Sun; 2, the Planets, large, small, and
minor; 3, Moons or Satellites; 4,
Comets, together with Meteors or Shoot
ing Stars.
The Sun consists of a nucleus, sur
rounded by envelopes called the photo
sphere and the chromosphere, outside
which lies the mysterious corona, whose
delicate silver radiance forms the
glorious nimbus of a total eclipse. The
nucleus is a gaseous mass, burning at a
temperature of which we have no con
ception, being probably millions of
degrees; but the condensation which
goes on under the radiation of energy
may have already reduced the core to a
liquid or putty-like state.
The disc
which we see includes the vaporous
photosphere, with its puzzling grain-like
face, here and there pitted with the
cloud-patches or spots, from the move
ments of which we learn that the sun
rotates on his axis in twenty-five days.
The chief constituents of the chromo
sphere are hydrogen and “ helium,”
which last-named was discovered in the
mineral “cleveite ” by Professor Ramsay
in 1896, and which the spectroscopic
researches of Sir William and Lady
Huggins and Sir William Ramsay show
may be a product of radium. It is from
this atmosphere that the red prominences
or tongues, which often reach a height
of one hundred thousand miles, are
expelled. Vast as is the sun’s volume,
exceeding several hundred times all the
other members of his system, he is
by no means the biggest of the stars,
and, as compared with them in bright
ness, probably does not exceed the
third or fourth magnitude. But the
sun has the greatest interest and import
ance for us, seeing that to him are due
those manifold energies by which the
processes of nature, both chemical and
vital, are carried on within the limits of
his system. Further, with the knowledge
which has been gained during late years
concerning the sameness of the stuff of
which nebulae, stars, and planets are
spun, the nature and arrangement of the
contents of our solar system enable us
to make lawful analogies concerning the
contents of systems beyond it.
Of the solar radiant energy the planets
receive or intercept only the two hun
dred and thirty millionth part, the earth
receiving but the two thousand one
hundred and seventy millionth part.
Even a large proportion of this energy
is immediately, and the whole of it
finally, radiated into space.
The planets, one and all, revolve in
nearly circular orbits, but on rather
differently inclined planes, round the
sun, in virtue of that energy of orbital
motion with which each was endowed
at birth, and which counteracts the op
posing force of the sun’s gravitation,
which would otherwise pull them into
him, absorbing them in his mass. In
cluding the swarm of minor planets or
asteroids, of which new ones are being
�THS SUN AND PLANETS
21
The mass of matter called the earth
frequently discovered, they are perhaps
to be »timbered by thousands. _ They is of nearly spherical shape, being slight
are of various sizes and densities, and ly flattened at the poles and bulged
in different stages of progress and. de towards the equator.
*It consists of a core within a rocky
pay. The evidence for the primitive
gaseous state of all bodies now possess crust, three-fourths of which is covered
ing greater density will be given here- by a layer of water, and the whole
after, but our system itself witnesses to surrounded by an atmosphere.1
The entire mass, solid, liquid, and
the passage of planets and satellites to
an ultimately solid form, Some, like gaseous, spins on its axis at the rate of
our earth and, perhaps, Mars, have about one thousand miles every hour,
cooled down sufficiently
to be covered by a hard
crust, and to be fit
abodes for living crea
tures ; others, like Jupi
ter and correspondingly
huge bodies, are still in
a more or less heated
and partly self-luminous
condition. The smaller
bodies have long been
cold and inert, like our
airiesSj SÌlent, and barren
mOOtl. In her pale re
flected light, her scarred
surface, and her vast
ringed craters, illumined
no longer by flame of
central fires, we learn
that what she is the
planetsand the sun him
self will ®e day become.
Th® moons revolve
round their several plan
qty under similar re
paint of force and
Fig. i.—Sun-spots. (From Orchard’s Astronomy.}
freedom of energy as
the planets themselves.
The gaseous masses composing comets and speeds through space in its orbit
and
streams travel in very round the sun at the rate of one thousand
eccentric orbits. In fine, motion is miles every minute.
The atmosphere is composed, in the
everywhere, in ether, atom, molecule,
and mass ; the sun, like his fellow-stars, main, of the uncombined elements
has his proper motion, carrying with oxygen and nitrogen ;2 the water is chiefly
him planets, satellites, and whatever compounded of combined but mobile
Other bodies are within the influence of oxygen and hydrogen. Of every hundred
his force of gravitation. This is itself
1 Taking the earth’s surface as I, the sea
obedient to the attractions of bodies covers 0’734 part, and the land 0’266 part.
perchance as much exceeding his own
2 Add to these water-vapour, and, among
in power as he exceeds the mote dancing other gases, argon, neon, &c., discovered within
the last few years.
in his beams.
�22
THE SUN AND PLANETS
parts of the crust, ninety-nine are made
up of about sixteen out of the seventy
or more elementary substances, and
of. these sixteen the larger number
exist in small proportion. It is com-
the earth is about five times and a
half that of a body of the same size
made of pure water, but the large
extent covered by the ocean in the
southern hemisphere, whither the
Fig. 2.—Photograph of the moon, taken at Paris by MM. Loewy and
Puiseux on September 19, 1894. (Inverted as seen in a telescope.)
puted that fully one-half of the crust
consists of oxygen which it has taken
into itself from the atmosphere, and
that already one-third of the water
of the ocean has been absorbed by
minerals.1
The average density of
1 Geikie’s Text-book of Geology, pp. 30, 298.
tendency to collect was probably
manifest at the outset when the
steamy vapours condensed and filled
the depressions in the crust, points
to an excess of density in that direc
tion.
What the inside of the earth is like no
�THE SUN AND PLANETS
man can tell1; the latest theory, which
has the support of Sir Archibald Geikie,
is that beneath the solid crust there is a
molten magma over one hundred miles in
depth, which shades continually inwards
into a gaseous centre. This theory goes
far to explain the crumpled and fractured
surface, and also earthquake movements
and volcanic action.
These show that the unquiet earth has
not yet lost the whole of the original
store of energy which it acquired during
the aggregation of the particles of which
it is built up in their passage from a
diffused nebulous state to one of increas
ing density under the action of the force
of gravitation. But the escape of that
energy through the crust to the ethereal
medium is unintermittent, and its final
dissipation into space is therefore only a
question of time.
The crust was probably never uniform
ly smooth, because the contraction of
the interior mass as it cooled would
bring about a state of tension causing
shrinkage of the surface, producing
intense heat. Hence the beginnings of
those wrinkled, cracked and crumpled
features which other agencies would
score more deeply in the face of the
globe, giving thereby beauty and variety
in valley, mountain, table-land, and all
else that makes the earth so fair a dwell
ing place.
Our knowledge of the crust extends
only to a relatively small depth, the
aggregate thickness of the strata or layers
of rock already measured being about
twenty-five miles, or the one hundred
and sixtieth part of the earth’s semi
diameter. The term “ rock ” is applied
alike to hard granite and loose sand, to
ore veined with metal and to mud from
country lanes, as including the materials
composing the crust or shell. Rocks
are divided into two classes—un stratified
and stratified. The unstratified, which
1 Cf. Geikie, Text Book, vol. i., p. 73 (1903
edition).
23
are also called igneous or Plutonic,
embrace all rocks which, as they now
exist, have been fused together by heat,
or erupted from the earth’s interior by
volcanic agency. The stratified, which
are also called aqueous or Neptunic,
embrace all rocks which have been
deposited as sediment by the action of
water or of the atmosphere, or which are
due to the growth and decay of plants
and animals. With this class are
grouped the metamorphic, for the most
part stratified rocks which have been meta
morphosed into a crystalline state by the
action of heat and pressure, resulting in
effacement of their original character, and
in the destruction of traces of any organic
remains in them. Throughout the entire
series of rocks, the newer have been, and
are being, formed out of the older, which,
unless upheaved, are always found at the
bottom ; but of the original crust perhaps
no trace remains.
The depth to which the unstratified
rocks extend is unknown, and as they
contain no organic remains they tell us
nothing concerning the origin and
succession of life on the earth. The
stratified rocks, which alone throw light
on this question, have been divided for
convenience, and not as implying any
gaps between their several formations
save where natural causes have operated,
into four, or sometimes five, epochs.
These, together with the typicalremains of
plant and animal associated with each,
are as follows :—1
Epoch.
Thickness
of Strata
Archaean or Eozoic
{dawn life, chiefly
70,000
metamorphic) .
Primary or Palaeo
zoic {ancient IBe). 42,000
Secondary or Meso
zoic {middle life). 15,000
Tertiary or Caino
zoic {recent life) . 3,000
Quaternary or Post
600
Tertiary . . .
Plant
Animal
Monera
feet Algae
(Chiefly marine)
Fishes
,, Ferns
„ Pine forests
Reptiles
„ Leaf-bearing Mammals
forests
Existing species
,,
�Chapter IV
THE PAST LIFE-HISTORY OF THE EARTH
Geology deals with the stuff of which
the earth is made, its origin, structure,
and arrangement. But so interrelated
is the material of which all things are
formed, that inquiry into the structure
of rocks has to be extended well nigh at
the outset to their contents—that is, to
the fossil remains of ancient life which
are not only preserved within the larger
number of strata, but entirely compose
vast masses, as coal-beds, chalk hills,
and coral islands. Therefore the inter
est which the study of the erupted, firefused, and water-laid rocks awakens,
especially in their witness to ceaseless
changes through an ever-receding past,
becomes more immediate and human
when the relics of ancient life-forms are
examined; and when their appearance,
persistence, or disappearance, their
order and succession in an ever-varying,
ever-ascending scale, are traced. For
in them lies the record of life on the
earth through measureless time; the life
that was, parent of all life that is; from
simple slime-speck to structure of
subtlest complexity named man, with
its passionate story of agonies and joys,
of struggle towards a “kingdom of
heaven ” which remains the ideal of the
noblest of our kind.
True it is that the record is very
imperfect, that the gaps remain wide
and numerous, even when supplemented
by fossils from different parts of the
globe. But the wonder is that the
blanks are not greater when the nature
and extent of the changes to which all
[
[
I
I
rocks have been, and are being, sub
jected, are considered. In addition to
the havoc and effacement wrought by
the earth’s internal heat, the formation
of every deposit involves the waste of
an older deposit, which has in its turn
been derived from more primitive stuff,
| the effect throughout being muti
lation or destruction of the organic
contents.
It is impossible that the vast number
of lowest life-forms, whether plant or
I animal, should have been preserved.
| Traces of marine organisms survive in
i the trails and borings of sea-worms, or
in the imprint of carcasses of jelly-fish
stranded on the ripple-marked mud of
ancient sea-shores; but of the softbodied creatures themselves not a
vestige remains. Only such hard parts
as the shells or skeletons of animals,
and the bark, wood, and seeds of plants,
would reach the fossil state in more or
less perfect form; and even their
preservation is contingent upon the
nature of the beds in which they are
interred. As it is, but a remnant of all
that ever lived in the water, and a far
less proportion of the smaller popula
tion of the land, are represented in
actual fragments. Sometimes only an
impression survives, as when a dissolved
shell has left its witness in cast or
mould, in clay or mud, or an extinct bird
or reptile its footprints on-the sands of
a far-off time. Sometimes, in the
compensating action of nature, chemical
agents, in destroying the original
�THE PAST LIFE-HISTORY OF THE EARTFI
structure, infiltrate the vacancy with
minerals, replacing the form, occasion ally in minutest detail.
Bich as are igneous rocks in wealthyielding mineral veins and ores, they are,
save where recent plants and animals
have been accidentally enveloped in the
flowing lava or dust of volcanic eruptions,
destitute of fossils. There was a period
in the earth’s history when life was not,
and its beginnings, which, as will be
shown hereafter, were probably in polar
were certainly subsequent to the
^5
the remains of animals, composing chalk,
limestone, and other organically-derived
rocks. But whatever their source, and
however much the original order of
strata has been deranged by hidden
agencies which have tilted them at
all angles, cleaved and contorted them,
and superposed the older on the newer,
there is a well-ascertained succession in
them which their fossils alone have
enabled us to determine, each formation
having its own characteristic kinds or
dominant types of plant and animal.
Fig. 3.—Footprints of Birds, with (2) marks of Raindrops.
ejection of die molten or pasty masses
which cooled into true volcanic or fireformed rocks.
Although fossils are found only in
sedimentary rocks, they are not uni
versally present in them. Varied and
mixed as those rocks are in composition,
it suffices here to group them under two
heads- - -1, those derived from sediment,
in its several states of gravel, sand, and
mud: and 2, those formed of the re
mains of plants, as coal in its several
stages from peat to the hard graphite or
black-lead of the older formations; or of
Not that there are any hard and fast
lines between the disappearance of an
earlier species and the appearance of &
later species, the forms being often com*
mingled. Some of the low and simple
types persist through almost all for
mations ; some of the more complex are
found only in one or two formations ;
but there is a merging of one into
another ; there are gradations and alli
ances of type, as of birds with reptilian
characters, and vice versa. And although
seemingly isolated types occur, or the
divergence between earlier and later types
�2Ó
THE PAST LIFE-HISTORY OF THE EARTH
Fig. 4.—TABLE OF STRATIFIED ROCKS.
EPOCH.
SYSTEM.
Quaternary.
13. Recent
STRATA.
.
TYPICAL FOSSILS.
.
' 12. Pliocene .
.
ix. Miocene .
.
Tertiary
or
Cainozoic.
10. Eocene
Mastodon.
Univalve (Cerithium).
Conifer (Sequoia).
Secondary
or
/
Jurassic or
Oolitic
Mesozoic.
1. Nummulite.
2. Univalve (Natica).
1.
2.
3.
4.
7- Triassic . .
z
6. Permian .
.
Pearl Mussel (Inoceramtes).
Ammonite, new form (Turrilitei).
Bivalve (Pecten).
Ammonite, new form (Hamitt£).
p.
2.
3.
4.
Bivalve (Pholadomya).
Bivalve ( Trigonia).
Cycad (Mantellia).
Univalve (Nerintea).
Fish-lizard (Ichthyosaur).
Ammonite.
Sea hly (Encrinus).
Footprints of Labyrinthodon^
5- Carboniferous.
Primary
or
Palæozoic.
4- Devonian.
.
Bivalve (Bake-veilla).
Lampshell (Products!}.
Ganoid (Palæoniscus).
Precursors of Ammonites
(Gonialite .
Club-moss (Lepidodendron).
Horsetail Plants (Calamité).
/
\
Ganoid Fish (Pterichthys).
( I. Strophomena.
Lampshells ! 2. Lingula.
I 3. Pentamerus.
Trilobite 4. Calymene.
3. Silurian .
.
Seaweed (Oldhamite).
2. Cambrian.
.
\
Archæan
or
Eozoic.
I. Pke-Cambrian.
�THE PAST LIFE-HISTORY OF THE EARTH
has blurred their relation, it will be
seen that the modern are the ancient
slowly and wondrously modified. In
short, the life-history of the globe is
one both of unbroken relation and
27
Silurian, from the Silures, a tribe of
ancient Britons, the people formerly
inhabiting the district; sometimes they
denote typical features of the formation
but they are the accepted nomenclature
in treatises on geology, and are therefore
adopted here.
1. Archaean : also named Eozoic
{dawn life} and Pre-Cambrian. These
rocks have different names in different
parts of the globe. For example, in
Shropshire they are called Uriconian
(from the old Roman military station
Uriconium, on the site of which the
village of Wroxeter stands); in North
America they are known as Laurentian,
after the St. Lawrence river basin, and
also as Huronian, after Lake Huron.
They have been subjected to vast
changes which prevent any systematic
classification of them, and which make
the placing of the few fossils—traces
of worms, sponges, and plants—found
in them, in any order of geological
time very difficult.
They fall into
three main types: 1, coarse crystalline
Fig. 5.— Olenellus : the characteristic
fossil of the lowest Cambrian system.
(From Geikie’s Text-Book of Geology ; by
permission of Macmillan and Co., Ltd.)
progress ; the gaps exist because the
record is mutilated. Nature, like the
Sybil of Cumte, has destroyed her
books.
The fossil-yielding rocks are sub
divided into the systems shown on
fig. 4. There is no one section of
the earth’s crust where a complete series
is to be found with layer superposed
on layer like the skins of an onion ;
but whatever gaps exist locally do not
affect the relative age and place of
each stratum, which, as remarked above,
are fixed by the fossils. No uniform
principle has governed the choice of
the system-names. Sometimes they in
dicate the place where a formation is
markedly developed ; sometimes, as the
Fig. 6.—Foraminifer, Glohlgerina bulloides,
magnified seventy diameters. This form
is found floating in tropical and temperate
seas.
gneisses and schists associated with
plutonic rocks; 2, finer grained crys
tallines associated with volcanic and
metamorphic rocks ; and 3, sedimentary
rocks with volcanic ashes and lavas.
�28
THE PAST LIFE-HISTORY OF THE EARTH
“The longevity of an organic type
has, on the whole, been in inverse pro
portion to its perfection ”; and some of
the lower types may smile at man’s
“ claims of long descent,” for they have
survived through the long and change
bringing millions of years to this day,
shedding their shells on the ocean floor,
Fig. 7.—Section of Gravesend
Chalk.
Fig. 9.—Diatoms from “Infusorial
Earth ” of Richmond, Virginia
(highly magnified).
•
as their ancestors shed theirs, forming
vast chalk' and limestone hills and
mountain ranges in relatively shallow
seas. Not in deep oceans, as was
formerly held, since the fossils are shown
to resemble present shoal water deposits
rather than similar oozes found in water
over a thousand fathoms deep, which
further confirms the theory that the
great ocean beds have never been up
raised. While some secrete chalk,
others secrete flint. Among the latter
are the minute plants known as diatoms,
whose remains compose, among other
deposits, the “rotten-stone” used as
polishing powder, of which no less than
Fig. 8.—Organisms in Atlantic
Ooze (highly magnified).
Fig. io.—A Cambrian Crustacean
(Hymenocaris).
From Geikie’s
Text-Book of Geology : by permis
sion of Macmillan and Co., Ltd.)
forty-one thousand million skeletons
go to make up a cubic inch.
2. Primary.—The Cambrian rocks,
although less metamorphic, add little to
our knowledge of primitive plant forms,
such as are preserved being probably algse,
or seaweed, corresponding to the tangles
covering large areas of the Atlantic,
�THE PAST LIFE-HISTORY OF THE EARTH
especially the region called the Sargasso
Sea. But the system is fairly rich in
fossils of marine animals, themselves
the descendants of a long line of
perished ancestors. Sponges, sea-lilies,
and low forms of mollusca, or true
shell-fish, are found; but the typical
and most perfect fossil is that of the
three-lobed crustaceans called trilobites,1
which swarmed in those ancient seas,
and survived till the Carboniferous
period.
The Silurian rocks, although ex
hibiting in crumpled and rugged moun
tain chains the action of agents both
above and below the earth, are much
29
ancient of all known land animals is a
scorpion found in the upper Silurian
beds of both Scotland and Sweden ;
while the marine remains are varied and
numerous, comprising seaweeds, foraminifera, corals, star-fish, shell-fish of every
kind, trilobites, and huger lobster-like
crustaceans, sometimes measuring above
six feet in length.
But the most important fossils are
those of the earliest known vertebrates, in
the form of armoured fishes,1 allied to
the sturgeon, and called ganoids (Gr.
ganos, splendour; and eidos, form) from
the brilliancy of their enamelled scales.
In this seemingly sudden appearance
Fig. ii.—A, Recent Ganoid Fish; B, Ganoid from Devonian strata.
less metamorphosed than the preceding | of highly organised animals marking so
systems. They are in large measure the great an advance in structure on the
worn fragments of land areas which higher invertebrates, the imperfection of
Stretched across Northern Europe for the geological record is brought home
above two hundred miles into .the to us. For if later forms are modified
Atlantic, the sediment being deposited descendants of earlier, then not only
In a shallow sea which then covered are the transitional ancestral forms of
Central and Southern Europe, and the the ganoids missing, but the species
floor of which was slowly raised as a itself is enormously older than the fossils
primitive European continent at the imply. The inquirer, however, need
close of the Silurian period by subter not despair, for only a limited portion
ranean movements. The land plants, of the dry land has as yet been explored
which are the earliest as yet met with, with any completeness, and there are vast
are allied to huge club-mosses, ancestors fossil-holding areas submerged and inac
of the gigantic forest-kings of Devonian cessible ; yet one by one missing links
and Carboniferous times. The most
1 Discovered by Professor Claypole near the
1 Trilobites with antennae have been found in
the Hudson River shales.
base of the Upper Silurian in Pennsylvania; of.
Smithsonian Report, 1884, p. 622.
�30
THE PAST LIFE-HISTORY OF THE EARTH
are being found. Probably the pre
decessors of the ganoids, the skeletons
of which are cartilaginous, were of a
structure too soft to permit of their
preservation in a fossil state.
In this brief survey of the three
earliest systems we have already traversed
more than half the total thickness of the
fossiliferous rocks, the deposit of which
involved a lapse of time and series of
changes of which no conception is
possible. The base-line of our life is
too short for measurement of the distance
which separates the foraminifera from
the ganoids ; of time, as of space, we see
neither beginning nor end.
The Devonian and Old Red Sandstone
rocks, while evidencing frequent redistri
bution of sea and land, have undergone,
as compared with the older systems of
the Primary epoch, but slight disturb
ance from the upheaving and contort
ing agencies beneath. They are widely
diffused, extending far north within the
Arctic circle; and although their fossil
contents are very incomplete, they bring
less . fragmentary witnesses to that con
tinuity of life the record of which is so
markedly broken in more ancient
deposits. . This is specially apparent in
the relative abundance of vegetable
remains, by which we may for the first
time construct some picture of plant-life
on the globe in Palaeozoic times. Not
only do we find huge tree-like plants of
which our club mosses and ferns are
pigmy representatives, but true trees, as
proven by the concentric rings of growth
in their trunks. Of land animals, the
preservation of which is so rare in all
deposits, there are no traces ; no reptiles
wallow in the lagoons and marshy flats,
neither are the verdant yet flowerless
forests brightened by the plumage, nor
their stillness broken by the song, of
birds. But we find the earliest known
insects; some happy chance, like that
which envelops the insects of Tertiary
forests in amber—the fossil resin of their
conifers—has preserved a fragile wing,
with the remains of a stridulating organ
attached, as in the grasshopper and
cricket, wherewith then, as now, mates
were attracted or rivals challenged—per
chance “ the first music of living things
that geology as yet reveals.”
Fresh-water fossils abound, but the
predominant types are marine—large
sponges and corals; “lamp-shell”
mollusca, which have persisted in varying forms from Cambrian times to the
present; crustaceans huger than any
that have lived since, of which even
the spawn masses are sometimes pre
served. More or less special types
appear and then vanish, through inability
to adapt themselves to new surroundings
and changed climates. But the De
vonian is notably the “ age of fishes,”
and its waters swarmed with the ganoid
type.
Coal is formed of compressed and
chemically altered plants, and occurs in
all water-laid rocks, although in very
different states and kinds. Sachs
remarks that every experiment on nutri
tion with green-leaved plants confirms
the theory that their carbon is derived
solely from the atmosphere, and we get
some idea how enormously large that
derivation has been on “ reflecting that
the deposits of coal, lignite, and turf
spread over the whole earth, and the
oituminous substances as great or even
�THE PAST LIFE-HISTORY OF THE EARTH
3i
greater in quantity which permeate moist atmosphere of those times, reached
mountain formations, besides asphalte, a gigantic size, and had a world-wide
petroleum, &c., are products of the range far into north polar regions, where
decomposition of earlier vegetations, coal seams have been found. Of the
which in the course of millions of years 1I animal life that dwelt amongst them we
have taken from the atmosphere the know very little, nor do the extant frag
carbon contained in these substances, ments represent a tithe of the forms then
and transformed it into organic sub flourishing. In the later deposits the
lower sub-kingdoms are represented by
stance.” 1
The climate and soil, during long spiders and large scorpions ; by land
eras of the Carboniferous system, snails, beetles, cockroaches,1 of which
specially favoured the growth of plants above eighty species occur, walkingmost fitted for coal formation. A large stick insects a foot long, huge May-flies,
part of Europe (and the like conditions and other insects; the honey-seeking,
apply wherever the true coal measures pollen-carrying species being still absent
abound) was then covered with shallow from the sombre forests. The first
waters, both salt and fresh, divided by known land vertebrates appear in the
low ridges, the bases of future mountain salamander-like and long-extinct am
chains, and dotted with islands; while phibians called labyrinthodonts, from
numerous rivers traversed the land, and the labyrinthine structure of their teeth.
silted up lagoons and lakes with the The marine remains are still dominant.
debris worn from older rocks. Vegetation The lower types persist; the trilobites
flourished apace on these river banks and are on the verge of extinction, but higher
marshy flats, and, with intermittent sub forms of the same group, allied more
sidence of the soil occurring again and nearly to the lobster and the shrimp,
again, was buried under sand and mud, succeed. The first known oysters
becoming changed into coal of varying appear, and, to the joy of the epicure,
seams of thickness. Hence the abun have survived all changes until now,
dance of this mineral in the Carboni spreading themselves over the whole
ferous strata, which, as a whole, yield northern hemisphere. Forerunners of
more of value and variety for the service the beautiful ammonites are found; and
of man than all the other, systems put the fish, while still of the armoured
together. Sandstones for building; species, have a more reptilian character
marbles for decoration; metals for than their Devonian ancestors.
machines; coals wherewith to drive
The life-features of the Permian system,
them; purest oil from muddy shale; jet the last division of the Primary epoch,
for the lapidary’s art ; loveliest colours, differ but little from those of the Car
exquisite perfumes, and curative drugs boniferous ; the only, although im
from gas-tar, even sugar therefrom, three portant, distinction is in the remains
hundred tjmes sweeter than that from of true reptiles with crocodile-like
the cane—these are the rich gifts of the characters.
deep rocks, which, struck by a more
3. Secondary.—Although the old
magic rod than Moses wielded, have theory of abrupt breaks between geogiven up their treasures for man’s needs
1 The cockroach is historically one of the most
and delight.
ancient, and structurally one of the most primi
Of the plants forming the coal tive, of our surviving insects (cf. Miall and
measures, the larger number are obliter Denny’s Cockroach, p. 22). It is amusing to
ated, but they all belong to the lower find Gilbert White speaking of this household
which
the
orders, as do the club-mosses, tree-ferns, pest, forinterest,we have to thankinsectEast, with
curious
as “an unusual
in one of
and other forms which, in the warm, my dark chimney closets; and find since that in
1 Sachs’ Leet, on the Physiol, of Plants, p.
294.
the night they swarm also in my kitchen.”
(Selborne, Obs. on Insects.}
�32
THE PAST LIFE-HISTORY OF THE EARTH
logical epochs has yielded to that of
continuity, the artificial divisions of the
series of rocks have their convenience.
And there exists marked distinction in
hence we meet with few traces of the
metamorphism which baffles examina
tion of the earlier rocks; we can
mark more definitely the boundaries
Calamite.
Fig. 13.—Fossil Plants from Coal-beds.
feature between the Primary and
Secondary formations. In the latter,
as represented in the European area,
volcanic action is much less manifest,
of land and water, measure more accu
rately the changes, and trace more
clearly the relations between the succes
sive life-forms, of which the marine are
�THE PAST LIFE-HISTORY OF THE EARTH
still the preponderating, and the reptilian
the most marvellous.
In the earliest division of this epoch,
the Triassic, many of the leading Palaeo
zoic types are extinct. Several plants of
the Coal and Permian systems have
disappeared, and the flora consists mainly
of ferns, of cycads or palm-ferns, and of
conifers, or pines and ferns, to which the
cycads are allied. Among the inverte
brate animals certain molluscs are no
longer found, but there is an interming
ling of old and new types. Oysters and
whelks and members of the cuttle-fish
group are abundant. As yet fishes ex
hibit no marked advance in structure,
and the labyrinthodonts, the time-range
of which is thus shown to have been
enormous, are changed only in size, as
their footprints evidence. Reptiles allied
to the crocodile group, and sea-lizards,
which attained gigantic size in later
periods, are now the dominant types.
Whether certain bipedal footprints in
the Triassic sandstones are those of birds
is doubtful; perhaps they are tracks of
reptiles with bird-like movements. But
in the absence of proof that they are due
to birds, assuming that these preceded
mammals in the succession of species,1 a
great link is missing in the Trias, since
that system has yielded teeth of the
earliest known mammal.1
2
It was
probably of the marsupial or pouched
order, a form now represented most
nearly by the Australian phalangers and
the American opossums.
The Jurassic or Oolitic system oc
cupies extensive areas in both hemi
spheres, and ranges from the Arctic circle
to Australia. Its strata, largely composed
of coral growths and other organic re
mains, are rich in special life-forms which
are limited to the Secondary epoch.
1 Cf. Heilprin, p. 161.
2 “ I entertain no sort of doubt that the rep
tiles, birds, and mammals of the Trias are the
direct descendants of reptiles, birds, and mam
mals which existed in the latter part of the
Palaeozoic epoch, but not in any area of the
present dry land which has yet been explored
by the geologist.—Huxley’s Critiques and
Addresses, p. 213.
33
Its seas, which overspread the greater
part of Europe, covering the large salt
lakes of the Trias, swarmed with exquisite
spiral ammonites, large and small; with
conical bolt-like belemnites, allied to the
cuttle-fish group; with lobsters, prawns,
and crabs, which succeeded the trilobites
and other crustaceans; with ganoid
fishes, sharks, and rays. And “there
were giants in those days ”—monsters of
the deep—in the ferocious sea-lizards,
with their fish-like bodies and flipper-
Fig. 14.—Belemnites.
like limbs; monsters of the land, too, of
dread aspect and size seen neither before
nor since, one found in North American
beds being, it is computed, nearly one
hundred feet in length, and above thirty
feet in height. Very interesting and
unique remains of the marine lizard
plesiosaurus have recently been found in
the shape of minute mummies under five
inches long, in which the substance of
the flesh is perfectly preserved, even the
circle of the eyes and the constituent
bones being clearly distinguished. There
were flying lizards, winged like bats,
B
�34
THE PAST LIFE-HISTORY OF THE EARTH
hollow-boned like birds, and with claws,
skin, and teeth like reptiles; and it is
in a Jurassic limestone stratum that the
addition to free claws to each wing, the
tail is long, and made up of separate
bones or prolonged vertebrae, a feature
oldest known true bird, a creature about
the size of a rook; called archaeopteryx,
is found. It does not correspond to
noted in the embryos of birds. The
remains of a bird about the size of a
crane, but with uncertain affinities, have
also been found in the Juras
sic beds of Wyoming.
While the sea, then, as
ever, was the more thickly
peopled, the land had a far
more important air-breathing
population, both of small
things and great. The hum
of insect life filled the cycadaceous forests, butterflies 1
sported in the sunshine,
spiders spread their webs for
prey, and the remains of
marsupials point to the range
of these small but highly orga
nised creatures over Western
1 Mr. Bates remarks that butter
flies, owing to the registry of all
changes of the organisation on the
wings, are ‘1 better adapted than
almost any other group of animals
or plants to furnish facts in illus
tration of the modifications which
all species undergo in nature under
changed local conditions. As the
laws of nature must be the same
for all beings, the conclusions fur
nished by this group of insects must
be applicable to the whole organic
Fig. 16.—Pterodactyl (Wing-finger).
world ; therefore the study of butter
flies—creatures selected as the types
of
and frivolity—will
valued
any known past or present birds, but as airiness the most importantsome day beof bio
one of
branches
represents a transitional type, having both logical science.”—- Naturalist on the Amazons,
bird and reptile-like characters. In PP- 347-48.
�THE PAST LIFE-HISTORY OF THE EARTH
Europe.
The plants and animals
of the British Isles in Jurassic times
probably resemble those still found in
Australia, which, by reason of its long
isolation from other continents, has pre
served in its pouched mammals, its
mud-fish, and its cycads more ancient
35
has gathered, forming the flints which
occur in limestones of all ages from
the Silurian downwards.
Molluscs,
nautiluses, belemnites, ammonites, some
of them the size of a cart-wheel, swarmed
in its waters ; and with them the huge
reptiles of Jurassic times, sea-lizards and
Fig, 17.—Archaeopteryx. A, Fossil, showing tail and leg, from specimen in
the British Museum (South Kensington). B, Head from Berlin Museum.
(Both reduced.) C, Archaeopteryx restored.
life-forms than any other country, per
haps New Zealand excepted.
The vast chalk formations of the globe
are the typical features of the Cretaceous
period, when the sea overspread a large
part of Europe, Asia, and Northern
Africa, receiving on its floor the foraminiferal shells which were converted
into chalk, and the skeletons of sponges
and other organisms round which silica
sea-serpents, also ganoids and sharks ;
and, what is important to note, bonyskeletoned fish allied to the salmon,
herring, and perch families.
In the North American formations,
which have so largely added to our
knowledge of ancient life-forms, “dragons
of the prime,” crocodile-like, bird-like,
and bat-like, are found ; also toothed
birds, with reptile-like brains, and the
�36
THE PAST LIFE-HISTORY OF THE EARTH
remains of true birds, these last being
rare in the Old World. Little trace of
the Cretaceous land-areas remains, but
the plants of the upper strata resemble
4. Tertiary.—Those warm climates
continued far into the Tertiary epoch,
but they were followed by declining
temperatures, which at last resulted in
the long and intermittent period of
intense cold known as the Glacial epoch.
Large areas of Europe and North
America were then swathed in ice, which
gouged and moulded the subsiding land,
choking the sea with ¿ZVzzA, and destroying
numberless species of plants and animals,
to the lasting biological impoverishment
of after times. In the end the tempera
ture gradually rose to its present level.
The Tertiary epoch marks the begin
ning of the present order of things, and
of the existing distribution of land and
sea, as also the uprising of most of the
great mountain chains.
Although much of the existing land
area was then submerged under shallow
seas, the sites of the great continents of
both hemispheres had well-nigh the same
outlines as now. Varied as are the life
forms of that epoch, unrelated and, save
existing vegetation, as angiospermous
exogens, or leaf-bearing trees having a
true bark, and growing from the outside,
with their seeds enclosed in a vessel.
They are called “ exo
gens ” in contrast to
“ endogens,” or palms,
grasses, and lilies, which
have no true bark, and
grow by additions from
the inside.
Of the total thickness
of the stratified rocks,
estimated at one hun
dred and thirty thousand
feet, the Secondary sys
tems occupy only fifteen
thousand, or less than
one-ninth of the whole.
But their importance,
like that of later and
thinner formations, is
not to be measured by
the space which they
fill, since it is during
their deposition, when,
Fig. 19.—i, Fossil Perch ; 2, Fossil Salmon.
as the coal seams and
coral deposits of extreme northern zones in the nummulitic limestones, detached,
show, warm climates prevailed, that the as are the strata, those life-forms manifest
marked advance in specialisation of a gradual approach to existing species
and a marked divergence from theplant and animal forms is manifest.
�THE PAST LIFE-HISTORY OF THE EARTH
37
species of older epochs. The colossal the Eocene strata, prominent among
reptiles of Jurassic and Cretaceous times, which are the vast beds of limestone laid
the coiled ammonites and other mollusca down when Europe, its north-west corner
of their seas, are extinct. The age of excepted, and Central Asia, were covered
huge reptiles has given place to the age of by the sea; when the rock from which
mammals, with their intermediate forms, the Sphinx was to be hewn was being
but with no one group dominant, and formed; and when the two Americas
with no important group unrepresented. were partially submerged. These beds
Larger animals have always been less extend from the Pyrenees to China and
able to resist changes than smaller Japan, and also largely compose the
animals. When the particular conditions Alps, Carpathians, Himalayas, Atlas,
which enabled them to attain to a great and lesser mountain chains. Not many
size have altered, they have been the first noble nor mighty are called to the en
to perish. It is the smaller, nimbler, and during tasks of nature. It is the
larger-brained animals that adapt them minute agents, unresting and widespread,
selves to changed conditions; hence that have been the efficient causes of
their long time-range compared
with that of animals of unwieldy
Structure and small brains. And
while the big reptiles of the Second
ary epoch, like the big plants of
the Carboniferous system, have
left only dwarfed representatives,
it is from the persistent smaller
types that the higher mammals are
descended.
The links between the Second
ary and the Tertiary epochs are,
except meagrely in the United
States, unrepresented by any
known strata, denudation having
swept away the intermediate de
of Nummulitic
posits with their contents. And Fig. 20.—Fragment Great Pyramid. Limestone from the
so confused are the Tertiary strata
that their order in time is determined much that is grandest in earth-structure ;
solely by the proportion of their shell and it is of shells of the coin-like numfish to existing species, ranging from mulities that these stupendous formations
as low as three per cent, in the are mainly composed. Their foundations
oldest beds to ninety-five per cent, were laid in archsean times in the fissures
in the newest.
Mollusca have been opened in the crust by volcanic action.
called the alphabet of palaeontology, Into these fell the sediment and organic
because their extensive distribution deposits of ancient seas, which ultimately,
through the several epochs renders them as the cooling crust caved-in by its own
the most valuable and trustworthy of all weight upon the shrinking hot nucleus,
organic remains in assigning the order in were squeezed and puckered and over
time and the conditions of life, not only turned by lateral pressure into number
of their own species, but of other species less folds ; or, according to a later theory,
whose life-history is briefer, and whose plicated and bulged through the heat
generated by the accumulation of sedi
range is more limited.
The rocks of the Tertiary epoch wit ment.1 Then, when the twisted and
ness to widespread aqueous and volcanic
1 Mr. Mellard Reade’s Orig'n of Mountain
action. This is specially noticeable in Ranges is an important contribution to a difficult
�38
THE PAST LIFE-HISTORY OF THE EARTH
crumpled strata were upheaved above
sea level, water and the powers of the
air sculptured them into pinnacle and
peak, into ravine and valley. So the
big mountains, as we know them, are
relatively modern; the lesser ones are
the older, as longest subject to the wear
and tear of eroding agents.
Mont
Blanc and the Matterhorn are not older
than the Eocene marine clay on which
London stands ; and the Righi, a fresh
water shingle bed, is younger still.
Broadly grouping the life of Eocene
seas, we find large whales, teleost or
bony-skeletoned fish in abundance,
the persistent ganoids. Birds
quadrupeds, carnivora, hornless deer,
and hog-like forms of a type between
the tapir and the horse—appear in large
numbers. Among the most remark
able fossils from North American
beds are those of the ancestor of the
horse, a creature about the size of a fox,
with four hoofed toes on each foot,
and in one form (Eohippus) with the
rudiments of a fifth toe. A still more
significant biological link is found in the
lemuroids of the Upper Eocene (which
belong to the Primates, or order of
mammals including man and ape),
possessing characters allying them to
one or other of the hoofed quadrupeds
then living.
The
plants, which were
slowly dispersed over
the northern hemi
sphere from polar
regions, were tropical
in character, as shown
by remains in the
Thames delta and
corresponding
de
posits.
The like character
applies to the flora of
early Miocene (in
21.—Feet of Ancestors of the Horse (Equida}.
which is included OliA, Orohippus, Eocene ; B, Anchitherium, Upper Eocene ; c, Hipparion, Upper
gocene} times, which
Miocene ; d, horse of Pliocene and Quaternary. The figures indicate the
are represented by
numbers of the digits in the five-fingered hand of mammals.
only a patch or two
are in the air; crocodiles and turtles of deposit in Britain. Timber trees, ever
swarm in the shallows ;1 snakes and > greens, and water-lilies flourished within
serpents make their appearance; the eight degrees of the North Pole, with
mammals are no longer restricted to which Europe and America were con
pouch-bearers, for the placentals—huge nected by way of the Faroe Islands,
subject. The author contends that the earth’s
Iceland, and Greenland, or of Behring
cooling has not extended to such a depth as to
Straits.
The animals approximated
make internal contraction a cause of mountain
more nearly to those of the present,
ranges. He regards them as due to sedimentation,
save in the huge size of some of the
whether organic or inorganic, accompanied by
local change of temperature in the crust. The
mammals, as of the mastodon and
heaping up of the sediment produces a rise in
other creatures allied to the elephant.
temperature, which causes expansion in all direc
Small rhinoceroses, hornless deer,
tions. This is illustrated by the effect in the
anthropoid apes as large as man, and,
course of time on the lead lining of a sink,
which, through alternate heating and cooling,
probably, the ape-like ancestors of man
gets bulged up in ridges.
himself, appeared; the horse corre
1 “ More true turtles have left their remains in
sponded more nearly to his modern
the London clay at the mouth of the Thames
descendant, the variation being that
than are known to exist in the whole world.”—
Sir R. Owen, Paleontology, p. 281.
each foot had three toes, of which only
�I
THE PAST LIFE-HISTORY OF THE EARTH
39
Fig. 22.—Stone Implements : Palaeolithic Age.
oaks and vines, that had stretched from
France to Greenland, and the remnants
of whose volcanic chain, of which Hecla
is the sole active relic, are extant in the
Hebrides and the Highlands of Scotland
and Wales, was submerged. Europe
was thus severed from America, but
Britain was left as a peninsula, the
newly invading waters of the North. Sea
dividing Scotland from Norway. ‘ On
the other hand, the Eurasian continent
was upraised in parts, leaving the deeper
basins of the Black, the Aral, and the
Caspian Seas as remnants of the
shallow waters that had linked together
the Baltic and the Persian Gulf,
and also the Arctic and the Indian
Oceans.
Except in the larger species, which
gradually died out, the hippopotamus
alone among them surviving to this
day, the quadrupeds varied little from
those of the Miocene, the most remark
able among the carnivora being fierce
sabre-toothed felines.
But for us the most interesting
Pliocene relics are the scanty fragments
of the skeleton of man, and the flints
bearing marks of artificial chipping,
which have been found not only in
France, Italy, and Portugal,1 but, what
is far more important, in the Pliocene
gravels of California.2 For as it is
agreed that the birthplace of man was
in the Old World, probably, in the
judgment of some authorities, in the
Indo-Malaysian region, the time-range
of the genus from which he is descended
has to be extended to allow for his
development and dispersion.
Pliocene fauna and flora alike witness
to a cooling climate. The life-destroy
ing agencies are at work; the cold
fingers of the ice-giant are being spread
over the northern hemisphere to the
fiftieth parallel of latitude, dinting and
thirteen hundred species have been
found in Switzerland alone.
The Pliocene period ushered in great
local changes in land and water dis
tribution. The lofty ridge, clothed with
1 Cf. M. de Quatrefages’s Introdziciion a
P Etude des Races Humaines, p. 91 (Paris, 1887) ;
and, for opposite views, Professor Boyd Daw
kins’s Early Man in Britain, pp. 90-92.
2 On the authority of Professor J. D. Whitney,
U.S. Geol. Survey.
one touched the ground. Birds and
insects were abundant: of the latter,
�40
THE PAST LIFE-HISTORY OF THE EARTH
rounding its surface, and leaving to
this day the traces of their impress in
the snow-fields
and glaciers
of
Scandinavia and Switzerland. Glacial
action swept away the northern flora,
never to return, the existing vegetation
being almost entirely Post-Glacial and of
eastern origin.
5. Quaternary.—Upon the glacial
deposits or boulder clays, only the most
recent of which contain fossils, and
than in himself, since only the scantiest
remains of his fragile skeleton have
been preserved. The roughly chipped
stone tools and weapons with which he
made shift have been found buried in
ancient river gravels with bones of the
mammoth or woolly-haired elephant, and
other arctic animals, as well as with
bones of temperate and tropical
animals, probably witnessing to sharp
alternations of climate. When the
Fig. 23.—Mammoth, or Woolly-haired Elephant.
these poor and scanty, rest the strata
of the present geological epoch, the
Quaternary, or Post-Tertiary, or Pleisto
cene, as it is variously called. This is
subdivided into the Post-Pliocene and
the Recent, the former containing the
remains of many extinct animals, as
huge wingless birds and sloth-like
mammals, and the latter the remains of
none but existing species. The Post
Pliocene beds furnish plentiful evi
dence of man’s presence in Western
Europe, although more in his works
foundations were being dug for Drum
mond’s new bank at Charing Cross the
following fossils were found in the Pleistw
cene gravels :—Cave lion ; tusks and
bones of the mammoth; extinct Irish
deer; rhinoceros; extinct oxen ; red deer,
etc. Stone implements and rude works of
art of a somewhat more advanced type
have also been found associated with re-i
mains of sub-arctic animals in limestone
caverns. Man’s occupancy of Europe
has been continuous since his migration
thither, probably by way of Northern
�THE PAST LIFE-HISTORY OF THE EARTH
Africa, in the remote period known as the pouch-bearers, bringing forth their
Palaeolithic or Old Stone Age, which, as- young immature, are less specialised
ggaming the artificial shaping of flints found j than the placentals, bringing forth their
fefcotftbertt England, may have been pre- I young fully developed; while here, also,
ceded by an Eolithic Age. The succeed- the ascending grades are seen in
Eatf periods into which prehistoric time is whales, ungulates, carnivora, monkeys,
divided are the Newer Stone Age, the Age men.
To all which the fossil-yielding rocks
of Bronze, and, lastly, the Age of Iron,
Ifeich merges into the brief and modern
period embraced
by the historian.
In the foregoing rapid summary of the
earth’s past zo
ology and botany much of de
tail has been left
out for clearer
presentment of
the typical fea
tures of each
epoch, and of
B
the scale of life
as an ascending
scale. The older
the rock the
Simpler the life
forms.
The seaweed
and the lichen,
stemless
and
leafless, are lower
than the club
moss and the
tree-fern; these
are lower than
the true timber
tree, with its
complex arrange Fig. 24.—A, Mammoth scratched on ivory, found in the Madelaine cavern
ment of trunk,
in the Dordogne. B, Fight between Reindeer ; scratched on slate.
branches, leaves,
flowers, and fruit. The sponge, rooted bring their witness.
Imperfect as is
plant-like to the rock, is lower than their record, obscure as in certain cases
the coral or the star-fish; these, are the causes of modification resulting
crabs or shell-fish, the in the appearance of new types, the
most highly organised of which are evidence as to ascent of life from the
lower than the vertebrates, between the simple to the complex, and as to its
several groups of which the ascents are succession, is overwhelming. There
manifest in fish, reptile, bird, and was a time when the earth was devoid of
mammal. And among these last there life, and we are very far from its “ pro
are the lesser and the greater: the toplast ” beginnings in the earliest
B*
�42
THE PAST LIFE-HISTORY OF THE EARTH
known organic remains, just as all
species probably came into being long
before we have any trace of them. But
The history of the earth is written by
fire and water ; its life-history by water
alone.
Fig. 25.—Stone Implements : Newer Stone Age.
1, flint arrow-head; 2, stone axe-handle; 3, flint knife; 4, bone harpoon;
5, bone needle ; 6, perforated horn ; 7, spoon for scooping marrow from bones.
no evidence as to their first appearance
that may be gathered from parts still
unexplored is likely to alter the relative
order assigned to the several types as
compared with one another.
The volcanic and other modes of
igneous disturbance that have upheaved,
depressed, contorted, and fissured its
cooling crust are due to the internal
energy manifest in the escape of pent up
�THE PAST LIFE-HISTORY OF THE EARTH
heat and in chemical action. The more
potent agents of change in the visible
crust, however, have not been from
within, but from without. As the
internal energy, derived from contraction
of the hot nucleus, decreased, the energy
derived from the sun became more
effective, giving rise to changes wherein
variations of temperature and the circu
lation of air and water over the surface
of the earth would come into play. It
is to these—to the solvents of the atmo
sphere and rain, to the driving wind, to
water in its several states and move
ments, whether of disrupting frost,
grinding glacier, eroding river, or waves
Table
Epoch
Primary or
Palaeozoic
(Age of Ferns
and Fishes)
or
have probably been permanent from the
remotest geological epochs, and the
variations in land and water distribution,
although enormous and unceasing, have
been confined to certain areas. All the
evidence furnished by the aqueous rocks,
from the earliest primary to the alluvial
formations of to-day, point to their tran
quil deposition on the floors of relatively
shallow seas, where they have been
converted by pressure and other means
into solid beds, entombing organic
remains which give the key to their
relative place. Then, on their upheaval
above the sea, the eroding agents have
begun their slowly levelling work, and
Successive Appearance of Typical Life
System
(Earliest known
Life-forms)
Secondary
Mesozoic
of the
43
fokms.
Animal
Plant
Laurentian
Cambrian
Silurian
Eozocm Canadense (?); Foraminifera
Sponges ; corals ; Crustacea ; shell-fish
Huge Crustacea; the lowest known vertebrates
(ganoids or armoured fish)
Seaweeds;
1 club-mosses
Devonian
Carboniferous
Permian
Insects ; swarms of ganoids
Land vertebrates (labyrinthodonts)
R ep tiles
1 Ferns ; ealamites ;
J cycads
Triassic
Immense reptiles ; sea-lizards ; marsupial
mammals
Immense bird-reptiles ; true birds 1
Bony-skeletoned fish ; large arpmonites
^Conifers ; palms
(Age of Pines and
Reptiles)
Jurassic
Cretaceous
Tertiary or
Cainozoic
Eocene
Miocene and
Pliocene
(Age of Leaf-forests
and Mammals)
Quaternary
Huge placental mammals ; serpents ; nummulites I Trees, shrubs her bs
True whales ; man-like apes
1 allied to existing
j sub-tropical
' species
(Glacial epoch intervening, and continuing into the—)
Post-Pliocene
Mammoth and other woolly quadrupeds ; man
Arctic and temperate
Recent or Historic Existing species
Existing species
and currents of the sea—that the fiveand-twenty miles and more of stratified
rocks (for the same stuff has been used
over and over again), with all the varied
contour of the earth’s surface, are mainly
due.
Vast, slow, and continuous as are the
changes, they occur within defined limits.
The deep ocean basins, the lines or
seams of the great mountain chains,
1 The discovery of the lowest mammalian
forms in earlier strata than those containing
birds seems opposed to the accepted order of
succession, but there is considerable uncertainty
as to the exact period of the first appearance of
birds.
the débris of lands, where life-forms
have flourished and perished, have re
turned to the waters whence'they uprose,
to become once more “ the dust of
continents to be.” And so “ the thing
that hath been, it is that which shall be ;
and that which is done is that which
shall be done : and there is no new
thing under the sun.” Between the
opposing agents of waste and repair, of
upheaval and subsidence, with interplay
of the organic in growth and decay, as
in limestone ranges, coral isles, and coal
beds, and the action of man himself on
nature, the ancient earth is maintained
from age to age mother of all living.
�Chapter V
PRESENT LIFE-FORMS
2. Vertebrates :
I. PLANTS.
Sea and other water- 1 Gymnospores, i.e. naked
weeds (H/^r<?)
J spores.
Fungi ....
Lichens ....
Mosses ....
Angiospores,
Ferns and Horsetails
i.e. enclosed spores.
Club-mosses
Gymnosperms,
Pines and Palm Ferns
i.e. naked seeds.
(Many seed lobes.)
Grasses, Sedges, Palms
(One seed-lobe.) Angiosperms,
i.e. enclosed seeds.
Trees, Shrubs, Herbs
(Two seed-lobes.)
II. ANIMALS.
i. Invertebrates, i.e. without backbone.
sticky,
monos, / Structureless,
. . . V alike all over.
Slight unlikeness of
amoibe,\ parts ; always chang
. . . | ing shape.
Secrete shell or skeleton
of lime from water.
Foraminifera (Lat._/t>r-_ Show
passage
to
amen, an opening)
further unlikeness in
I parts.
Polycystina ^.polusA Secrete she]] or s]<eleton
many ; and kustis, jfrom Water.
a cyst)..................... )
Sponges.
Coral animals, anemones,1 jelly-fish.
Sea-lilies, star-fish. Worms; flat and cordor thread-like (unsegmented). Crabs, spiders,
centipedes, insects; annulate or ring-bodied
worms (segmented). Oysters, snails, cuttle
fish. Connecting links between Invertebrates
and Vertebrates : Balanoglossus, Sea squirts,
Lancelets.
Monera1 (Gr.
single)
.
Amoebic1 (Gr.
change) .
1 No fossils of these soft-bodied lowest forms
exist.
- Impressions of bodies only.
A. Pisces.
Fish of all kinds.
B. Amphibia.
Toad, frog.
C. Reptilia.
Serpent, lizard,
crocodile,
turtle.
D. Aves.
Birds of all kinds.
E. Mammalia.
1. Monotremcs or one-vented egg-laying :
duckbill; spiny ant-eater.
2. Marsupials or Pouched ; Kangaroo ;
opossum ; Tasmanian wolf.
3. Placental (bringing forth mature
young) :—Ant-eater, sloth, manatee; whales
and porpoises ; horse and all other hoofed
animals ; elephant ; seal, dog, lion, tiger,
and all other flesh-feeders ; hare and all
other gnawing animals ; bats ; moles and
all other insect-feeders ; apes ; man.
If the life-forms of the past somewhat
baffle us by their scantiness and im
perfectness, those of the present em
barrass us by their abundance. But
although the existing species of plants
and animals are numbered by hundreds
of thousands, and the tale is not yet
complete, they are classified into a few
primary divisions or sub-kingdoms repre
senting certain allied types, of which
the several species included in each
sub-kingdom are modified forms. For
example, olives and daisies are grouped
as angiosperms because their seeds are
enclosed within a seed-vessel; flies and
lobsters, beetles and crabs, are grouped
together, although somewhat loosely,
because they are alike composed of
�PRESENT LIFE-FORMS
45
non-specialists; otherwise the significance
of facts, in their relation and dependence,
is missed, and the larger generalisations
are swamped in a sea of detail, so that
we cannot, as the phrase goes, see the
wood for the trees.
In the old division of the three
kingdoms of nature into the mineral,
the vegetable, and the animal, we were
taught that stones grow; that plants
grow and live; while animals grow, live,
and move. But this no longer holds
good, at least in respect of the lower
life-forms. There are locomotive plants
All things the world which fill
and stationary animals. The swarm
Of but one stuff are spun ;
cells or zoospores which are expelled
and this stuff, the basis of all life, the from some of the lower plants, as algae
formative power, “ universally known and certain fungi, behave like animals,
and yet essentially unknown,”1 to which darting through the water by the aid of
the name protoplasm (Gr. protos, first; hairlike filaments called vibratile cilia,
plasma, moulded) has been given, is a finally settling down and growing into
semi-fluid, sticky material, full of num new plants. Other plants, as diatoms
berless minute granules in ceaseless and and desmids, are locomotive throughout
rapid motion. “ It is not a compound, life ; certain marine animals, as sponges
but a structure 1 built up of compounds, and corals, are rooted to the spot where
2
consisting of the elementary substances they grow; while there are organisms
carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, which appear to be plants at one stage
in very complex union.” They are the of their growth and animals at another
essential elements, but a few others enter stage.
Other marks of supposed unlikeness
into the chemistry of life, with resulting
slight differences in the incidental ele have vanished. It was formerly held
ments in animals and plants. Moreover, that among the distinctive features of
a fundamental unity of form and of animals are—(1) a sac or cavity in
function underlies and pervades living which to receive and digest food ; (2) the
matter, from the slime of a stagnant power to absorb oxygen and exhale
ditch to the most complex animal; the carbonic acid ; and (3) a nervous system.
differences between living things being But although nearly all animals, in virtue
in degree, and not in kind. Therefore, of their food being solid, have a mouth
although each genus, nay, in most cases, and an alimentary cavity, the lowest forms
each species, needs for its complete are without these organs ; and although
study the labour of a lifetime, it suffices plants, in virtue of their food being
for the majority of us, grateful for the liquid or gaseous, need not that cavity,
results which the zeal of specialists has there are some that have it. Not only
achieved, to acquaint ourselves with the is the process of digestion apparent in
essential characteristics which mark the the leaves of carnivorous plants, the hair
main divisions of the twin sciences of like glands on which contain pepsin, but
botany and zoology. If this is the only embryonic forms have been found to
possible thing for. us, it is the one thing secrete a ferment similar to the ferment
needful for all, whether specialists or in the pancreatic secretion of animals,
by which they dissolve and utilise the
1 Sachs, p. 294.
food-stores in their seed-lobes as com
2 Sir Henry Roscoe’s Presidential Address to
pletely as food is digested in our
til# British Association, 1887.
distinct segments; boys and frogs, pigs
and herrings, are grouped in the sub
kingdom of the Vertebrata, because
they alike possess an internal bony
skeleton, the most important feature of
which is the spine or vertebral column.
And this classification is applicable
alike to past and present organisms,
there being throughout the whole series
of fossil remains no form, however un
like any existing living thing, that is not
to be placed in one or other of the sub
kingdoms.
�46
PRESENT LIFÈ-FORMS
stomachs. And although green plants,
under the action of light, break up
carbonic acid and release the oxygen,
they do the reverse in the dark, as also
in respiration; while the quasi-animal
fungi which are independent of light
absorb oxygen and give off carbonic
acid.
In the “irritability” of the sundew,
Venus’s fly-trap, and other sensitive
plants, still more so in subtile and
hidden movements in plant-cells, we
have actions corresponding to those
called “ reflex ” in animals, as the con
traction of the shapeless amoeba when
touched, or the involuntary closing of
a,
Fig. 26.—Venus’s Fly-trap.
bristles in triplets, which when touched cause the sides
of the leaf to collapse and enclose the intruder.
one’s eyelid when the eye is threatened,
or the drawing back of one’s feet when
tickled. The filament in the amoeba
which transmits the impulse causing it
to contract differs only in degree from
the sensory nerves in ourselves which
transmit the impression to the motor
nerves, causing the muscles to act ; and
since there is every reason for referring
the contractile action of plants, i.e., their
movements in obedience to stimulus, to
like causes, the germs of a nervous
system must be conceded to them.
The minute observations of Darwin and
his son into the large class of quasianimal movements common to well-nigh
all vegetable life go far to confirm this.
The highly sensitive tip of the slowly
revolving root, in directing the move
ments of the adjoining parts, trans
mitting sensation from cell to cell,
seems to “act like the brain of one of
the lower animals; the brain being
seated within the anterior end of the
body, receiving impressions from the
sense organs and directing the several
movements.” 1
In these and kindred vital processes,
in the so-called sleep-movements of
leaves and flowers, both regulated by
the amount of light, apparently acting
on them as it acts on our nervous
system; in. the detection of subtile
differences in light which escape the
human eye, by plants; in the higher
range of sensation which they manifest,
as compared to some animals ; in their
choice of food, and of the material of
the covering which some of them
secrete; in their general sensitiveness
to external influences; even in the
diseases which attack them, the study
of which Sir James Paget has com
mended to pathologists, we have the
rudiments of attributes and powers which
reach their full development in the
higher animals, and therefore a series of
fundamental correspondences between
plant and animal which point to the
merging of their apparent differences
in one community of origin.
In fine, that which was once thought
special to one is now found to be
common to both, and to this there is
no exception. Not only is there
correspondence in external form in the
lower life-groups, but, fundamentally,
plants and animals are alike in internal
structure, and in the discharge of the
mysterious processes of reproduction
and of nutrition, although, as will be
shown presently, this last forms a con
venient line of separation. Notwith
standing agreement in essential points
of comparison, there is this difference to
be noted, that while animals, the lower
forms excepted, reach a given develop
ment, the vast majority of plants do not,
but continually put forth growing points,
so that life goes on indefinitely, and is
multiplied and distributed over large
areas. The life of the higher animals is
1 Darwin’s Movements of Plants, p. 572.
�PRESENT LIFE-FORMS
indivisible and, as compared with the
plant, brief, while cuttings or tubers
from a single plant are taken without
detriment to the vigour and duration of
the parent life.
Of course the difficulty of classifying
vanishes in the higher forms ; the lowest
plants are allied to the lowest animals,
but the higher the plant the more it
diverges from the animal, which is evi
dence that in the succession of life the
highest plants do not pass into the
lower animals. Descent is not lineal,
but lateral; the relations between the
two kingdoms are represented by two
lines starting from a common point and
spreading in different directions (see
diagram, fig. 62). Even “lower” and
‘ ‘ higher ” are relative terms; the organi
sation of the amoeba is as complete for
its purpose as is that of man for his pur
pose, the modification in the complex
forms being due to the division of
functions which are performed in every
part by the simple forms. The like does
everything; the unlike does some
things.
Although the foregoing and number
less other facts, together with the evi
dence from continuity, alike forbid the
drawing of any hard and fast lines, and
involve the conclusion, to borrow Pro
fessor Huxley’s words, “ that the problem
whether in a given case an organism is
an animal or a plant may be essentially
insoluble,” there exists, as noted already,
a broad distinction in the mode of
nutrition.
The plant possesses the mysterious
power of weaving the visible out of the
invisible, of converting the lifeless into
the living. This it does by virtue of the
green colouring matter called chlorophyll,
which is found united with definite
portions of the protoplasm mass, of
which it is a modification, the exact
nature being unknown. The water sup
plied by the root and the carbonic acid
which the plant absorbs through the
numberless stomata or mouth-pores in
its leaves or integuments are, when the
sunlight falls upon them, broken up by
47
the chlorophyll,1 which sets free the
oxygen, and locks together the hydrogen
and carbon, converting this hydrocarbon
into the simple and complex cells and
tissues of the plant, with their store of
energy for service to itself and to other
organisms. Animals cannot do this;
they are powerless to convert water, salts,
gases, or any other inorganic substances
into organic: they are able only to
assimilate the matter thus supplied by
the plant, nourishing themselves there
with, either directly, by eating the plant;
or indirectly, by eating some plant
feeding animal.
In other words, the
plant manufactures protein from the
mineral world, and the animal obtains
the protein ready made ; the plant con
verts the simple into the complex, and this
the animal, by combining it with oxygen,
consumes, using up the energy which it
thereby obtains in doing work. So the
plant is the origin of all the energy
possessed by living things; but how it
can convert the stable inorganic into the
unstable organic, while the animal can
not, we do not know.
Structurally, the lowest animal is below
the lowest plant, since it is a speck of
relatively formless, colourless protoplasm,
whereas the protoplasm of the lowest
plant is visibly organised to the extent
that it has formed for itself an outer
layer or membranous coat called the cell
wall. Broadly speaking, the vegetable
character of yeast granules is deter
mined by the protoplasm being en
closed within a cellulose coat; and
the animal character of the amoeba
is determined by the absence of
any such covering. A few years ago
it was held that the plant-cells
were so encased within the cellu
lose wall as to be cut-off from each
other, but recent discoveries prove that
the protoplasm of the plant is con
tinuous by means of threads or canals,
1 The formation of chlorophyll in complete
darkness, but under sufficiently high tempera
ture, has been observed in a few instances, as in
the seed-leaf of some conifers and in the leaves
of ferns.
�48
PRESENT LIFE-FORMS
thus breaking down the barrier which
assumed a fundamental distinction
between plants and animals.
But
while the animal, with a few exceptions,
remained free to wander, and developed
organs of digestion and motion, the
plant, where fixed, perforce struck its
structure of living things; “it marks
only where the vital tides have been,
and how they have acted.” 1 The lowest
organisms consist of one cell only, and
the higher consist of many cells, which,
increasing in complexity or diversity of
form adapted to their different functions
at later stages, are modified into the
special tissues, with resulting unlikeness
in parts or organs, of which all higher
plants and animals are composed.
Every variation in structure is therefore
due to cellular changes, and every living
thing is propagated in one way or
another by cells : by their self-division or
fission; or by gemmation, i.e. throwing
off buds; or by the union of like cells;
Fig. 27.—Diagram of a Cell.
or in more complex mode, by the
/, protoplasm ; n, nucleus ; n’, nucleolus.
spontaneous or aided union of unlike
cells, as the sperm-cell of the male with
tentacles into the soil for foothold, and the germ-cell of the female, giving rise
developed a large surface of green leaf to a seed or egg from which grows off
to take in the food which the wind and spring more or less like its parents.
the water brought it. In changing the
In both plant and animal the cell
substance of its cell-wall into woody contents, although here again excep
tissue it prevented the evaporation of the tions occur in some of the lowest
food-carrying fluids, and gained that organisms, exhibit a rounded body called
solidity and form of which man has the nucleus,2 which itself often encloses
another body called
the nucleolus, but the
functions performed
by both in cell de
velopment are ob
scure.
That even
this much is known
of cell structure may
awaken wonder when
it is remembered that
A
B
C
we are dealing with
Fig. 28.—-Structure of Cells and Nuclei.
bodies for the most
part beyond
the
A, cell from the marrow : /, protoplasm ; n, irregular nucleus. B, gland-cell :
m, cell membrane ; /, protoplasm ; n, nucleus with convoluted filament. C,
range of our unaid
part of the filament greatly magnified.
ed vision.
Bacon
availed himself in the use of timber truly says that “ the complexity of nature
for the needs and arts of life.
exceeds the subtilty of man ”; the
Organ and function are developed infinite divisibility of matter is apparent
together, and where function is not in the organic as in the inorganic. And
localised there is no variation of parts ;
1 Huxley, in Brit, and For. Medico- Chirurgical
life probably began in combinations
xii.
having no visible distinction of parts. Rev., 1853, the p. 14. are very large or long,
2 When
cells
And as the cell is the first step in visible nuclei are present in large numbers. (Sachs, p.
organisation, it is the fundamental | 86.)
�PRESENT LIFE-FORMS
size counts for little : the oak and pine,
the acacia and the rose, are lower in the
scale of life than the thistle and the
daisy;1 the elephant is one hundred
and fifty thousand times heavier than
the mouse, but the egg of the one is
nearly as large as that of the other; and
it has been calculated that if one
molecule in the nucleus of the ovum of
a mammal were to be lost in every
second of time, the whole would not be
exhausted in seventeen years.
These molecules are the sufficing
material media of transmission of re-
Fig. 29.—Semi-Diagram of Ovum of Mammal.
zp, membrane ; -vi, protoplasm filled with fatty granules ;
gv, nucleus or germinal vesicle ; gs, nucleolus or
germinal spot.
semblances, both striking and subtile,
between parent and offspring, and of
the vast sum-total of inherited tendencies,
good or bad, which are the product of
no one generation, but which reach us
charged with the gathered force of
countless ancestral experiences.
Born into life, man grows
Forth from his parents’ stem,
And blends their bloods, as those
Of theirs are blent in them ;
So each new man strikes root into a far fore
time.2
A. Plants.
Plants are divided into two main
groups or sub-kingdoms : I. Cryptogams
1 See Grant Alien’s [Flowers and Their
Pedigrees, p. 42.
2 Matthew Arnold, Empedocles on Etna.
49
(Gr. kruptos, hidden ; gamos, marriage),
or flowerless. II. Phanerogams (Gr.
phaneros, open; gamos, marriage), or
flowering.
I. The Cryptogams are subdivided
into —
1. Thallophytes (Gr. thallos, a shoot;
phyton, a plant), comprising algae, fungi,
and lichens. These have no leaves,
stems, or roots ; many of them are onecelled.
2. Bryophytes (Gr. bryon, moss),
comprising mosses and liverworts. These
have leaves and stems, but no true
roots.
3. Pteridophytes (Gr. ptens, a fern),
comprising ferns, horsetails, and club
mosses. These have stems, leaves, and
roots.
The feature common to the crypto
gams is the absence of any conspicuous
organs, i.e., true flowers, with stamens
and pistils for the production of seeds
or fruits. The simplest or single-celled
plants increase by subdivision, each cell
carrying on an independent life and re
peating the process of division. But
sexuality is manifest in plants very low
down in the scale, the mode of repro
duction varying a good deal in different
species.
In some cryptogams it is
almost as complex as in the flowering
plants ; but notwithstanding the different
kinds of sexual organs, there is this
fundamental resemblance between them,
that the union of the contents of two
cells, a male or sperm cell, and a female
or germ cell, each of which is by itself
incapable of further development, is
essential to the production of the
embryo or seed.
The lowest cryptogams are congrega
tions of simple fibreless cells united in
rows, or gathered round one another,
and spreading on all sides. At the
bottom of the scale are the Alga, com
prising some ten thousand species, from
the microscopic fresh-water desmids,
one-millionth of an inch in length, with
their whip-like cilia the two hundredmillionth of an inch long, to the giant
t sea-weeds or tangles, hundreds of feet
�5°
PRESENT LIFE-FORMS
in length, that cover thousands of square
miles of ocean. The green scum of
stagnant ponds, the waving filaments in
streams, the shell-coated microscopic
diatoms that people the ocean, tinging
its depths with olive-green, and whose
skeletons form deposits hundreds of
miles in length ; the rose and purple
weeds that flourish in shallow seas, and
are cast upon their shores, are all
members of a group which is perhaps
the most venerable of living things. For
although their generally fragile forms
have been fatal to their preservation as
fossils, there is little doubt that the algse
flourished in dense masses in primeval
oceans, and were the chief, if not the
sole, representatives of plant life on the
earth during millions of years. Like the
foraminifera and other low animal organ
isms, they illustrate the persistency of
the earlier forms, in virtue of their
simplicity of structure, despite changing
conditions ; whereas the more complex
structures, by reason of the greater
delicacy of their parts, earn less readily
adapt themselves to altered surroundings,
and therefore have a much narrower
distribution both in time and space.
Next to the algae in ascending order
are those fantastic products of decay, the
quick-growing, short-lived Fungi, animallike in their mode of nutrition, plant-like
in their fixity, and through untold epochs
the agents by which dead plants and
animals are resolved into the inorganic,
and made available to enter into new
combinations. Next in order are the
Lichens, which, it is now generally agreed,
are composite plants, being a special
kind of parasitic fungi growing on algae.
These are widely spread, living, after the
adaptive manner of simple forms, where
nothing else can live; unwithered by
the heat, unsmitten by the frost; re
deeming the earth’s desolate places, from
treeless desert flats far as the lines of
enduring snow, where, like the mosses,
they shine in hues of gold and purple;
spreading their flowerless patches of
richest colours in metallie-like stains over
rock and ruin ; incrusting the trees with
j tint of freshness or touch of age, with
hoary fringe or mock hieroglyph ; and in
their decay yielding rich soil wherein
fern and flowering tree may strike root.
In Mosses, whose glossy, many-coloured
masses weave softest carpet over the
earth, sharing in the service rendered by
the humble lichens, the cells have be
come developed into rudimentary root,
stem, and leaf, manifesting still further
transition toward unlikeness in parts
which is due to division of function.
But the structure is still cellular, i.e.,
there are no tissues and fibres. The
mosses represent the intermediate forms
between the lowest and the highest
cryptogams, between the green algae, out
of which liverworts were probably de
veloped, and ferns, which arose out of
liverworts.
In Ferns, the larger number of cells
have joined together to form fibrous
vessels, lengthening or thickening in
varying shape and texture according to
the functions to be discharged by them,
resulting in the woody tissue which enters
into the structure of all the higher plants.
The cells, thus converted into tissue,
cease to grow; the formative protoplasm
is always becoming the formed; ’tis “ an
infinite dying, and in that dying is
life,” since there is locked up in the
compacted material a store of energy on
which the higher organisms depend.
The ferns and club-mosses and horse
tails of the present day are the puny re
presentatives of the stately and luxuriant,
although sombre, flowerless trees that
composed the dense jungles of green
vegetation in the Devonian and suc
ceeding Primary periods, during which
our fossil fuel was chiefly formed. The
existing palm-like vegetation of the
tropics more nearly approaches its
Devonian prototype, but it falls far
behind it in abundance as well as in
size.
II. The Phanerogams have their
flowers with stamens and pistils con
spicuous, and are divided, according to
the formation of their seeds, into—
i. Gymnosperms, or naked-seeded, the
�PRESENT LIFE-FORMS
ovum not being enclosed within a seed
vessel or ovary, but carried upon a cone,
as in pines and allied species. The
Fig. 30.—Diagram of a Flower.
Ke, calyx ; K, corolla ; f, filament of stamen ; a, anther,
showing pollen sacs open and pollen grains escaping ;
F, ovary; g, style ; n, stigma, on which are pollen
grains, one of which, p, is sending down its spermatozoid, ps, to the micropyle of the ovum, the central
structure in F-, i is the integument of the ovum;
S, the nucleus ; em, the embryo sac ; E, the germinal
vesicle, close to the pollen tube near the micropyle.
gymnosperms are the connecting link
between the flowerless and the flowering
plants.
2. Angiosperms, or cover-seeded, the
ovum being enclosed within an ovary.
This group is subdivided into (tz)
plants having one cotyledon or seed-leaf,
from which they are developed, as palms,
lilies, orchids, and grasses ; and (¿) plants
having two seed-leaves, as oaks, beeches,
and all trees and shrubs not included in
the foregoing.
In naked-seeded plants the pollen or
male element falls on the exposed ova;
in cover-seeded plants it falls on the
stigma, passes down the pistil into the
seed-vessel, and enters the ovum through
an opening in it called the micropyle, or
“ little gate.” It has been ascertained
that malic acid is the agent by which the
spermatozoids are guided to the ovaries.
Whilst the gymnosperms are, on the
one hand, most nearly allied in the
order of descent to ferns, the; sombre
5i
flowers which they bear giving them
only by strict botanical classification a
place among phanerogams, they are, on
the other hand, more complex in struc
ture than the single seed-leaf plants,
because their bark, wood, and pith are
clearly defined, as in the double seed
leaf plants. Their lowest representa
tives comprise the cycads or palm-ferns,
so called from their resemblance to
palms, for which, with their crown of
feathery leaves, they are often mistaken.
Next in order is the much more varied
and -widely distributed conifer family,
notably pines, firs, and larches, and,
lesser in importance, cedars and cy
presses. A still higher class, various in
its modes of growth, marks the transi
tion to angiosperms, the flowers of both
having many features in common.
The single seed-leaf angiosperms have
no visible separation of their woody
stuff into bark, stem, and pith, and have
no rings of growth, the wood exhibiting
Fig 31.—Fertilisation of Ovum.
A, section of ovum after fertilisation ; pl, placenta ; a,
outer, and i, inner, integument; p, spermatozoid
entering micropyle; e, embryo sac. B, apex of
embryo sac, with eb, young embryo of three cells.
C, same further developed.
an even surface, dotted over with small
dark points. Their leaves have parallel
veins or “nerves,” as in the onion and
tulip ; and the blossom-leaves, or petals,
are most usually grouped in threes or
�52
PRESENT LIFE-FORMS
multiples of three. Among their several
representatives we may single out the
lilies for their beauty and fragrance, and
the cereals for their value and import
ance, both classes being in near con
nection, since the grasses from which
man has developed wheat, barley, oats,
rice, and maize are, in a botanical sense,
degenerate descendants of the lily
family.
The double seed-leaf plants include
all the highest and most specialised
varieties. Bark, stem, pith, and con
centric rings of growth, by which the
age of the plants may frequently be
reckoned, are clearly defined ; the leaves
are netted-veined, and the petals are
most usually grouped in fours or fives
Fig. 32.—Cycad (Australia).
or multiples of those numbers. The
lowest class, represented by the.catkin
bearers, as the birch and alder, the pop
lar and the oak, and by plants allied to
the nettle and to the laurel, are nearly
related to the highest gymnosperms.
Next in order are the crown bearers,
or flowers with corollas, as the rose
family, which includes most of our
fruit-yielders, from strawberries to apples j
while the highest and most perfect of
all are plants in which the petals are
united together in bell shape or funnel
fashion. Such are the convolvulus and
honeysuckle, the olive and ash, and, at
the top of the plant-scale, the family of
which the daisy is the most familiar re
presentative. Its position among plants
corresponds to man’s position among
animals. As he, in virtue of being the
most complex and highly specialised, is
at their head, albeit many exceed him
in bulk and strength, so is the daisy
with its allies, for like reasons, above
the giants of the forest.
The primary function for which the
organs of plants known as flowers exist
is not that which man has long assumed.
He once thought that the earth was the
centre of the universe, until astronomy
dispelled the illusion; and there yet
lingers in him an old Adam of conceit
that everything on the earth has for its
sole end and aim his advantage and
service.
Evolution will dispel that
illusion. But our delight in the
colours and perfumes of flowers will not
be lessened, while wonder will have
larger field for play, in learning that the
coloured leaves known as flowers, to
gether with their scent and honey, have
been developed in furtherance of nature’s
supreme aim—the perpetuation of the
species. For that alone the flowers
blossom and the fruits ripen. And truly
the contrivances to secure this which are
manifest in plant-life are astounding,
even to those who perceive most clearly
the unity of function which connects
the highest and lowest life-forms together.
It is difficult to deny the existence of a
rudimentary consciousness in the efforts
of certain plants to secure fertilisation.
For example, in a well-known aquatic
plant, Vallisneria spiralis, the male
flower with its matured pollen is detached
from the stem and rises to the surface,
where, as it floats, it comes into contact
with and fertilises the ovary of the
female flower, whose stalks then contract
and carry the ovary to the bottom,
where the seeds can ripen in safety.
Most flowers are hermaphrodite, i.e.,
have their male and female organs
within the same petals, and in some
cases fertilise themselves by scattering
the pollen from the bursting stamens on
the stigma or head of the pistil. But
nature is opposed to this; “ tells us in
the most emphatic manner that she
�PRESENT LIFE-FORMS
abhors perpetual self-fertilisation,”1 with
its resultant puny and feeble offspring;
and we find a number of contrivances
to prevent this, and to secure fertilisation
•by the pollen of another plant, to the
abiding gain all round of the plant,
whose blood, as we may say, is thus
mixed with that of a stranger. Con
sequently, the most effective mode of
reproduction is that in which two
individuals are concerned. All organisms
in which the sexes are separate have
descended through many gradations
from hermaphrodite ancestors, and it is
to this division of function between male
and female that not only a more I
53
naked-seeded groups whose sombre
flowers are borne on dull brown cones ;
and, among cover-seeded groups, grasses
and rushes with their feathery flowers,
and willows and birches with their long
waving clusters of catkins. All of these
provide against the fitfulness of the wind,
which is as likely to blow pollen one
way as another, by producing it in large
quantities, so that it sometimes falls in
thick showers, covering wide areas.
Plants which are insect-fertilised
attract their visitors by secreting honey
and developing coloured floral organs.
The way in which this came about is
probably as follows.
Fig. 33.—Fertilisation of Flower (Meadow Sage) by Insect.
a, calyx ; b, curved upper lip ; c, under lip, on which the bee stands while sucking the honey ; d, pistil ;
d’pistil at a later stage ; e, stamen ; Z, stamen shedding the pollen from its anther qn the back of
the bee; f bee’s proboscis wherewith it reaches the honey.
The common idea about flowers is
vigorous offspring, but also progress
among the higher animals, is, in the first that they are made up of petals and
instance, due. Were there no sex there sepals, whereas the essential parts are the
would be no social instincts, no love, no stamens and pistils, i.e. the male or
dependence, no unity. This, however, pollen-producing organs, and the female
or seed-containing organs. The earliest
by the way.
Two agencies are unwittingly con flowers consisted of these alone, having
cerned in the fertilisation of plants— no coloured whorl of petals within
insects, and the wind “ that kisses all it another coloured whorl of sepals, and
meets ” ; while in the dispersion of the were only scantily protected by leaves, as
matured seed, birds and other animals, are many extant species. These the
and again the wind, play an important food-seeking insects then, as now, visited
for the sake of the pollen, to the detri
part.
Plants which are wind-fertilised have ment of the plant, which lost the fertil
no gaily coloured petals or sepals, and ising stuff and gained nothing in return.
do not secrete nectar. Such are the Besides the pollen, most plants
secreted the sweet juice called honey,
especially when in the act of flowering,
1 Darwin’s Fertilisation of Orchids, p. 359.
�54
PRESENT LIFE-FORMS
for the nourishment of the blossom.
This juice was often stored in nectaries
near the seed-vessels, where the insects
could not get at it without covering their
bodies with some of the pollen, which
they unknowingly rubbed on the pistils
of the plant next visited, and thus fer
tilised the ovum, provided that the plants
were nearly related.
Honey being
sweeter to the taste than pollen, the
plants that produced most honey stood
the better chance of repeated visits from
insects, and therefore of fertilisation, to
the manifest advantage of their species
over others. Thus, as first shown by
Conrad Sprengel in 1794, there were
developed in the course of long ages
intimate relations between the two, and
also .marvellous contrivances to secure
the visits of welcome insects of a certain
form and size, and to prevent the intru
sion of unwelcome insects, as well as to
arrest the washing out of pollen by rain
or dew. For as plants are rooted to one
spot, they cannot act on the aggressive.
They have to develop defensive structures
to resist attacks of devouring enemies:
hence their thorns, prickles, spikes, hairs,
nauseous taste, and the like. Some
plants have an eel-trap sort of arrange
ment of the hairs at the base of their
petals to retain the desired honey-seeker
till the pollen is rubbed on it, when the
hairs relax and release it. Others have
become specially adapted to certain in
sects by secreting the honey at the bot
tom of a tube (nearly afoot long in some
rare orchids), and the insect has developed
a correspondingly long proboscis to reach
it. The one aim of all these modifications
of structure is to economise the pollen
and ensure its use for fertilisation, to the
advantage of the plant in the struggle for
life.
Still more were those plants favoured
on which spots or patches of colour
appeared, attracting the eye of the
insect, and developing through its
agency into tinted petals and sepals,
which have changed the earth’s once
flowerless meadows into fields of cloth of
gold. Both petals and sepals are modified I
or transformed stamens, which have ex
changed their function ofpollen-producers
for that of insect-allurers ; and as both
stamens and pistils are leaves aborted or
modified for the special function of repro
duction, Wolff’s generalisation that the
leaf is the type or fundamental organ of
the plant has a large measure of truth in it.
But before speaking further about colour
development in plants it may be useful
to say a little about colour itself.
Since everything is black in the dark,
and moreover has no colour in itself, it
follows that colour is in some way a
property of light. Now light, which is
itself invisible, is due to vibrations or
minute waves set up in all directions by
Fig. 34.—Transition from Stamen to Petal in
White Lily.
any luminous body—whether the sun or
a rushlight—in the ethereal medium
which pervades all space, and is com
posed of rays of different refrangibility,
i.e., change of direction in passing from
one medium into another, say from the
ethereal medium to the denser atmo
sphere. White light is due to the com
bination of all these rays, w’hich range
through innumerable gradations of
colour from red to violet, and it is to
the absence of one or more of them
that the infinite variety of colours is
due. If a body is quite opaque, or
otherwise so constituted as to absorb
none of the rays, it appears white; if it
absorbs them all, it appears black; if it
absorbs green, blue, and violet, and not
red, it appears red; if it absorbs red,
orange, and violet, and returns or reflects
green, it appears green. The colours
�PRESENT LIFE-FORMS
which bodies reflect are therefore regu
lated by their structure; the way in
which their molecules are arranged de
termines the number and character . of
the light vibrations or ether waves which
are returned to the eye, and which rule
the colour we see. For example, char
coal and the diamond are both pure
carbon; the dull opacity of the one
and the trembling splendour of the other
are solely due to the arrangement of the
several molecules of each.
It is thus obvious that any change in
the nature or structure of a thing is
accompanied by change in its colour,
and to this cause the various pigments
in plants are to be referred.
All growth involves expenditure of
the energy which the plant has stored
within itself, and which becomes active
when the hydrocarbons combine with
oxygen, resulting in cellular change, and
appearance of other colours than the
green of the chlorophyll. Thus may be
explained the colour of sprouting buds
and young shoots, the more or less in
tensified colours of leaves and flowers,
and the lovely tints of autumn ; one and
all being due to oxidation, the minutest
changes inducing subtile variations in
colour. As the stamens of most flowers are
yellow, the earliest flowers, being derived
from stamens, were probably yellow
also; and all subsequent changes in
colour take place in a regular order, yellow
passing into white or pink, and then
through red and purple into blue, but
never in a reverse direction nor in any
other order.1
Whichever plants made most show of
colour would the sooner catch the eye
of insects, however dim their perception
of the difference in colours might be,
and would thus get fertilised before
plants which made less display. Thus
have insects been the main cause in the
propagation of flowering plants, the
plants in return developing the colour
sense in insects. The flower nourishes
55
the insect; the insect propagates the
flower. Other contrivances to meet the
need for fertilisation might be cited,. as
the markings upon the petals to guide
the insect to the nectary; the exhalation
of scent by inconspicuous flowers, as
mignonette, or by such as would attract
visitors at night, as the night-smelling
stock ; but enough has been adduced to
show that the chief, if not the sole,
function of flowers is to attract insects,
and thus secure cross-fertilisation. Nor
does the provision stop here. The
fertilised seed is not left to chance, but,
like the fertilising pollen, is entrusted to
secondary agents, to the care of the birds
and the breezes.
Where not scattered
by the bursting of the ovary it is winged
with gossamer shafts, as in the thistle
and the dandelion, and floated on
gentlest zephyr or rushing storm to a
genial soil. Such wind-wafted seeds,
like wind-fertilised flowers, are rarely
coloured; neither are the seeds of the
larger trees, since their abundance
ensures notice by food-seeking animals ;
nor are the nuts which are protected by
shelly coats. But other seeds enwrap
themselves in sweet pulpy masses, called
fruits, whose skins brighten as they
ripen and attract the eye of fruit-loving
birds and beasts.1 The seeds pass
through their stomachs undigested, and
are scattered by them in their flight over
wide areas. As with the brightest hued
and sweetest scented flowers, so it is
with the brightest and juiciest fruits;
they sooner attract the visitors whose
services they need, and thus gain
advantage over less favoured members
of their species, developing by the
selective action of their devourers into
the finest and pulpiest kinds. And, as
Grant Allen shows in his delightful and
exhaustive book on the colour. sense,
the origin and development of this sense
in the sub-kingdom which includes man
1 “ Birds are much influenced in their choice
of food by colour, for, though white currants are
much sweeter fruit than red, yet they seldom
touch the former till they have devoured every
1 Colour of Flowers as illustrated by the
bunch of the latter.”—White's SelborHe, “ ObBritish Flora, pp. 17-60, by Grant Allen.
J servations on Birds. ”
(Macmillan.)
�PRESENT LIFE-FORMS
56
is due to the same cause, man being
descended from a fruit-eating animal
“who shared the common vertebrate
faculty of colour perception and the
common frugivorous taste for bright
hues.”1 The subject is of course closely
connected with the evolution of the
sense of beauty, which, at first evoked
by things connected with physical needs,
was developed by leisurely contemplation
of natural forms, colours, and groupings.
B. Animals.
All animals fall into two main groups :
the structureless, or one-celled, called
Protozoa ; and the many-celled, called
Metazoa.
The several types upon which they
are constructed are usually classed
under the following primary divisions,
called gub-kingdoms :—
' Protozoa (Gr.
firotos,
first ;
zoon, animal)
Ex. Moneron,
amoeba
Coelenterata (Gr. Hollow-bodied
koilos, hollow ;
entcron, bowel)
<D
>
fl
Simplest forms
Ex. Sponge,
polyp, ane
mone, coral builder
Echinodermata
(Gr. cchinos, a
hedgehog ;
derma., skin)
Ex. Sea-urchin,
star-fish
body-cavity; the Coelenterata, which
have a body-cavity ; and the Coelomata,
including all animals, from echinoderms
to man, which have a digestive cavity
separate from the body-cavity. Any
consecutive arrangement can only
broadly indicate the relative order of the
several life-forms, because development
has not proceeded in direct line—eg.,
the ant, which belongs to the Arthropoda, is the highest of all invertebrates ;
but it is not therefore most nearly
allied to the lowest vertebrate. As will
be shown later on, the connecting link
between invertebrates and vertebrates is
to be found in such animals as the remark
able worm-like Balanoglossus ; the bottle
shaped sea-squirt or Ascidian (Gr.
Spiny-bodied
Annelida (Lat. Joint-bodied
annulus& ring),
and Arthropoda
(jointed-footed)
Ex. Worm, crab,
spider, ant
Mollusca (Lat.
mollis, soft)
Soft-bodied
Ex. Sea-squirt,
(but usually pro oyster, snail,
tected by a shell)
cuttle-fish
Vertebrata (Lat.
vertebra, joint)
Back-boned
Ex. Fish, and
all other
higher life
forms to man
Tabular forms are convenient for
clear presentment, but their hard and
fast divisions are apt to be mistaken for
real lines of separation, whereas the
several sub-kingdoms merge one into
the other, like the colours of the rainbow.
As further reducing the number of types,
animals may be divided into three
grades : the Protozoa, which have no
1 The Colour Sense (Triibner & Co.), p. 221.
B
Img. 35-'—Monera, without nucleus. A, show
ing pseudopod. B, process of fission.
asktdion, a leathern bottle); and the head
less lancelet. If we go back far enough, we
find the common starting-point of all,
whence they travelled for a while along
the same road, and then diverged wider
and wider apart, until it now seems diffi
cult to believe that the lowest and highest,
both of plant and animal, are one in
community of origin.
1. Protozoa.
The lowest member of this group—in
other words, the lowest known animal,
if we except certain parasites—is the
moneron (Gr. monos, single). Like the
lowestplants, it lives in water, the element
in which life had beginning. It is an
extremely minute, shapeless, colourless,
slimy mass, alike all over, and therefore
without any organs. When we say that
it is alike all over, we mean that our
range of vision does not enable us to
�PRESENT LIFE-FORMS
report otherwise, for doubtless the
simplest and smallest living thing is
very complex in structure. And we
mean, further, that there is no differen
tiation, as it is called, z.<?., no formation
of specific organs for the performance of
specific functions. The functions of living
things are threefold—nutrition, reproduc
tion, and relation; in other words, to
feed, to multiply, to respond to the
outer world ; and all these the organless
moneron discharges. Every part of it
does everything ; it takes in food and
oxygen anywhere, and digests and
breathes all over its body. Like the
happy peptician of whom Carlyle tells, it
“ has no system.” It literally “ gets out
side” its food, having the power of
throwing out blunt finger-like prolonga
tions, called pseudopods or false feet,
with which it propels itself and spreads
over its prey, sucking the soft body even
from shelly creatures, and casting away
the refuse. So far as the function of
nutrition, which includes digestion,
circulation, and rejection of waste, and
the function of reproduction, are con
cerned, the moneron performs these as
completely as the highest animals. For
these, with their complex sets of organs
—lungs, heart, stomach, &c.—cannot
do more than nourish themselves and
keep the body in health ; very often
they cannot, through folly or misfortune,
do that. And in reproduction, which
the moneron effects by dividing itself
into two (as do the lowest plants,
wherein, as in it, there is neither male
nor female), it accomplishes in simple
fashion what the higher life-forms can
do only in a more complex way. So
that the difference—and this only in
degree, not in kind—between a slime
speck of protoplasm and the higher
organisms is in the discharge of the
function of relation.
Reference has been made to the
response to stimulus from external things
manifested by the lowest life-forms, al
though there is no trace of a nervous
system in them ; and now that we are
treating of a living mass that not only
57
feeds and digests and breathes all over,
but likewise feels all over, a few remarks
upon the function and origin of nerves
may supersede the need for any detailed
account of the several nervous systems
in the representative animal types.
The function of the nerves is to bring
the organism into relation with its sur
roundings ; they are the special media of
communication between the body and
the external world, and between the
brain and every movement of the parts
of the body. Starting in the higher
animals from the encased brain and
ensheathed spinal cord, and diffused in
the lower animals in less complex ar
rangement, they report from without to
within. The vibrations of the ethereal
medium that affect us as light enter the
eye and pass along the optic nerve,
which conveys the impulse to the brain,
and it is the brain, not the eye, that sees.
So with the air-vibrations that travel
along the aural nerves, the sensation of
sound resides in the brain, not in the
ear ; so with all the manifold sensations
that we feel. The unity of the sensations
is fundamental; the differences lie in
the vibrations. The correlation of the
senses, as we may term it, is shown in
the familiar trick of getting a blindfolded
person to tell whether he is drinking port
or sherryj or whether the pipe he is
smoking is alight or not.
Wherever there is sensitiveness to im
pressions, however dim and feeble this
may be, there the function of relation is
being exercised. This sensitiveness is
exhibited by the moneron in its shrinking
when touched, and in its grip of food;
but the sensitiveness is diffused, and not
located in any organs. In members of
the same sub-kingdom there are faint
traces of approach to nerve-structure,
and the development of this is manifest
in ascending scale, till in the highest
life-forms among certain invertebrates, as
ants, and vertebrates, as man, it reaches
subtlest complexity.
Now, as every part of an organism is
made up of cells, and as the functions
govern the form of the cells, the origin
�58
PRESENT LIFE-FORMS
of nerves must be due to a modification
in cell shape and arrangement, whereby
certain tracts or fibres of communication
between the body and its surroundings
are originated.
But what excited this modification?
The all-surrounding medium, without
which no life had been, which determined
its forms and limits, and touches it at
every point with its throbs and vibrations.
In the beginnings of a primitive layer or
skin exhibited by creatures a stage above
the moneron, unlikenesses would arise,
and certain parts would by reason of
their finer structure be the more readily
stimulated by, and the more quickly
responsive to, the ceaseless action of the
surroundings, the result being that an
extra sensitiveness along the lines of
least resistance would be set up in those
more delicate parts. These, developing
like all things else, by use, would become
more and more the selected paths of the
impulses, leading, as the molecular waves
thrilled them, to structural changes or
modification into nerve-cells and nerve
fibres of ever-increasing complexity as
we ascend the scale of life. The entire
nervous system with its connections; the
brain and all the subtile mechanism with
which it controls the body; the organs
of sense, with their mysterious selective
power—the olfactory organs, probably
the earliest developed, so acute in man
as to detect the presence of the onethree-billionth of a grain of mercaptan
(sulphuretted alcohol), and yet coarse by
comparison with the antennae of insects;
the eye, to receive and sift vibrations
travelling twelve million miles in a
minute; the ear, with its three thousand
strings of Corti, each vibrating in
response to a particular sound-wave; the
organs of taste, guarding the entrance to
the digestive canal and refusing ad
mittance to contraband food—alike begin
as sacs formed by infoldings of the
primitive outer skin. In contrast to the
eyes of the invertebrates, the sensitive
elements of the eyes of vertebrates are
formed from a paired outgrowth of the
fore brain. The brain, trillion-celled seat
of sensation, arose from the infoldings
sinking down beneath the surface and
finally becoming embedded in other
tissues; the eye and the ear, as their
parts developed, were joined from within
by outgrowths from the brain. Such, in
fewest words, is that theory of the origin
of nerves which, formulated by Herbert
Spencer, has been confirmed by all recent
biological research.1
Development by cell-modification ap
plies to the body throughout—to bone,
to cartilage, and sinew, as well as to the
myriads of nerve-tissues, varying between
the fifteen-hundredth and the twelve
thousandth of an inch in breadth, that
keep us in touch with the universe.
But, easy as it is to dissect and describe
the nervous mechanism, the nature of
the connection alike between nervous
impulse and consciousness in a man, and
between sensation and contractile action
in a moneron, remains an insoluble
mystery.
What has been said concerning the
diffused sensitiveness of the lower animals
adds force and suggestiveness to the fact
that the plant limited the action of the
outer world upon it when the protoplasm
enclosed itself within a wall of cellulose.
This isolation, or lessened susceptibility
to the vibrations of air and ether, to
changes of temperature, and a thousand
fold subtile influences, the animal escaped
by remaining mobile, and setting up no
barriers between itself and its environ
ment.
A short step upward from the moneron
brings us to the Amoeba, so called from
its constant change of shape as it pro
trudes and withdraws the pseudopods.
It shows approach towards unlikeness in
parts in the modification of the proto
plasm into a membranous skin at the
surface, and in a nucleus near the centre,
with an expanding and contracting cavity.
for distributing food and oxygen in the
body—a primitive apparatus for digestion
and circulation. Therein the beginning
of a distribution of labour, leading to
1 Cf.
400-4.
Balfour’s Comp. Embryology, ii. pp.
�PRESENT LIFE-FORMS
cell-modification into organs, is illus
trated. The white corpuscles in the red
blood of man and other animals are
called “ amceboids ” because they are
like the amoeba in structure, size, and
movements, changing their shape, living
Fig. 36.—Amoebae (highly magnified),
an independent life, and even taking in
food.
Some of the lowest amoebae secrete,
like the diatoms among plants, solid
matter from the sea, building for them
selves primitive organs of shelter and
defence in the shape of exquisitely
formed chambered shells pierced with
holes, through which the soft body flows
and the pseudopods are pushed for
capture of food.
Some form their
skeletons of lime, others of flint, pos
sibly evidencing to the possession of a
selective power or dim sentience by even
the minutest creatures; and, as shown
already, it is of these skeletons that vast
deposits are composed.
Still more marked advance towards
unlikeness in parts is manifest in the
Infusoria., so called because readily
59
developed in infusions of exposed vege
table matter, where they crowd by myriads
in the space of a water-drop. Instead of
the pseudopods of the moneron and
the amoeba, we find vibrating filaments
or cilia, by which supplies are swept
into the body, which is furnished
with a rudimentary mouth and short
gullet, through which the food and
oxygen pass to the body-cavity.
2. Coelenterata.
The “ hollow-bodied ” animals are
made up of two layers of cells more
or less modified. But they are still
of low organisation, one evidence of
which is that, like the Protozoa, they
have no vital parts, and that there
is no separate canal for absorbing
food and carrying away refuse, the mouth
still opening direct into the body-cavity.
The lowest members of this sub-king
dom are the Sponges, They were long
regarded as colonies of amoebae, and
therefore classed among Protozoa, but
fuller knowledge of their structure as
many-celled organisms, some of the
highest among which show slight traces
of nerves and sense-organs, has caused
them to be ranked in a division called
Porifera (Lat. porus, a pore ; and fero to
bear). Very lovely are the skeletons
which some of them secrete, such as
Venus’s flower-basket, with its graceful
fretted spirals ; but more familiar to us are
the useful fibrous and porous domestic
sponges, woven of material said to be
chemically allied to that spun by silk
worms. Being rooted to one spot, the
sponge-cells have become specially
modified for ingathering food and oxygen.
Only the cells on the outside of the
horny or flinty skeleton can procure
food and oxygen easily; those living
in the inside effect this by means of
cilia, the whip-like action of which
drives the water, charged with food and
oxygen, through the innumerable canals,
whence, having served its purpose, it is
driven out through other canals, carry
ing the refuse of the colony with it.
The whole sponge represents, as has been
�6o
PRESENT LIFE-FORMS
aptly said, a kind of submarine Venice,
“ where the people are ranged about the
streets and roads in such a manner that
each can easily appropriate his food from
the water as it passes along.”
Cilia also cover extensive surfaces of
the higher animals. They abound about
the eyes, the ears, the windpipe, and the
brain of man ; mysteriously moving
own account—are found clinging mouth
downwards to weeds and rubbish in
fresh water. From the mouth hang a
number of tentacles containing cells, in
which lie barbed threads coiled up in a
poison-fluid.
When anything touches
these tentacles they contract, the cells
burst and fling the thread, lasso-like,
around the prey, poisoning it with the
fluid.
From
some of the mar
ine species which
secrete tubes of
flint, and project
themselvestherefrom like flowers,
so that the sea
depths are cov
ered with their
waving,
plant
like forms, the
buds
detach
themselves and
become the
beautifullytinted
Medusae or jelly
fish. These pro
duce eggs which
become rooted
polyps, so that
the offspring
never resembles
its parents, but
always its grand
parents.
All
living matter is
largely made up
Fig. 38.—Structure of Sponge.
of water, the
A. Vertical section of outer layer magnified 75 times. /, pores or openings of
canals for conducting water, which flows to a, sacs ; e, canal for expulsion of
average propor
water ;
early stages of spores.
tion ranging
B. Sac transversely divided (800 diameters), showing sponge-particles with cilia.
C. Sponge-particle highly magnified.
cilium; m, collar; w, nucleus; c, con
from seventy to
tractile vesicle.
ninety per cent.,
independently of any other part, even of but in the jelly-fish it is about four
the nervbus system, but fulfilling much hundred to one. Yet, fragile as is
less important functions than in the the creature, its structure is complex.
bodies of the lower animals.
Canals traverse the swimming-bell, and
Next in rank above the sponges are carry food and oxygen to every part;
the tiny cup or tube-shaped, jelly-like, rudimentary muscles in the shape of
green-hued (because chlorophyll-contain contractile tissues propel the animal
ing) polyps named Hydra, colonies of along in rhythmic grace of motion; a
which, with their bud-like clusters of nervous system runs round the margin
young—soon to start in life on their of the bell; there are rudimentary eyes
�PRESENT LIFE-FORMS
in bead-like pigment-spots, and rudi
mentary ears in small sacs along the
margin ; and the hanging tentacles are
Fig. 39.—Ilydra.
A. Planula or earliest stage of a hydroid on its emission
from the egg. B. Thread-cell undisturbed. C. The
same with the filament protruded.
charged, as in its fresh-water ally, with
deadly fluid.
Lovelier still, and of slightly more
complex structure, are the variously
Fig. 40.—Jelly-fish.
coloured Sea-anemones, with their petal
like tentacles ; while nearly allied to
these are the colonies of Coral-builders,
which, despite the surging wave and
drifting current, raise their tree-like
structures, foundations of solid land on
which the bird builds her nest and man
sets his dwelling.
3. Echinodermata.
This division includes all rayed
animals, the skin being hardened by the
m, mouth ; in', primary cavity; in.', secondary cavity ;
e, ectoderm or outer skin ; e', endoderm or inner
skin ; t, tentacle ;
ovary ; rf, disc of attachment;
j, body-cavity.
secretion of jointed or leathery plates, or
of spines or hedgehog-like prickles. In
some, as the star-fish, the rays
spring from a common centre ;
in others, as the Sea-urchin,
they are coiled to form a
globular body; in the Sea
lilies, which abounded as far
back as Silurian times, but
which are now limited in
range, they spring, flower-like,
from the end of a fixed stalk;
in the slug-like Sea-cucumbers,
which possess the power dys
peptics may envy of throwing
away the inside of the body
and growing it anew, the skin
is tough, the limy matter being
secreted in scattered spicules.
The echinoderms show
marked advance towards un
likeness of parts in having a
digestive canal shut off from
the body-cavity, affording
special provision for nutrition.
This is effected by a number of canals
which communicate with the outside
of the body, and through which the
sea water is driven by cilia, as in the
sponges. The water is also pressed
from the canals into numerous little
�Ô2
PRESENT LIFE-FORMS
suckers, by which the animal crawls
along—nature’s first essay in locomotion
on solid ground. There is a distinct
nervous system, the fibres of which in
the star-fish run along each ray, at the
the digestive canal of the sea-cucumber,
are differences of degree and not of kind.
They are one and all due to cell-modifi
cation arising out of advance from the
like to the unlike, from the simple and
general to the complex and
special, from the organless to the
organised; and any addition to
the bare details given above
would only bring the more pro
minently into relief the fact of an
indissoluble, underlying unity.
4. Annelida and Arthropoda.
The gradations between the
infinite variety of life-forms are
nowhere sharply marked, and
this has led to the grouping of
large numbers under one sub
kingdom, as in the case of the
~
-----
Fig. 42.—Coral.
The left side of the figure shows the coral denuded of soft parts" on the
right the animal matter is shown, while at the upper part several of Very miscellaneous animals lonP"
the polyps are seen projecting.
.
/ - ,
, _ ________
inn lit
A
1
included together as Annulosa
(Lat._ annulus, a ring) because of the
division of the body (which is developed
from three layers of cells) into more or
less well-defined rings or segments. It
is also, like the body of vertebrates,
bilaterally symmetric
al, i.e., double and
correspondent,
so>
that if it were split
lengthways the two'
halves would be seen
to be almost exactly
alike. The nervous
system, which runs
along the belly, con
sists of two fine cords,
knotted at different
points into ganglia or
masses of nerve-cells,
the first pair of gan
glia being above the
gullet, so that the
Fig. 43.—«, Sea-cucumber ; b and c, young stages of the same.
cords which join the
invertebrates. The differences between second pair form a collar round it.
the secretions of limy matter by the The important part which the mouth
amoeba and by the sea-urchin, between plays as the. immediate channel be
the contractile action of the moneron in tween the animal and its surroundings
every part and the localisation of nerve accounts for the development of the
function in the medusa and the star-fish, higher organs of communication near it ;
between the vacuole of the amoeba and the anterior or front segments most
tip of which is an eye having about two
hundred crystal lenses, and a primitive
eyelid in the form of a filmy covering.
Thus far an intimate relation may be
noted between the life-forms of the
�PRESENT LIFE-FORMS
completely undergo concretion, and in
this way the portion that carries the
mouth, the chief nervous centre or
brain, and the sensory organs, as eyes,
ears, antennae, is formed. Hence the
position of the head or skull, as the pro
tecting structure round the more special
ised parts, is ruled by the position of
Fig. 44.—Diagram of Annelid Animal.
A. a, digestive canal; b, heart; c, nervous system.
B. Nervous system enlarged, showing double cord and
ganglia.
the mouth. The heart, which is tube
shaped, lies along the back, and the
digestive canal lies between the heart
and the nervous system. This arrange
ment distinguishes both earth-worms
and wasps, leeches and crabs, centi
pedes and beetles, lobsters and ants—
in fine, all but the very lowest classes.
But the advance in complexity of
structure—in other words, in division
of labour—is especially shown in the
more elaborate arrangements for the
conveyance of nutrition throughout the
body as compared with that exhibited
in the lower sub-kingdoms : eg., in the
moneron food and oxygen enter at any
and every part • in the amoeba they
are driven throughout the body by
means of a pulsating vacuole; in the
polyp they are brought by the water
which flushes it within and bathes it
without; in the sea-urchin and the
star-fish the nutriment is carried by
canals in their bodies which com
municate direct with the water. In
the higher organisms the oxygen and
food are circulated by a more highly
organised fluid called blood, which
carries them to every part, and like
wise removes the waste and effete
63
matter, the immediate motor power by
which the blood is driven through the
body being the heart. The aeration
of the blood—in other words, the supply
of oxygen and the removal of carbonic
acid—is effected by its passage through
the respiratory organs. Only the back
boned animals breathe through the nostrils,
the lower animals breathing through
pores or sacs in their sides, which
subdivide into, countless tubes.
But this grouping of animals so
variously modified in structure, however
fundamentally related in type, in the sub
kingdom Annulosa, has been abandoned,
especially as it included a number of
primitive unsegmented forms. In fact,
the term itself is given up by the best
authorities, who are, however, by no
means agreed as to the mode of
classification to be substituted.
For the purposes of this section, the
life-forms ranging from worms to insects
may be divided into the Annelida or
footless, comprising worms and leeches ;
and the Arthropoda or footed, compris
ing crabs and other Crustacea, spiders,
scorpions, centipedes, and all insects.
The jointed organs of locomotion known
as limbs, and which have been developed
Fig. 45.—Section of Second Segment of Worm.
a, outer or skin layer; b, dermal connective layer ;_c,
muscle plates ; d. segmental organ ; 7z, arterial
blood ; z, venous blood;
intestine ; n, ovary.
from muscle fibres, are arranged in
pairs.
The Vermes, or worms, are very
heterogeneous, and a distinction has to
be made between the unsegmented and
segmented (see Table, p. 44). The
former include the flat or ribbon-like,
and thread-like forms, of which a vast
number live as parasites outside or
inside the bodies of nearly all animals,
passing, in some cases, from one animal
�64
PRESENT LIFE-FORMS
to another, in curious changes, man breathing Arthropoda, i.e. of all insects,
having his full share of them, while spiders, and myriopods.” It has the
earth-worms, marine worms, and leeches appearance of a black caterpillar, and
are the leading representatives of the sometimes is more than three inches in
segmented. The interest in the struc length. It is provided with a single
ture of the JNemertines, or ribbon pair of small, simple eyes, with horn-like
worms, has greatly increased of late, antennas, and with a double pair of horny
because “ certain points in their jaws. It has seventeen pairs of short,
organisation appear to indicate a re hook-clawed feet, and it breathes air by
mote degree of relationship to the means of tracheal (or wind-pipe like)
ancestral forms which must have tubes similar to those of insects. “ It
preceded the Chordata, appears probable that we have existing
to which the vertebrate in Peripatus almost the earliest stage in
the evolution of tracheae, and that these
animals also belong.” 1
This is perhaps the air-tubes were developed in the first
most convenient place tracheate animal out of skin glands scat
to make reference to tered all over the body. In higher
the isolated Rotifers, so- tracheate animals the tracheal ooenings
called because of the
ceaseless wheel-like
movements of the cilia
round the mouth. These
degenerate specks, many
Fig. 47.—Peripatus.
of which are visible to
the naked eye, are high have become restricted to certain definite
ly organised. They have positions by the action of natural selec
a nerve ganglion which tion.” The sexes are distinct in Peri
sends out threads to the patus. Its antiquity “is proved by its
ruby eye or eyes and wide and peculiar distribution. It js
antennae; they have jaws found at the Cape of Good Hope, in
and teeth, often a hard Australia, New Zealand, Chili, the
skeleton; the females Isthmus of Panama, and the West
have one and sometimes Indies. If its horny jaws were only
two stomachs, but the larger they would no doubt be found
Fig. 46.—
poor male has none. fossil in strata as old as the Old Red
Common Rotifer.
They can remain for Sandstone at least.” 1
a, mouth ; b, eye
The typical form—head, thorax or
spots ; d, chewing or years in a state of sus
chest, and abdomen or belly—of the
gan ;
alimentary pended animation.2
canal ; b, developing
The Arthropoda in numerous varieties of the widely diffused
embryos ; t, anus.
clude the remarkable Crustacea, or hard-shelled class, whose
worm-like Peripatus ; the Crustacea three-lobed ancestors, the trilobites,
(lobsters, crabs, shrimps,&c.); Mynopoda flourished in the seas of the Cambrian
(centipedes, millepedes); Insecta ; Arach- and later periods, is the same, with
infinite modifications in detail, as that of
nida (spiders, scorpions, mites, &c.).
Peripatus is “ regarded as an animal of the Insecta and Arachnida. But in
the very highest importance and antiquity, Insects these three divisions are sharply
and is believed to be a nearly-related marked, the chest, to which the legs and
representative of the ancestor of all air- wings are attached, and the belly, being
sometimes joined by a mere thread,
1 Zool. Articles from the Ency. Brit., p. 83
whence the name given to that class,
(1891).
2 Cf. Hudson and Gosse’s magnificent mono
graph, The Rotifera, pp. 9, 139 (Longmans).
1 Moseley’s Notes by a Naturalist on H.M.S.
“ Challenger," pp. i37~8 (edit. i892)-
�PRESENT LIFE-FORMS
Insecta, “ cut into.” The aquatic origin
of insects is certain. Their wings have
been developed from organs which were
adapted for breathing in the air as the
necessity arose, and they ultimately
became organs of flight when the creature
left the water for the land. Here, as in
*5
proportioned by the size of the thing
which arouses it. For the infinitely
small is as fully charged with mystery
as the infinitely great; the movements
Fig. 49.—Nervous System of Beetle, showing
double nerve-cord and chain of ganglia.
of forces and energies in both cell and
crystal are more complex than the
motions of the giant bodies of the
heavens; the ultimate analysis of the
atom is more elusive than that of the
mass which it makes up.
In the beauty and delicacy of insect
structure—notably in the wings, more
perfect for flight than those of birds; in
the infinite division of organs; the
spider, with its six hundred teats, spin
ning its web of as many strands ;1 the
Fig. 48.—Generalised Insect (Grasshopper).
a, head ; b, eye ; c, antennee ; d, thorax ; e, foremost
pair of legs; f, middle segment of thorax ; g-, fore
most pair of wings ; h, second pair of legs; z, hind
most segment of thorax ; j, second pair of wings ; k,
femur of third pair of legs ; I, tibia (corresponding to
shin-bone); wz, tarsus (flat part of foot); ab, ab
domen.
of the water winning in the struggle for
life.
The larger number of animals pass
through well-marked series of changes,
but these take place within the egg;, the
food-store of which suffices for their
development. Through lack of this
supply most insects quit the egg in
an immature condition, passing through
the metamorphoses of grub, chrysalis,
and imago. Like the rotifers, they
rebuke the vulgar notion that bigness is
greatness, and that wonder is to be
Fig. 50.—Section of Eye of Insect.
dragon-fly, with its twelve thousand eyes.,
each with its own lens, cone, and rod ;
the caterpillar, with its fifteen hundred
air-tubes—we learn that magnitude is
not necessary to complexity. In the high
1 At the Melbourne Observatory a breed of
spiders is kept, the strands of whose webs are
used for micrometers.
C
�66
PRESENT LIFE-FORMS
nervous organisation of insects, and the
variety of functions, many of these quasi
human, which some of them discharge;
in the dexterity of their actions, and the
manifest adaptation of means to ends ; in
the social order of certain species, notably
the ant commonwealth, with its division
of labour, its slave and fighting popu
lation, its farmers and miners,1 its
nurseries for pets and weaklings, its
burial customs, its political and industrial
order, which has not, like ours, to re
adjust itself by peaceful or bloody revo
lutions to changing conditions—we have
striking evidence of the interrelation of
all living things and of the unreality of
the distinctions which man has set up
between instinct and reason: in fine,
evidence of fundamental correspondence
between the nervous systems of the lowest
and the highest. Complexity, not size ;
mental, not physical power, mark advance
in the organism ; and it is in the special
isation of the nervous system, and in the
proportion of its controlling centre, the
brain, to the rest of the structure, that
the mechanical explanation of intelli
gence lies.1 Darwin remarks that the
2
brain of an ant, which is proportionally
larger than that of any other insect, al
though itself not so large as a quarter of a
small pin’s head, “is one of the most
marvellous atoms of matter in the world,
perhaps more so than the brain of a
man.” 3
There is much force in the argument
that the long period of infancy, with its
consequent dependence on parental love
and care, through which man, and, in
lesser degree, the highest apes and other
animals, pass, has tended to develop the
feeling of sympathy and of its expression
in service of the helpless by which the
1 Cf. Bates’s Amazons, pp. 350-360, on forag
ing ants.
2 In the cockchafer the proportion of brain to
body is 1 to 3,500 ; in the worker bee, 1 to 174;
in the whale, 1 to 3,000 ; in the chimpanzee, I
to 50. But, as evidenced by the large brain of
the porpoise and the dolphin, the convolutions,
more than the volume of brain, are the measure
of capacity.
3 Descent of Man, p. 54, 2nd ed.
family is knit together, and out of which
has grown the social instinct which forms
tribes and nations. Nor does the
argument stop here. The longer the
baby stage, the more intelligent is the
animal; for where there is a complex
nervous system its specialisation goes
on after birth, whereas in the case of an
animal with low capacities all the nervous
connections are formed before birth, so
that it begins life in lusty independence,
fully equipped for work, and therefore
with no tie to bind it to its parents, while
its isolated life is fatal to mental develop
ment.
Now the ant, with other communal
insects, as bees and wasps, has to pass
through a relatively long grubhood, and
in this we may have the explanation of
its high social organisation, which has
had measureless time for its develop
ment, since the remains of Hymenoptera
are found as far back as the Jurassic
Age. And if the argument has any force
in the case of man, the evolutionist is
bound to apply it to the ant, with the
important difference that the limits*of the
ant’s development were reached long
ago, the capacity to change varying
inversely with the persistence of inherited
qualities.
But in the highest members of the
Arthropoda we arrive at the extremity of
one branch of the life-tree, and we must
descend to reach the starting-point which
leads us to the loftier branch whose
topmost twig is man.
5. Mollusca.
This sub-kingdom, the importance of
whose fossil remains has been indicated,
includes a wide range of organisms, any
common definition of which is difficult.
Many of them appear, like the fallen
angels, not to have “kept their first
estate ”—as, e.g., the lowest class, which
resembles polyps, and was formerly
erroneously grouped with them. In the
larger number of molluscs symmetry of
form is more the exception than the
rule. Some Mollusca have neither heads
nor hearts, or at least quite imperfect
�PRESENT LIFE-FORMS
ones ; others have heads and chambered
hearts; some grow together in colonies,
others live an independent life; but all
are alike soft-bodied, lacking segmented
or jointed structure. Some, as the sea
and land slugs, are naked, although
furnished with a delicate shell when
young; others have a leathery or gristly
covering; the rest, the shell-fish proper,
are protected by single or double valves,
which in their spiral forms and fadeless
colouring sometimes surpass the loveliest
flowers, or which, as in the pearl
oyster, yield the lustrous substance
which recent research has shown is due
&7
which is so abundant as to colour the
surface of the Arctic seas for leagues,
has no less than 360,000 suckers for
capture of its prey attached to the wing
like organs which spring from its head.
The lowest molluscs are the plant
like, fixed Sea-mats and Sea-mosses; the
highest are represented by the Briareuslike Cuttle-fish, from the common species
of our seas to the octopus, with its rudi
mentary internal skeleton and its chame
leon-like power to change its colour; and
by the pearly Nautilus, the sole survivor
of an ancient family that swarmed in the
waters of the Jurassic and Cretaceous
periods. Between these range
the more familiar shell-fish,
notably the oyster, which, in
common with all bivalves, is
headless; and the periwinkle,
whose land congener is the
air-breathing snail.
6. Vertebrata.
We now reach the last and
highest of the divisions of
animal life, the sub-kingdom
of the back-boned^ which in
cludes man.
Professor Cope says that
“ the simplest expressions
a, anus ; b, abductor muscle ; c, heart ; d, nerve ganglia ; e, adductor
muscle ;
mouth ; g-, stomach; ti, gills; z, intestine surrounded by which shall cover all organs
liver. The tubes marked by arrows are the canals of the siphon. The are the solid segment, the
water enters by the lower and leaves by the upper tube.
hollow sac and tube.” 1 The
to a tape-worm whose larvae invades back-boned animals witness to this;
the oyster, which thereupon encrusts they have fundamentally the same
the parasite. The power of secreting organs and parts as earth-worms, pass
matter from the surrounding water for ing through the same grades of struc
the construction of their shells is one of ture. But while all invertebrates, ex
the most persistent characteristics of the cept the lowest, consist of a single
Mollusca, the shells (which are not cast tube or cavity containing the nervous
periodically, as with the Crustacea) being and vascular systems in common, and
formed along the surface of the thick have an outside skeleton, which is
flexible skin called the “mantle,” the simply a hardening of the skin, verte
crumpled line of which determines their brates consist of two tubes or cavities,
shape. They range in size from the the smaller of which encloses the
enormous Tridacna of tropical seas, central parts of the nervous system, or
which sometimes weighs five hundred the brain and spinal cord, and the other
pounds, to the minute species of our the vascular system, or the organs of
coasts, thousands of which scarcely ex digestion and circulation, and have an
ceed an ounce in weight. One species,
the Clio borealis, about an inch long,
1 Origin of the Fittest, p. 185.
�68
PRESENT LIFE-FORMS
inside skeleton. The most important
part of this is the spine or back-bone,
which separates the tubes, and is made
up of a number of jointed bones or
vertebrae, united by remains of the
cartilaginous notochord, which give
flexible action to the whole column.
The advantage of this combined
strength and ease of movement is seen
in fishes as they dart through the water,
in the gliding of the snake, the leap of
the antelope, and the spring of the
lion; while, as compared with animals
which are either naked, or covered by a
rigid horny skeleton, cumbersome as the
chest, and belly, characteristic of
Crustacea and insects, is, however, more
obvious. The limbs never exceed four
in number, and are in pairs, whether as
fins of fish (not reckoning the unpaired
fins as limbs), wings and legs of birds
and bats, fore- and hind-legs of quadru
peds, or arms and legs of man; all
being modifications of one type, as in
the prolonged bones of the bat’s wing, ,
which correspond to our fingers.
Such, in crude outline, are the prin
cipal features of the highest animals, but
no general description can cover the
infinite variety of vertebral forms. The
armour of our ancestors, vertebrates
have an enormous superiority in their
internal framework of living bone, which
adapts itself to, as well as nourishes and
protects, the softer parts. Vertebrates,
like the Annelida and Arthropoda, are
bilaterally symmetrical, and are com
posed of segments placed one behind
the other; but the lines of junction
have become hidden by overlying
muscles or effaced by structural modifi
cation—as, e.g., in the formation of the
skull, which is composed of nine or
more coalesced segments. The three
fold division of the body into head,
sturgeon and the shark have a gristly
spine; the frog has no ribs ; the tortoise
is encased in a shield composed of the
hardened skin of its back and belly; and
even in the marked division of verte
brates into cold-blooded, embracing fish
and reptiles, and warm-blooded, em
bracing birds and mammals, exceptions
occur in warm-blooded fish, as the tunny
and the bonito. But no differences in
detail can obscure the fact that verte
brates are all modifications of a common
type, the variations in structure being
due to differences of function determined
by unlike modes of life. Moreover,
�PRESENT LIFE-FORMS
details obscure relations ; and since it is
with the relation of all life-forms that we
are chiefly concerned, we may pass to
further evidence of connection between
the highest invertebrate and the lowest
animal of vertebrate character. This is
furnished by the marine worm Balanoglossus, because it is shown to possess
gill-slits like sea-squirts and lancelets,
and to develop in early life a short
notochord.1 Of perhaps greater interest
to the evolutionist are the transparent
bag-shaped Sea-squirts, or Ascidians,
which were formerly classed by them
selves under Tunicata (Lat. tunica, a
cloak). Most of the species are im
mobile, attaching themselves to rocks,
shells, and other objects, sometimes
growing separately, and sometimes in
colonies on a common stem. Of the
69
consisting of a single ganglion, lies be
tween the mouth and vent. The position
of this ganglion gives a valuable clue to
the connection between the ascidians
and the vertebrates, but still more im
portant evidence as to this is supplied
in the early stages of the ascidian’s
development. In certain species the
egg gives rise to a larva resembling the
tadpole of a frog, both outwardly and in
wardly—a resemblance “ reaching abso
lute identity when we examine the way
Fig. 53.-—Balanoglossus.2
two openings in their gristly covering,
which is largely made up of cellulose, a
characteristic element in plants, one is
the mouth and the other the vent. The
mouth opens into a breathing sac, fur
nished with numerous gill-slits and cilia,
and leading through the gullet to the
digestive organs—stomach and intestine
—which are connected by a sharp bend
with the vent, whence the inhaled water,
after giving up its oxygen to the blood,
is expelled. The heart, a tube-shaped
organ, is placed at the lower end of the
body-cavity, which fills the space around
the intestine. The circulation forms a
remarkable exception to that of every
other known animal, the current being
reversed after the heart has beat a certain
number of times. The nervous system,
1 See Professor Ray Lankester’s art. “Verte
brata,” in Zoological Articles contributed io the
Ency. Brit. (1891).
2 This illustration and that of Peripatus (p.
64) are, with the kind permission of Mr. John
Murray, copied from Thomson’s Study of
Animal Life.
Fig. 54.—Sea-squirt.
a, mouth ; b, vent.
in which the various organs arise from
the primitive egg-cell,” the only im
portant difference being that the ascidian
has but one eye. In connection with
this Mr. W. B. Spencer’s important dis
covery of a small eye beneath the skin
on the top of the head of the Hatteria
lizard in New Zealand, the representa
tive of reptiles whose fossils occur in the
Trias, may be noted. The larvæ of the
ascidian and of the frog alike possess
four structures which are common to
every back-boned animal at some stage
of its development, and the possession
�70
PRESENT LIFE-FORMS
of which is explicable only on the theory
of the descent of sea-squirts and verte
brates from a common ancestor. These
four structures are—(i) the throat with
its gill-slits ; (2) the primitive back-bone
—a gristly rod called the notochord
developed from the alimentary canal,
which is found in no invertebrates
a, mouth ; Z, vent ; c, gullet-opening ; d, nerve-ganglion ;
e, stomach ; yj test or outer layer ; g, tunic or inner
layer ; h, branchial sac.
the fish-like form to the amphibian, ex
changing gills and tail for lungs and
limbs, and, in fine, epitomising in its
development the series of forms through
which its ancestors passed, the other
fixes itself by suckers to stone or plant.
Tail, notochord, nerve-cord, and eye
disappear, the brain remains small, the
throat enlarges, the gill-slits increase in
number, the skin becomes hard and
leathery, and the eyeless, footless thing
sinks, as its manufacture of cellulose
markedly shows, well-nigh to the plant
level, its vegetating mode of nutrition
sealing its degeneration.
The old classification of Vertebrates
started with the lancelet (so called from
its lance-like shape), or Amphioxus (Gr.
amphi, both; and oxus, sharp, both
ends being nearly alike). The mouth
of this headless, one-eyed, semi-trans
parent animal has cilia for driving in the
food-carrying water, and opens through
the breathing slits into a wide gullet, in
which the water, after giving up its
oxygen to the colourless blood, enters,
and is expelled at the vent. There
being no muscular heart, the blood is
circulated by contractions of the vessels.
Now this boneless creature is classed
among back-boned animals because it
has the primitive gristly notochord from
which the spine is developed in all true
except the ascidians; (3) the brain and
spinal cord; and (4) the eye, which is
inside the brain. In all invertebrates
which have eyes the retina or sensitive
part is developed from the outer skin,
and its outgrowth from the brain in
vertebrates is ingeniously accounted for
by Professor Ray Lankester1 on the theory that the
original vertebrate was a
transparent animal, through
every part of whose clear
skin the light passed and
acted on the tissues of the
inlying brain. But as the
; g, respiratory organs ;
skin became tougher and a, mouth ; t, c, heart ; d, liver ot, spinal marrow ; o, tailA-/, digestive canal ;
Z, notochord ;
fin.
denser, and functions con
sequently more localised, the eye-bearing vertebrates. Above this rod lies the
part of the brain had to grow outwards nervous system, composed of a single
till skin-vesicle and brain-vesicle met, cord, which bulges slightly as a primitive
brain near the mouth. The short noto
and the eye was formed at the surface.
Similar as are the larvae of the tadpole chord and single nerve-ganglion of the
and the sea-squirt, they diverge at later ascidian correspond, as far as they go,
stages. While the one advances from to like organs in the lancelet ; and if
1 Cf. Degeneration, pp. 47-49, Nature Series they were lengthened, so as to run along
the whole of the back of the ascidian, the
(Macmillan).
�PRESENT LIFE-FORMS
positions in the two animals would be
found to agree exactly. This certainly
points to their common descent.
Fishes, as the least specialised verte
brates, although by no means so stupid
as is commonly thought, are placed in
the lowest class, many species, as sharks,
rays, and sturgeons, representing in their
gristly back-bones, uneven tails, and
spiny or plated skins, the armoured
ganoids which mark the gradations
between cartilage and bone in structure.
All fish, breathe by means of gills, the
Structure of which varies a good deal in
the different orders, but are essentially
the same in having like functions to
discharge.1
Just as we had to retrace our steps in
search of a link between vertebrates and
7i
the paired fins into limbs,1 those of the
mud-fish being thong-like, and those of
the jeevine being jointed, for locomotion
on land. Other fish, as eels and the
climbing perch of India, can also leave
the water, their breathing being effected
by modification of the gills.
Here, then, we find another inter
mediate step between land-dwellers and
water-dwellers, the most perfect and
familiar example of which is supplied by
the common frog’s life-history. The
gill-breathing, limbless, tailed, plant
eating, aquatic tadpole develops into the
lung-breathing, four-legged, web-footed,
tailless, animal-eating, amphibian frog,
unable, save when torpid, to live in
water without coming to the surface for
air. Some amphibians possess both
Fig. 57.—Mud-fish.
invertebrates, so we must again go
back a step or two to find the inter
mediate forms between aquatics and
amphibians. These forms, the evolu
tion of which is probably due to their
occasional exposure to the atmosphere,
developing in them different organs of
breathing, are represented by certain
fishes called Dipnoi, or “double
breathers,” because, while they have gills
for taking up the oxygen from the water,
they can also breathe on land by means of
the air-bladder or sound, which thus dis
charges the functions of a lung. Such
are the mud-fish of the Amazons, and
the jeevine of Australia, both of which
show tendency towards modification of
1 In his Naturalist in North Celebes (1889),
Dr. Hickson gives an account (p. 30) of certain
Jumping fishes which breathe mainly by the tail,
the greater part of their lives being spent with
head and gills out of the water.
lungs and gills throughout life, but all
the higher vertebrates, whether they live
in water or not, breathe through lungs,
which arise, like the air-bladder of fishes,
as sac-like outgrowths of the primitive
gullet.
Reptiles, which include forms as diverse
as the nimble lizard, the sluggish croco
dile, and the limbless snake, are for the
most part the relatively insignificant
descendants of the monsters of the
land, air, and water, that flourished in
the Age of Reptiles amidst the dense
vegetation of a swampy world, until con
ditions fatal to them, and favourable to
the development of more plastic life
forms, supervened.
Birds, at the head of which our best
1 Cf. Professor Ray Lankester’s preface to
Gegenbaur’s Comp. Anatomy, p. xi, “ On the
Origin of Limbs.”
�IM
PRESENT LIFE-FORMS
authorities place the crow family, possess
a number of special characters, chiefly
connected with the power of flight, from
the path of which Roman augurs drew
their omens of good or evil, as do the
Papuans of to-day. Their exact sequence
in the development of vertebrates is un
known, but their descent from reptiles is
certain. Not, as might be thought, from
the flying species, for these were feather
less, and more like bats than birds in the
membranous wings which stretched from
limb to body, but from species that
walked upon the land. But, although
structural likenesses between birds and
reptiles survive to attest this former close
relation—as, eg., the union of the skull
to the spine by a single joint, instead
of by two joints, as in most amphibians
and in all mammals, and the union of
the skull to the jaw by the quadrate
bone, which enables the jaws to be
opened very widely—manifold causes,
working through long periods, have
brought about marked differences of
external and internal structure. Nota
ble among these is the modification of
the three-chambered heart of nearly all
reptiles into the four-chambered heart of
birds and mammals, by which the fresh
and used-up blood are kept separate, and
the higher temperature of the body is
maintained. The scales of the one, and
the feathers or downy covering of the
other, are alike modifications of the
outer skin; for although the interme
diate stages between the plumage of
birds and the horny plates of reptiles are
missing in fossil remains, it is certain
that these and kindred structures, as
hairs, claws, nails, and hoofs, are all out
growths of the skin. Even teeth, the
variety of form and arrangement of
which render them of great value in
determining the habits and general struc
ture of the animal to which they be
longed, are secreted from the skin. It
has been shown already that the nervous
system and sense-organs are also formed
from the skin ; nor should the variety of
function which it discharges, and there
fore the variety of structure into which
it is modified, surprise us when we re
flect how continuous has been the action
of the medium with which it is in imme
diate contact upon the external surface
of all organisms, so that the slight film
or integument of the lowest has deveA
Fig. 58.—Growth of Hair.
A. Hair-rudiment from an embryo of six weeks, a, horny
layer of cuticle ; b, mucous layer of cuticle ; c, cells of
the future hair ; d, basement membrane.
B. Hair-rudiment with the young hair formed, but not
yet risen through the cuticle.
C. Hair protruded.
loped into the complex layers which
enclose the highest.
Space prevents more than bare refer
ence to the varied and helpful material
furnished to the evolutionist by birds,
and to the significant evidence of their
development as compared with their
reptilian ancestors in larger proportion
of brain to body, with the intelligence
which this connotes. A remarkable
proof of this may be seen in the wide
�PRESENT LIFE-FORMS
range and method of their migrations,
involving powers of vision and memory
exceeding that possessed by man. On
this instinct, about which we know very
littlSj but which probably had its origin
in the search after food, Darwin remarks,
“ How a small and tender bird coming
from Africa or Spain, after traversing
the sea, finds the very same hedgerow
73
one-vented. These quasi-mammals are
represented by the ornithorhynchus,1 or
duckbill, a beaver-like creature with a
horny bill, the feet being furnished with
both webs and claws; and by the
echidna, or spiny ant-eater, which re
sembles a large hedgehog, being snouted
and covered with prickles. Each is
found in Australia, that land of primi-
Fig. 59.—-Duckbill.
in the middle of England, where it tive forms, and recent discoveries invest
made its nest last season, is truly mar them with the greatest importance as
links in the chain of mammalian descent.
vellous.”
interesting to note that in the For they both lay eggs like reptiles and
oldest known picture in the world, a birds, the duckbill laying two at a time,
fresco in the Boolak museum at Cairo which she deposits in her underground
taken from a tomb dating about 3000 nest, and the echidna laying one, which
B.C., three species of geese are depicted, is probably hatched in her pouch. And
two of which are so well drawn as to be the eggs further correspond with those
of birds and reptiles in containing not
readily Identified.
The lowest members of the diversified -only the protoplasm from which the
group of Mammals or milk-givers re- embryo is formed, but also the food-yolk
seffibie birds in being toothless, and in
1 Ornithorhynchus paradoxus, the older natur
having a common sac into which the in alists named it ; for when they were assured
testines and other organs open, for which that the creature was not a fraud of the staffer,
reason they are called Monotrernes, or they thought it must be a freak of nature.
C*
�74
PRESENT LIFE-FORMS
on which it is nourished until hatched,
when it lives on the milk obtained from
the mammary glands in some way not
yet fully ascertained. Now an animal
that unites in itself these reptilian and
mammalian features is to be classed
among the interesting anomalous and
intermediate forms which Darwin has
happily termed “ living fossils.” Whether
monotremes are descended in direct line
from reptiles, with the internal structure
of which they have much in common,
and mammals from monotremes, or
whether there was an ancestral form or
rootstock from which both reptile and
mammal branched off, so that mammals
island continent, and to lands similarly
long isolated.
In all other mammals the young are
born fully formed, being attached during
the time of their development within the
mother to a structure called Xhe placenta,
through which they are nourished by
her, whence the general term placental
mammals, of which the insect-feeders
appear to be the primitive type. Start
ing thus more or less fully equipped in
the struggle for life, the chances in their
favour were incomparably greater than
those of animals which are precariously
hatched or born in an imperfect state;
hence, among other causes, the
Fig. 6o.—Spiny Ant-eater.
in, marsupial bones.
are as old as reptiles and older than
birds, is not clear, although the rocks
may one day reveal it. But the inter
relation of reptiles and mammals is
proven beyond question.
The next stage in mammalian de
velopment is marked by the Marsupials,
or pouched milk-givers, as kangaroos
and opossums, the young of which are
born in an imperfect condition, and
nourished and kept in the mother’s
pouch till they can run alone. Their
fossil remains evidence a wide range in
Triassic times, and the Post-Pliocene
beds of Australia yield bones of
marsupials as large as elephants ; but
their habitats are now limited to that
dominance of the placentals, and their
development into the highest organisms
yet reached. They are usually divided
into the following classes, which indicate
structural characters common to the
animals included under each, and not
the exact relative place of the class in
the sub-kingdom. No linear arrange
ment of classes, nor even of species, is
possible, for the succession of forms is
not as that of steps of a ladder, but as
of a many-branched tree. (See Fig. 62.)
1. Toothless
{Edentala)
. Sloths; ant-eaters; armadillos. These show affini
ties linking them nearer
to monotremes than to
marsupials
(The term
�PRESENT LIFE-FORMS
75
■educed from diagrams of the natural size (except that of the gibbon, which was twice as large as nature).
(From Professor Huxley’s Mails Place in Nature, Frontispiece.)
RACES OF MAN.
Tuft-haired
variety . .
Fleece-haired
variety . .
< Woolly-haired.
(Nearly
all
long-headed/
I
I
f
I
Papuans
Hottentots
Kaffirs
Negroes
Australians
Malays
Chinese
Tatars
Primitive
Man. .
' Stiff-haired
variety .
Dapps
Straight-haired.
(Nearly
all
broad-headed ; I
but the Esqui- *
maux and Aus
tralians
are
long-headed)
'
{
.
Curly-haired
variety . .
k Native American f
Arctic .
' Dravidas . . . {
(
(
Nubians . . . (
.
Turks
Hungarians
Esquimaux
Greenlanders
Hyperboreans
Nubians.
Foulahs
Basques
Semitic
Mediterranean
Egyptians (?)
Jews
Arabs
Indo-Romanic - .
Indians
Persians
Greeks
Romans
Slavo-Germanic
Slaves
Scandinavians
Teutons
Celts
' Caucasian.
�PRESENT LIFE-FORMS
Edentata is misleading,
as only two members of
the order, the Great and
the Scaly Ant-eater, are
without teeth.)
2. Sirens
Dugongs and manatees, or
{Sirenia} So called sea-cows; fish-like in
from their fancied form, the fore-limbs modi
resemblance to the fied into paddles, the hind
fabled mermaids or limbs absent; both these
sirens.
are plant-feeders.
3. Whale-like . 'Whales ; dolphins ; por( Cetacea}
poises ; also adaptation
of structure to aquatic life.
4. Hoofed .
. Very numerous and valu( Ungulata}
able order. Divided into
IS&odd-toed—as the horse,
the tapir, and his near
relation the rhinoceros ;
and the even-toed—as
swine, and their near re
lation the hippopotamus ;
camel ; deer ; sheep; ox ;
all these are plant-feeders.
5. Hyrax or Rock- Represented by a small
rabbit .
. animal, the coney of the
(Hyracoidea}
Bible. The shape of the
teeth points to affinities
with hoofed animals on
the one hand and gnawing
animals on the other.
6. Trunked.
Represented only by the
{Proboscidea}
elephant, the longestlived and most intelligent
of plant-feeders.
7. Flesh-feeders Seals ; bears ; weasels ;
( Carnivora}
wolves and other mem
bers of the dog family ;
lions and other members
of the cat family.
Hare ; rat; beaver ; squir
8. Gnawers.
rel. A very widespread
{Rodentia}
class.
9. Insect-feeders Mole ; hedgehog ; shrew.
{Insectivora}
10. Finger-winged Bat, highly organised,
{Cheiroptera}
closely allied to insect
feeders.
11. Lemurs .
{Lemuroidea}
12. Primates.
(Pronounced “Prima-tes,” thus pre
venting confusion
with Archbishops).
The lemurs are sometimes
grouped with monkeys in
the order of the “ fourhanded,” a division fall
ing into disuse ; but they
have marked affinities
with marsupials, gnawers,
and insect-feeders. The
“flying lemur,” or colugo, a squirrel-like crea
ture with webbed hands,
appears to be an interest
ing link between insect
feeders and Primates.
Monkeys ; baboons; man
like apes (gibbon, orang
outang, chimpanzee,
gorilla), big-jawed, small
brained, stooping pos
ture ; Man, big-brained,
erect posture—divided
into races according to
shape of skull, colour of
skin, nature of hair.
In the foregoing survey of past and
present life-history no break in the con
tinuity of life, or in its fundamental unity,
is found. In the unstableness of the
first living matter lay the tendency to
that variation which, acted upon by
manifold agencies in the production of
unlikeness, both seen and unseen, has
resulted in ever-increasing complexity of
forms. But, strive as we may not to
overlay with detail, it is not easy to keep
clear and constant before the mind the
relationship between all life that is and
that has been, as well as the identity of
that life with, and its dependence upon,
the not living. Perhaps this interrelation
may be made more apparent in the
exposition of the theory of evolution
which is now to follow the description of
the things evolved.
�O
-
p lu s C hlorophyll
62.— Diagram of Development.
PRESENT LIFE-FORMS
F ig .
P r o to plasm
il
77
�PART II—EXPLANATORY.
Chapter VI
THE UNIVERSE: MODE OF ITS BECOMING AND
GROWTH
It must be so, for miracles are ceased ;
And therefore we must needs admit the
means
How things are perfected.
Archbishop of Canterbury, Henry V.,
act i. sc. I.
The gases gather to the solid firmament; the
chemic lump arrives at the plant and grows;
arrives at the quadruped and walks ; arrives at
the man and thinks.—Emerson.
In the first chapter a summary account
was given of the materials which make
up the universe. These were comprised
under the terms Matter and Motion, as
convenient names for an observed
order of phenomena of whose ultimate
nature we know nothing. As explained
already, it is upon the twofold and
opposite action of Motion that we base
our assumptions as to the nature of
matter—i.e., as consisting of atoms of
infinite minuteness and complexity.
That form of Motion which draws the
atoms together into larger or smaller
masses, and which resists their separa
tion, we distinguish as Force; that form
of Motion which drives the atoms apart,
and resists their combination, we dis
tinguish as Energy. Both Force and
Energy are, like Matter, indestructible ;
in other words, the sum-total of each is
a fixed quantity. Force inheres in, and
cannot be taken from, each atom of
weighable matter; but Energy passes
from atom to atom, and from mass to
mass, its vehicle being that unweighable
ethereal medium which, it is assumed,
fills the spaces between bodies and
between the particles of bodies. In
this diverse way each is ceaselessly
acting, Force aggregating the particles
round various centres, Energy separating
them and passing into space, only
fractions *of it striking intervening
bodies, as, e.g., in the interception of the
sun’s radiant energy by the planets.
And the certain result, however im
measurably distant, is that all the Energy
of the universe will be dissipated, and
that all the matter of the universe will
become cold, solid, and inert under the
aggregating and unopposed action of
Force.
The problem we have now to con
sider is this :—Given Matter and Motion
as the raw materials of the universe, is
the interaction of Motion, under its two
forms of a combining Force and a
separating Energy,
upon
Matter,
sufficient to account for the totality of
non-living and living contents of the
universe ?
Of the beginning, of what was before
the present state of things, of what
will follow the end of it, we know
nothing, and speculation about it is
futile. Science is concerned with the
universe' as we find it, the mobile
vehicle of orderly succession; the
Evolved, or Unfolded ; das Werden, as
the Germans say, or the Becoming: not
less wrapped in mystery because we
describe it as a mechanical process, and
do not fall back upon unknown agencies
�THE UNIVERSE: MODE OF ITS BECOMING AND GROWTH
or assume unknown attributes of Matter
or Motion to explain it.
But since everything points to the
finite duration of the present universe—
for what it now is it once was not, and
its state is ever changing—we must
make a start somewhere. And we are
therefore compelled to posit a primordial
nebulous, non-luminous state, when the
atoms, with their inherent forces and
energies, stood apart from one another.
Not evenly distributed, else Force
would have drawn them together as a
uniform spherical mass round a com
mon centre of gravity, and Energy,
awakened by the collision of atom with
atom, would have passed profitlessly in
the form of heat to the ethereal medium ;
but varying in position and character,
with special gravitation towards special
centres. This theory of unstableness
and unlikeness at the outset squares
with the unequal distribution of Matter,
with the movements of its masses in
different directions and at different
rates, and with the ceaseless redistribu
tion of Matter and Motion.
All
changes of state are due to the re
arrangement of atoms through the play
of attracting forces and repelling
energies, resulting in the evolution of
the seeming like into the actual unlike,
of the shapeless into the shapely, of the
simple into the more and more com
plex, till the highest complexity . is
reached in the development of living
matter. If all that is, from fire-fused
rock to the genius of man, was wrapped
up in primordial matter, with its forces
and energies, we can speak of simplicity
only in a relative sense as contrasted
with the infinite variety around us which
has been evolved.
(i) Inorganic Evolution.—Under this
head we may apply the foregoing princi
ples to the earliest stages of cosmical
change, to the Evolution of Stellar
Systems.
The existence of nebulous or cloud
like objects in space, which the tele
scope, aided by the analysis of the
spectroscope, proves to be immense
79
masses of glowing gas, goes far to justify
the assumption of a yet more discrete
state of the atoms which formed the
material universe at the outset. But,
although we are familiar with matter in
an invisible state, as, e.g., in the element
oxygen, which, in a combined state,
forms nearly half the solid framework
of the globe, we can form no conception
of the extreme rarefaction of the primi
tive atoms. Upon this Helmholtz re
marks that “if we calculate the density
of the mass of our planetary system at
the time when it was a nebulous sphere
which reached to the path of the outer
most planet, we should find that it would
require several millions of cubic miles
of such matter to weigh a single grain.”
Given, however, the play of force and
energy upon this diffused matter, the
mechanics of the process which resulted
in the visible universe are not difficult
of explanation. The Force bound up
in each atom, acting as affinity, com
bined the atoms as molecules; acting
as cohesion, it united the molecules into
masses; acting as gravitation, it drew
the masses toward their several centres
of gravity. One of these masses, by no
means the largest, became the nucleus
of our solar system, which may be taken
as a type of all other masses whose evo
lution into stellar systems is as yet
complete.
As the atoms rushed together, Energy,
which had hitherto existed in a state, of
rest as passive separation, became active
in molar and molecular form. As molar
energy it imparted motion to each mass
—a motion of rotation on its own axis ;
and a motion in an orbit, as in the proper
motion of double stars, and of the planets
round the sun. As molecular energy it
imparted a rapid vibratory backwards
and forwards motion to the molecules,
which motion was forthwith converted
into the radiant energy of heat and
light, rendering the mass self-luminous.
From the moment of their conversion
the dissipation of both forms of energy
ensued. The friction of the ethereal
medium slowly retards the orbital motion
�8o
THE UNIVERSE: MODE OF ITS BECOMING AND GROWTH
of every mass, the molar energy thus
lost passing into that medium, until
finally the orbital motion will be stopped,
■and the force of gravitation, no longer
resisted by energy, will draw the smaller
masses to the larger, as vagrant meteors
are being ceaselessly drawn to planets
and sun. Moons will gravitate to their
planets, planets to their suns, and so on,
until the matter of the universe, with
intermediate outbursts of energy, be
comes cold, inert, and solid, and Force
will have subdued all things unto itself.
The molecular energy likewise passes,
but more rapidly, into the ethereal
medium, throbbing ceaselessly in all
directions to the farthest marge of space,
if any marge there be. Small portions
of it are intercepted by each mass, but
of these the larger proportion is reflected
back, the remainder setting up separative
motions on the surface, as, e.g., in the
familiar case of the action of the sun’s
radiant heat on the earth. Of this solar
energy, which is radiated equally in
every direction, the earth does not
intercept much more than the two
thousand-millionth part. And of this
the larger proportion is reflected back ;
only a fraction, to be itself finally dissi
pated, being used to maintain the earth
as the theatre of atmospheric and super
ficial changes whose highest result is life.
2. Evolution of the Solar System.—
We may now leave the general for the
particular, and apply the theory to the
evolution of that particular stellar sys
tem to which we belong, and to that
portion of it which we call the earth.
If the explanation of the origin of the
sun and planets repeats somewhat of
the foregoing, it will only bring home
to us the uniformity of the process, and
show that what is true of the whole
holds good for every part, and for the
parts of every part down to the atoms
of which all things consist.
Two striking pieces of evidence of the
common origin of the sun and planets
may be cited at the outset: (i) They are
made of like materials; (2) they have
like motions.
(1) The spectroscope has revealed to
us the chemical constitution of several
of the fixed stars, their enormous dis
tance not affecting the trustworthiness of
the analysis. It evidences the existence
of substances in the glowing vapours of
their atmospheres akin to those which
feed the fires of the sun ; and if such
identity of stuff is proved to exist be
tween the sun and other stars, we may
with reason look for still closer identities
of material between him and his family
of planets, moons, and erratic bodies.
In fact, the sun is known to consist
of materials largely represented in our
earth.
(2) The planets and, with rare excep
tions, their satellites, revolve round him
in the same direction ; they also, so far
as is known, rotate on their axes in the
same direction, and very nearly coincide
in the shape and planes of their orbits,
which are almost in a plane with the
sun’s equator. Now, since the conse
quences would be the same were these
motions, both on axis and in orbit, in
the reverse direction, the inference is
obvious that there was a uniform motion
of rotation of the mass from which they
were severally formed.
As with the primitive nebula from
which that mass was detached, so with
the mass itself ; there were differences of
density throughout. On no other theory
is its segregation into a multitude of
bodies explicable. As the rotation of
the mass quickened with the indrawing
of the particles towards the common
centre of gravity, the energy of molar
separation acted most powerfully in the
region of the bulging equator, and, over
coming the force of cohesion along the
line of least resistance, detached certain
portions one after another at irregular
intervals from the central mass as it
retreated within itself. These portions
were the nuclei of the planetary groups,
in which the like processes of contraction
and rupture were repeated, the masses
detached becoming moons, or, as in the
case of Saturn, rings of satellites. In
respect of the diffused and highly ener
�THE UNIVERSE: MODE OF ITS BECOMING AND GROWTH
81
equilibrium of temperature is reached,
all separative motions cease—no work
can be done. The smaller the body,
the sooner would its molecular energy be
dissipated; in other words, the quicker
it lost its heat. The present in a large
degree interprets the past, and explains
the several stages of the members of our
system, according to their bulk. The
sun, whose mass exceeds the combined
mass of all the planets more than 700
times, is still slowly contracting, and
therefore still radiating energy. In this
lies the most probable explanation of the
1 The nebular theory of Laplace, some features
maintenance of this energy, which at the
of which are given in the foregoing text, assumed
the casting-off of equatorial rings of matter from
present rate of dissipation would cause
the central mass, the rings drawing together as
the whole diameter to contract 220 feet
planetary bodies, from which, in like manner,
yearly, or four miles in a century, so that
other rings, which became moons, were thrown
the sun may become as dense as the
off. But the coherence of rings into globes is
not proven, and in this, as in some other matters,
earth in a few million years.1 The cloud
Laplace’s theory breaks down. Every astronomer
laden atmospheres of the larger planets, as
agrees that there was a primitive solar nebula,
Jupiter and Saturn, are torn by cyclones
and that the planets were once an integral part
only second to those of the sun in their
of it, but “how it became ordered and organised,
how it collected into spheres, leaving wide inter fury, and the molten centres feed volcanic
spaces clear, the wisest are perplexed to
outbursts to which those of Vesuvius and
decide.”
Krakatoa are mere squibs. But as for
For a lucid criticism of the defects of La
the smaller bodies, their turmoil is calmed
place’s theory, more especially in its failure to
account for the peculiar distribution of the
and their light extinguished; the store of
larger and smaller planets, the reader may study
energy is exhausted; the forces of affinity
with advantage Mr. Proctor’s essay on “How
and cohesion have gained the upper hand
the Planets Grew,” in his Expanse of Heaven.
and drawn the particles together into the
A foot-note on Sir Norman Lockyer’s theory
of the meteoric origin of the heavenly bodies
solid form. Thus it is with the moon,
was appended to previous editions of this book.
on whose dead and barren surface we
The paper in which that theory was expounded
may read the future of the giant planets
was enlarged into a volume entitled The Meteorand the sun himself. For the history of
itic Hypothesis, and the theory has been re-stated
in Sir Norman Lockyer’s The S-un's Place in
one is the history of all; each has passed,
Nature. That re-statement, together with the
or is passing, from the indefinite nebulous
mis-statement in Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace’s
gised fugitive masses, as comets and
meteors, Mr. Proctor has adduced cogent
reasons in support of the theory that
they are “products of expulsion from
suns, from giant planets, and from orbs
like our earth when in the sun-like
state.”1
The origin of the planets and their
moons being found in the mode described
above, it is obvious that in their primitive
state they were molten, and shone by
their own light. All hot bodies part with
their heat to cooler bodies; and when
»
fantastic Maris Place in the Universe that Sir
Norman Lockyer’s theory is “gradually spread
ing among astronomers and mathematicians,”
make it desirable to say that the objections
summarised in the foot-note have lost none
of their weight, but have, in fact, gathered
force from the inability of Sir Norman Lockyer
to prove his assumption of identity between the
spectrum of meteoric dust and that of nebulae.
His contention that the chief nebular line is
due to magnesium is met by proof that it differs,
both in position and character, from the spectrum
of that element. In fact, such eminent authorities
as Professors Schemer and Newcomb are of
opinion that the theory is not worth the time
needed to refute it, and this opinion is fully
endorsed by our highest authority on spectrum
analysis, Sir Williarp Huggins, P. R.S.
1 Recent researches show that contraction of
the sun’s mass is not the sole, nor, perhaps, even
a chief, cause of the maintenance of his heat.
Possibly radium may be present in sufficient
quantity to play a large part in this, and, as
Mr. Maunder suggests in Knowledge (November
1903), the same or similar radio-active properties
may be possessed by other solar constituents, or
by the sun himself as a whole. By radio-activity
is understood the spontaneous emission of radia
tion which a few elements, as uranium, thorium,
and radium, give off incessantly without any
apparently exciting cause. But the more we
advance in knowledge, the more do the mysteries
of cosmic dynamics multiply, and in the penetra
tion of these the achievements of the twentieth
century may surpass those of the nineteenth
century.
�82
THE UNIVERSE: MODE OF ITS BECOMING AND GROWTH
state, through numberless modifications,
to the definite and solid state, by decrease
in volume and increase in density. What
the earth is, the moon was; what the
moon is, the earth will be.
3. Evolution of the Earth.—To this
passage from the sun-like to the solid
state the earth bears witness.
Its
flattened poles, its bulging equator, its
spheroidal shape, are the effects of rota
tion on a fluid or viscous mass ; whilst
the geologically oldest parts of the crust
—for there is no primogeniture in matter
are of a structure which is producible
only by the fusion of particles under
intense heat. As that crust, thin and
mobile, at the outset, continued to cool
and thicken, it evidenced more strikingly
the play of forces and energies within,
and of energies and, in lesser degree, of
forces without.
The cooling and
shrinking of the internal mass, as the
stored-up energy slipped away, caused
tension of the crust, which, yielding to
the force of gravitation, was drawn in
wards, and cracked and crumpled into
mountains and valleys, and into the
deep depressions which the great oceans
have filled since the time when their
waters were first condensed from the
thick primitive vapours that swathed the
cooling earth. Then the continuous
action of the sun’s radiant energy, oper
ating through air and water upon the
increasingly rigid crust, dissolved its
superficial particles, and re-deposited
them as stratified rocks, in endless
beauty and variety, over the surface of
the globe. And herein lies the major
cause of our earth’s present condition as
a possible abode of life. For its native
supply of energy—that of position
derived from the momentum given it
when thrown off from the parent mass ;
and the still, unspent, but always lessen
ing, store of internal heat1manifest in the
volcano and the earthquake—would not
suffice to arrest effeteness and the wrap
ping of the globe in a winding-sheet of
ice. It. is the imported supply from the
sun which alone does that, for in its
absence the trivial tidal energy due to
the moon would be futile, because the
seas and oceans would be solid. Oppos
ing the force which attracts everything
into inert union, the solar energy sets up
the separative motions, the ceaseless re
distributions, which give rise to the
grand climatal and vital phenomena of
nature. Expanding the air, it causes
the inrush to which winds and storms
are due ; heating the water, it excites the
warm currents, and draws heavenward
the aqueous vapour, which, driven by
the wind, returns, when its energy is
lost, as rain and snow, those silent yet
mightiest agents of mechanical, chemical,
and vital changes. But the full signifi
cance of the work done by the sun
beams that strike the earth’s surface will
appear, when we treat of the relation of
the living to the non-living.
1 We possess no criterion in our surface
observations as to whether or not the interior of
the earth is rising in temperature. Arguing from
the presence of radium, whereby the loss of heat
by radiation into space is probably made good,
Professor Joly thinks that it is rising, but he
adds as to the destiny of our globe, “ peaceful
cooling may await it or catastrophic heating
may lead-in a new era of life.”
�Chapter VII
THE ORIGIN OF LIFE
The fascination which the question of
the origin of life possesses is not lessened
by the slow abrasion of the artificial
lines which divide the living from the
non-living. Round it, like planet
tethered to sun by the invisible force of
attraction, the mind of man revolves,
unable to disentangle itself and escape
into a larger orbit, whence the truer
proportions of things may be seen; nor
will the undue importance accorded to
the living vanish until there is deepened
within us that sense of the unbroken
interrelation of all things to which science
brings her “ cloud of witnesses.”
It is agreed that there was an “ azoic”
or lifeless period in the history of the
earth—therefore that life had a begin
ning ; and it is with the evidence as to
continuity or gap between the azoic and
the zoic epochs that the present chapter
is concerned.
The azoic stage is evidenced by the
primordial temperature of the globe,
which, taking the present temperature of
the sun as a fair standard of comparison,
is computed to have been 14,000 times
hotter than boiling water. Under such
highly energetic conditions chemical
combinations of the vaporous particles
were impossible, and, a fortiori., vital
combinations. But with the slow cooling
consequent upon the continuous passage
of the earth’s molecular energy into
space, the combining forces came into
more and more active play, forming first
the extremely simple and more stable
compounds, as water; then the more
complex and less stable, as salts; and so
on in increasing complexity of material
and unlikeness of structure. Obviously
an enormous fall in the temperature
took place before the superheated mass
became cool enough to permit the form
ation of an outer crust. It was into the
depressions of this crust that the vapours
which floated over it fell as they con
densed, forming water, which at first was
probably at the temperature of a dull
red heat.
Thus far, in broad outline, the material
foundation for the superstructure of life.
When, where, and how did life begin ?
As to the time, we have no evidence
whatever.
Life is enormously older
than any record of it. Even the higher
forms were developed long before the
periods in which we first find their
remains.
As to the place, probably in polar
regions, as Buffon suggested in his
“ Epoques de la Nature.”
As the globe cooled, those regions
would be the earliest to reach a tem
perature under which life is possible.
The Comte de Saporta, whose researches
give large support to Buffon’s theory,
remarks that the richest fossil-yielding
rocks are found in northern latitudes of
50° to 60° and beyond. They show that as
far back as Silurian times the North Pole
was warm enough to maintain life of a
tropical character, and that it was the
centre of origin of successive forms down
to the Tertiary epoch; the Miocene
flora, which has now to be sought 40°
farther south, being profusely repre
sented. In Carboniferous times a warm,
moist, equable climate prevailed over
the whole globe, due, as De Saporta
�84
THE ORIGIN OF LIFE
explains, to arrest of radiation by a highly
vaporous atmosphere, and also, perhaps,
to the greater diffuseness of the sun’s
light by reason of his larger volume. Sir
W. Thiselton-Dyer says that all the great
assemblages of plants seem to admit of
being traced back at some time in their
history to the northern hemisphere with
its preponderating land-surface.
It is therefore to the North Pole, more
than to the South Pole, whose secrets,
however, no man has yet wrested,1 that
all evidence points as the area of the
origin and distribution of life. The
great land-masses radiate southwards,
forming, with their alternations of sub
mergence beneath shallow seas, and of
upheaval, channels of migration for life
forms, the modifications in which have
arisen from causes to be dealt with
presently. In contrast to this, the South
Pole, through its isolation by the deep
oceans, whose beds have never been
dry land since the waters filled their
cavities, has maintained only a slender
connection with the continents and large
islands tapering towards it, and its plants
and animals have been unable to make
headway against the ceaseless life-stream
from the north. So that given time,
evolution, continental continuity, changes
of climate and elevation of the land, and
it would appear that the dominant types
may. be traced back to the northern
hemisphere.1
2
As to the mode, let us approach the
problem by treating of what is common
to both the lifeless and the living. Now,
in brief, there are no elements in the
one which do not occur in the other.
The most complex plant and animal,
and the lowest living germ, so apparently
devoid of structure that it can only by
courtesy be called an organism, are alike
made of materials derived, directly or
indirectly, from earth and air and water.
These materials are oxygen, carbon,
hydrogen, nitrogen, with a little sulphur
and phosphorus, and still fainter' traces
of other elements, combined in extreme
and elusive complexity. Of the several
elements entering into this subtile com
bination, carbon is probably the element
to which the most prominent part is to
be assigned. Its affinity for itself, and
its faculty of uniting in manifold re
lations both of number and weight,
cause its compounds to be more
numerous and important than those of
all the other elements taken together.
Combining with the foregoing elements,
it gives rise to protoplasm, from which
by successive modifications, slow in their
operations, the teeming variety of living
things has been developed. These, as
explained already, are made up of
myriads of cells, each of which is a life
centre, their combination being the sum
total of the life of the organism. As the
cell itself is an organisation formed from
protoplasm, and marks the first stage in
1 Coal seams and traces of fossil flora
of constant stimulation by bright sunlight: and
(pine trees ?) have been discovered by Sir E.
if, further, it is admitted that it is to internal
Shackleton, who reached within 93 miles of the
South Pole in 1909.
heat we may ascribe the tropical aspect of the
former vegetation of the polar region, then there
2 Cf. the Comte Gaston de Saporta’s L'Ancienne Vegetation Polaire, in Compte Rendu of is no necessity for assuming that the solar system
at those periods was in a warmer area of stellar
the International Congress of Geography held
space, or that the position of the poles was
in Paris, 1875 (published 1877); extracts from
altered, to account for the high temperature of
Sir J. D. Hooker’s Address to the Royal
Society, 1877, in Proceedings of Royal Geog.
pre-Glacial times in high northern latitudes ; or,
Soc., vol. i., 1879, from which the following lastly, that the main features of the great con
is quoted : “ Perhaps the most novel idea tinents and oceans were very different in early
in Count Saporta’s essay is that of the diffused geological times from what they now are.” Also
sunlight which (with a densely clouded atmo Wallace’s Island Life, ch. xxiii. passim ; Thiselsphere) the author assumes to have been ! ton-Dyer’s lecture on “Plant Distribution as a
operative in reducing the contrast between Field of Geographical Research,” Proc. Royal
Geog. Soc., xxii. 415, 1878; Grant Alien’s
the polar summers and winters. If it be
Vignettes from Nature,“ The Fall of the Year ” ;
accepted, it at once disposes of the difficulty
of admitting that evergreen trees survived a and Sir J. W. Dawson’s Geol. Hist, of Plants,
long polar winter of total darkness, and summer pp. 221, 257.
�THE ORIGIN OF LIFE
85
visible structure, the question as to the wise impracticable.”1 But, although the
mode of origin of life narrows itself to living thing affects us much more nearly
the origin, not of complex organisms, than lifeless stones and rain, it hides no
nor of cells, but of protoplasm. Given profounder mystery than they. The
the matter which composes it, and the “ affinities,” as in our ignorance we name
play of forces and energies of which that them, which lock the elements into
matter is the vehicle, wherein lies the beautiful crystalline forms, are no whit
difference which gives as one result non less wonderful than the motions in
living substance, and as another result matter through which the same elements
living substance? The answer ob manifest the phenomena of life. The
viously is that, the ingredients being origin of life is not a more stupendous
the samç, the difference must lie in the problem to solve than the origin of
water. Both protoplasm and water have
mixing.
We are already familiar in the in properties that do not belong to the
organic world with the existence of the individual atoms which compose them,
same element in more than one form, and the greater complexity of the living
but with different characteristics—of structure does not constitute a difference
carbon, as diamond, graphite, and char in kind, but only in degree. It does
coal ; the difference being doubtless due not seem, after all, such a far cry from
to molecular arrangement. Chemistry the crystal to the amoeba as from the
also reveals intimate likeness of materials amoeba to Plato and Newton. The
in the compounds known as isomeric, crystal and the amceba take their place
in which the physical and chemical as independent products of physical and
properties vary considerably. It has chemical change, and cannot do other
also manufactured organic compounds, than obey the law of their development.
as starch, urea, and alcohol, the pro The crystals of rock-salt, determined by
duction of which was once thought im the mutual action of the attractive and
possible ; and if the experiments _ to repellent poles of their atoms, dispose
produce the living out of the non-living themselves as cubes; the crystals of
by decoctions of hay and extracts of snow as hexagons ; of sulphur as rhom
beef have failed, as we might expect boids ; and the protoplasmic atoms,
they would, this failure can have no obeying their polarities and charged
weight against the argument that we with separating energies, dispose them
cannot think any limit to the possi selves “each after his kind.” _ But
bilities of nature’s subtile transmuta whilst the crystal grows by accretion at
tions during the vast periods that the the surface, although even this distinc
earth has been a possible abode of tion has its rare exceptions, the cell
life. And is not the transmutation grows by assimilation or intussusception,
of the inorganic into the organic cease i.e., by inflowing of nutrition amongst all
lessly going on within the laboratory its parts,2 the new replacing the old,
of the plant under the agency of chloro yet maintaining its structure and com
position, like the fabled ship of Theseus,
phyll ?
The ultimate cause which, bringing
1 Cf. Cope’s Origin of the Fittest, p. 436.
certain lifeless bodies together, gives
Modern theories of matter lend significance to
living matter as the result, is a profound Professor Cope’s suggestion, and it is to be re
mystery. “ The transition between the gretted that he is no longer with us to know
organic and the inorganic energies may this.
...
.
,
2 The so-called precipitation cells or mineral
be possibly found in the electric group.
organisms known, after their discoverer, as
Its influence on life, its production of Traube’s cells, are spoken of with contempt by
contractions in protoplasm, and its re Sachs, who says that their resemblance to living
semblance to nerve-force, are well known. cells has been much exaggerated. (Cf. Leet, on
It also compels chemical unions other Physiol, of Plants, p. 215.)
�86
THE ORIGIN OF LIFE
which remained the same although re
paired so often that not an original plank
was left.
Speaking relatively—for nothing is
absolutely motionless—the crystal is
stable, irresponsive: the cell is plastic,
unstable, responsive, adapting itself to
the slightest variation; it “stoops to
conquer,” and so undergoes ceaseless
modification by interaction with its ever
changing environment.
Life involves
delicacy of construction; hence the
transient nature of the organic in con
trast to the abiding nature of the in
organic. And, strange as it may seem,
separation is life ; integration is death.
For life is due to the sun’s radiant
energy, which, setting up separative move
ments, enables the plant to convert,
through its mysterious alchemy, the life
less into the living, thus forming energetic
compounds, which are used partly by the
thrifty plant for its own vital needs, and
largely by the spendthrift animal for its
nutrition, to repair waste and maintain
functions. Ultimately the energy thus
derived from the sun, directly by the
plant and indirectly by the animal, passes
into space, and “ the dust returns to the
earth as it was.” For life is only a local
and temporary arrest of the universal
movement towards equilibrium.
Turning to mental phenomena, from
its lowest manifestations in the simplest
reflex action of the amoeba or the sun
dew when touched, to its highest mani
festations in consciousness or self-know
ledge, we find the connection between it
and the bodily movements a greater crux
than the connection between the inor
ganic and the organic. We know that
all the thoughts we think, and all the
emotions we feel, involve a physical pro
cess ; that is to say, they are accompanied
by certain chemical changes or molecular
vibrations in nerve-tissue, involving waste
or large expenditure of energy, which is
repaired by food. We know that the
healthy working of the brain depends
upon nourishment, upon abstinence from
excess, upon freedom from injury.
Starve, or stun, or stupefy a man, let
palsy or paralysis afflict him, and the
complex machinery is thrown out of
gear. And we know that the larger the
proportion of brain to body, and especially
the more numerous and intricate the
furrows and creases in the grey matter of
the brain, the higher in the life-scale are
the mental powers.
But the gulf between consciousness
and the movements of the molecules of
nerve-matter, measurable as these are, is
impassable; we can follow the steps of
the mechanical processes of nerve
changes . till we reach the threshold
which limits the known, and beyond
that barrier we cannot go. We can
neither affirm nor deny; we can only
confess ignorance. “ If any one says
that consciousness cannot exist except in
the relation of cause and effect with
certain organic molecules, I must ask
how he knows that; and if he says that
it can, I must put the same question.”1
That is the impregnable position of
physical science as defined by the greatest
expositor of our time. “Soul is only
known to us in a brain, but the special
note of soul is that it is capable of existing
without a brain or after death.”2 That is
the unverifiable assumption of dogmatic
theology.
1 Professor Huxley on “ Science and Morals,”
Fortnightly Review, December, 1886.
2 Principal Tulloch, Modern Theories in
Philosophy and Religion, p. 328.
�Chapter VIII
THE ORIGIN OF LIFE-FORMS
Moisture as well as heat is essential
to life ; therefore life had its beginnings
in water,1 the earliest organisms being
probably plants. As to this the fossil
yielding rocks tell us nothing, and the
lowest and simplest organisms have
so much in common that any attempt
to gather evidence from them on the
matter must fail. But, however closely
the earliest life-forms were related,
there is, as noted already, fundamental
difference to be drawn between their
successors in the mode of nutrition, a
difference which may throw some light
upon the problem of priority, and which
is not effaced by the existence of certain
flesh-eating plantsand vegetating animals,
since this witnesses to the interchange
of modifications of which protoplasm is
capable.
It has been shown that the plant alone
has the power to convert the elements
of lifeless matter into the living solid
state, thereby storing up energy for its
own use in growth and germination, and
for the use directly or indirectly of the
animal. This the plant is enabled to do
solely in virtue of its chlorophyll, which
absorbs certain sun-rays, and sets up
1 “It was in the littoral region that all the
primary branches of the zoological family tree
were formed ; all terrestrial and deep-sea forms
have passed through a littoral phase, and amongst
the representatives of the littoral fauna the re
capitulative history in the form of series oflarval
conditions is most completely retained.”—Pro
fessor Moseley, Nature, September 3, 1885.
And the primary condition of animal develop
ment was the development of plant-life in the
same region.
chemical action by which carbon is
separated from oxygen in carbonic acid
gas, and hydrogen from oxygen in water,
forming hydrocarbons in which energy
is stored up. Now, if the animal is
entirely dependent upon the plant for
this energy, it would seem that plants
were developed first.
For, remarks Professor Sachs, “as all
animals are devoid of chlorophyll-con
taining organs, and are thus unable to
form organic substance from carbon
dioxide and water, although they build
up their bodies from such substance, it
follows obviously that the substance of
the bodies of all animals is originally
produced in the chlorophyll cells of
plants. The few lower animals which
apparently contain chlorophyll—certain
Infusoria, Sponges, and Planarioe1— con
tain chlorophyll as a matter of fact, not
as a proper constituent of the body, but,
as Brandt has recently shown, have vege
table cells (Algse) containing chlorophyll
in their bodies ; by means of the assimi
lation of these green bodies such animals
1 The following list of chlorophyllian animals
has been drawn up by Professor Ray Lankester :—
Foraminifera.
Ccelentera.
Radiolaria.
Hydra viridis.
Rhaphiophrys viridis. Anthea smaragdina.
Heterophrysmyriapoda. Vermes.
Infusoria.
Mesostomum viride.
Stenior Mulleri, &c.
Boneilia viridis.
„
..
Chsetopterus ValenciSP°nSldaennesii.
Spongillafluviatilis. Crustacea (Isopoda).
Idoteea viridis.
�THE ORIGIN OF LIFE-FORMS
may be nourished under certain circum
stances.” 1
Grant Allen has marshalled the facts
in support of the priority of plants in a
paper of great force and clearness, which
has apparently received but scant atten
tion from biologists.2 He submits that
Fig. 63.—Chlorophyll Granules in Leaf-cells
(magnified 550 diameters).
A. Granules of chlorophyll, with starch grains imbedded
in the protoplasm of the cells.
B. Separated granules, a, b, young granules ; b', U',
granules dividing; c, d, e, old granules ; f, granule
swollen by water ; g, starch granules in which water
has destroyed the chlorophyll. (After Sachs.)
as the solar rays are, in the absence of
chlorophyll, powerless to set up the
separative action resulting in the material
on which alone life can be sustained, the
inference is obvious—no .chlorophyll, no
1 Sachs, pp. 298-99.
2 Gentleman's Magazine, June 1885, art.
“ Genesis.”
life. In other words, life being due to
energy radiated from the sun, which
energy is inoperative without chloro
phyll, protoplasm plus chlorophyll is the
physical basis of .life.
Against this we have the opinion of
authorities of the rank of Professor Ray
Lankester among zoologists, and of
Thiselton-Dyer among botanists, that
the earliest protoplasm was destitute of
chlorophyll. They contend that since
chlorophyll is a modification of certain
parts of the protoplasmic cells, it is not
a thing of primary origin, but a later
acquirement, slowly attained. Both
authorities incline to regard certain
forms of fungi as representing “ more
closely than any other living forms the
original ancestors of the whole organic
world 1 . . . which existed before plants
possessed chlorophyll at all,” But fungi
“ draw their nutriment from compounds
derived from other organisms, and there
fore in a higher state of aggregation
than those the green plants make use
of, so far approaching animals in the
mode of their nutrition.” 2 That is to
1 Ency. Brit., arts. “Protozoa,” p. 832, and
“ Biology,” p. 691.
2 “ Looking back through the prodigious vista
of the past, Ifind no record of the commencement
of life, and therefore I am devoid of any means
of forming a definite conclusion as to the con
ditions of its appearance. Belief, in the scientific
sense of the word, is a serious matter, and needs
strong foundations. To say, therefore, in the
admitted absence of evidence, that I have any
belief as to the mode in which the existing forms
of life have originated, would be using words in
a wrong sense. But expectation is permissible
where belief is not ; and if it were given me to
look beyond the abyss of geologically recorded
time to the still more remote period when the
earth was passing through physical and chemical
conditions, which it can no more see again than
a man may recall his infancy, I should expect to
be a witness of the evolution of living protoplasm
from not-living matter. I should expect to seé
it appear under forms of great simplicity, en
dowed, like existing fungi, with the power of
determining the formation of new protoplasm
from such matters as ammonium carbonates,
oxalates and tartrates, alkaline and earthy phos
phates, and water, without the aid of light.
That is the expectation to which analogical
reasoning leads me ; but I beg you once more to
recollect that I have no right to call my opinion
�THE ORIGIN OF LIFE-FORMS
89
say, fungoids are like animals; they use fied. The organism is the sum of life
up the energy which the plants accumu of all the cell-units.
late, and fill a secondary place in the
The one-celled forms increase by
succession of life-forms. The strength division. Growth is the balance of re
of the argument in support of plant pair over waste; and when through
priority lies in this, that viewing life as a assimilation of food into its substance
product of motion operating under its the cell reaches a certain size, the force
separating action of Energy upon Matter, of cohesion is overcome by the release
an energy-storing organism must
have come first. If the first proto
plasm lacked chlorophyll, it had
within it the possibilities which
permitted its secretion at an early
stage; it was, to use an unavoid
ably long word, chlorophyllaceous.
The question, however, is of no
serious importance in view of the
common evolution of living things,
and we may pass to less debatable
ground in inquiry into the causes
which have developed them in
countless variety from specks of
relatively formless protoplasm.
The cell is the structural start
ing-point of all life. The nucleus
which it encloses is the result of
the first visible approach of proto
plasm to unlikeness of parts, and
is the chief centre of activity.
Every cell arises by separation
from a pre-existing cell, and every
living organism is made up of one
cell or of many cells. The single
cell of which the lowest organisms
are composed does everything ap
pertaining to life : it feels, moves,
feeds, and multiplies. In the
complex or many-celled organisms
Fig. 64.—Cells of Root of Fritillary (magnified 550
these functions are divided among
diameters).
the cells, each of which is in
from
dependent, but nevertheless adapts A. Very young cellabove near apex.
B. From two mm.
it.
itself for the work it has to do, C. From about 8 mm. h, cell-wall; /, protoplasm ; k, nucleus ; kk
nucleoli; 5, vacuoles and cell-sap cavity. (After Sachs.)
acting in common with its fellow
cells. Division of labour causes differ of the energy derived from food, and the
ence of structure—stem, root, sap, leaf, cell divides equally at the kernel or
and seed in the plant; bone, muscle, nucleus. The slimy protoplasm distri
nerve-tissue, blood, and egg in the butes itself around each nucleus as the
animal: all are communities of cells of two part company, to grow and divide
astounding minuteness variously modi- again in like manner ad infinitum. To
these lowest Protozoa we may apply the
any thing but an act of philosophical faith.”—
words, “ thou art the same, and thy years
Huxley’s Critiques and Addresses, p. 238. (The
italics are mine.)
shall have no end,” at least till all life
�9c
THE ORIGIN OF LIFE-FORMS
here has end ; for they were the Alpha,
and may be the Omega, in the earth’s
life-history; neither is one before nor
after the other, since there is no descent
amongst them, but only lateral multipli
cation.
In many Protozoa a small
portion of the parent is detached—a
•m
Fig. 65.—Cell.
process known as generation by budding;
but this and other modes of whole or
partial fission are classed together as
reproduction by multiplication.
The next stage in structure is when the
cells in dividing remain, to their common
advantage, grouped together, as in all
animals above the Protozoa.
The cells divide 1 in definite order into
two, then into four, eight, sixteen, and so
on, clustering together in a morula, or
mulberry-like mass, in which a cavity
filled with fluid is formed, the cells being
parted and driven to the surface.
Mutual pressure, as they continue to
subdivide, causes them to flatten and
range themselves side by side in a single
layer, forming what is called a blastosphere
(Gr. blastos, a bud).
By a process
which is somewhat obscure (for we are
dealing with the movements of very
1 Cell-division does not extend to the food
yolk which the eggs of birds, reptiles, and many
other animals contain for the nutriment of the
embryo.
minute bodies), but which corresponds
to the conversion of a small india-rubber
ball, having a pinhole in it, into a two
walled cup by pushing it in with the
finger, the single-layered sphere becomes
changed into a double layered hood- or
horseshoe-like structure, called a gas
trula (Gr. dim. of gaster, stomach).1
The simpler stationary animals, as
sponges and polyps, do not advance
beyond this stage, but in all animals
above them, in which bilateral structure,
probably through free movement in a
given direction, is developed, a third
layer larger and more complex arises.
The other two layers apparently take
an equal share in its formation, and from
its subdivision the greater number of
organs of the body, be it of a worm or a
man, are developed. Passing over much
technical detail, it must suffice to say
that the upper layer gives rise to the skin,
the nervous system, and organs of sense ;
the lower layer to the intestinal canal and
appendages ; and the middle layer to the
general skeleton, the heart, and other
important organs. Thus does the future
animal emerge from
the gastrula stage, and
pass into the embryo
stage, until an ad
vanced period of which
the embryos of verte
brates, whether fish,
tortoise, dog, ape, or
man, cannot be dis
tinguished from one
another, so close are the likenesses both
in outward form and structure.
All plants and animals above the
lowest are reproduced by the agency of
special cells, the impregnation of the
nucleus of the germ or egg-cell of the
female by the nucleus of the sperm-cell
of the male being necessary to set up
the series of changes which result in the
future animal.2 There are numerous
1 On the variations in the gastrula type, see
Haeckel’s Evolution of Man, i, 231, and plates
2 and 3, pp. 240-2.
2 At the present time the cell theory, in con
sequence of recent investigations into the struc-
�THE ORIGIN OF LIFE-FORMS
variations in the organs of reproduction,
but whatever unlikenesses exist in detail
do not affect this general statement; alga
and oak, sponge and man, are alike
developed from germs variously called
spores, sacs, seeds, and eggs. The
91
cell, epitomises the history of the
ancestral forms of its species.
The transmission of parental form and
structure, as well as of mental character,
to offspring, being clear, the question
suggests itself, How have variations,
resulting in millions of past and present
species of plants and animals, arisen ?
Professor Huxley says that “ the great
need of the doctrine of evolution is a
theory of variation.”1 When, however,
we consider the mobility and minute
complexity of structure of living things
invisible to the naked eye, and their
response to every shiver of energy from
without, we have sufficing factors to
structure of the fertilised egg of the
parent determines the structure of the
offspring, which to some extent repro
duces the series of forms through which
its ancestors passed as it progresses to
a, b, brain vesicles ; c, blastoderm ; d, primitive vertebras ;
e, medullary cord ; f, upper layer or body-wall.
Fig. 68.—Gastrula Stage.
A, upper cell layer; B, lower cell layer ; C, primitive
mouth ; D, body-cavity.
its adult state. In other words, the
individual, as it develops from the eggture and metamorphosis of the nucleus, is
undergoing a new development of great signifi
cance, which, among other things, foreshadows
the possibility of the establishment of a physical
theory of heredity on a safer foundation than
those which Buffon and Darwin devised. (Hux
ley, art. “ Science,” Reign of Queen Victoria,
ii, 376.) “The pith of the matter is that
structural elements of the male nucleus appear
to be associated with those of the female in the
fecundated ovum and all its derived cells.”
(Extract from a letter from Professor Huxley to
the Author.) And cf. Wiedersheim’s Comf.
Anat. of Vertebrates, pp. 4, 300.
produce unstableness which will result
in unlikeness of parts. Given a body
which, although a minute speck, contains
billions of molecules performing compli
cated movements of immense rapidity,
and sensitive in an inconceivable degree
to the play of vibrations impinging upon
them at the rate of hundreds of trillions
per second, would not the marvel be if
these quivering particles of the structure,
shaken by energies within, and by still
more potent energies without, did not
undergo continuous redistribution ? 2
1 Critiques and Addresses, p. 299; and cf.
Science and Culture, p. 307.
2 “ What organism can pass through life
without being subjected to more or less new
conditions ? What life is ever the exact fac
simile of another? And in a matter of such
�THE ORIGIN OF LIFE-FORMS
The position may be thus stated:—
The organism has—(i) Infinite complex
ity of structure ; (2) inherited tendencies;
(3) mobility and continuous motion,
therefore capacity to vary. (4) Varia
tions are induced by the surroundings
on which, as vehicles of energy, life
depends; (5) when the surroundings
change, the organism adapts itself or not
to the change ; (6) such as fail to adapt
themselves perish; (7) such as adapt
themselves vary in greater or lesser
degree; (8) these variations, being
transmitted, are stages in the develop
ment of different life-forms. To put the
and adapting hints from Malthus 1 and
other writers in the clearing up of ques
tions suggested by observations extend
ing over many years, Darwin propounded
a theory which in the judgment of every
biologist unfettered by predilections or
prejudices, accounts in large degree for
the origin of species.2
1 See Darwin’s Letter to Haeckel, Hist, of Crea
tion,!. 134 ; also Darwin’s Life and Letters, i. 83.
2 “ I am satisfied that natural selection is a
true cause ; and whatever may be the final result
of our present inquiries—whether animated
nature be derived from one ancestral source or
from many—the publication of the Origin of
Species will none the less have constituted an
Fig. 70.—Corresponding stages in the development of
Fish
Dog
Man
a., brain ; b, eye ; c, ear ; d, gills ; e, tail.
matter briefly, likenesses are inherited,
variations are acquired.
This brings us to the theory linked
with Darwin’s name, which explains by
what operation of natural causes the
highest plants and animals have
descended by true generation and slow
modification from less complex life-forms,
and these in ever-lessening degrees of
complexity and unlikeness, until the
common starting-point from the lowest
or one-celled organism is reached.
Following Lyell’s method of explaining
the past by agencies still in operation,
extreme delicacy as the adjustment of psychical
and physical relations, who can say how small a
disturbance of established equilibrium may not
involve how great a rearrangement?”—Luck or
Cunning? p. 273, by Samuel Butler. (See
Headley’s Problems of Evolution, pp. 33, 38. )
epoch in the history of biology.”—Lubbock’s
Origin, &c., of Insects, p. 83 ; and cf. Spencer’s
Factors of Organic Evolution, passim, for dis
cussion of the limitations of Darwin’s theory. As
opposed to the so-called Neo-Darwinians, who
plead, with Weismann, for the “ all-sufficiency of
natural selection,” Mr. Spencer defends, with
modifications, the theory of Lamarck that the
influence of external conditions and the exercise
of their organs by animals have been factors in
the origin of species.
In certain ill-informed and prejudiced quarters,
the statement has been circulated that the experi
ments on plants made by the Abbé Mendel above
forty years ago, and revived by Professor de Vries,
the result of which is to show that evolution may
proceed by large or sudden steps (“mutations”
they are called) and not solely by small steps, as
Darwin held, shake the theory of natural selec
tion, whereas that theory is in no wise affected by
such experiments. As an explanation “ of the
origin of species by the survival of selected races
in the. struggle for existence it is more firmly
established than ever.” (Cf. Sir Ray Lankester’s
Kingdom of Man, p. 125.)
�Chapter IX
THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
The history of the slow but sure pre
paration of the scientific world for the
reception of a theory displacing the old
notions of the fixity of species ; and the
record of the kings and prophets who
foreknew the coming day, but who died
“ without the sight," are set forth by Grant
Allen in his monograph on Charles
Darwin. Commending the reading of
that book, especially of the fifth chapter,
as superseding the need for repeating the
story here, we may pass to a rapid sum
mary of the evidence as to the mutability
of species.
It should be noted at the outset that
“ species ” is a convenient term to
denote groups of individuals having
certain characters in common, but that
no one definition of “ species ” has
satisfied all naturalists.
The term
“variety” is almost equally difficult to
define; but practically, when a naturalist
can unite by means of close intermediate
links any two forms, he treats the one
as a “variety ” of the other, ranking the
most common, but sometimes the one
first described, as the “ species,” and the
other as the “ variety.”1
i. No two individuals of the same
species are exactly alike; each tends to
vary.
Of this obvious fact every
species, with its several varieties, from
man downwards, supplies abundant
illustration. Of the hundreds of thou
sands of faces that we meet in the course
of the year in any large city, each has
1 Cf. Origin of Species, p. 33> 6th ed.
some feature to mark it from every
other ; the practised eye of the shepherd
recognises each sheep in his flock, of the
Laplander each reindeer among the
herd crowded “ like ants on an anthill,”
and of the gardener each hyacinth among
a thousand bulbs. Children of the same
parents vary in size, feature, complex
ion, character, and constitution, often
very obviously, but sometimes too
obscurely, for cursory detection ; and this
law of general resemblance, with more
or less variation in detail, applies to all
animals and plants.1 The tendency to
vary, which in our ignorance of its ulti
mate causes we say “ inheres ” in the
organism, and of which what are called
“ sports ” furnish the best illustration,2
is fostered by the change of condition in
which the animal or plant may be placed,
as shown in its more marked tendency
to vary in a domesticated than in a wild
state. For example, when the common
ringed snake, which in its natural state
is oviparous, is confined in a cage in
which no sand is strewn, it becomes
viviparous.
Throughout these pages stress has
been laid on the fact that the organ
adapts itself to the work which it has to
do; hence changes of structure in a
species are necessitated to fit it for an
altered state of things. This implies
increased or lessened activity on the part
of certain organs, the use or disuse lead1 Cf. Animals and Plants under Domestica
tion, i, 445 ; ii, 238, 2nd ed.
2 Origin of Species, p. 8 ; A. and P., i, 397.
�94
THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
ing, under the action of natural selection
working through long ages, to their
development or suppression.
2. Variations are transmitted, and
therefore tend to become permanent. In
other words, what is peculiar to the
parent plant or animal reappears in the
offspring. This is known as “descent
with modification,” the import of which
will be shown later on.
3. Man takes advantage of these trans
mitted unlikenesses to produce new varieties
of plants and animals. He selects cer
tain individuals possessing variations
which he wants to preserve, and allows
only them to breed together, by which
means in the course of time he produces
varieties differing greatly from the parent
form with which he started. The stock
example of this is the pigeon. All our
domestic pigeons, exceeding in number
a hundred well-marked races, are
descended from the ordinary blue rock
pigeon of the European coasts. Varia
tions as marked as the fan-tail, the
tumbler, and the pouter, have been pro
duced by the breeder selecting birds
with certain peculiarities, and choosing
from each successive brood only those
which exhibited the same peculiarities
in more marked form, the result being,
after a long time, the production of
entirely new varieties. The same method
has given us different races of dogs,
sheep, horses, and other domestic
animals. The fleetest horses are chosen
to breed together; then the fleetest off
spring of these in succession, until
horses are produced whose swiftness far
exceeds that of the originally selected
pairs. In the development of the cart
horse, strength, not speed, is the quality
selected ; while in the marked unlikeness
between dogs we see the result of
artificial selection in producing such
varieties as the bloodhound, the terrier,
and the spaniel. What varieties in
flowers, vegetables, and fruits—as, for
example, the development of the numer
ous kinds of apples from the small, sour
crab species—the like method has in
duced, is too well known to need detailed
reference here.
When we see how
successfully this choice of slight variations
has brought about plants and animals
best adapted to the service of man, we
may desire the time when man shall so
realise his duty to the race that the
multiplication of the rickety, both
physically and morally, will cease, and
men and women only of the highest type
reproduce their kind.
Now the important work which Darwin
did was to show that what man does on
a small scale within a limited range of
time, nature does on a large scale during
countless epochs; with the further differ
ence that the action of nature is not pur
posive, as is the action of man, but in
volved in the necessities of things. We
may quote what Darwin says on this
matter :—
“As man can produce, and certainly
has produced, a great result by his
methodical and unconscious means of
selection, wh§t may not natural selection
effect? Man can act only on external
and visible characters : Nature, if I may
be allowed to personify the natural pre
servation or survival of the fittest, cares
nothing for appearances, except in so far
as they are 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, as is implied by the fact
of their selection. 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 long-backed 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 pro-
�THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
ductions. He often begins his selection
by some half-monstrous form, or at least
by some modification prominent enough
to catch the eye or to be plainly useful
to him. Under Nature the slightest
differences of structure or constitution
may well turn the nicely balanced scale
in the struggle for life, and so be pre
served. How fleeting are the wishes
and efforts of man ! how short his time !
and, consequently, how poor will be his
results, compared with those accumu
lated by Nature during whole geo
logical periods ! Can we wonder, then,
that
Nature’s productions should
be far ‘ truer ’ in character than man’s
productions; that they should be in
finitely better adapted to the most com
plex conditions of life, and should plainly
bear the stamp of far higher workman
ship ? ”1
4. More organisms are born than sur
vive. To quote Darwin once more,
“ there is no exception to the rule that
every organic being naturally increases
at so high a rate that, if not destroyed,
the earth would soon be covered by the
progeny of a single pair. Even slowbreeding man has doubled in twentyfive years, and at this rate in less than a
thousand years there would literally not
be standing-room for his progeny.”2
If all the offspring of the elephant, the
slowest breeder known, survived, there
would be in seven hundred and fifty
years nearly nineteen million elephants
alive, descended from the first pair. If
the eight or nine million eggs which the
roe of a cod is said to contain developed
into adult cod-fishes, the sea would
quickly become a solid mass of them.
So prolific is its progeny after progeny,
that the common house-fly is computed
to produce twenty-one millions in a sea
son ; while so enormous is the laying
power of the aphis, or plant-louse, that
the tenth brood of one parent, without
adding the products of all the gener
ations which precede the tenth, would
contain more ponderable matter than all
1 Cf. Origin of Species, p. 65.
2 Ibid, p. 51-
95
the population of China, estimating this
at five hundred millions !
It is the same with plants. If an
annual plant produced only two seeds
yearly, and all the seedlings survived and
reproduced in like number, one million
plants would be produced in twenty
years from the single ancestor. Should
the increase be at the rate of fifty seeds
yearly, the result, if unchecked, would be
to cover the whole globe in nine years,
leaving no room for other plants. The
lower organisms multiply with astonish
ing rapidity, some minute fungi increasing
a billionfold in a few hours, while the
protococcus, or red snow, multiplies so
fast as to tinge many acres of snow with
its crimson in a night. But we need
notgive further examples of this fecundity
whereby nature, “ so careless of the
single life,” secures the race against
extinction.
5. The result is obvious: a ceaseless
struggle for food and place. In that
struggle the race is to the swift, and the
battle to the strong; the weaker, be it
in brain or body, going to the wall, the
vast majority never reaching maturity, or,
if they do arrive at it, attaining it only to
be starved or slain. As, amongst men
competition is sharper between those of
the same trade, so throughout the or
ganic world the struggle is less severe
between different species than between
members of the same species, because
these compete most fiercely for their
common needs—plants for the same
soil, carnivora for the same prey. But
whether the battle is fought between
allied or unallied species, the victory is
never doubtful; it is assured to the plant
or animal that has some advantage, how ■
ever slight, which its opponent lacks.
Among plants growing in a dry soil,
those whose leaves have thicker hairs
upon them will absorb more moisture
from the air than plants with less hairy
leaves, and, competing successfully with
these, will survive to transmit their ad
vantageous variations. Again, such as
are better able to resist the depredations
of burglarious insects by protection of
�96
THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
thorny or prickly stems, or by nauseous
taste, will thrive and multiply, while
plants lacking these defences dwindle
and become extinct. So with those
which by showy colours of their flowers
and sweeter nectar attract insects whose
visits are desired as carriers of pollen
from stamens to pistils. These secure
propagation, while plants less attractive
remain barren. The birds that are
strongest on the wing reach the land
whither they migrate, while the weaker
perish by the way. The lions of sharper
sight and more supple spring, the wolves
of keener scent, secure their prey, while
the feebler members starve. It is with
man as with the organisms below him :
the quickest in intellect, and those with
greater power of endurance, distance the
weak or the stupid, who fall behind, and
finally slip out of the ranks altogether.
Sometimes the area of struggle is nar
rowed, and survival secured by retreat,
as of the sloth to trees, and of digging
and burrowing animals underground.
The subtilty and variety of the condi
tions upon which natural selection seizes
escape the keenest observers. Of their
success, however, in tracing the varying
fortunes of species Darwin gives a strik
ing illustration in his explanation of the
absence of wild oxen and horses in
Paraguay. This is due to the action of
a small fly which lays its eggs in the
navel of newly born calves and foals, the
maggots hatched from the eggs causing
the death of the young animals. Now,
supposing this parasitic fly to be de
stroyed by an insect-eating bird, oxen
and horses would abound in a wild state,
and, as they would eat certain plants,
the vegetation would be altered, and
these changes in the flora and fauna
would involve changes of increasing
complexity.
The interrelation between the propor
tion of old maids and an abundance of
red clover is not, prima facie, quite as
obvious. But it may be proved in this
wise. The clover is fertilised by humblebees, the number of which is determined
by the number of field-mice, which de
stroy their nests. The number of field
mice, again, is determined by the
number of cats, and the number of
these, finally, by the number of old
maids who keep them ! Therefore, as
red clover is excellent food for cattle,
and cattle are excellent food for man,
elderly spinsters are benefactors to their
species !
The important part played by colour
and mimicry1 in the struggle for life has
been demonstrated by Darwin, Wallace,
Bates,2 Belt, and other acute observers.
The more closely that an animal approxi
mates in form and hue to its surround
ings, the easier does it escape detection
by its pursuer, and the easier does it
avoid the notice of the prey which it
pursues. In conformity with this we
find that most animals are protectively
coloured, while those which are not are so
constituted as to render such protection
needless. As illustrative of the opera
tion of natural selection in this matter,
we may borrow an admirable example
from Grant Allen’s Charles Darwin.
“ In the desert, with its monotonous
sandy colouring, a black insect or a white
insect, still more a red insect or a blue
insect, would be immediately detected
and devoured by its natural enemies, the
1 This word is not used as implying conscious
imitation, but as conveniently grouping re
semblances which, in the degree that they are
protective or helpful, give advantage to the
individual exhibiting them.
2 Contributions to an Insect Fauna of the
Amazons Valley (Trans. Linn. Soc., November,
1861), of which Darwin says, in a letter to
Bates (Az/e and Letters, ii, 391): “ It is one of
the most remarkable and admirable papers I
ever read . . . solving a wonderful problem.”
This paper should not be allowed to lie buried
in a learned society’s Transactions, for the
illustrations of .mimetic analogies between
members of widely distinct families and between
insects and their surroundings which it gives are,
as Darwin adds, “truly marvellous.” Such are
those of moths, whose wings are coloured and
veined like the fallen leaves on which they lie
motionless, of hunting-spiders which mimic
flower-buds, and of large caterpillars which
resemble poisonous snakes. An abstract of the
paper is given in my Memoir of Bates
(pp. xxxviii-xliv) prefaced to reprint of his
Naturalist on the Amazons, 1892.
�THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
birds and the lizards. But any greyish
or yellowish insects would be less likely
to attract attention at first sight, and
would be overlooked as long as there
were any more conspicuous individuals
the desert, the stripes upon the tiger,
which, parallel with the vertical stems of
bamboo, conceal him as he stealthily
nears his prey, the brilliant green of
tropical birds, the leaf-life form and
colours of certain insects, the dried twig
like form of many caterpillars, the bark
like appearance of tree-frogs, the harmony
of the ptarmigan’s summer plumage with
the lichen-coloured stones on which it
sits, the dusky colour of creatures that
haunt the night, the bluish transparency
of animals which live on the surface of
the sea, the gravel-like colour of flat-fish
that live at the bottom, and the gorgeous
tints of those that swim among the coral
reefs.
Among the secondary causes of modifi
cation of species among animals Darwin
gives prominence to “ sexual selection,”
or the struggle between males for the
possession of females ; the result being
that the stronger males secure mates,
and transmit the qualities which have
given them the mastery to their offspring.
Every farmyard combat illustrates the
of their own kind about for the birds and
lizards to feed on. Hence in a very
short time the desert would be de
populated of all but the greyest and
yellowest insects ; and among these the
birds would pick out those which differed
most markedly in hue and shade from
the sand around
them. But those
which happened to
vary most in the
direction of a sandy
or spotty colour
would be most like
ly to survive, and
to become the par
ents of future gener
ations. Thus, in
the course of long
ages, all the insects
which inhabit des
erts have become
sand-coloured, be
Fig. 72.—Walking-stick Insect.
cause the least
sandy were perpetually picked out for truth of Gilbert White’s prose1 and
destruction by their ever-watchful foes, Schiller’s poetry:—
while the most sandy escaped, and
Meanwhile, until Philosophy
multiplied and replenished the earth
Sustains the structure of the world,
Her workings will be carried on
with their own likes.”1
By hunger and by love,
Thus, then, is explained the tawny
colour of the larger animals that inhabit and among the larger animals—as stags
1 P. 97; and cf. G. A.’s art. “Mimicry,”
Ency. Brit., xvi. p. 341.
1 White’s Selborne, letter xi., to Hon. Daines
Barrington.
D
�98
THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
and deer, and notably sea-lions 1—the
deadliest combats take place at certain
seasons for possession of the females.
But there is competition less fierce in
character, if not less fatal to the weaker
or unendowed, strength giving place to
grace of form, brightness of colour,1 and
2
witchery of song, the females making
choice of the male who, by his beauty of
form, colour, odour, or voice, attracts
them most, or who, as among the highest
species, has wealth or good social
position. These last condone infirmity
and ugliness.
It is clear that sexual selection largely
explains the development of special
features, which, transmitted in increasing
degree through a series of generations,
have contributed to the survival of the
fittest. For whatever these features may
be, whether weapons of defence or
attack, plumage and song of birds, colour
of butterflies, perfume as of the muskdeer, or acrid taste as of the toad, their
presence is explained by their utility,
since, as with the flowers and scents
wherewith plants attract insects to secure
fertilisation, the primary function of
colour, form, ornament, and whatever
else has given advantage to plant or
animal over its competitors, is its service
to the organism, and not, as man in his
fond delusion has assumed, the delight
or profit which it has given to him.
6. Natural selection tends to maintain
1 Cf. Elliot’s An Arctic Province, ch. x., for
a vivid account of the battles between the males
for priority on the breeding-grounds of the
Pribylov Islands.
2 “ As colours seem to be the chief external
sexual distinction in many birds, these colours do
not take place till sexual attachments begin to
obtain. And the case is the same in quadrupeds,
among whom, in their younger days, the sexes
differ but little ; but as they advance to maturity,
horns and shaggy manes, beards and brawny
necks, &c., &c., strongly discriminate the male
from the female. We may instance still farther
in our own species, where a beard and stronger
features are usually characteristic of the male
sex : but this sexual diversity does not take
place in earlier life ; for a beautiful youth shall
be so like a beautiful girl that the difference
shall not be discernible.”—White’s Selborne,
letter vi., to Hon. Daines Barrington.
the balance between living things and
their .surroundings. These surroundings
change ; therefore living things must adapt
themselves thereto, or perish.
In treating of the obscurity which
hangs around the ultimate causes of
variation, stress has been laid on the
ceaseless and elusively complex interplay
between organisms and the medium
which surrounds, quickens, and nourishes
them. As Gegenbaur remarks,1 the
energies which cause change in the
organism either lie without it, or for the
most part are to be sought for without it,
the range of variation of the plant being,
by reason of its fixed conditions, limited
as compared with that of the locomotive
animal.
It has been shown already that the
touch of the medium was the first
quickener of variation in the rise of the
earliest approach to unlikeness at the
surface, as in the membranous film which
envelops the lowest life-forms, and,
among the higher animals, in the gradual
specialisation of lines of communication
—the nervous system and sense organs
—with the outer world from infoldings
of the skin. The diffused sensitiveness
to smell, light, and sound became local
ised, the sense of touch remaining general
over the body-surface, except where
horny skin is secreted. Obviously, there
fore, the tendency to vary which inheres
in living things being stimulated by
interaction between them and their sur
roundings, the degree in which variations
are useful to living things—i.e., in en
abling them to win in the universal
struggle for food and place—determines,
under the action of natural selection,
their survival.
The slow but ceaseless changes in
things without have involved adaptive
changes in all organisms except the
lowest. Seemingly, all things remain
1 Comp. Anat. (English ed.), p/57. “ I have
been led to place somewhat more value on the
definite and direct action of external conditions.”
Letter to Carus, May 1869, Darwin's Life and
Letters, iii. 109 ; and cf. letter to Moritz Wag
ner, October 1876, ibid., p. 159.
�THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
as they were from the beginning. The
range of our experience is too narrow,
the time since scientific observation of
nature began is comparatively so recent,
the changes in living things often
so beyond direct detection, that we
cannot wonder at people’s reluctance
to accept the theory that the countless
species of plants and animals which
have succeeded one another have a
Common descent, through infinite
modification, from structureless germs.
And, in fact, not only is life vastly
older than any record of it, but the
fossil-yielding rocks supply no key to
the origin of the leading groups, whose
representative types of to-day are so
little altered that every fossil as yet
found can be put into existing classes.
Huxley remarks that “ the whole lapse
of geological time has thus far yielded
not a single new ordinal type of vege
table structure
and although “ the
positive change in passing from the
recent to the ancient animal world is
greater, it is still singularly small.”1
The variation in ordinal type of animal
structure is only about ten per cent, of
the whole.
Yet we know that nothing is rigid;
the earth records the gradual ascent of
life-forms in structure, and the changes
in its crust, in a scripture that cannot be
broken. The agencies within, and the
far more potent agencies without, that
have wrought those changes, pursue
without pause their slow and sometimes
sudden working. The earth itself
speeds through space, heedless of the
freight of life that throbs and struggles
on its surface, and that at last is laid to
sleep in its bosom ; careens and brings
the seasons in their sureness; spins and
gives, unfailing, the glory of the sunrise
and the sunset; and, in periodic changes
of its orbit, crowns at one epoch its
northern pole with vines and oaks and
water-lilies, and at another epoch covers
it with impassable ice.
Changes of climate and level, with
1 Lay Sermons, p. 216.
99
the alterations in soil which they bring
about, profoundly affect food and the
power to obtain it. And the necessity
for food being a strong—perhaps the
strongest—stimulus to motion, the
organism which the more readily adapts
itself to the changed conditions, or is
better equipped to resist them, wins in
the struggle. The new functions to be
discharged involve changes in structure,
because the organs exist for the work
which they have to do, not the work for
the organs. Moreover, changes which
arise in the structure are not limited to
one part, the whole organisation being,
in Darwin’s words, “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.” Take, for example, the
growth of the deer’s antlers, which in
some species attain a weight of seventy
pounds in a few weeks. The increased
supply of blood which this involves
necessitates readjustment of circulation,
and the increased weight which the
skull has to bear necessitates more
powerful muscles and ligaments, with
increased strength of the bones to which
they are attached. More food is needed
to supply the energy thus expended,
involving more active digestion, and
therefore modification of the digestive
organs. Again, in man the slow ac
quirement of an erect position led to
flattening of the feet, and to projection
of the heel as support; to altered
position of the head with its added
weight of brain, so as to be nicely
balanced on the spine,' which became
peculiarly curved ; and to the readjust
ment of a large number of muscles.
Then there are the changes wrought
after long lapses of time by use and
disuse, in the one case leading to the
development of organs, in the other
case to their decline.1 “ Thus I find,”
1 The question how far use and disuse are
true causes of change of organic type has long
exercised the attention of biologists, some among
whom, notably Professor Weismann, contend
�too
THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
Darwin remarks, “ in the domestic duck
that the bones of the wing weigh less
and the bones of the leg more in pro
portion to the whole skeleton than do
the same bones in the wild duck; and
this change may be safely attributed to
the domestic duck flying much less and
walking much more than its wild
parents,”1 or, more correctly, its wild
ancestors. But there are many changes
induced in organs by their use or disuse
on the part of the animal which are not
transmitted ; they die with the individual
in which they occur. Like mutilations
of parts of the body, which are practised
through successive generations of indi
viduals, they are powerless to affect the
type..
It is to natural selection that we must
more often refer modifications which,
appearing as relics of structure common
to large groups, have a specious look of
being due to individual use or disuse.
Take the familiar example of the true
whale. The epitome of its ancestry
which the embryo presents reveals its
descent from land mammals having
short fore- and hind-limbs, scanty cover
ing of hair, broad beaver-like tails, teeth
of different shape, and well-developed
sense-organs, especially of smell. These
forefathers of the whale probably lived in
marshy districts, and, being omnivorous,
sought their food in both swamp and
shallow water; but as conditions more
and more adverse to life on land super
vened, they were gradually modified
under the action of natural selection in
to dolphin-like creatures, living in fresh
water, and at last finding their way into
the ocean, from which the huge sea
lizards of earlier epochs had disappeared,
leaving these later leviathans scope ‘ ‘ to
play therein.” Hence are explained the
adaptive changes of structure: the forethat changes acquired by the individual are never
transmitted. But the arguments as yet adduced
by him leave his case not proven. The subject
is, however, too technical for enlargement here.
See article by the author in Chambers's Cyclop.
s.v.
1 Origin opSpecies, p. 8, and cf. pp. 131, 401,
410; Animals and Plants, ii., 313, 345.
limbs were modified into flippers en
closed in a fin-like sac, but retaining the
bones corresponding to like structures in
other mammals, as in the arm of man,
the wing of the bat, and the fore-leg of
the horse. Traces of the hind-legs may
be detected in a few species; the tail,
which acted as a powerful swimming
organ, became divided into two lobes;
the head became fish-like in shape; the
seven bones of the neck, common to
most mammals, grew together ; the skin
became hairless; and the teeth, which
appear in the young of the true whale
but are never cut, gave place to hanging
fringes of whalebone, in the meshes of
which the animal entangles the minute
organisms it feeds upon. In the seal,
which is the modified descendant of
land flesh-feeders, the hind-legs have
been developed, while the tail remains
rudimentary.
The explanation is that both whales
and seals are the gradually modified
descendants of ancestors who, in virtue
of their favourable adaptation to altered
conditions, survived under the agency of
natural selection, while the majority,
being unfit or less adapted, perished.
Variety of readjustment to altered
surroundings, through like causes, result
ing in progress in some directions and in
stagnation in other directions, is further
evidenced in existing modifications of
the common mammalian type. We find
one large group—the plant-feeders—
developing organs suited to their func
tions, as teeth for grinding instead of for
tearing, large stomachs, and horny or
bony structures for combat, the evolution
of which in the deer’s ancestry is re
capitulated year by year in the individual
from the boss to the noble branching
antlers. In the flesh-feeders we find
that higher intelligence which the steal
thy or open pursuit of other animals
required, economy of bulk, great muscu
lar strength united to quickness of action,
and teeth and claws adapted for attacking
and readily seizing prey.
In both groups we find progression of
parts which in the Primates, the group
�THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
including man, are well-nigh stationary.
Among this group, limbs, teeth, and or
gans of digestion have all been slightly
modified, and no organs of defence or
attack developed. The explanation is
that these animals, being unable to com
pete with the larger mammals, took to an
arboreal life, which induced few variations
of bodily structure, the most important
being opposable thumbs and great toes
for grasping. But the need for alertness
against foes sharpened their wits, and the
need of combination quickened the social
instincts, so that the energy which in the
flesh-feeders and the plant-feeders was
stored in limb and muscle was diverted
in the Primates to development of brain.
They thus escaped the limitations of one
condition, which determined, say, the de
velopment of lions and rhinoceroses in a
given direction, and they preserved the
power to adapt themselves to very diverse
conditions. Whichever among the arbo
real creatures possessed any favourable
variation, however slight, in structure of
brain and sense-organs, would secure an
advantage over less favoured rivals in the
struggle for food and mates and elbow
room. The qualities which gave them
success would be transmitted to their off
spring, the distance gained in one
generation would be increased in the
next, brain-power conquering brute force,
and skill outwitting strength.
And while some of them remained
arboreal in habits, never moving easily
on the ground, although making some ap
proach to bipedal motion, as seen in the
shambling gait of the man-like apes,
others developed a mode of walking on
the hind-limbs which entirely set free the
fore-limbs as organs of support, and en
abled them to be used as organs of
handling and throwing. Whatever were
the conditions which permitted this, the
enormous advantage which it gave is
obvious. It was the making of man.
His bipedal and erect position involved
exchange of tree-life for life on the ground,
bringing him into new relations with his
surroundings, and ultimately giving him
the mastery over them.
IOI
We see in lower animals, as the ele
phant, the monkey, the opossum, and
the parrot, that their power to grasp an
object by reason of their prehensile or
gans, and thus to learn something about
its nature, raises them in the scale of in
telligence ;1 and when we find in man a
yet more perfect instrument to carry out
the behests of his brain, we may see in
the interaction of brain and hand a main
factor in his development. The struc
tural differences between him and the
man-like apes are insignificant; the
impassable chasm lies in his larger and
more complex thinking apparatus. The
action of natural selection became re
stricted, except in minor changes, as of
the jaw, to his mental faculties. Yet
Fig. 73.—Gorilla walking.
(From Huxley’s Man's Place in Nature, p. 49.)
even in brain-structure the differences
between him and the chimpanzee are
slight when compared with the differences
between the brain of the chimpanzee and
the lemur. It is in the deeper furrows
and the more intricate convolutions that
the distinction lies ; but even here the
gap between civilised and savage man is
greater than that between the savage and
the man-like apes.2 Therefore, in fol
lowing evolution to its highest operations
and results, the comparison lies between
the several races of mankind. Darwin
says that he does not believe it possible
1 Of. Spencer’s Principles of Psychology, i.,
pp. 368-72.
2 Cf. Huxley’s Man s Place in Nattire, p. 78 ;
and his Note to chap, vii, of Descent of Man.
�102
THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
is the same which would lead every one
to desire to see the lion in his desert, the
tiger tearing his prey in the jungle, and
the rhinoceros wandering over the wide
plains of Africa.”
He describes the
Fuegians, who rank amongst the lowest
savages, as men “ whose very signs and
expressions are less intelligible to us than
those of the domesticated animals—men
who do not possess the instinct of those
animals, nor yet appear to boast of human
reason, or at least of arts consequent on
that reason.” 1 Such races are somewhat
nearer to the ape than to the European,
and it is from like accounts of existing
savages2 that we may form a rough
picture of “ primitive ” man.
Doubtless he was lower than the low
est of these—a powerful, cunning biped,
with keen sense-organs (always sharper,
in virtueof constant exercise, in the savage
than in the civilised man, who supple
ments them by science), strong instincts,
uncontrolled and fitful emotions, small
faculty of wonder, and nascent reasoning
power; unable to forecast to-morrow or to
comprehend yesterday, living from hand
to mouth on the wild products of nature,
clothed in skin or bark, or daubed with
clay, and finding shelter in trees and
caves; ignorant of the simplest arts,
save to chip a stone missile, and perhaps
to produce fire; strong in his need of
life and vague sense of right to it and to
what he could get, but slowly impelled
by common perils and passions to form
ties, loose and haphazard at the outset,
with his kind, the power of combination
with them depending on sounds, signs,
and gestures.
To quote the striking description from
Lucretius, “ during the revolution of
many lustres of the sun through heaven
they led a life after the roving fashion of
wild beasts. No one then was a sturdy
Fig. 74.—Hemispheres of Brain of Chimpanzee and of guider of the bent plough, or knew how
Man, showing relative proportions of the parts.
to labour in the fields with iron or plant
(From Huxley’s
Place in Nature, p. ioi.)
in the ground young Saplings. What
to describe the difference between savage
and civilised man. “ It is the difference
a, posterior lobe ; b, lateral ventricle ; c, posterior cornu; x, hippocampus minor.
1 Naturalist s Voyage round the World, p. 504,
, | fed. 1879.
between a wild and tame animal; and
2 q Lumholtz’s Among Cannibals (1889),
.
part of the interest in beholding a savage | PP. 101, 179, 254, 271.
�THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
the sun and rain had given, what the earth
itself brought forth, was guerdon enough
to content their hearts.”1
Such, in broad outline, was probably
the general condition of the earliest
known wanderers, the rude relics of
whose presence are found associated with
the bones of huge extinct mammals in
old river beds and limestone caverns.
As the successive deposits and their
contents show, not till long ages had
passed, bringing new and settled condi
tions, with knowledge of agriculture,
metals, and other useful arts, do we find
any marked progress among mankind.
Even that progress, often checked in its
zigzag course, and never an unmixed
good, neither synonymous, as the many
think, with a nation’s imports and exports,
has been confined to a minority of the
species and to a narrow zone, while, com
pared to the antiquity of man, it is but
as yesterday. The enterprise of the
higher races has explored and utilised
large tracts, and the pressure of popula
tion at the centres of civilisation has
within quite recent periods vastly
extended their periphery; but whole
empires, like China, advancing to a
certain stage, have through isolation and
the tyranny of custom or dread of change,
stagnated, whilst the lowest races have
remained unmodified, like the lowest
organisms, and have more or less
succumbed before the imported vices
and the weapons of the wrhite man. But
the causes of arrest and of advance are
alike complex: man, like every other
living thing, is the creature of outward
and inward circumstances, and many
influences have worked in the shaping
of his destiny. Certainly, extremes of
climate have been fatal to advance
beyond a given stage; it is. in the
temperate zones that the incentives exist
to continuous and indefinite progress.
In reviewing the several operations by
which species have arisen, it is essential
to bear in mind that natural selection is
not causal, but only directive. It is
1 De Rerum Naturd, v. 933-938 ; and cf.
Odyssey, ix., 106-115.
103
powerless to bring about, the slightest
variation in organisms ; it is all-powerful
to preserve variations “ beneficial to the
being under its conditions of life ;.... . it
can do nothing until favourable individual
differences 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.
Moreover, since it tends to establish
balance between life and its surroundings,
it does not imply all-round development
of the higher from the lower. Its key
note is adaptation. To quote Herbert
Spencer’s remarks on the erroneous con
ception of evolution as implying that
everything has an intrinsic tendency to
become something higher, “ if in the case
of the living aggregates forming a species
the environing actions remain constant
from generation to generation, the species
remain constant. If those . actions
change, the species changes until it is in
adjustment with them. But it by no
means follows that this change in the
species constitutes a step in evolution.
Usually neither advance nor recession
results; and often, certain previously
acquired structures being rendered
superfluous, there results a simpler form.
Only now and then does the environing
change initiate in the organism a new
complication, and so produce a some
what higher type.” 2
The parasites notably, the sea-squirts,
lancelets, and the marvellous rotifers,
are examples of recession. Nor . these
alone; the history of mankind, with its
degenerate races, Bushmen,. Fuegians,
and, perhaps, Australians ; with its relics
of ancient civilisations, whose art we
can only feebly imitate, and whose types
of manliness we cannot hope to excel;
furnishes its monitions of the lethargy
and love of ease which precede the
downfall of peoples.
1 Origin of Species, pp. 63, 132, J37 5 An.
and Pl., i. 6-8, chap, xxiv.-xxvi. ; Heilprin, pp.
125, 212.
^Principles of Sociology, p. 107 ; Huxley’s
Amer. Add., p. 38; and in Letter to Lu^iDarwin’s Life and Letters, ii., 210.
�io4
THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
Examples of persistence of type are
supplied in the unaltered condition of
the simplest forms since the appearance
of their earliest known representatives.
Their simplicity has been their salvation.
A high organisation brings with it many
disadvantages, for the more complex the
structure the more liable is it to get out
of gear. We cannot have highly con
voluted brains, and at the same time
digestive organs simple and renewable
like those of the sea-cucumber. Death
is the price paid for complexity.
Of the propositions expounded in the
present chapter this is the sum :—No
two living things are exactly alike.
Their inherent tendency to vary is
excited by their surroundings, on which
all life depends, and to changes in which
they must adapt themselves or perish.
Every living thing transmits its qualities,
and therefore, among them, its variations,
to its offspring ; the more useful the varia
tion, the better is the plant or animal
equipped in the struggle for life. For as
all living things tend to multiply so
rapidly that the earth would be too small
in a very short time for a single species, a
fierce and ceaseless struggle is waged,
chiefly between the same species, for
food and place. The result is that by
far the larger number never reach
maturity, or are killed and eaten. In
the long result variations give rise to
new species.
The only assumption at the base of
Darwin’s theory is that sufficient time
has elapsed since the beginning of life
for the development of all past and
present species of plants and animals
from a common ancestry. As to the
age of the earth, more especially as a fit
and possible abode of life, geologists
and physicists are not agreed. The
geological estimate rests chiefly upon the
rates at which the deposit of sediment,
or the wearing away of soil by rain and
rivers, is going on; but that estimate is
based upon the assumption that present
changes are the measure of past changes,
whereas uniform action does not exclude
the possibility of great and sudden re
volutions. On the whole, the argument
from geological evidence is strongly in
favour of the lapse of not much less
than one hundred million years since the
earliest life-forms appeared and the
oldest stratified rocks began to be laid
down.1. This is much longer than the
physicists, reasoning from the origin and
age of the sun’s heat, the rate of the
earth’s cooling, and other data, are
willing to allow.2 But, however the
question may be finally settled, the result
cannot affect the evidence in support of
the theory of descent.
1 A second and recent method is to estimate
the increase of the proportion of sodium in the
sea by the annual supply from rivers. The
numerator—the amount of salt in the sea—is
known through the fair degree of uniformity in
the chemical composition of the great oceans,
and the denominator—the discovery by
analysis of the addition made by the rivers—
gives a value of about ninety million to a
hundred million years. See Joly’s Radioactivity
and Geology, pp. 157, 236, 275.
2 See Professor Perry’s article on “ The Age
of the Earth,” Nature, January 3, 1895; Pro
fessor Poulton’s Address in Section D, Brit.
Assoc., Nature, September 27, 1896. Revised
•and republished in his Essays on Evolution,
1908, Professor Perry appends this note thereto :
‘ ‘ Assume that there is adium in the sun, and this
gives us almost any multiple we please to imagine
of the total energy assumed by Helmholtz. We
are now in a position to say that the physicist can
make no calculation either as to the probable or
possible age of life on the earth ” (p. 15).
�Chapter X
PROOFS OF DERIVATION OF SPECIES
The evidence supplied by living things
in support of their common descent is
fivefold: viz. i, by embryology, or like
ness in their beginnings and develop
ment; 2, by morphology, or structural
likenesses; 3, by their classification; 4,
by their succession in time; and 5, by
their distribution in space.
1. Embryology.—-The eggs or germs
from which all organisms spring are, to
outward seeming, exactly alike, and this
likeness persists through the earlier
stages of all the higher animals, even
after the form is traceable in the embryo.
In proof of this Darwin quotes the
following from Von Baer, the discoverer
of this remarkable fact:—“ In my possession are two little
embryos in spirit, whose names I have
omitted to attach, and at present I am
quite unable to say to what class they
belong. They may be lizards, or small
birds, or very young mammalia, so com
plete is the similarity in the mode of for
mation of the head and trunk in these
animals. The extremities, however, are
still absent in these embryos. But even
if they had existed in the earliest stage
of their development we should learn
nothing, for the feet of lizards and mam
mals, the wings and feet of birds, no
less than the hands and feet of man, all
arise from the same fundamental form.”1
In further evidence of this interrelation
of living things, their embryos, as we
have seen, epitomise during development
the series of changes through which the
ancestral forms passed in their ascent
1 Origin of Species, p. 38S.
from the simple to the complex; the
higher structures passing through the
same stages as the lower structures up
to the point when they are marked off
from them, yet never becoming in detail
the form which they represent for the
time being. For example, the embryo
of man has at the outset gill-like slits on
each side of the neck like a fish'; these
give place to a membrane like that which
supersedes gills in the development of
birds and reptiles; the heart is at first a
simple pulsating chamber like that in
worms ; the back-bone is prolonged into
a movable tail; the great toe is extended
or opposable, like our thumbs and like
the toes of apes ; the body three months
before birth is covered all over with hair
except on the palms and soles. At birth
the head is relatively larger and the arms
relatively longer than in the adult; the
nose is bridgeless; both features, with
others which need not be detailed, being
distinctly ape-like. ■ Thus does the egg
from which man springs, a structure only
one hundred and twenty-fifth of an inch
in size, compress into a few weeks the
results of millions of years, and set
before us the history of his development
from fish-like and reptilian forms, and of
his more immediate descent from a hairy,
tailed quadruped. That which is in
dividual or peculiar to him, the physical
and mental character inherited, is left to
the slower development which follows
birth.
Besides the past history which the
embryo recapitulates, there are the
rudimentary structures of which relics
remain as witnesses to the former close
D*
�io6
PROOFS OF DERIVATION OF SPECIES
connection of organisms. Among these
are teeth in fœtal whales, remnants of
hind-limbs in certain snakes, wings
under the wing-cases of insects that do
things where they are found fully
developed.
2. Morphology.—Large groups of
species, whose habits are widely different,
present certain fundamental
likenesses of structure. The
arms of men and apes, the
fore-legs of quadrupeds, the
paddles of whales, the wings
of birds, the breast-fins of
fishes, are constructed on
the same pattern, but altered
to suit their several functions.
Nearly all mammals, from
the long-necked giraffe to
the short-necked elephant,
have seven neck-bones; the
eyes of the lamprey are
moved by six muscles which
correspond exactly to the six
which work the human eye;
a, gill-arches ; b, mid-brain ; c, eye ; d, nose ; e fore-brain f fore-ieg; all insects and Crustacea—
g, hind-leg.
moth and lobster, beetle and
not fly, rudiments of pointed ears and of cray-fish—are alike composed of twenty
a third eyelid in man, abortive stamens segments; the sepals, petals, stamens,
in plants, as in the snapdragon, and so and pistils of a flower are all modified
forth. Except as evidence of the modi leaves arranged in a spire. Such facts
fication of life-forms in which they occur need no comment.
3. Classification.—It has been shown
somewhat in detail that all plants fall
into two main groups, the flowerless and
the flowering, and that all animals may
be reduced to three types: (1) those
without body-cavity; (2) those with
body-cavity; (3) those with digestive
cavity separate from body-cavity. And
the general likenesses of structure upon
which division into sub-kingdoms is
based having been given in the chapters
on existing life-forms, it here suffices to
repeat that the old attempts at a linear
arrangement have failed, and that the
only true mode of presentment, both of
the life that is and that was, is that of a tree
Fig. 76. —Tortoise (4 weeks).
with short trunk, indicating common
a, gill-arches ; b, ear ; c, eye ; d, nose ; e, fore-brain ;
origin of the living from the non-living,
I, fore-leg ; g, hind-leg.
and divided into two large trunks repre
from other life-forms, and of persistency senting plants and animals respectively.
of type, these vestiges of organs are From each of these start large branches
meaningless; the functions they once representing classes, the larger branches
discharged have long ceased, being giving off smaller branches representing
exercised only in other and allied living families, and so on with smaller and
�PROOFS OF DERIVATION OF SPECIES
107
smaller branches representing orders and thing of the complicated subject of the
genera, until we come to leaves as geographical distribution of plants and
representing species, the height of the animals we must study the past as well
branch from which they are hanging as the present, and learn from both
indicating their place in the growth of geologist and astronomer, the one tell
ing us of the shiftings of land and
the great life-tree. (See Fig. 62.)
4. Succession.—Each formation has water, and the other accounting for
its peculiar groups of fossil remains the great climatal changes that have
representing the life-forms of the period ; swept over the globe.
the older the rock, the simpler are its
Every living thing has its definite
organic contents ; and, what is of no area of range: the sloth is peculiar to
mean importance, although transitional America ; the hippopotamus to Africa;
forms are from their nature fewer and the chamois to the Alps. The higher
less permanent than forms which have we climb, the hardier and more stunted
arrived at balance with their
surroundings, the fossil-yield
ing rocks have disclosed the
existence of several hitherto
missing links between species.
Reference has been made to
the proofs of descent of the
one-toed horse of to-day, with
his knee corresponding to
our wrist or ankle, from the
five-toed primitive horse
found in the Eocene beds of
North America, and to the
connecting link between
birds and reptiles supplied
by the archaeopteryx. To
these may be added, among
others, the compsognathus,
with its swan-like neck, its
toothed jaws, and hind-limbs Fig. 77.—A, Arm of Man. B, Fore-leg of Dog. C, Wing of Bird.
on which it walked. Then
there are the links between k, humerus ; r, radius ; u, ulna ; c, carpus ; m, metacarpus ; phalanges.
pigs and hippopotamuses in the ano- is all vegetation; tropical plants perish
plotherium; between tapirs, horses, in cold or even temperate zones; Arctic
and rhinoceroses in the palaeotherium; plants wither under the equator; while a
between seals and whales; between vast number of plants flourish only in
sloths and bearers ; between lemurs and water, their primeval life-home. Among
man-like apes ; and in the Devonian animals a few, notably man and the cat
strata forms occur which are considered genus, have spread themselves well-nigh
intermediate between ganoids and mud everywhere, but as a rule certain life
fishes. Thus one by one the blanks are forms—and this holds good of their
being filled up ; the faith of the biologist fossil representatives also—are restricted
is justified by his works.
to certain regions. Hence the land
5. Distribution.—Emerson says that has been divided into life-regions corre
“ the man of this age must be matricu sponding to that distribution, and the
lated in the university of sciences and water into life-regions measured by the
tendencies flowing from all past periods ”; limits of depth at which marine forms
and certainly if we would know some- are found.
Speaking broadly, the
�108
PROOFS OF DERIVATION OF SPECIES
plants and animals of countries in un
broken connection resemble one another,
while those of countries remote or cut
off are unlike. But although, at first
sight, climate and separation would
appear to account for this, there are
likenesses and unlikenesses which are
not to be thus explained. In fine, ex
ceptions meet us at every turn. Great
Britain and New Zealand are much
alike in general conditions, yet the life
forms of New Zealand, now being fast
supplanted by aliens, are the littlealtered survivors of plants and animals
once dominant over the globe. On the
Fig. 78.—Compsognathus
other hand, as Mr. Wallace tells us, the
Englishman visiting Japan finds its
woods and fields tenanted by the sing
ing birds familiar to him at home.
Tapirs, whose origin in the north-western
parts of the Old World is indicated by
their fossil remains in Miocene beds, are
now separated by nearly half the globe’s
circumference, being found only in
South America and Malacca, while the
man-like apes are found only in West
Africa and Borneo.
But puzzling and seemingly capricious
us is the distribution of life, the general
causes are not far to seek.
Distribution is due to the slow but
ceaseless migration and transport of
living things rendered necessary by their
rate of increase. While climate has
much to do with it in compelling organ
isms, in proportion to their power of
dispersion, to shift their quarters, the
struggle for life between them has had
more influence still, so that the past and
present habitats of plants and animals
throw welcome light not only on changes
in the relations of land and water, but
also on the origin of species.
Where unallied forms are found on
the same continent we may infer that
the physical barriers between them have
been permanent through long periods;
where allied forms which are unable to
cross the seas are found in lands now
separated, as in Britain and Japan, in
South Europe and North Africa, we
have evidence of former union. The
degree in which life-forms have been
modified gives some key to the remote
ness of that union; as, for example,
when we find more ancient types in New
Zealand than in Australia, and more
ancient types in Australia than in
Madagascar.
Islands afford important aid in the
study of the intricate problem of distri
bution.
They are of two kinds,
continental and oceanic. The conti
nental, as the British Isles, Japan, ancient
Madagascar with its lemurs, and New
Zealand with its wingless birds and
Hatteria lizard, have been broken ofl
from the mainland. The oceanic, as
the Azores and Sandwich Islands, are
of volcanic or coralline formation, and
depend for their life-forms upon their
relative position to the mainland, and
also to the winds and £>cean currents
that prevail. Exclusive of animals
introduced by man, they are found
destitute of frogs and other batrachians;
also of mammals, bats excepted; the
explanation being that sea water kills
frogs and toads and their spawn, and
that only flying animals can cross the
ocean. For this reason bats, at least
the insect-eating species, are found
everywhere, except at the poles; and the
range of birds, although defined, is
�PROOFS OF DERIVATION OF SPECIES
much wider than that of all the larger
and wingless land animals.1
Isolated islands like St. Helena are
peopled with waifs and strays from all
quarters, while in continental islands
like our own the life-forms are, for the
most part, identical with those of the
nearest mainland. But here, again,
exceptions exist. The islands of Bali
and Lombok in the Malay Archipelago,
although only fifteen miles apart, differ
far more from each other in their birds
and quadrupeds than do England and
Japan, the birds being extremely unlike?
As shown by the deep soundings, Bali
belongs to the Indian region, and Lom
bok to that zone of “ living fossils,” the
Australian region. Australia contains
only the lowest mammals, as duckbills
and kangaroos—for there is little doubt
that the dingo or wild dog was introduced
by man—witnessing to its severance
from Asia millions of years ago during
the Secondary epoch. It is an ancient
and little-altered fragment, preserving
as in a museum the types of plants
and animals which were then domi
nant on the great shifting land areas,
and from which the higher forms have
been developed.
Oceanic islands, with their population
of birds, flying insects, and a few creep
ing things, are the refuge spots of casta
ways. Strange are the ways and means
of dispersal. Winds waft the light seeds
of plants to great distances; currents
drift to far-off shores icebergs laden with
earth and seeds, or masses of floating
vegetation, sometimes so matted with soil
as to form island rafts, with trees upstand1 Although the dispersal of the larger animals
is instanced in this summary of facts of distribu
tion, it should be added that far more striking,
if less obvious, evidence could be cited from the
dispersal of insects. Their great powers of flight,
and their extreme lightness, cause them to be
transported enormous distances by the wind;
their eggs and larvae, deposited in the bark or
crevices of logs, are carried with these as they
float to far-off shores, while their immense
antiquity largely explains the wide areas over
which they range. Cf. Wallace’s Island Life,
VIS
2 Ibid., p. 4.
109
ing, and carrying with them not only
numbers of grubs and eggs of insects, but
even large animals. Darwin foundbeetles
swimming in the open ocean seventeen
miles from land ; and one evening when
ten miles from the Bay of San Blas, in
the Pacific, the air was thick with but
terflies—it snowed them, as the sailors
Fig. 79.—Dinornis elephantopus, New Zealand.
said. But the most remarkable instance
cited in his Journal is the arrival of a
grasshopper when the ship was three
hundred and seventy miles from the coast
of Africa. Birds are important agents in
plant distribution, transporting seeds
embedded in dirt sticking to their feet or
beaks, or the barbed seeds of certain
plants, as the hook-like spikes of the curi
ous Uncinia, which cling to their feathers,
or the undigested seeds and stones of
fruits which are passed through their
�no
PROOFS OF DERIVATION OF SPECIES
bodies. A swift-winged bird may drop
cherry-stones a thousand miles from the
tree they grow on ; a hawk, in tearing a
pigeon, may scatter from its crop the still
fresh rice it had swallowed at a distance
of ten degrees of latitude. Among the
many suggestive experiments which
Darwin made in this matter, he cites the
case of the leg of a wounded partridge
to which a ball of hard earth weighing
six and a half ounces adhered. The
earth had been kept for three years, but
when broken, watered, and placed under
a bell-glass, no less than eighty-two sepa
rate plants of about five distinct species
sprang from it.
Very important also, although more
remote in its ultimate results, is the
agency of man, especially of civilised
races, in the distribution of life. Both
with and without intent he distributes
and destroys, as his needs or caprices
demand. Clearing forest, draining lake
and bog, reclaiming land from sea, or
uniting ocean with ocean, he disturbs, or
mingles, or kills their life-forms. He
imports strange plants and noxious insects
in his merchandise ; the sheep walks of
the Antipodes are cursed with the fecund
rabbit, and their river beds choked with
our water-cress ; while the European rat
has left our shores as a stowaway to oust
the native rat wherever it goes, as the
white man ousts the coloured man. But
man blesses as well as curses ; he trans
ports the healing cinchona plant from
Peru to India, or the salmon ova from our
native streams to the rivers of Australia,
and to him is due the réintroduction of
the horse into America, which had been
extinct there long before the arrival of
Columbus.
“ The hortus siccus of a
botanist may accidentally sow seed from
. the foot of the Himalayas on the plains
that skirt the Alps ; and it is a fact of very
familiar observation that exotics, trans
planted to foreign climates suited to their
growth, often escape from the flower-gar
den and naturalise themselves among the
spontaneous vegetation of the pastures.
When the cases containing the artistic
treasures of Thorwaldsen were opened in
the court of the museum at Copenhagen
where they are deposited, the straw and
grass employed in packing them were
scattered upon the ground, and the next
season there sprang up from the seeds no
less than twenty-five species of plants be
longing to the Roman Campagna, some
of which were preserved and cultivated
as a new tribute to the memory of the
great Scandinavian sculptor, and at least
four are said to have spontaneously nat
uralised themselves about Copenhagen ” 1
It surprises one to learn how many of
our familiar flowers are foreigners, which
happy chance or wise intent have accli
matised. The daisy and the violet are
natives, but not the laburnum and jas
mine, nor
Sweet William with his homely cottage smell,
And stocks in fragrant blow.
While needless destruction has often
followed in the wake of man, as he kills
out of sheer wantonness, or seeks profit
by gratifying the cruel freaks of fashion,
his enterprise and needs have, on the
other hand, rid the earth of harmful and
baneful plants and animals, produced
food and clothing from wild species, lus
cious fruit from sour and dwarfed
varieties, and developed domestic ani
mals, the dog probably earliest of all,
from the fierce beasts of the forest and
the field.
Enough has been cited to show that no
preordained scheme of fitness for their
several habitats has placed plants and
animals where they are found. Remem
bering what has been said about the
probable polar origin of life, we are pre
pared to find that, so far as most of the
higher forms are concerned, our best
authorities, with Mr. Wallace at theirhead,
incline to the theory of their develop
ment in the Euro-Asiatic continent when
the temperature was comparatively warm
from the pole to the antipodes. The
wave of migration rolled over the Old
World far south by routes now long sub
merged, and into the New World, where
other life-forms appear to have been
1 Marsh’s Man and Nature^ p. 67.
�PROOFS OF DERIVATION OF SPECIES
Ill
developed, by a northerly route. One history of the rapid rise of a. variety is
among several proofs of the existence of supplied by the Anglo-American race,
an old land connection between North the vigour of which may be primarily
America and Europe is supplied by the due to the blending of many bloods,
musk-sheep (or musk-ox), which flourish pre-Celtic, Celtic, Saxon, Norman, and
ed ages ago in Eurasia, and. is now con Dane, in its British ancestry.
“That many and serious objections
fined to Greenland. And it is interest
may be advanced against the theory of
ing to note that the path taken by some
birds in their migrations gives further clue descent with modification through varia
to other ancient land connections.1 In tion and natural selection ! do not deny.
capable as they are of crossing the wide I have endeavoured to give them their
oceans, we find them migrating between full force.”1 The sixth, seventh, and
Europe and Africa by way of Greece, tenth chapters of the “ Origin of
Malta, and Gibraltar, the three points at Species” are proof of this.. Darwin
which the two continents were. formerly shirked no difficulty, and in. laying
united. They follow instinctively the stress upon whatever told against his
route which their ancestors have taken theory he made its foundations more
sure. One great, but unduly overrated,
for countless seasons.
Widespread as is the distribution of the stumbling-block—the absence of inter
races of mankind, they are probably of mediate forms in the fossil-yielding rocks
common origin. All of them being —has been removed by the discovery of
fertile with one another, they are to be many more connecting links in the long
classed as varieties of one species, whose chain of life than could be expected
physical and mental differentiations from when we take into account the small
their nearest congeners, the highest apes, minority of ancient forms which have
had been acquired before their disper escaped the havoc of the past, and when
sion. The modifications which exist we remember how much smaller are the
have been developed through the potent chances in favour of the preservation
agency of natural and sexual selection of the more fragile, rare, and unstable
acting upon variations induced by transitional forms than of the species
diverse conditions—conditions which which they connect.
Another leading objection, drawn from
have surrounded man in virtue of his
migrations from pole to pole, and the barrenness of hybrids2—as, eg., of
which have called his industry and the mule—loses much of its force in
resource into full play. Perhaps the view of the numerous examples to the
most striking illustration throughout contrary, both in plants and animals, as
amongst genera of the thistle and of the
1 “A bird may travel from England to the
laburnum, and as in the cases of fruitful
equator without launching out and exposing
hybrids of sheep and goats in Chili.3
itself to boundless seas, and that by crossing the
But, as against natural selection, the
water at Dover, and again at Gibraltar. . . .
real difficulty lies in the interbreeding of
When arrived there the birds do not—•
species developed by selective breeding
‘ Ranged in figure wedge their way,
from a common stock.4 For example, the
.
.
.
.
and set forth
different species of pigeons have been de
Their airy caravan high over seas
Flying, and over lands with mutual wing
veloped from the wild rock-pigeon, and
Easing their flight’ {Milton},
these are fertile with one another, which
but scout and hurry along in little detached
1 Origin of Species, p. 404.
parties of six or seven, and sweeping low, just
2 Animals and Plants, ii., 130-156, and ch.
over the surface of the land and water, direct
xix. passim.
their course to the opposite continent at the
3 Haeckel’s Hist, of Creation, i., 145-149.
narrowest passage they can find.”—White’s
4 For some suggestive remarks on this, see
Selborne, letter ix., to the Hon. Daines Bar
J Quarterly Review, January 1901, pp. 269, 271.
rington.
�112
PROOFS OF DERIVATION OF SPECIES
would seem to tell in favour of the
fixity of species, unless the carrier,
pouter, and tumbler are, after all, to be
regarded only as varieties or sub-divisions
of species. The matter, however, is too
abstruse for these pages, and, moreover,
it has no weight as against the theory
of derivation. We know very little as
to the complex conditions ruling fertility
and barrenness; we know that the re
productive organs are peculiarly sensitive
to altered habits and surroundings; and
we know, further, that it is through
changes in those organs that the barriers
to interbreeding have arisen, and the
consequent multiplication of countless
intermediate varieties been arrested.
Happily, the Darwinian theory has no
fatal element of rigidness in it, and
those who would mould it into a dogma
know not what spirit they are of. It
admits of alterations in detail at the
behest of fresh facts, and of such cor
rection of proportion as time alone
gives to things new and near. But the
truth of the theory of which it is a
subordinate part will thereby stand out
the clearer, and the full accord of past
and present to the oneness of things
appear more manifest. So far as the
doctrine of organic evolution is con
cerned, the evidence from embryology
and pateontology in support of it is so
conclusive that it would remain un
shaken if the theory of natural selection
could be disproved.
�Chapter XI
SOCIAL EVOLUTION
i. Evolution of Mind.—If the theory
of evolution be not universal, the germs
of decay are in it. And here we pass
from what is interesting to what, is of
"serious import for us, because if the
phenomena of mind are not capable
of the like mechanical explanation as
the phenomena of stars and planets, and
of vegetable and animal life, evolution
remains only a speculation to fascinate
the curious. It can, in that case, furnish
no rule of life or motive to conduct, and
man, “the roof and crown of things,”
would be the sole witness against their
unity and totality. If there be in him
any faculty which is no part of the con
tents of the universe, if there be anything
done by him which lies outside the range
of causation, then the doctrine of the
Conservation of Energy falls to pieces,
for on such an assumption man has the
power to add to that which the physicist
demonstrates can neither be increased
nor lessened.
The ground already covered need not
be retrodden to show that man is one
in ultimate beginnings, and in the stuff
of which he is made, with the meanest
flower that blows, and that in mode of
development from the egg to the adult
state there is exact likeness between him
and other mammals. But some repeti
tion of the process of mental develop
ment from the lowest life-forms to the
* highest is needful.
“ Structure for structure,” remarks Pro
fessor Huxley, “down to the minutest
microscopical details, the eye, the ear,
the olfactory organs, the nerves, the
spinal cord, the brain of an ape, or of a
dog, correspond with the same organs in
the human subject. Cut a nerve, and
the evidence of paralysis, or of insensi
bility, is the same in the two cases;
apply pressure to the brain, or admin
ister a narcotic, and the signs of intelli
gence disappear in the one as in the
other. Whatever reason we have for
believing that the changes which take
place in the normal cerebral substance
of man give rise to states of conscious
ness, the same reason exists for the
belief that the modes of motion of the
cerebral substance of an ape, or of a
dog, produce like effects.”1
Let us begin, however, at the bottom
of the life-scale. The lowest things,
being organless, or alike all over, respond
to touch, “ the mother-tongue of all the
senses,” in every part, simply changing
their shape from moment to moment.
A step higher we find forms in which
unlikenesses in parts begin to show
themselves—eg. in the formation of a
layer at the surface; and here the re
sponses to the stimuli, as they are called,
become localised, because the move
ments set up by the stimuli take place,
like all modes of motion, along the lines
of least resistance. These movements
give rise to changes in the structure of
the organism, driving the molecules out
of their places, and, following in incre
dibly rapid succession, finally lay down
permanent nerve-tracks, built up of the
more sensitive parts of the skin. All
sense-organs, whether the whiskers of a
cat or the eye of a man, all the wondrous
network of nerves and the brain itself,
have thus originated. Practice makes
perfect; and, as the result of their
incessant repetition, the lowest and
simplest nerve-actions, known as reflex,
take place automatically in plants and
1 English Men of Letters, Hume, p. 105.
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SOCIAL EVOLUTION
animals. Such are the contractions of
an amoeba or of the leaves of a mimosa,
the shutting up of an oyster when the
shell is touched, breathing, the action
of the heart, winking of the eyes—in
short, all actions which are performed
unconsciously, and repeated in virtue
of the tendency to do them being innate
in the structure which each organism
inherits from its ancestors. Besides
these natural reflex actions, there is
a group of artificial reflex actions which
our higher intelligence enables us to
acquire, as the arts of reading, playing
instruments, &c.
As every one knows, it takes a soldier
a long time to learn his drill—for instance,
to put himself into the attitude of “ atten
tion ” at the instant the word of command
is heard; but after a time the sound
of the word gives rise to the act, whether
the soldier be thinking of it or not.
There is a story, which is credible enough
though it may not be true, of a practical
joker, who, seeing a discharged veteran
carrying home his dinner suddenly called
out “ Attention ! ” whereupon the man
instantly brought his hands down, and
lost his mutton and potatoes in the
gutter. The drill had been thorough,
and its effects had become embodied in
the man’s nervous structure. The possi
bility of all education is based upon the
existence of this power, which the
nervous system possesses, of organising
conscious actions into more or less
unconscious, or reflex, operations.1
Instinct is a higher form of reflex
action. The salmon migrates from sea
to river j the bird makes its nest or
migrates from one zone to another by an
unvarying route, even leaving its young
behind to perish; the bee builds its six
sided cell; the spider spins its web ; the
chick breaks its way through the shell,
balances itself, and picks up grains of
corn; the new-born babe sucks its
mother’s breast—all in virtue of like acts
on the part of their ancestors, which,
arising in the needs of the creature, and
gradually becoming automatic, have not
1 Huxley’s Elementary Physiology, p. 306,
varied during long ages, the tendency to
repeat them being transmitted within the
germ from which insect, fish, bird, and
man have severally sprung.1 Touching
on larger matters for a moment, even the
so-called necessary truths and innate
ideas of the mind, as of time and space,
take their place among transmitted
experiences.
“ Being,” as Herbert
Spencer says, “ the constant and infinitely
repeated elements of thought, they must
become the automatic elements of thought
of which it is impossible to get rid.”
More than a century ago Gilbert White
remarked that “ the maxim that defines
instinct to be that secret influence by
which every species is compelled naturally
to pursue at all times the same way or
track without any teaching or example,
must be taken in a qualified sense, for
there are instances in which instinct does
vary and conform to the circumstances
of place and convenience.” 2 Herein that
delightful observer, perhaps without sus
pecting what he was conceding to the brute,
indicates where instinct passes into Reason.
For the main difference between the two is
that while the one is done because the
animal cannot help doing it, and has no
knowledge of the relation between the
end and the means, the other is the
conscious adjustment of means to ends—
selection as the result of reflection. In
the one there is no pause, in the other
there is a measurable interval; the
stimuli to action are more complex and
less rapid, giving time for that perception
of likenesses and unlikenesses in things
which is essential to rational action.
This is manifested by all animals except
the lowest, which, however, form the vast
majority. The latter start fully equipped
for their functions : their actions are
1 An interesting illustration of this was supplied
by a St. Bernard dog belonging to a relative.
The dog was born in London, and taken into
the country when a puppy. After a few months
a sharp fall of snow happened, and “Ju,” who
had never seen snow before, was frantic to get
outdoors. When she was set free, she rolled in
the snow, bit it, and dug it up with her claws
as if rescuing some buried traveller. The same
excitement was shown whenever snow fell.
2 Letter lvi., to Hon. Daines Barrington.
�SOCIAL EVOLUTION
reflex and unvarying from birth to death.
But in the higher animals the same
mental processes are apparent as in man.
There is not a faculty of the human
mind which is not possessed in lesser or
greater degree by them ; oftenest in lesser
degree, sometimes in larger degree, as
in the showing forth of affection and
devotion that puts man’s selfishness to
shame. Where some of the highest
animals approach him, although Longo
intervallo, is in their passage through
a period of helpless infancy, because the
brain and connecting apparatus are not
complete at birth ; and in this lies the
explanation of the capacity for receiving
instruction and for profiting by ex
perience, which reaches its fullest devel
opment in man. And it is because the
knowledge that is gained, and the habits
that are acquired, in early life abide with
us, determining character, that the im
portance to ourselves and to others . of
learning what is true, and of cultivating
what is good, is paramount. Vast, there
fore, as are the differences between the
highest and lowest mental actions, there
is no break in the series which, starting
with the reflex movements of an amoeba
or of a carnivorous plant, advances along
the line of animal instinct and intelli
gence, and ends with the complex move
ments of the brain of civilised man, with
its infinite modes of response to infinite
stimuli.
2. Evolution of Society.—Like every
other species, man multiplies beyond the
means of subsistence. Civilised races are
more prolific than savage races. Under
prosperous conditions they double their
numbers in a quarter of a century, a
rate at which the present population of
the United States alone would in six
hundred and fifty years cover the
terraqueous globe so thickly that four
individuals would have to stand on each
square yard of surface.1 Consequently
the mortality of the human species,
though far less than that of any other
animal, is still enormous. It is com
puted that more than seven hundred
million human beings are every century
1 Descent of Man, p. 44.
H5
pounded back to nothingness without
knowing that they ever lived, to which
have to be added the vast number that
die before reaching manhood, and the
wholesale destruction of communities by
wars, pestilences, famines, and catas
trophes. In various ways natural selec
tion weeds out the least fit ; and al
though under civilised conditions the
weak and diseased are coddled and even
permitted to multiply their kind, this
check is too local to affect the larger
result, while that which the race might
gam in physique by its removal is not to
be compared to the loss that would
ensue from the repression of mercy and
sympathy.
In a barbaric society, or
among the civilisations where infanticide
was practised, weaklings like Newton and
hunchbacks like Pope would have been
left to perish : modern civilisation spares
them, and humanity is enriched by their
genius.
When the weeding process has done
its utmost, there remains a sharp struggle
for life between the survivors. Mans
normal state is therefore one of conflict;
further back than we can trace, it im
pelled the defenceless bipeds from whom
he sprang to unity, and the more so
because of their relative inferiority in
physique to many other animals. The
range of that unity continued narrow
long after he had gained lordship over
the brute; outside the small combina
tions for securing the primal needs of
life the struggle was ferocious, and,
under one form or another, rages along
the line to this day. “There is no
discharge in that war.” It may change
its tactics and its weapons : among ad
vanced nations the military method may be
more or less superseded by the industrial,
and men may be mercilessly starved
instead of being mercifully slain ; but be
it war of camps or markets, the ultimate
appeal is to force of brain or muscle,
and the hardiest or craftiest win. In
some respects the struggle is waged more
fiercely than in olden times, while it is
unredeemed by any element of chivalry.
Moreover, the greater strength of man’s
emotions, and the persistent craving for
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SOCIAL EVOLUTION
excitement, acting upon his inherited
savage instincts, have made that struggle
more terrible in his case than any that
rages between the lower animals. These
fight for food and mates, not for the mere
love of fighting. No brute ever tortured
its kind or gloated over the agonies of its
prey as man has tortured in fiendish glee
the victims of his revenge, intolerance,
and hate. True it is that peace has been
wrung from pain; that war is a nation
builder ; that slavery and superstition
have been agents of progress, whereby
the many, through the sacrifice of the
few, have gained freedom, unity, and
larger life; that in the death-struggle for
food, curiosity, the mother of knowledge,
has been awakened, never more to sleep;
that in the fight for mates the germ of
the highest and purest love of man for
woman has been developed; that in the
conflicts between tribes, patriotism,
morals, and the hardy virtues have been
evolved: but when we count the cost,
all this would afford small content did we
not have faith that the slow-footed years
are bringing us nearer to the goal where
might shall be subdued by right, and
where injustice and selfishness shall be
swallowed up by goodness, because this
shall have become spontaneous to man.
The social instincts to which his pro
gress is due are without doubt inherited
from his pre-human ancestors. “ There
is,” wrote Gilbert White in 1775, “a
wonderful spirit of sociality in the brute
creation, independent of sexual attach
ment ”; and Darwin remarks that “ the
social animals which stand at the
bottom of the scale are guided almost
exclusively, and those which stand
higher in the scale are largely guided,
by special instincts in the aid which they
give to the members of the same com
munity ; but they are likewise in part
impelled by mutual love and sympathy,
assisted apparently by some amount of
reason.”1 In the degree that animals
are social we find them higher in the
scale, as ants, bees, and wasps among
insects; and among domestic animals,
1 Descent of Man, p. 109.
dogs, whose wild ancestors hunted in
packs, as compared with cats, which
inherit the solitary and wandering habits
of their wild ancestors.
We do not know what the earliest
social unions among mankind were
like. Probably there were no family
arrangements as we understand the
term, but only various kinds of relations,
more or less fugitive, between groups of
men and women.1 The details, how
ever, do not affect the general fact of
social intercourse, in which community
of interest was the binding force. Im
petus was given to more personal and
permanent relationships by the longer
period of infancy in man as compared
with the same period in the man-like
apes, in whom, again, it is much longer
than in the lower monkeys.2 For as the
maternal instinct “ sublimes the passions,
quickens the invention, and sharpens the
sagacity of the brute creation,”3 so this
period of helplessness would draw
parent and child closer together, evolv
ing love and sympathy, and develop
ing those enduring and exalting relations
of the family which widened into tribal
life. Struggles against common foes
brought the bravest to the front as
leaders, turbulent elements within in
volved the rule of the ablest, disputes
called for the settlement of the wisest;
and thus the rough foundations of law
and order were laid. As the wants and
capacities of the ever-increasing com
munity multiplied, the work done by
each one under rude conditions was
1 Cf., e.g., Sir A. C. Lyall’s account of the
Bheels, an undoubted remnant of the aboriginal
tribes of India. “ They may be taken to re
present generally the barbarian type before the
earliest civilisation had brought in ideas and
prejudices about food, worship, and connubium.
So far as can be ascertained, the Bheels are all
subdivided into a variety of distinct groups, a
few based on a reputed common descent, but
most of them apparently muddled together by
simple contiguity of habitation, or the natural
banding together of the number necessary for
maintaining and defending themselves.” Asiatic
Studies, p. 160.
2 Cf. Fiske’s Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy,
ii- 342-346.
3 White’s Selborne, letter xiv., to Mr. Bar
rington.
�SOCIAL EVOLUTION
divided among the many ; hence special
isation of the people into classes,
with all the complex duties of modern
societies.
Carlyle says that the great man shapes
the age; Herbert Spencer says that the
age shapes the great man. The truth
lies in the mean ; the great man is the
product of past tendencies and. present
conditions, and he is supreme in virtue
of these operating in him in higher de
gree; hence he acts upon society for
good or evil.
3. Evolution of Language, the Useful
Arts, and Science— Man is markedly
separate from the highest brute, riot only
by his brain-power and his erect attitude,
with its free command over the hands, but
also by language. Not that the “ dumb ”
animals, as they are called, are all voice
less, many of them having no small or
inexact gamut of sounds by which to
express their thoughts and emotions.
But although the love-calls of birds and
the danger-cries of beasts may be not
more unintelligible to us than . the
language of savages like the Fuegians,
which Captain Cook compared to a man
clearing his throat, the distinction abides
that language, as the plastic symbol, of
ideas of unlimited range and complexity,
marks the impassable gulf between the
mental capacity of man and every other
animal. Its origin lies in his need to
communicate with his fellows; and but
for it all attempts after social union,
except of the lowest and most fleeting
kind, would have been as the weaving
of a rope of sand. “ Nature,” says
Lucretius (v. 1028, 9), “impelled them
to utter various sounds of the tongue,
and use struck out the names of things.”1
Words themselves reveal under
analysis the history of their origin from
a few simple root-sounds, which were
instinctive cries or imitations of various
natural noises very largely aided at the
outset by signs and gestures. Speech is
but one way of expressing thought;
deaf mutes can converse only by gesture ;
1 On the evolution of the organs of articulate
speech, see the author’s Thomas Henry Huxley,
pp. 120-122.
117
to this day it is the chief mode of com
munication between certain wandering
tribes of American Indians, and among
the vivacious races of Southern Europe
it largely supplements talk. We can
never know what the first sound-signs
were like, but their choice and currency
obviously depended on the success with
which they conveyed the meaning of
those who invented them—a principle,
of course, applicable to every stage of
language, from the simple names of
objects with which it began to the
ultimate transfer of those names to
abstract ideas. For all abstract terms
have a concrete origin. The words just
used evidence this; abstract meaning
“dragged away” and concrete “grown
together.” Even the verb to be is made
up of “ the relics of several verbs which
once had a distinct physical significance.
Be contained the idea of ‘growing’;
am, art, is, and are, that of ‘ sitting ;
was and were, that of ‘dwelling,’
‘abiding.’”1 Certain it is that from
mimetic sounds, with their boundless
variety of modulation, there have been
developed not merely the scanty and
shifting speech of the lower races, but
the wondrously rich, copious, and evergrowing languages of civilised races, the
sound-carriers not only of man’s common
wants, but of the lofty conceptions
which are enshrined in prose and poetry,
and without which, now made the
common intellectual wealth of nations
through the arts of writing and printing,
how poor and dwarfed would human life
have been! Language has, therefore,
followed the common law of evolution
in advance from the simple to the com
plex, from nouns and verbs to the elabora
tion of families of words and of parts of
speech, with their subtile shades of
meaning whereby no thought remains
unexpressed. Thus does it prove itself
one of the many instruments which the
skill of man has perfected from raw
materials as his social needs have
impelled him and as his intelligence has
increased.
1 Professor W.D. Whitney’s Leet, on Language,
p. 115.
�n8
SOCIAL EVOLUTION
And the like adaptation of means to
ends applies to the development of the
useful arts, as well as of those arts in
which the head is more concerned than
the hand. The primal needs of clothing
and shelter, of weapons of war and of
the chase—for the sword and bow
precede the spade and hammer—the
need, under more settled conditions, of
implements for the household and the
field, set man’s wits at work to supple
ment and improve that which nature
supplies in the rough. For if he is not
the only tool-user, he is the only tool
maker among the Primates. Every
instrument of his culture bears traces of
its development from simpler forms : the
spear and knife-blade from the sharpedged flint flake ; the saw from the
jagged-edged flake ; the matchlock from
the crossbow ; the warrior’s armour from
the scaly hide of beasts ; the plough
from the stag’s antlers or the tree branch ;
the mill from pounding stones ; the ship
from the scooped-out trunk ; the oar
from the hands or feet as primitive
paddles ; the house from the sun-baked
clay hut, or, as in China, from the Tatar
tent ; the pyramid from the earth mound
or cairn : all art from imitation—the
alphabet from picture-writing ; sculpture
and painting from rude scratchings on
bone and horn ; stringed instruments
from the twang of the hunter’s bow;
wind instruments from the blast of his
horn, the “ blowing into hollow stalks
from the whistling of the zephyr through
the hollows of reeds ” ; melody and
dance from the rude, impassioned chant
of the savage, time-marked by yell and
tamtam ; arithmetic from primitive per
ception of more or less ; counting and
measuring, as shown in our words cubit,
ell,1 foot, hand, digit, span, fathom, and
1 Some confusion of measures of length having
occurred in the reign of Henry I., he commanded
that the ancient ell (Lat. ulna), which corre
sponds to our yard, should be made of the exact
length of his own arm. The span, which is nine
inches, is the space from the end of the thumb
to the end of the little finger (Lat. digitus) when
extended, or the eighth of a fathom (A.S. fœtheni,
the bosom), the space to which a man’s arms can
ordinarily be extended.
in cognate terms of other languages,
from using the fingers, toes, and other
parts of the body; geometry, or landmeasuring, from early perceptions of
space; all science from crude and false
guesses about the nature and causes of
things, from illusions of alchemist and
astrologer, which made attainment of
the truth more possible to chemist and
astronomer; and so on through the
whole range of man’s social and intel
lectual development.
4. Evolution of Morals.—Man by
himself is not only unprogressive, he is
also not so much immoral as unmoral.
For where there is no society there is
no sin. Therefore the bases of right
and wrong lie in conduct towards one’s
fellows; the moral sense or conscience
is the outcome of social relations,
themselves the outcome of the need of
living. The common interests which
impel to combination involve praise or
blame of the acts of each individual in the
degree that they aid or hinder the well
being of all—in other words, add to
their pleasure or their pain; and this
praise and blame constitute the moral
code, the collective or tribal conscience.
Society, like the units of which it is
made up, has to fight for its life, and all
primitive laws are laws of self-preserva
tion. Tribal self-preservation is based
on sympathy between the several
members, and it is therefore the ultimate
foundation of the moral sense; what
ever is helpful to it is right, whatever
is a hindrance to it is wrong. Although
union involves limitation and restraint,
so that the units can no longer do
exactly as they like, self-interest comes
into play, since a man best ensured
respect for his own rights by respecting
the rights of others. Society is not
possible where a man is not true to his
fellow; there is, as the phrase goes,
honour among thieves, probably even
among savages as low as the Jolas of the
Gambia, every one of whom does as he
likes, the most successful thief being the
greatest man. In that model of sound
and clear reasoning, so refreshing a
I contrast to the tedious word-mongering
�SOCIAL EVOLUTION
119
ancient Germans—“ Robberies beyond
the bounds of each community have no
infamy, but are commended as a means
of exercising youth and lessening sloth ” 1
—still applies to barbaric peoples, and has
its survival in the slowly decaying pre
judices of civilised nations.
Morals are relative, not absolute ;
there is no fixed standard of right and
wrong by which the actions of all men
throughout all time are measured. The
moral code advances with the progress
of the race ; conscience is a growth.
That which society in rude stages of
culture approves, it condemns at later
and more refined stages, although such
is the power of custom in investing the
antique with sanctity, such the per
sistence of authority, and so deep its
interest against change, that moral
qualities are grafted upon acts apart
from any question of their bearing upon
character. Such, for example, are the
prohibitions against certain foods and
the commands to keep certain days
sacred ; such also the tyranny of caste,
as among the Bhattias of India, who
regard dining at an hotel as a greater
sin than murder. Among the Moham
medan sect of the Wahhabees murder
and adultery are venial offences com
pared to the smoking of tobacco.
Among many savage peoples it is worse
to marry a girl within the tribe than to
murder one of another tribe. Among
ourselves society condones a seduction,
but not a mésalliance, and forgives an
offence against etiquette less readily
than an act of dishonour.
Although tending of late to unwise
laxity towards offences for which death
is the rightful penalty, the alterations in
criminal codes witness to progress in
morals and humaneness, and to the
recognition of crime as more or less of
the nature of disease. We need not go
back to the time when laws punish
ing heresy and witchcraft were in
force, since during the last century
people were burned to death for coining
* Chap. iv. passim ; and cf. Clifford’s Lectures
false money, hanged for stealing a
and Essays, ii. pp. 106-176 ; Huxley’s Life and
few shillings’ worth of goods, and
Tetters, ii., pp. 205, 206; and Coll. Essays, vi.,
of most writers on ethics, the chapter
on the growth of the moral sense in the
Descent of Man} Darwin points out
how man’s instinctive sympathy would
lead him to value highly the approval of
his fellows, and how his actions would
be determined in a high degree by their
expressed wishes; unfortunately, often
by his own selfish desires. But while
the lower instincts, as hunger, passion,
and thirst for vengeance, are strong,
they are not so enduring or satisfying as
the higher feelings which crave for
society and sympathy. And the yield
ing to the lower, however gratifying for
the moment, would be followed by the
feeling of regret that he had thus given
way, and by resolve to act differently
for the future. Thus at last man comes
to feel, through acquired and perhaps
inherited habit, that it is best for him to
obey his more persistent impulses. It is
this self-accusing feeling of remorse (liter
ally biting again), due to power of reflectiononactionsand motives, that makes the
difference so profound between man and
the lower animals, whose moral sense
does not advance beyond the stage which
commits or avoids certain acts according
as they are remembered as pleasurable
or painful to the creature itself.
Special value would be set by the
tribe upon brave and unselfish deeds as
contributing to the common weal;
praise and honour would reward the
doer, encouraging that love of the tribe
in which lay the germ of love of country.
For he who is not a good citizen cannot
be a true patriot, and he who holds not
his fatherland dear can never become a
well-wisher to mankind. The concep
tions which these larger interests involve
are, however, of very slow growth; for
a long time the feeling of rightness and
wrongness was limited to acts harmful
or helpful to the tribe; in fact, that
which was a crime within its borders
became a virtue, and even a duty,
outside them. What Caesar says of the
P- «39-
1 Comm., bk. vi. cap. 23.
�120
SOCIAL EVOLUTION
imprisoned for paltry debts, death being
often the only bringer of release.
Among the sights of London were the
procession of condemned criminals to
Tyburn every six weeks, and the
auctions of negroes at the Poultry
Compter. These and a hundred other
barbarities went on without protest
from the humane, whether Christians
or non-Christians, for the collective
conscience did not question their right
ness, and their abolition was ultimately
due to the efforts of individuals in
whom a higher sense of human rights
and duties was aroused, and through
whom the general moral tone was
advanced. That heightened tone, which
is a yet stronger note of our time, is, in
the main, due to the progress of science,
using the term as including not merely
knowledge of the operations of nature,
but knowledge of human life as affected
by divers causes, and of the community
of blood in all mankind.
It is this which has broken down the
barriers of prejudice between the classes
of each nation and between nations
themselves, bringing home the force of
the Italian proverb, “Tutto il mondo e
paese ”—“ all the world is one country.”
This larger view extends the range of
human sympathy and of the service of
man to his fellows, as well as to the
lower animals, which that sympathy
inspires. Terrible are the ills which the
misuse of knowledge in the hands of the
selfish and the ruffian inflicts, but these
are as dust in the balance against the
good which has been wrought. The
conduct of a nation is no longer regulated
solely by its own interests without regard
to what is due to others, neither does it
draw its sanction from the tribal legis
lation of a barbaric past, but from what,
after ages of dearly bought experience,
has proved itself to be best for man. In
this, as in aught else which endures,
nothing is rigid or final. Man’s capacity
can never overtake his loftiest ideals ; in
their conception is the spur to their
pursuit. What dead weight of care do
morals, thus regarded, lift from the heart
of man ! what new energy is given to his
efforts ! Thought becomes fixed on the
evolution of goodness instead of on the
origin of evil; time is set free from
useless speculation for profitable action ;
evils once deemed inherent in the nature
of things, and therefore irremovable, are
accounted for and shown to be within
our power to extirpate.
For in proving the unvarying relation
between cause and effect in morals as in
physics, science gives the clue to the
remedy for moral ills. Moreover, that
which man called sin is shown to be
more often due to his imperfect sense of
the true proportion of things, and to his
lack of imagination, than to his wilful ness; “ evil is wrought by want of
thought as well as want of heart.” As
Herbert Spencer says, “the world is
governed or overthrown by feelings to
which ideas serve only as guides ”;1 and
the lack of imagination, which is itself
largely due to defective training of the
intellect, prevents a man from putting
himself in the place of others, and
deprives him of that sympathy which is
essential to the unselfish life. Since
morals are due to the social instinct, the
highest morality is that wherein each one
shares to the full the life of all. The
terrible mass of wrong-doing can be
lessened and finally removed only by sup
pression of the over-self; by the main
tenance of the balance between such
care of oneself as shall best fit us for
the service of man, and such thought for
others as shall inflict on them no suffering
through our selfishness, nor loss through
our gain.2 The crises of history are
now rare when great principles or causes,
demanding the sacrifice of the individual
life, are at stake, but the world has never
lacked a Curtius, and the spread of the
scientific spirit has not proved fatal to
the heroic.
Especially is science a preacher of
righteousness in making clear the indis
soluble unity between all life past,
present, and to come. We are only on
1 Social Statics, quoted in Essays, iii., 69.
■2 Cf. the eloquent and stimulating chapter on
“The Cultivation of Human Nature,” in Mr.
Cotter Morison’s Service of-Man.
�121
SOCIAL EVOLUTION
the threshold of knowledge as to the vast
significance of the doctrine of heredity,
but we know enough to deepen our sense
of debt to the past and of duty to the
future. We are what our forefathers
made us, plus the action of circumstances
on ourselves ; and in like manner our
children inherit the good and evil, both
of body and mind, that is in us. Upon
us, therefore, rests the duty of the culti
vation of the best and of the suppres
sion of the worst, so that the future of
the race suffers not at our hands. More
imperious is that duty since nothing—
not omnipotence itself—can step in be
tween us and the consequences of our
acts. The “ forgiveness ” of which men
talk shows the charity of the injured, and
may win the wrong-doer to a better life ;
but the thing “ forgiven ’’—who can undo
its effects ?1 “ Our deeds are like the
children born to us—they live and act
apart from our own will. Nay, children
may be strangled, but deeds never.” 1
2
Self-conquest lies in obedience, obe
dience lies in knowledge ; and if to know
that it rests with man to make or to mar
the lives of others be not sufficing
stimulus to learning the true that we may
do the right, no other motive can avail.
Whatever power the threats of punish
ment and the promises of reward in an
after life may have had in lawless and
superstitious ages, they have now but the
smallest effect on conduct; their remote
ness exhausts their power, and, moreover,
the belief in them is slowly decaying.
For the conduct of life brief maxims
are enough; all the law and command
ments are in the golden rule; all ethics in
the teaching that if man be true to him
self he cannot be false to his fellows;
while in the knowledge that life’s demands
will always exceed its opportunities we
may feel—
How fair a lot to fill
Is left to each man still.
5- Evolution of Theology.—Theology
may be defined as dealing with man’s re
lations to the god or gods in whom he
believes; morals, as dealing with his
relations to his fellow-men.
Unfortunately, the two have become a
good deal mixed in the degree that con
duct has been made to rest on supposed
divine commands as to what men shall
and shall not do—an assumption which
serves a useful purpose as a restraint upon
the brutal and ignorant, but which has
been a powerful engine of terrorism in
the hands of impostors and fanatics.
The confusion, however, disappears when
it is seen that the evolution of belief in
spiritual beings is a thing apart from the
evolution of morals, which, as has been
shown, are based on social instincts and
sympathies guided by reason and strength
ened by inheritance and practice. For
primitive theology is primitive science;
it is the outcome of man’s first efforts to
explain the nature of his surroundings,
and of the divers influences which affect
him for good, and still more for ill. At
this stage of his mental growth the
emotions have foremost play, because
feeling precedes reason, and its exercise
is more easy, its results more rapid, al
though, on that account, less trustworthy.
Moreover, the phenomena on which
experience, as the sole guide to true
1 “ ‘ Do you know, Wilfrid, I once shot a
little bird—for no good, but just to shoot at
knowledge of things, is based, are too
something. It wasn’t that I didn’t think of it—
vast for a single life to compass, even were
don’t say that. I did think of it. I knew it
the reasoning faculty capable of dealing
was wrong. When I had levelled my gun I
with them. It needed the lapse of long
thought of it quite plainly, and yet I drew the
trigger. It dropped, a heap of ruffled feathers.
time ere man found out how his senses
I shall never get that little bird out of my head.
tricked him at every turn, and ere he
And the worst of it is, that to all eternity I can
could form any conception of orderly re
never make any atonement.’
lation in his surroundings. So far as
“ ‘ But God will forgive you, Charley.’
“ ‘ What do I care for that,’ he rejoined
effort to supply his lower needs sharp
almost fiercely, ‘when the little bird cannot
ened his wits, he did not go far astray;
forgive me ? ’ ”—George Macdonald’s Wilfrid
in his struggle against material foes the
Cumbermede, p. 179.
weapons of his warfare were carnal, but as
2 Romola, p. 150 (one-vol. edition).
�122
SOCIAL EVOLUTION
fall, and who secure dominance over
their fellow-men by pretending to be the
mouthpiece of the gods, to forgive sins in
their name, and to make known their will.
This animism, or general doctrine of
spiritual agents, was largely fostered by
personal experience supplied by dreams
about both the dead and living, hallucin
ations, swoons, and by the shadows or
reflections which objects cast, all which
seemed to witness to the existence of a
second self or soul that came and went
at pleasure during life, and haunted its
old home after death. The burial-place
became the spot where the living brought
their gifts to the dread spirits of the
departed, whose worship is a leading
feature of barbaric religions.
The
grave was the cradle of beliefs about
the departed; the tomb became the
That if it would but apprehend some joy
It comprehends some bringer of that joy.
temple. Combined with the belief in
Ever on the alert against enemies, man’s life wherever power or movement was
fancy multiplied them on all sides; and manifest, these ideas have built up all
since he naturally attributed passions like theologies, from the polytheistic to the
his own to the unseen beings in whom he so-called monotheistic, the common
believed, he dreaded “ some bringer of element in each being the ascription of
that ” harm from every quarter, especially personality to unseen powers. Given
from things near at hand whose dire the intellectual stage which a people has
effects touched him closely, as the whirl reached, the character of their gods can
pool and the breaker, the falling tree, be predicted, although the higher
the devouring beast, or venomous reptile. theologies will retain persistent traces of
Phenomena farther off and less fitful the barbaric conceptions of deity in
moved him less, but although day suc which they arose. They are not, as
ceeded night, both sun and moon were shallow carpers have argued, the in
in turn often swallowed and disgorged genious inventions of self-seeking men ;
by the black cloud-monsters, and in the they arise out of the necessity of human
wake of the fire- and wind-dragons of the nature to frame an explanation of that
lightning and the storm there followed which affects it deeply and constantly.
Their roots draw nutriment from a
destruction and death.
What man fears, but is powerless to common soil; the frenzy of the savage
control, he seeks to appease. Hence the and the ecstasy of the saint have a com
prominence of devil-worship, of belief in mon base in undisciplined imagination.
Theology is purified from gross concep
baleful spirits amongst lower races;
hence, likewise, the persistence of kindred tions only in proportion as it is purged of the
beliefs among the ignorant in civilised false science with which, to its own hurt,
countries ; hence the world-wide custom it identified itself in the past, and to the
of averting the wrath of gods or of buy remnants of which it still clings. The
ing their favour by sacrifices, smearing function of science is to clarify the mind,
their images with human blood, and and to show how the beliefs of the past
wreathing them with human intestines. are the myths of the present; the duty
Hence, also, the rise of a special class, of theology is to readjust itself to what
“ medicine-men ” and priests, into whose science proves to be true, since science
hands all ghastly and ghostly functions has no facts to interpret save those which
against spiritual powers he was defence
less. Ignorance, always the mother of
mystery, made him the slave of his fears.
The vacuity of his mind gave admission
to all the demons of panic and terror.
The universal instinct of the savage leads
him to ascribe an indwelling life to
everything that moves, from the sun in
heaven to the rustling leaves and the
stones that roll from the hill-side across
his path. In this he acts as we see shy
ing horses, timid pups, and young
children act, until they learn from experi
ence what things move of their own
accord and what things do not. Shake
speare might have added Caliban to “ the
lunatic, the lover, and the poet,” as of
imagination all compact, on whom it
plays such tricks—
�SOCIAL EVOLUTION
man has gained from experience. Of
aught else, as Omar Khayyam sings—
Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and saint, and heard great argument
About it and about, but evermore
Came out by the same door wherein I went.
Creeds may die, rites and _ ceremonies
become matters of archaeological interest,
but human needs endure. Conduct is
everything, because duty never lapses.
Theology, uncorrected, troubles itself
about the fate of a man who denies its
speculative doctrines ; morals bid him
remember, as the one thing needful, that
what he sows he or his will reap. In the
future, when it is seen that theories about
gods and all other spiritual beings have
nothing whatever to do with man’s duty
to his fellows, theology and morals will
again become distinct.
In the chapters now brought to an
end a vast field, the limits of which shade
into the unlimited on all sides, has been
roughly surveyed. We began with the
primitive nebula, we end with the highest
forms of consciousness; the story of
creation is shown to be the unbroken
record of the evolution of gas into genius.
Let us epitomise in fewest words what,
after all, is itself but a summary of a
large subject:—
1. Description.—The universe is made
up of Matter and Motion, both of which
are indestructible. Matter contains
above seventy so-called elementary sub
stances, which exist in a free or combined
state as solid, liquid, gaseous, or ultragaseous ; it is also present throughout
space in the imponderable state known as
ethereal. Motion acts in a twofold and
opposite way, viz., as a pulling or combin
ing Force, and as a pushing or separat
ing Energy. Force inheres in matter,
and acts continuously whatever the
distance; Energy is both passive or
stored up, and active or in a state of
transfer from body to body, the sum
total being in gradual course of transfer
to the ethereal medium, where its power
to do work ends. Ponderable matter
is distributed throughout space in bodies
of various size and density, from mole
I23
cules to sidereal or solar systems. _ Such
a system is our central sun, with his
company of planets and their moons,
and of comets and other wandering
gaseous bodies. The planet on which
we live is a nearly spherical body, threefourths of which is covered by water,
and the whole surface enveloped by an
atmosphere. So far as its rind or crust
can be examined, it is found to consist
of solid rocks, the lowest of which have
been fused by fire, and the uppermost
laid down by water. The water-laid
rocks contain the remains of plants and
animals which have escaped the general
destruction of organisms in the wear and
tear which the rocks undergo ceaselessly.
The simplest fossils are found in the
oldest deposits, the more advanced in the
newer, and so on in ascending scale
until we reach the newest deposits,
which contain the highest forms. The
existing species of plants and animals
comprise the lowest and simplest, which
have probably persisted throughout the
entire life-period, as well as the highest
and some others, the vast majority of
intermediate species having died out.
All plants and animals are made of the
same materials, and have to do the
same work. That work is threefold : to
feed, to multiply their kind, and to
respond to the outer world. The cells
of which every part of every plant and
animal is builtup are variously altered and
arranged according to the way in which
that work is more or less divided
amongst the several parts. The main
difference between plant and animal is
in the mode of feeding; the plant is
alone able, in virtue of its chlorophyll,
to convert the inorganic into the organic,
and the animal therefore depends on the
plant for its food supply.
2. Explanation.—At the beginning of
the present universe Matter was a
diffused vaporous mass, unequally dis
tributed throughout space. Force, act
ing on the unstableness of that mass,
drew its particles together, and the re
sulting collision set free the stored-up
Energy, which became active in two
I forms: the molar, causing the several
�124
SOCIAL EVOLUTION
masses into which the particles had
gathered to spin round in an orbit; and
the . molecular, causing a swing-like
motion among the particles, which
motion was diffused as light and heat.
The masses into which the primitive
nebula was broken up became sidereal
or solar systems, each of which, like the
parent mass, threw off, as it was indrawn
towards its common centre of gravity,
masses which became the planets, and
from these were detached, in like
manner, masses which became moons.
Comets and other fugitive bodies are
probably due to expulsion. Both in its
shape and general condition the earth
gives proof of this passage from the
gaseous to the solid state. As one of
the smaller bodies, it long ago ceased to
shine by its own light, but a vast period
elapsed before it became cool enough
to form a crust and to condense the
vapours that swathed it into primeval
oceans. The simplest compounds of
its elements were formed first, the
combinations becoming more and more
complex until they reached that subtile
form which is the physical basis of life,
and which, starting in water as a structure
less jelly, has reached its fullest develop
ment in man. The organic is depen
dent upon the inorganic ; and mind, as a
special form of life, takes its place as
the highest product of the action of
Motion upon Matter. From the action
of mind on mind has arisen that social
evolution to which, in a supreme degree,
is owing the progress of man in know
ledge, whereby he has subdued the earth.
The ultimate transference of all energy
to the ethereal medium involves the end
of the existing state of things. But the
ceaseless redistribution of matter, forceclasped and energy-riven, involves the
beginning of another state of things.
So the changes are rung on evolution
and dissolution, on the birth and death
of stellar systems—gas to solid, solid to
gas, yet never quite the same—mighty
rhythmic beats of which the earth’s
cycles, and the cradles and graves of her
children, are minor rhythms.
Thus the keynotes of Evolution are
Unity and Continuity. All things are
made of the same stuff differently mixed,
bound by one force, stirred by one
energy in divers forms. Force inheres
in matter; Energy acts through it;
therefore both have neither more nor less
claim to objective reality than matter.
And as science tends to the conclusion
that all kinds of matter are modifications
of one primal element, and that all
modes of motion are varied operations
of one power, perchance these three—
Matter, Force, and Energy—are one.
But into these and like speculative
topics Evolution does not intrude.
Dealing with processes, and not
with the nature of things in them
selves, it is silent concerning any
theories that may be formulated to
gratify man’s insatiate curiosity about
the whence and whither. Since it can
throw no light on the genesis of matter,
or on the origination of motion, or on
the beginnings of life or of mind, it
leaves great and small alike a centre of
impenetrable mystery. It may correct,
but it does not repress, the imagination ;
neither does it impose any limits on
thought; it has a larger charity for
superstition than for irreverence; it has
no shibboleths the surrender of which
can awaken dread; its temper is not
aggressive; it seeks to inform life with
the love of truth, and to let the facts
which it reveals, and whose significance
is its chief concern, win their way on
their own merits; since “ a dogma
learned is only a new error—the old one
was perhaps as good; whereas a spirit
communicated is a perpetual possession.”
Our sense of the beauty of Nature is not
dimmed by fuller and truer knowledge
of her works and ways; the more we
feel our oneness with her the more do
we desire to know her as she is ; while
all that it really suffices us to learn
for the discharge of life’s duties,
and all the motive that is needed to
impel us thereto, is supplied in the
theory which has so profoundly and
permanently affected every department
of human thought.
�INDEX
Bats, 67 ; range of, 108
Beetles, 31, 65, 109
Belemnites, 33, 35
Abdomen, 64
Bilateral symmetry, 62, 68
Affinity, 14
Birds, 39, 71, 72 ; as seed dispersers,
Algte, 49, 87
109; descent, 34 ; migration, 73,
Allen, Grant, 55, 84, 88, 93, 96
in ; reptile-like, 34, 35 ; wingless,
Alpha Centauri, 18
108
Amber, 30
America, connection of, with Europe, Blastosphere, 90
Blood, 59 ; salt in, 63
hi
Body-cavity, 106
Ammonites, 31, 33, 35
Brain, 46, 63, 66, 67, 70; and thought,
Amoeba, 46, 47, 58, 63
86
Amphibians, 71
Brain of ant, 66 ; of man and apes,
Amphioxus, 70
102
Ancestor-worship, 122.
Breathing, organs of, 6,3
Anemone, 61
Bronze, age of, 41
Angiosperms, 36, 51
Bryophytes, 49
Animals, chlorophyllian, 87.
Animals and plants, priority of, 87 ; Buffon, 83
Butler, Samuel, 92
unity, 45, 46
Butterflies, 34
Animism, 122
Annelida, 56, 62
Annulosa, 62
Ant, brain of, 66 ; high social stage
C
66
Apes, man-like, 38, 75, iox
Apes and man, brain of, 102 ; skele
Ceesar, 119
tons, 75
Calamite, 32
Aphis, increase of, 95
Cambrian system, 28
Aqueous action, 23, 37, 4?
Carbon, 14, 30
Archtean, 23, 27
Carbonic acid, 45, 47
Archaeopteryx, 34
Carboniferous system, 31
Arnold, Matthew, 49
Carlyle, 117
Arthropoaa, 56, 63
Carnivora, 38, 100
Artificial selection, 94
Carnivorous plants, 45
Arts, evolution of, 117
Carpenter, W. B., 27
Ascidians, 69
Catkin-bearers, 52
Ascidians and vertebrates, 56
Cell, 48, 50, 85, 89; division, 90;
Asteroids, 20
layers, 90 ; wall, 48
Atmosphere, earth’s, 21
Cellulose, 70
Atomic theory, 13
Chalk, deposit of, 28
Atoms, 12, 16; divisibility of, 12;
Charing Cross, fossils at, 40
unity, 13 ; weight and volume, 13
Australia, ancient life-forms of, 73, Chemical attraction, 14
Chimpanzee, 102
109, TIO
Chlorophyll, 47, 55, 87
Azoic, 83
Chromosphere, 20
Cilia, 49, 59, 60, 70
Classification, 106
B
Cleveite, 20
Clifford, Prof., 119
Backbone, 68, 70
Clio borealis, 67
Bacon, Lord, 48
Club-mosses, 29, 30, 50
Balanoglossus, 56, 69
Coal, nature of, 30
Balfour, F. M., 58
Cockroaches, 31
Bali, 109
Cod, increase of, 95
Bates, H. W., 34, 66, 96
Coelenterata, 56
A
Cohesion, 14
Colonial animals, 59
Colour, nature of, 54; order of, in
flowers, 55
Colouring, protective, 96
Comets, 19, 21
Compsognathus, 108
Conifers, 51
Conscience, 118
Consciousness, mystery of, 58, 86
Conservation of energy, 15, 113
Cook, Captain, 117
Cope, Prof., 67, 85
Coral, 45, 6x
Corolla, 52
Cotyledon, 51
Crabs, 33
Cretaceous system, 35. 37, 67
Crime, nature of, 120
Crocodiles, 38
Crown bearers, 52
Crust of the earth, 21
Crustacea, 29, 64
Cryptogams, 49
Crystals, formation and growth of,
85
Cuttle-fish, 33
Cycads, 33, 35, 51
D
Daisy, 52
Dalton, 13
Darwin, 9, 46, 66, 73, 74, 96, 100,
102, 105, 109, in, 119
Darwin’s theory, summary of, 104
Dawson, Sir J. W., 27
Death, 104
Deer, antlers of, 100
Degeneration, 70, 103
Descartes, ix
Descent of Man, 66, iox, 116,
119
Descent, 47; objections to theory of,
hi
Desmids, 45, 49
Devonian system, 30, 50
Diamond, 55, 85
Diatoms, 28, 45, 59
Digestive organs, 45, 57, 58, 61,
,69
Dipnoi, 71
Distribution of life-forms, 107
Dog, embryo of, 92, 106
�12Ô
INDEX
Duck-bill, 73
Dyer, Thiselton, 84, 88
E
Earth, age of, 104; core of, 22 ;
destiny, 82 ; evolution, 82
Echidna, 73
Echinodermata, 56
Egg, of mammal, 14 ; of man, X05
Electrons, 12, 16
Elements, 12, 13 ; classification of,
13 ; common origin, 13 ; periodic law,
x3
Elephant, increase of, 95
Embryo stage, 90
Embryology, 105
Emerson, 10 107
Endogens, 36
Energy, 14, 78 ; active and passive,
15 ; definition of, 15, 78 ; molar and
molecular, 79 ; tabular summary,
16
Eocene strata, 37
Eozoon Canadense, 27
Epochs, Geological, 23
Ether, 12, 14, 16
Ethereal medium, 16, 79
Europe,
connection
of,
with
America, in
Evolution, conditions of, inorganic,
79 ; summary, 123, 124
Evolution of earth, 82; gods, 122 ;
language, 117; man, 105 ; mind,
113; morals, 118 ; plant and
animal, 84; society, 115 ; solar
system, 80 ; stellar systems, 79;
theology, 121
Exogens, 36
Eye, evolution of, 62; of Hatteria,
69 ; of sea-squirt, 70
F
Faraday, 13
Females, fights for, 97
Ferns, 30, 50, 51
Fertilisation, 53
Fishes, 71 ; embryo of, 92
Fiske, 116
Fission, 48
Flints, chipped, 39, 40
Flowers, earliest, 55 ; essential parts
of, 53 ; fertilisation, 53 ; function,
52 .
Fly, increase of, 95
Flying lizards, 34
Foraminifera, 27, 50
Force, definition of, 14, 78; tabular
summary, 16
Fossils, 24, 25
Frog, 68, 69, 71, 108
Fruits, function of, 55
Fuegians, 103, 117
Fungi, 46, 50, 88
Geikie, 22, 23, 27
Gemmation, 48
Geological record, gaps in, 24, 29
Germ-cell, 48, 90
Gills, 71, 105
Gill-slits in man, 105 ; sea-squirts, 70
Glacial epoch, 36
Gods, evolution of, 122
Gorilla, 101
Gravitation, 14
Gymnosperms, 50
H
Hæckel, 90, hi
Hair, 72
Hand, importance of, 101
Hatteria lizard, 69
Head, 63, 108
Heart, 63, 72
Helium, 20
Helmholtz, 11, 79
Heredity, 121
Hermaphrodite, 52
Honey, 53
Hooker, Sir J. D., 9, 84
Horse, ancestor of, 38, 107
Horsetails, 50
Huggins Sir W., 20, 81
Huxley, Prof., 10, 33, 47, 48, 75, 86,
88, 91, 101, 104, 113
Hybrids, iix
Hydra, 60
Hydrocarbon, 47, 55, 87
Hydrogen, 12, 13, 14, 15
I
Ice, action of, 39
Igneous rocks, 23
Infancy, period of, 66, 114, 116
Infanticide, 114
Infusoria, 59, 87
Inorganic evolution, 79
Insects, 30, 64, 66
Insect-fertilisation, 53
Instinct, 114
Intermediate forms, 34, 107
Invertebrates, 56
Iron, age of, 41
Islands, 108
Island. Life, 109
J
Japan, 108
Jeevine, 71
Jelly-fish, 60
Jolas, 118
Jupiter, 21, 81
Jurassic system, 33, 34, 37, 66
K
G
Galapagos Islands, 9
Ganglia, 62, 70
Ganoids, 29, 35
Gaseous state of matter, 12
Gases, solidifying of, 16
Gas-tar, products of, 31
Gastrula, 90
Gegenbaur, 98
Khayyam, Omar, 123
Kinetic energy, forms of, 15, 16
L
Labyrinthodonts, 31
Lancelet, 56, 70
Language, evolution of, 1x7
Lankester, Prof. Ray, 70, 71, 87
Laplace, 81
Laurentian system, 27
Laws, changes in, 119
Leaf-forests, age of, 23
Leaf-insects, 97
Lemuroids, 38
Lemurs, 77
Lichens, 50
Life, characteristics of, 86; chemistry,
85 ; mystery of origin, 85 ; regions,
88 ; unity, 45
Life-forms, present, 44; distribution
of, 107 ; succession, 107
Light, 18, 54
Limbs, 68, 71
Limestone, 37
Liquids, compression of, 16
Littoral life-region, 87
Living _ things, composition of, 85 ;
functions, 57
Lizards, flying, 33
Lobsters, 33
Lockyer, Sir J. Norman, 81
Lodge, Sir Oliver, 12
Lombok, 109
Lubbock, Sir John (Avebury, Lord),
Lucretius, 102, 117
Lunar craters, 22
Lungs, development of, 71
Lyall, Sir A. C., 116
M
Maccabees, Book of, 11
Macdonald, G., 121
Madagascar, 109
Malic acid, 51
Malthus, 92
Mammals, 33, 49; age of, 37, 73
Mammoth, 40
Man, ancestors of, 73 ; development,
105 ; _ embryo, 92, 105, 106 ; erect
position, xoi; increase, 95 ; 1 primi
tive,’ 102 ; races, 75 ; remains, 39
Man, action of, on nature, x xo; on
species, 94
Man and apes, brain of, 102 ; skeleton,
75
Mankind, races of, 75 ; struggles, 115 ;
unions, xx6
Mars, 2i
Marsh, G. P., 110
Marsupials, 33, 34, 74
Mates, fights for, 97
Matter, distribution of, x8 ; states of,
12 ; tabular summary, 16
Measuring, 1x8
Medusae, 60
Mendelejeff, 13
Metamorphic rocks, 23, 32
Meteoritic theory, 81
Meteors, 21
Metazoa, 56
Micropyle, 51
Migration, 73, 1x1, 114
Mimicry, 96
Mind, evolution of, 113
Mind and body, connection of, 86
Miocene system, 38, 83
Molar energy, 79
Molecular attraction, 14 ; energy, 79
Molecules, 12, 14, 15, 16, 49; rate of
motion, 15 ;size, 14 ; spaces between,
16
Mollusca, 29, 56, 66 ; importance of
fossil, 37
Moneron, 56, 63
Monotremes, 73
Moon, condition of, 21 ; craters of, 22
Morals, evolution of, xr8
�Ï27
INDEX
Plants, action of green, 30 ; adapta
tion of, to insects, 53 ; carnivorous,
45 ; defensive structures, 54 ; dis
persal, 109 ; fossil coal, 31 ; increase,
95 ; locomotive, 45 ; one-seed-leaved,
51 ; sensation of, 44 ; sex in, 53 ;
two-seed-leaved, 52
Plants or animals, priority of, 89 ;
unity of, 45, 46
Pleistocene, 40
Plesiosaurus, 33
Pliocene gravels, flints in,. 39.
Polar region, origin of life in, 25, 83,
no
Pollen, 51, 52, 53
N
Polyps, 60
Porifera, 59
Natural selection, 94-971 objections Post-Pliocene system, 74
to, in
Potential energy, 15
Nature, action of man on, 94
Pouch-bearers, 74
Nautiluses, 67
Poultry Compter, 120
Nebular theory, 79
Priests, 122
Nebulae, 19
Primary Epoch, 23, 281 3°, 43
Neck bones, 106
Primates, 38, 77, 100
Neptune, discovery of, 13
“ Primitive ” man, 102
Nerves, function of, 57 ; origin, 57
Primordial element, 13
Nervous system, 45, 46, 58, 62, 67, 69, Proctor, R.A., 19, 81
98, 113
Prohibitions, social, 119
New Zealand, 108, 109
Protein, 47
Newlands, 13
Protoplasm, 45, 47, 50, 58, 85
Newton, Sir I., 9, 16, 85
Protozoa, 56, 89
Nitrogen, 14, 21
Prout, 13
North Polar regions, origin of life in, Pseudopods, 57
25, 83, no
Pteridophytes, 49
Notochord, 70
Pterodactyl, 34
Nucleolus, 48
Nucleus, 48, 89
Nummulites, 36
Nutrition, 87
Morison, J. Cotter, 188
Morphology, 106
Morula, 91
Moseley, Prof., 64, 87
Mosses, 50
Motion, 12, 14, 78
Mountains, origin of, 37
Mouth, 62
Mud-fish, .35
Musk-sheep, in
Q
Quaternary Epoch, 40
Quatrefages, M. de, 39
O
R
Oceans, permanence of deep, 28
Old maids and clover, 96
Radiant energy, 20
Old Red Sandstone system, 30
Radio-activity, 81
Oligocene system, 38
Radium, 12, 13, 20, 81
Opossums, 33
Reason, 114
Orbital motion, energy of, 79
! Reflex action, 46, 114
Organic compounds, 85
! Reproduction, 46
Organisms, rate of increase of, 95
i Reptiles, 31, 33, 71
Organs, 48 ; prehensile, 101
: Rhinoceroses, 39
Origin of Species, 9, 93, 95, 100, 103, Right and wrong, 119
105, in
! Rock, definition of, 23
Ornithorhynchus, 73
1 Romola, 121
Ovary, 51
Roscoe, Sir H., 45
Owen, Sir R., 38
Rotifers, 64
Oxygen, 14, 21, 45
Rudimentary structures, 106
Oysters, 31, 67
S
P
Paget, Sir J., 46
Parasites, T03
Rear] oyster, 67
Periodic law, 13
Peripatus, 64
Persistence of force, 15
Petals, 51
Phanerogams, 49, 50
Photosphere, 20
Pines, 51
Pistils, 49, 51, 53
Placentals, 38, 74
Planets, orbits of, 20, 80 ; origin, 80
Plant-feeders, 100
Sachs, 85, 87
St. Helena, 109
Saporta, Comte de, 83
Saturn, 80
Savage man, 102
Science, evolution of, 118
Science and theology, 122
Scorpions, 29, 31
Sea-cucumber, 61 ; — lilies, 29 ; —•
lizards, 33 ; — mats, 67 — mosses,
67 ; — slugs, 67 ; — squirts, 69; —
urchins, 61
Secondary Epoch, 31, 43
Seeds, dispersal of, 109
Segments, 68
Selection, artificial, 94 ; — natural, 94
Senses, unity of, 57
Sex, importance of, 53; — in plants,
53
Sexual selection, 97
Sharks, 35, 68
Shell-fish, 37
Sidereal system, structure of, 19
Silures, 27
Silurian system, 29
Simple forms, persistence of, 27
Sin, 118
Skin, evolution of nerves, &c., from,
58, 72
Skull, development of, 68
Soap-bubble, thickness of, 14
Social evolution, 113
Social instinct, growth of, 116
Society, evolution of, 115
Sodium, 12, 13
Solar system, contents of, 20 ; evolu
tion of, 80
Sorby, H. C., 14
Soul. 86
Soul and brain, 86
Southern hemisphere, 84
Space, distribution of matter in,
18
Species, origin of, 93-104
Spectrum of stars, 80
Spencer, Herbert, 11, 58, 92, 101, 117,
120
Spencer, W. B., 69
Sperm-cell, 48, 90
Spider, 31 ; web of, 65
Spine, development of, 70
Spirits, belief in, 122
Sponges, structure of, 29, 45, 59,
87
Sprengel, Conrad, 54
Stamens, 49, 52, 53
Star-fish, 61
Stars, conditions of, 18; distance of
nearest, 18; double, 18 ; fixed, 18 ;
structure of, 18
Stellar systems, evolution of, 79
Stone Age, Old, 41
Stone Age, Newer, 41
Strata, thickness of, 23
Stratified rocks, 23, 26, 36
Structure, changes of, 99
Structures, rudimentary, 106
Struggle for life, 95, 97, 115
Succession of life-forms, 107
Sun, contents of, 20; rotation, 20 ;
volume, 20, 81
Sundew,46
Sun-spots, 20, 21
Sun and planets, common origin of,
80
T
Tadpole, 70, 71
Tapirs, 38
Teeth, 72
Teleost fishes, 38
Tertiary Epoch, 36, 43
Thallophytes, 49
Theology, evolution of, 121
Theology and science, 122
Thorium, 81
Tissues, 48
Tortoise, embryo of, 106
Touch, 98, 113
Tree fern, 32
Trees, earliest true, 36
Triassic system, 33
Tribal conscience, 118
Tridacna, 67
Trilobites, 29, 31
Tulloch, Principal, 86
Tunicata, 69
�INDEX
128
Turtles, 38
Tyburn, 120
U
Ultimate causes, mystery of, 11,
124
Ultra-gaseous
state of matter,
12
Unstratified rocks, 23
Uranium, 81
Use and disuse, 99
V
Vallisneria spiralis, 52
Variations, 91; transmission of, 94
Varieties, 93
Venus’s flower-basket, 59 ; — fly-trap,
46
Vermes, 63
Vertebrates, 45, 56, 64, 67
Vulcanic action, 23, 37, 42
Von Baer, 105
W
Walking-stick insects, 97
Wallace, A. R., 81, 84, 96, 109
War, 116
Water, 12, 13, 14, 21, 63, 85, 87
Water in living matter, 60
Weismann, 99
Whales, 38 ; development of, 100
White’s Selborne, 55, 96, 98, nr, 114,
116
Whitney, W. D., 117
Wiedersheim, 9r
Wind-fertilisation, 53
Wings, 65
Wolff, 54
Worm, segment of, 63
Y
Yellow stamens, 55
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The story of creation : a plain account of evolution
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64- pp. It
Pamphlets for the Million—No. 8
LAST WORDS
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EVOLUTION
By ERNST HAECKEL
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�INTRODUCTION
Not very long ago the sensational announcement was made
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to hope that his decision may yet be undone. He is now
condemned, he tells me, to remain a passive spectator of the
tense drama in which he has played so prominent a part for
half a century. For him the red rays fall level on the scene
and the people about him. It may be that they light up too
luridly, too falsely, the situation in Germany; but the reader
�4
INTHOD UCTION
will understand how a Liberal of Haeckel’s temper must
feel his country to be between Scylla and Charybdis—between
an increasingly clear alternative of Catholicism or Socialism—
with a helmsman at the wheel whose vagaries inspire no
confidence.
The English reader will care to be instructed on the anti
thesis of Virchow and Haeckel which gives point to these
lectures, and which is often misrepresented in this country.
Virchow, the greatest pathologist and one of the leading
anthropologists of Germany, had much to do with the inspir
ing of Haeckel’s Monistic views in the ’fifties. Like several
other prominent German thinkers, Virchow subsequently
abandoned the positive Monistic position for one of agnos
ticism and scepticism, and a long and bitter conflict ensued.
It is hardly too much to say that Virchow’s ultra-timid reserve
in regard to the evolution of man and other questions has
died with him. Apart from one or two less prominent an
thropologists, and the curious distinction drawn by Dr. A. R.
Wallace, science has accepted the fact of evolution, and has,
indeed, accepted the main lines of Haeckel’s ancestral tree
of the human race.
The lectures are reproduced here not solely because of the
interest aroused in them by the “Jesuit” telegram. They
contain a very valuable summary of his conclusions, and
include the latest scientific confirmation. Rarely has the great
biologist written in such clear and untechnical phrases, so
that the general reader will easily learn the outlines of his
much-discussed Monism.
JOSEPH McCABE.
�CONTENTS
PAGE
Introduction..........................................................................
CHAPTER I
The Controversy
about
Creation .
Evolution and Dogma
7
CHAPTER II
The Struggle
Genealogical Tree
over our
Our Ape-Relatives and the Vertebrate-Stem
27
CHAPTER III
The Controversy
over the
The Ideas of Immortality and God
5
Soul
....
47
��LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
CHAPTER I
The Controversy
about
Creation
EVOLUTION AND DOGMA
f
HE controversy over the idea of evolution is a prominent
feature in the mental life of the nineteenth century. It is
true'that a few great thinkers had spoken of a natural evolu
tion of all things several thousand years ago. They had,
indeed, partly investigated the laws that control the birth
and death of the world, and the rise of the earth and its
inhabitants; even the creation-stories and the myths of the
older religions betray a partial influence of these evolutionary
ideas. But it was not until the nineteenth century that the
idea of evolution took definite shape and was scientifically
grounded on various classes of evidence ; and it was not until
the last third of the century that it won general recognition.
The intimate connection that was proved to exist between all
branches of knowledge, once the continuity of historical
development was realised, and the union of them all through
the Monistic philosophy, are achievements of the last few
decades.
The great majority of the older ideas that thoughtful men
had formed on the origin and nature of the world and their
own frame were far removed from the notion of “ self
development.” They culminated in more or less obscure
\ creation-myths, which generally put in the foreground the
idea of a personal Creator. Just as man has used intelligence
and design in the making of his weapons and tools, his
houses and his -boats, so it was thought that the Creator
T
7
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LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
had fashioned the world with art and intelligence, according
to a definite plan. Among the many legends of this kind the
ancient Semitic story of creation, familiar to us as the
Mosaic narrative, but drawn for the most part from Baby
lonian sources, .has obtained a very great influence on Euro
pean culture owing to the general acceptance of the Bible.
The belief in miracles, that is involved in these religious
legends, was bound to come in conflict, at an early date, with
the evolutionary ideas of independent philosophical research.
On the one hand, in the prevalent religious teaching, we had
the supernatural world,the miraculous, teleology : on the other
hand, in the nascent science of evolution, only natural law,
pure reason, mechanical causality. Every step that was
made by this science brought into greater relief its incon
sistency with the predominant religion.1
If we glance for a moment at the various fields in which
the idea of evolution is scientifically applied we find that,
firstly, the whole universe is conceived as a unity; secondly,
our earth; thirdly, organic life on the earth; fourthly, man,
as its highest product; and fifthly, the soul, as a special •
immaterial entity. Thus we have, in historical succession,
the evolutionary research of cosmology, geology, biology,
anthropology, and psychology.
The first comprehensive idea of cosmological evolution was
put forth by the famous critical philosopher, Immanuel
Kant, in 1755, in the great work of his earlier years, General
Natural History of the Heavens, or an Attempt to Conceive
and to Explain the Origin of the Universe mechanically,
according to the Newtonian Laws. This remarkable work
appeared anonymously, and was dedicated to Frederick the
Great, who, however, never saw it. It was little noticed,
and was soon entirely forgotten, until it was exhumed ninety
years afterwards by Alexander von Humboldt. Note par1 The word “evolution” is still used in so many different ways in
various sciences that it is important to fix it in the general significance
which we here give it. By “evolution,” in the widest sense, I understand
the unceasing “ mutations of substance,” adopting Spinoza’s fundamental
conception of substance; it unites inseparably in itself “ matter and force
(or energy),” or “nature and mind” ( = the world and God). Hence the
science of evolution in its broader range is “the history of substance,”/
which postulates the general validity of “ the law of substance.” In the
latter are combined “the law of the constancy of matter” (Lavoisier,
1789) and “the law of the conservation of energy” (Robert Mayer, 1842),
however varied may be the changes of 'form of these elements in the
world-process. Cf. Chapter XII. of The Riddle.
�LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
9
ticularly that on the title-page stress is laid on the mechanical
origin of the world and its explanation on Newtonian prin
ciples ; in this way the strictly Monistic character of the whole
cosmogony and the absolutely universal rule of natural law
are clearly expressed. It is true that Kant speaks much in
it of God and his wisdom and omnipotence ; but this is
limited to the affirmation that God created once for all the
unchangeable laws of nature, and was henceforward bound
by them and only able to work through them. The Dualism
which became so pronounced subsequently in the philosopher
of Koenigsberg counts for very little here.
The idea of a natural development of the world occurs in a
clearer and more consistent form, and is provided with a
firm mathematical basis, forty years afterwards, in the re
markable Mécanique Céleste of Pierre Laplace. His popular
Exposition du Système du Monde (1796) destroyed at its
roots the legend of creation that had hitherto prevailed, or
the Mosaic narrative in the Bible. Laplace, who had become
Minister of the Interior, Count, and Chancellor of the Senate,
under Napoleon, was merely honourable and consistent when
he replied to the emperor’s question, “What room there was
for God in his system? ” : “Sire, I had no need for that un
founded hypothesis.” What strange ministers there are
sometimes ! 1 The shrewdness of the Church soon recog
nised that the personal Creator was dethroned, and the
creation-myth destroyed, by this Monistic and now generally
received theory of cosmic development. Nevertheless it
maintained towards it the attitude which it had taken up 250
years earlier in regard to the closely related and irrefutable
system of Copernicus. It endeavoured to conceal the truth
as long as possible, or to oppose it with Jesuitical methods,
1 Certain orthodox periodicals have lately endeavoured to deny this
famous atheistical confession of the great Laplace, which was merely a
candid deduction of his splendid cosmic system. They say that this
Monistic natural philosopher acknowledged the Catholic faith on his
death-bed ; and in proof of this they offer us the later testimony of an
Ultramontane priest. We need not point out how uncertain is the love
of truth of these heated partisans. When testimony of this kind tends
to “the good of religion” (i.e., their own good), it is held to be a pious
work (pia fraus). On the other hand, it is interesting to recall the reply
of a Prussian Minister of Religion, Von Zedlitz, 120 years ago, to the
Breslau Consistory, when it urged that “ those who believe most are
the best subjects.” He wrote in reply: “His majesty [Frederick the
Great] is not disposed to rest, the security of his State on the stupidity of
his subjects.”
�I
LAS! WORDS ON EVOLUTION
and finally it yielded. If the Churches now silently admit
the Copernican system and the cosmogony of Laplace and
have ceased to oppose them, we must attribute the fact,
partly to a feeling of their spiritual impotence, partly to an
astute calculation that the ignorant masses do not reflect on
these great problems.
In order to obtain a clear idea and a firm conviction of this
cosmic evolution by natural law, the eternal birth and death
of millions of suns and stars, one needs some mathematical
training and a lively imagination, as well as a certain com
petence in astronomy and physics. The evolutionary process
is much simpler, and more readily grasped in geology.
Every shower of rain or wave of the sea, every volcanic
eruption and every pebble, gives us a direct proof of the
changes that are constantly taking place on the surface of
our planet. However, the historical significance of these
changes was not properly appreciated until 1822, by Karl
von Hoff of Gotha, and modern geology was only founded in
1830 by Charles Lyell, who explained the whole origin and
composition of the solid crust of the earth, the formation of
the mountains, and the periods of the earth’s development,
in a connected system by natural laws. From the immense
thickness of the stratified rocks, which contain the fossilised
remains of extinct organisms, we discovered the enormous
length—running into millions of years—of the periods during
which these sedimentary rocks were deposited in water.
Even the duration of the organic history of the earth—that is
to say, the period during which the plant and animal popu
lation of our planet was developing—must itself be put at
more than a hundred million years. These results of geology
and paleontology destroyed the current legend of the six
days’ work of a personal Creator. Many attempts were
made, it is true, and are still being made, to reconcile the
Mosaic supernatural story of creation with modem geology.1
All these efforts of believers are in vain. We may say, in
fact, that it is precisely the study of geology, the reflection it
entails on the enormous periods of evolution, and the habit
of seeking the simple mechanical causes of their constant
changes, that contribute very considerably to the advance of
1 See, for instance, Moses and Geology, or Harmony of the Bible with
Science, by Samuel Kinns (1882). In this work the pious Biblical
astronomer executes the most incredible and Jesuitical manoeuvres in
order to bring about an impossible reconciliation between science and the
Biblical narrative.
�LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
11
enlightenment. \et in spite of this (or, possibly, because of
this), geological instruction is either greatly neglected or
entirely suppressed in most schools. It is certainly emin
ently calculated (in connection with geography) to enlarge the
mind, and acquaint the child with the idea of evolution. An
educated person who knows the elements of geology will
never experience ennui. He will find everywhere in sur
rounding nature, in the rocks and in the water, in the desert
and on the mountains, the most instructive stimuli to
reflection.
The evolutionary process in organic nature is much more
difficult to grasp. Here we must distinguish two different
series of biological development, . which have only been
brought into proper causal connection by means of our biogenetic law (1866); one series is found in embryology (or
ontogeny), the other in phylogeny (or race-development). In
Germany “evolution” always meant embryology, or a part
of the whole, until forty years ago. It stood for a micro
scopic examination of the wonderful processes by means of
which the elaborate structure of the plant or animal body is
formed from the simple seed of the plant or the egg of the
bird. Until the beginning of the nineteenth century the
erroneous view was generally received that this marvellously
complicated structure existed, completely formed, in the
simple ovum, and that the various organs had merely to
grow and to shape themselves independently by a. process of
“evolution ” (or unfolding), before they entered into activity.
An able German scientist, Caspar Friedrich Wolff (son of a
Berlin tailor), had already shown the error of this “pre
formation theory ” in 1759. He had proved in his disserta
tion for the doctorate, that no trace of the later body, of its
bones, muscles, nerves, and feathers, can be found in the
hen’s egg (the commonest and most convenient object for
study), but merely a small round disc, consisting of two thin
superimposed layers. He had further showed that the
various organs are only built up gradually out of these
simple elements, and that we can trace, step by step, a series
of real new growths. However, these momentous dis
coveries, and the sound “theory of epigenesis ” that he based
on them, were wholly ignored for fifty years, and even re
jected by the leading authorities. It was not until Oken had
re-discovered these important facts at Jena (i<3o6), Pander
had more carefully distinguished the germinal layers (1817),
t 1
�12
LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
and finally Carl Ernst von Baer had happily combined ob
servation and reflection in his classical Animal Embryology
(1828), that embryology attained the rank of an independent
science with a sound empirical base.
A little later it secured a well-merited recognition in botany
also, especially owing to the efforts of Matthias Schleiden of
Jena, the distinguished student who provided biology with a
new foundation in the “cell theory ” (1838). But it was not
until the middle of the nineteenth century that people gener
ally recognised that the ovum of the plant or animal is itself
only a simple cell, and that the later tissues and organs
gradually develop from this “ elementary organism ” by a
repeated cleavage of, and division of labour in, the cells.
The most important step was then made of recognising that
our human organism also develops from an ovum (first dis
covered by Baer in 1827), in virtue of the same laws, and
that its embryonic development resembles that of the other
mammals, especially that of the ape. Each of us was, at the
beginning of his existence, a simple globule of protoplasm,
surrounded by a membrane, about jT^of an inch in diameter,
with a firmer nucleus inside it. These important embryo
logical discoveries confirmed the rational conception of the
human organism that had been attained much earlier by com
parative anatomy : the conviction that the human frame is
built in the same way, and develops similarly from a simple
ovum, as the body of all other mammals. Even Linné had
already (1735) given man a place in the mammal class in his
famous System of Nature.
^Differently from these embryological facts, which can be
directly observed, the phenomena of phylogeny (the develop
ment of species), which are needed to set the former in their
true light, are usually outside the range of immediate ob
servation. What was the origin of the countless species of
animals and plants? How can we explain the remarkable
relationships which unite similar species into genera and these
into classes? Linné answers the question very simply with
the belief in creation, relying on the generally accepted
Mosaic narrative: “There are as many different species of
animals and plants as there were different forms created by’
God in the beginning.” The first scientific answer was given
in 1809 by the great French scientist, Lamarck. He taught,
in his suggestive Philosophie Zoologique, that the resem
blances in form and structure of groups of species are due to
�LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
13
real affinity, and that all organisms descend from a few very
simple primitive forms (or, possibly, from a single one).
These primitive forms were developed out of lifeless matter
by spontaneous generation. The resemblances of related
groups of species are explained by inheritance from common
s:em-forms; their dissimilarities are due to adaptation to
different environments, and to variety in the action of the
modifiable organs. The human race has arisen in the same
way, by transformation of a series of mammal ancestors, the
nearest of which are ape-like primates.
These great ideas of Lamarck, which threw light on the
whole field of organic life, and were closely approached by
Goethe in his own speculations, gave rise to the theory that
we now know as transformism, or the theory of evolution or
descent. But the far-seeing Lamarck was—as Caspar
Friedrich Wolff had been fifty years before—half a century
before his time. His theory obtained no recognition, and
was soon wholly forgotten.
.
It was brought into the light once more in 1859 by the
genius of Charles Darwin, who had been born in the very
year that the Philosophic Zoologique was published. The
substance and the success of his system, which has gone by
the name of Darwinism (in the wider sense) for forty-six
years, are so generally known that I need not dwell on them.
I will only point out that the great success of Darwin’s epochmaking works is due to two causes : firstly, to the fact that
the English scientist most ingeniously worked up the em
pirical material that had accumulated during fifty years into,
a systematic proof of the theory of descent; and secondly, to
the fact that he gave it the support of a second theory of his
own, the theory of natural selection. This theory, which
gives a causal explanation of the transformation of species, is
what we ought to call “ Darwinism ” in the strict sense. . We
cannot go here into the question how far this theory, is justi
fied, or how far it is corrected by more recent theories, such
as Weismann’s theory of germ-plasm (1B44), or De Vries s
theory of mutations (1900). Our concern is rather, with the
unparalleled influence that Darwinism, and its application to
man, have had during the last forty years on the whole pro
vince of science; and at the same time, with its irreconcil
able opposition to the dogmas of the Churches.
The extension of the theory of evolution to man was., natur
ally, one of the most interesting and momentous applications
�U
LA S 7' WORDS ON EVOLUTION
of it. If all other organisms arose, not by a miraculous/
creation, but by a. natural modification of earlier forms of life,/
the presumption is that the human race also was developed by/
the transformation of the most man-like mammals, the
primates of Linné—the apes and lemurs. This natural infer
ence, which Lamarck had drawn in his simple way, but Da?- •
win had at first explicitly avoided, was first thoroughly estab
lished by the gifted zoologist, Thomas Huxley, in his th/ee
lectures on Man s Place in Nature (1862). He showed tnat
this “ question of questions ” is unequivocally answered/ by
three chief witnesses—the natural history of the anthropoid
apes, the anatomic and embryological relations of man tp the
animals immediately below him, and the recently discovered
fossil human remains. Darwin entirely accepted these con
clusions of his friend eight years afterwards, and, in his twovolume work, The Descent of Man and Sexual Selection
(1871), furnished a number of new proofs in support of the
dreaded “descent of man from the ape.” I myself then
(1874) completed the task I had begun in 1866, of determining
approximately the whole series of the extinct animal an
cestors of the human race, on the ground of comparative
anatomy, embryology, and paleontology. This attempt was
improved, as our knowledge advanced, in the five editions
of my Evolution of Man. In the last twenty years a vast
literature on the subject has accumulated. I must assume
that you are acquainted with the contents of one or other of
these works, and will turn to the question, that especially
engages our attention at present, how the inevitable struggle
between these momentous achievements of modern science
and the dogmas of the Churches has run in recent years.
It was obvious that both the general theory of evolution
and its extension to man in particular must meet from the
first with the most determined resistance on the part of the
Churches. Both were in flagrant contradiction to the Mosaic
story of creation, and other Biblical dogmas that were in
volved in it, and are still taught in our elementary schools.
It is creditable to the shrewdness of the theologians and their
associates, the metaphysicians, that they at once rejected
Darwinism, and made a particularly energetic resistance in
their writings to its chief consequence, the descent of man
from the ape. This resistance seemed the more justified and
hopeful as, for seven or eight years after Darwin’s appear
ance, few, biologists accepted his theory, and the general
�LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
i5
attitude amongst them was one of cold scepticism. I can
veil testify to this from my own experience. When 1 first
openly advocated Darwin’s theory at a scientific congress at
Stettin in 1863, I was almost alone, and was blamed by the
great majority for taking up seriously so fantastic a theory,
“fee dream of an after-dinner nap,” as the Göttinger zoo
logist, Keferstein, called it.
lhe general attitude towards Nature fifty years-ago was so
different from that we find everywhere to-day, that.it is
difficult to convey a clear idea of it to a young scientist or
philosopher. The great question of creation, the problem
how the various species of plants and animals came into the
world, and how man came into being, did .not exist yet in
exact science. There was, in fact, no question of it.
Seventy-seven years ago Alexander yon Humboldt de
livered, in this very spot, the lectures which afterwards made
up his famous work, Cosmos, the Elements, of a Physical
Description of the World. As he touched, in passing, the
obscure problem of the origin of the organic population of
our planet, he could only say resignedly : “ The mysterious
and unsolved problem of how things came to be does not
belong to the empirical province of objective research, the
description of what is.” It is instructive to find Johannes
Muller, the greatest of German biologists in the ^nineteenth
century, speaking thus in 1852, in his famous essay, On
the Generation of Snails in Holothurians ” :
The entrance
of various species of animals into creation is certain it is a
fact of paleontology; but it is supernatural as long as this
entrance cannot be perceived in the act and become an
element of observation.” I myself had a number of remark
able conversations with Müller, whom I put at the head of all
my distinguished teachers, in the summer of 1854. His lec
tures on comparative anatomy and physiology—the. most
illuminating and stimulating I ever heard—had captivated
me to such an extent that I asked and obtained his permission
to make a closer study of the skeletons and other preparations
in his splendid museum of comparative anatomy (then in the
right wing of the buildings of the Berlin University), and to
draw them. Müller (then in his fifty-fourth year) used to
spend the Sunday afternoon alone in the museum. He would
walk to and fro for hours in the spaoious rooms, his hands
behind his back, buried in thought about the mysterious
affinities of the vertebrates, the “ holy enigma ” of which was
�16
LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
so forcibly impressed by the row of skeletons. Now and
again my great master would turn to a small table at the side J
at which I (a student of twenty years) was sitting in the angly
of a window, making conscientious drawings of the skulls oJ
mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and fishes.
/
I would then beg him to explain particularly difficult poin/s
in anatomy, and once I ventured to put the question : “Myst
not all these vertebrates, with their identity in internal
skeleton, in spite of all their external differences, have come
originally from a common form? ” The great master nodded
his head thoughtfully, and said : “Ah, if we only knew that !
If ever you solve that riddle, you will have accomplished a
supreme work.” Two months afterwards, in September,
I^54> J had to accompany Müller to Heligoland, and le/rned
under his direction the beautiful and wonderful inhabitants
of the sea. As we fished together in the sea, and caugnt the
lovely medusæ, I asked him how it was possible to explain
their remarkable alternation of generations ; if the medusæ,
from the ova of which polyps develop to-day, must not have
come originally from the more simply organised polypi? To
this precocious question, I received the same resigned
answer: “Ah, that is a very obscure problem ! We know
nothing whatever about the origin of species.”
i
Johannes Müller was certainly one of the greatest scientists
of the nineteenth century. He takes rank with Cuviei, Baer,
Lamarck, and Darwin. His insight was profound and pene
trating, his philosophic judgment comprehensive, ^nd his
mastery of the vast province of biology was enormous. Emil
du Bois-Reymond happily compared him, in his fine com
memorative address, to Alexander the Great, whose kingdom
was divided into several independent realms at his death. In
his lectures and works Müller treated no less than Jour dif
ferent subjects, for which four separate chairs were founded
after his death in 1858—human anatomy, physiology, patho
logical anatomy, and comparative anatomy. In fact, we
ought really to add two more subjects—zoology and embryo
logy. Of these, also, we learned more from Müller’s classic
lectures than from the official lectures of the professors of
those subjects. The great master died in 1858, a few months
before Charles Darwin and Alfred R. Wallace made their
first communications on their new theory of selection in the
Journal of the Linnæan Society. I do not doubt in the least
that this surprising answer of the riddle of creation would
�LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
17
have profoundly moved Muller, and have been fully admitted
by him on mature reflection.
To these leading- masters in biology, and to all other
anatomists, physiologists, zoologists, and botanists up to
1858, the question of organic creation was an unsolved
problem; the great majority regarded it as insoluble. The
theologians and their allies, the metaphysicians, built
triumphantly on this fact. It afforded a clear proof of the
limitations of reason and science. A miracle only could
account for the origin of these ingenious and carefully
designed organisms; nothing less than the Divine wisdom
and omnipotence could have brought man into being. But
this general resignation of reason, and the dominance of
supernatural ideas which it encouraged, were somewhat para
doxical in the thirty years between Lyell and Darwin,
between 1830 and 1859, since the natural evolution of the
earth, as conceived by the great geologist had come to be
universally recognised. Since the earlier of these dates the
iron necessity of natural law had ruled in inorganic nature, in
the formation of the mountains and the movement of the
heavenly bodies. In organic nature, on the contrary, in the
creation and the life of animals and plants, people saw only
the wisdom and power of an intelligent Creator and Con
troller; in other words, everything was ruled by mechanical
causality in the inorganic world, but by teleological finality in
the realm of biology.
Philosophy, strictly so called, paid little or no attention to
this dilemma. Absorbed almost exclusively in metaphysical
and dialectical speculations, it looked with supreme contempt
or indifference on the enormous progress that the empirical
sciences were making. It affected, in its character of
“purely mental science,” to build up the world out of its own
head, and to have no need of the splendid material that was
being laboriously gathered by observation and experiment.
This is especially true of Germany, where Hegel’s system of
“ absolute idealism ” had secured the highest regard, particu
larly since it had been made obligatory as “the royal State
philosophy of Prussia ”—mainly because, according to Hegel,
“ in the State the Divine will itself and the monarchical con
stitution alone represent the development of reason; all other
forms of constitution are lower stages of the development of
reason.” Hegel’s abstruse metaphysics has also been greatly
appreciated because it has made so thorough and consistent
�18
LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
a use of the idea of evolution. But this pretended “ evolution
of reason ” floated far above real nature in the pure ether of
the absolute spirit, and was devoid of all the material ballast
that the empirical science of the evolution of the world, the
earth, and its living population, had meantime accumulated.
Moreover, it is well known how Hegel himself declared, with
humorous resignation, that only one of his many pupils had
understood him, and this one had misunderstood him.
From the higher standpoint of general culture the difficult
question forces itself on us : What is the real value of the
idea of evolution in the whole realm of science? We are
bound to answer that it varies considerably. The facts of
the evolution of the individual, or of ontogeny, were easy to
observe and grasp : the evolution of the crust of the earth
and of the mountains in geology seemed to have an equally
sound empirical foundation; the physical evolution of the
universe seemed to be established by mathematical specula
tion. There was no longer any serious question of creation,
in the literal sense, of the deliberate action of a personal
Creator, in these great provinces. But this made people
cling to the idea more than ever in regard to the origin of the
countless species of animals and plants, and especially the
creation of man. This transcendental problem seemed to be
entirely beyond the range of natural development; and the
same was thought of the question of the nature and origin of
the soul, the mystic entity that was appropriated by meta
physical speculation as its subject. Charles Darwin suddenly
brought a clear light into this dark chaos of contradictory
notions in 1859. His epoch-making work, The Origin of
Species, proved convincingly that this historical process is
not a supernatural mystery, but a physiological phenomenon;
and that the preservation of improved races in the struggle
for life had produced, by a natural evolution, the whole
wondrous world of organic life.
To-day, when evolution is almost universally recognised in
biology, when thousands of anatomic and physiological works
are based on it every year, the new generation can hardly
form an idea of the violent resistance that was offered to
Darwin’s theory and the impassioned struggles it provoked.
In the first place, the Churches at once raised a vigorous protest; they rightly regarded their new antagonist as the deadly
enemy of the legend of creation, and saw the very foundations
of their creed threatened. The Churches found a powerful
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ally in the dualistic metaphysics that still claims to represent
the real “ idealist philosophy ” at most universities. But
most dangerous of all to the young theory was the violent re
sistance it met almost everywhere in its own province of em
pirical science. The prevailing belief in the fixity and the
independent creation of the various species was much more
seriously menaced by Darwin’s theory than it had been by
Lamarck’s transformism. Lamarck had said substantially
the same thing fifty years before, but had failed to convince
through the lack of effective evidence. Many scientists,
some of great distinction, opposed Darwin because either
they had not an adequate acquaintance with the whole field of
biology, or it seemed to them that his bold speculation ad
vanced too far from the secure base of experience.
When Darwin’s work appeared in 1859, and fell like a flash
of lightning on the dark world of official biology, I was
engaged in a scientific expedition to Sicily and taken up with
a thorough study of the graceful radiolarians, those won
derful microscopic marine animals that surpass all other
organisms in the beauty and variety of their forms. The
special study of this remarkable class of animals, of which I
afterwards described more than 4,000 species, after more
than ten years of research, provided me with one of the solid
foundation-stones of my Darwinian ideas. But when I re
turned from Messina to Berlin in the spring of i860, I knew
nothing as yet of Darwin’s achievement. I merely heard
from my friends at Berlin that a remarkable work by a crazy
Englishman had attracted great attention, and that it turned
upside down all previous ideas as to the origin of species.
I soon perceived that almost all the experts at Berlin—chief
amongst them were the famous microscopist, Ehrenberg;
the anatomist, Reichert; the zoologist, Peters; and the
geologist, Beyrich—were unanimous in their condemnation of
Darwin. The brilliant orator of the Berlin Academy, Emil
du Bois-Reymond, hesitated. He recognised that the theory
of evolution was the only natural solution of the problem
of creation; but he laughed at the application of it as a
poor romance, and declared that the phylogenetic inquiries
into the relationship of the various species had about as
much value as the research of philologists into the genea
logical tree of the Homeric heroes.
The distinguished
botanist, Alexander Braun, stood quite alone in his full and
warm assent to the theory of evolution.
I found comfort
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and encouragement with this dear and respected teacher,
when I was deeply moved by the first reading of Darwin’s
book, and soon completely converted to his views.
In
- Darwin’s great and harmonious conception of Nature, and
his convincing establishment of evolution, I had an answer
to all the doubts that had beset me since the beginning of
my biological studies.
My famous .teacher, Rudolf Virchow, whom I had met
at Wurzburg in 1852, and was soon associated with in the
most friendly relations as special pupil and admiring assist
ant, played a very curious part in this great controversy.
I am, I think, one of those elderly men who have followed
Virchow’s development, as man and thinker, with the greatest
interest during the last fifty years. I distinguish three periods
in his psychological metamorphoses.
In the first decade
of his academic life, from 1847 to 1858, mainly at Wurz
burg, he effected the great reform of medicine that culminated
brilliantly in his cellular pathology. In the following twenty
years (1858—1877) he was chiefly occupied with politics and
anthropology.
He was at first favourable to Darwinism,
then sceptical, and finally rejected it.
His powerful and
determined opposition to it dates from 1877, when, in his
famous speech on “The Freedom of Science in the Modern
State,” he struck a heavy blow at that freedom, denounced
the theory of evolution as dangerous to the State, and
demanded its exclusion from the schools. This remarkable
metamorphosis is so important, and has had so much influ
ence, yet has been so erroneously described, that I will deal
with it somewhat fully in the next chapter, especially as I
have then to treat one chief problem, the descent of man
from the ape. For the moment, I will merely recall the
fact that in Berlin, the “metropolis of intelligence,” as it
has been called, the theory of evolution, now generally
accepted, met with a more stubborn resistance than in most
of our other leading educational centres, and that this opposi
tion was due above all to the powerful authority of Virchow.
We can only glance briefly here at the victorious struggle
that the idea of evolution has conducted in the last three
decades of the nineteenth century. The violent resistance
that Darwinism encountered nearly everywhere in its early
years was paralysed towards the end of the first decade. In
the years 1866—1874 many works were published in which not
only were the foundations of the theory scientifically strength
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ened, but its general recognition was secured by popular
treatment of the subject. I made the first attempt in 1866,
in my General Morphology, to present connectedly the whole
subject of evolution and make it the foundation of a consistent
Monistic philosophy; and I then gave a popular summary
of my chief conclusions in the ten editions of my History of
Creation. In my Evolution of Man I made the first attempt
to apply the principles of evolution thoroughly and consistently
to man, and to draw up a hypothetical list of his animal
ancestors. The three volumes of my Systematic Phylogeny
(1894—1896) contain a fuller outline of a natural classification
of organisms on the basis of their stem-history. There have
been important contributions to the science of evolution in
all its branches in the Darwinian periodical Cosmos, since
1877; and a number of admirable popular works helped to
spread the system.
However, the most important and most welcome advance
was made by science when, in the last thirty years, the idea
of evolution penetrated into every branch of biology, and
was recognised as fundamental and indispensable. Thousands
of new discoveries and observations in all sections of botany,
zoology, protistology, and anthropology, were brought for
ward as empirical evidence of evolution. This is especially
true of the remarkable progress of paleontology, comparative
anatomy, and embryology, but it applies also to physiology,
chorology (the science of the distribution of living things),
and oecology (the description of the habits of animals). How
much our horizon was extended by these, and how much
the unity of our Monistic system gained, can be seen in any
modern manual of biology. If we compare them with those
that gave us extracts of natural history forty or fifty years
ago, we see at once what an enormous advance has taken
place. Even the more remote branches of anthropological
science, ethnography, sociology, ethics, and jurisprudence,
are entering into closer relations with the theory of evolution,
and can no longer escape its influence. In view of all this,
it is ridiculous for theological and metaphysical journals to
talk, as they do, of the failure of evolution and “the death
bed of Darwinism.”
Our science of evolution won its greatest triumph when,
at the beginning of the twentieth century, its most powerful
opponents, the Churches, became reconciled to it, and
endeavoured to bring their dogmas into line with it.
A
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number of timid attempts to do so had been made in the
preceding ten years by different freethinking theologians
and philosophers, but without much success. The distinction
of accomplishing this in a comprehensive and well-informed
manner was reserved for a Jesuit, Father Erich Wasmann of
Luxemburg. This able and learned entomologist had already
earned some recognition in zoology by a series of admirable
observations on the life of ants, and the captives that they
always keep in their homes, certain very small insects which
have themselves been curiously modified by adaptation to
their peculiar environment. He showed that these striking
modifications can only be rationally explained by descent from
other free-living species of insects. The various papers in
which Wasmann gave a thoroughly Darwinian explanation
of the biological phenomena first appeared (1901—1903) in the
Catholic periodical, Stimmen aus Maria-Laach, and are now
collected in a special work entitled, Modern Biology and the
Theory of Evolution.
This remarkable book of Wasmann’s is a masterpiece of
Jesuitical sophistry.
It really consists of three entirely
different sections. The first third gives, in the introduction,
what is, for Catholics, a clear and instructive account of
modern biology, especially the cell-theory, and the theory
of evolution (chapters i.—viii.). The second third, the ninth
chapter, is the most valuable part of the work. Ilj has the
title: “The Theory of Fixity or the Theory of Evolution?”
Here the learned entomologist gives an interesting account of
thè results of his prolonged studies of the morphology and
the cecology of the ants and their captives, the myrmecophilae.
He shows impartially and convincingly that these complicated
and remarkable phenomena can only be explained by evolution,
and that the older doctrine of the fixity and independent
creation of the various species is quite untenable. With a
few changes this ninth chapter could figure as a useful part
of a work by Darwin or Weismann or some other evolutionist.
The succeeding chapter (the last third) is flagrantly inconsist
ent with the ninth. It deals most absurdly with the application
of the theory of evolution to man. The reader has to ask
himself whether Wasmann really believes these confused and
ridiculous notions, or whether he merely aims at befogging
his readers, and so preparing the way for the acceptance
of the conventional creed.
Wasmann’s book has been well criticised by a number of
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competent students, especially by Escherich and France.
While fully recognising his great services, they insist very
strongly on the great mischief wrought by this smuggling
of the Jesuitical spirit into biology. Escherich points out at
length the glaring inconsistencies and the obvious untruths
of this “ecclesiastical evolution.” He summarises his
criticism in the words : “ If the theory of evolution can really
be reconciled with the dogmas of the Church only in the
way we find here, Wasmann has clearly proved that any such
reconciliation is impossible. Because what Wasmann gives
here as the theory of evolution is a thing mutilated beyond
recognition and incapable of any vitality.” He tries, like a
good Jesuit, to prove that it does not tend to undermine, but
to give a firm foundation to, the story of supernatural creation,
and that it was really not Lamarck and Darwin, but St.
Augustin and St. Thomas of Aquin, who founded the science
of evolution. “ God does not interfere directly in the order
of Nature when he can act by means of natural causes.”
Man alone constitutes a remarkable exception; because “the
human soul, being a spiritual entity, cannot be derived from
matter even by the Divine omnipotence, like the vital forms
of the plants and animals ” (p. 299).
In an instructive article on “Jesuitical Science” (in the
Frankfort Freie Wort, No. 22, 1904), R. H. Francd gives
an interesting list of the prominent Jesuits who are now at
work in the various branches of science. As he rightly says,
the danger consists “in a systematic introduction of the
Jesuitical spirit into science, a persistent perversion of all
its problems and solutions, and an astute undermining of its
foundations; to speak more precisely, the danger is that
people are not sufficiently conscious of it, and that they, and
even science itself, fall into the cleverly prepared pit of
believing that there is such a thing as Jesuitical science,
the results of which may be taken seriously.” 1
1 The eel-like sophistry of the Jesuits, which has been brought to such
a wonderful pitch in their political system, cannot, as a rule, be met by
argument. An interesting illustration of this was given by Father
Wasmann himself in his controversy with the physician, Dr. Julian
Marcuse. The “ scientific ” Wasmann had gone so far in his zeal for
religion as to support a downright swindle of a “ miraculous cure ” in
honour of the “Mother of God of Oostacker ” (the Belgian Lourdes).
Dr. Marcuse succeeded in exposing the whole astounding story of this
“pious fraud” (Deutsche Stimmen, Berlin, 1903, iv. Jahrg., No. 20).
Instead of giving a scientific refutation, the Jesuit replied with sophistic
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While fully recognising these dangers, I nevertheless feel
that the Jesuit Father Wasmann, and his colleagues, have—
unwittingly—done a very great service to the progress of
pure science. The Catholic Church, the most powerful and
widespread of the Christian sects, sees itself compelled to
capitulate to the idea of evolution. It embraces the most
important application of the idea, Lamarck and Darwin’s
theory of descent, which it had vigorously combated until
twenty years ago. It does, indeed, mutilate the great tree,
cutting off its roots and its highest branch; it rejects spon
taneous generation or archigony at the bottom, and the
descent of man from animal ancestors above.
But these
exceptions will not last. Impartial biology will take no notice
of them, and the religious creed will at length determine that
the more complex species have been evolved from a series of
simpler forms according to Darwinian principles. The belief
in a supernatural creation is restricted to the production of
the earliest and simplest stem-forms, from which the “natural
species ” have taken their origin; Wasmann gives that name
to all species that are demonstrably descended from a common
stem-form; in other words, to what other classifiers call
“ stems ” or “ phyla. ” The 4,000 species of ants in his system,
which he believes to be genetically related, are comprised by
him in one “natural species.” On the other hand, man forms
one isolated “ natural species ” for himself, without any con
nection with the other mammals.
The Jesuitical sophistry that Wasmann betrays in this
ingenious distinction between “systematic and natural
species ” is also found in his Philosophic “ Thoughts on
Evolution” (chap, viii.), his distinction between philosophic
and scientific evolution, or between evolution in one stem
and in several stems. His remarks (in chap, vii.) on “the
cell and spontaneous generation ” are similarly marred by
sophistry. The question of spontaneous generation or archi
gony—that is to say, of the first appearance of organic life
on the earth, is one of the most difficult problems in biology,
perversion and personal invective (Scientific [?] Supplement to Germania,
Berlin, 1902, No. 43, and 1903, No. 13). In his final reply, Dr. Marcuse
said : “I have accomplished my object—to let thoughtful people see once
fnore the kind of ideas that are found in the world of dead and literal
faith, which tries to put the crudest superstition and reverence for the
rnyth of miraculous cures in the place of science, truth and knowledge
(Deutsche Stimmen, 1903, v. Jahrgang, No. 3).
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25
one of those in which the most distinguished students betray
a striking weakness of judgment. Dr. Heinrich Schmidt,
of Jena, has lately written an able and popular little work on
that subject. In his Spontaneous Generation and Professor
Reinke (1903), he has shown to what absurd consequences
the ecclesiastical ideas lead on this very question.
The
botanist Reinke, of Kiel, is now regarded amongst religious
people as the chief opponent of Darwinism; for many con
servatives this is because he is a member of the Prussian
Herrenhaus (a very intelligent body, of course 1). Although
he is a strong evangelical, many of his mystic deductions
agree surprisingly with the Catholic speculations of Father
Wasmann. This is especially the case with regard to spon
taneous generation. They both declare that the first appear
ance of life must be traced to a miracle, to the work of
a personal deity, whom Reinke calls the “cosmic intelligence.”
I have shown the unscientific character of these notions in my
last two works, The Riddle of the Universe and The Wonders
of Life. I have drawn attention especially to the widely
distributed monera of the chromacea class—organisms of the
simplest type conceivable, whose whole body is merely an
unnucleated green, structureless globule of plasm (Chroococcus); their whole vital activity consists of growth (by
forming plasm) and multiplication (by dividing into two). There
is little theoretical difficulty in conceiving the origin of these
new simple monera from inorganic compounds of albumen,
or their later transformation into the simplest nucleated cells.
All this, and a good deal more that will not fit in his Jesuitical
frame, is shrewdly ignored by Wasmann.
In view of the great influence that Catholicism still has on
public life in Germany, through the Centre party, this change
of front should be a great gain to education.
Virchow
demanded as late as 1877 that the dangerous doctrine of
evolution should be excluded from the schools.
The
Ministers of Instruction of the two chief German States
gratefully adopted this warning from the leader of the pro
gressive party, forbade the teaching of Darwinian ideas, and
made every effort to check the spread of biological knowledge.
Now, twenty-five years afterwards, the Jesuits come forward,
and demand the opposite. They recognise openly that the
hated theory of evolution is established, and try to reconcile
it with the creed ! What an irony of history ! And we find
much the same story when we read the struggles for freedom
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of thought and for the recognition of evolution in the other
educated countries of Europe.
In Italy, its cradle and home, educated people generally look
upon the papacy with the most profound disdain. I have
spent many years in Italy, and have never met an educated
Italian of such bigoted and narrow views as we usually find
amongst educated German Catholics—represented with
success in the Reichstag by the Centre party. It is proof
enough of the reactionary character of German Catholics that
the Pope himself describes them as his most vigorous soldiers,
and points them out as models to the faithful of other nations.
As the whole history of the Roman Church shows, the charlatan
of the' Vatican is the deadly enemy of free science and free
teaching. The present German Emperor ought to regard it
as his most sacred duty to maintain the tradition of the
Reformation, and to promote the formation of the German
people in the sense of Frederick the Great. Instead of this
we have to look on with heavy hearts while the Emperor,
badly advised and misled by those in influence about him,
suffers himself to be caught closer and closer in the net of
the Catholic clergy, and sacrifices to it the intelligence of the
rising generation.
The firmness of the belief in conventional dogmas, which
hampers the progress of rational enlightenment in orthodox
Protestant circles as well as Catholic, is often admired as an
expression of the deep emotion of the German people. But
its real source is their confusion of thought and their credu
lity, the power of conservative tradition, and the reactionary
state of political education. While our schools are bent
under the yoke of the creeds, those of our neighbours are
free. France, the pious daughter of the Church, gives
anxious moments to her ambitious mother. She is breaking
the chains of the Concordat, and taking up the work of the
Reformation. In Germany, the birthplace of the Reforma
tion, the Reichstag and the Government vie with each other in
smoothing the paths for the Jesuits, and fostering, instead of
suppressing, the intolerant spirit of the sectarian school. Let
us hope that the latest episode in the history of evolution, its
recognition by Jesuitical science, will bring about the reverse
of what they intend—the substitution of rational science for
blind faith.
�CHAPTER II
' The Struggle over our Genealogical Tree
OUR APE-RELATIVES AND THE VERTEBRATE-STEM
In the previous chapter I tried to give you a general idea of
the present state of the controversy in regard to evolution.
Comparing the various branches of thought we found that the
older mythological ideas of the creation of the world were
driven long ago out of the province of inorganic science, but
that they did not yield to the rational conception of natural
development until a much later date in the field of organic
nature. Here the idea of evolution did not prove completely
victorious until the beginning of the twentieth century, when
its most zealous and dangerous opponent, the Church, was
forced to admit it. Hence the open acknowledgment of the
Jesuit, Father Wasmann, deserves careful attention, and we
may look forward to a further development. If his force of
conviction and his moral courage are strong enough, he will
go on to draw the normal conclusions from his high scientific
attainments and leave the Catholic Church, as the prominent
Jesuits, Count Hoensbroech and the able geologist, Professor
Renard of Ghent, one of the workers on the deep-sea deposits
in the Challenger expedition, have lately done. But even if
this does not happen, his recognition of Darwinism, in the
name of Christian belief, will remain a landmark in the
history of evolution. His ingenious and very Jesuitical
attempt to bring together the opposite poles will have no very
mischievous effect; it will rather tend to hasten the victory
of the scientific conception of evolution over the mystic
beliefs of the Churches.
You will see this more clearly if we go on to consider the
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important special problem of the “descent of man from the
ape,” and its irreconcilability with the conventional belief
that God made man according to His own image. That this
ape or pithecoid theory is an irresistible deduction from the
general principle of evolution was clearly recognised fortyfive years ago, when Darwin’s work appeared, by the shrewd
and vigilant theologians; it was precisely in this fact that
they found their strongest motive for vigorous resistance.
It is quite clear. Either man was brought into existence,
like the other animals, by a special creative act, as Moses and
Linné taught (an “ émbodied idea of the Creator,” as the
famous Agassiz put it so late as 1858) ; or he has been
developed naturally from a series of mammal ancestors, as is
claimed by the systems of Lamarck and Darwin.
In view of the very great importance of this pithecoid
theory, we will first cast a brief glance at its founders and
then summarise the proofs in support of it. The famous
French biologist, Jean Lamarck, was the first scientist defin
itely to affirm the descent of man from the ape and seek to
give scientific proof of it. In his splendid work, fifty years in
advance of his time, the Philosophie Zoologique (1809), he
clearly traced the modifications and advances that must
have taken place in the transformation of the man-like
apes (the primate forms similar to the orang and the
chimpanzee) ; the adaptation to walking upright, the
consequent modification of the hands and feet, and
later, the formation of speech and the attainment of a higher
degree of intelligence. Lamarck’s remarkable theory, and
this important consequence of it, soon fell into oblivion.
When Darwin brought evolution to the front again fifty years
afterwards, he paid no attention to the special conclusion.
He was content to make the following brief prophetic observa
tion in his work “ Light will be thrown on the origin and the
history of man.” Even this innocent remark seemed so
momentous to the first German translator of the work, Bronn,
that he suppressed it. When Darwin was asked by Wallace
whether he would not go more fully into it, he replied : “ I
think of avoiding the whole subject, as it is so much involved
in prejudice ; though I quite admit that it is the highest and
most interesting problem for the thinker.”
The first thorough works of importance on the subject ap
peared in 1863. Thomas Huxley in England, and Carl Vogt
in Germany, endeavoured to show that the descent of man
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from the ape was a necessary consequence of Darwinism, and
to provide an empirical base for the theory by every available
argument. Huxley’s work on Afcwi 5 Place in Nature was
particularly valuable. • He first gave convincingly, in three
lectures, the empirical evidence on the subject—the natural
history of the anthropoid apes, the anatomical and embryo
logical relations of man to the next lowest animals, and the
recently discovered fossil human remains. I then (1866)
made the first attempt to establish the theory of evolution
comprehensively by research in anatomy and embryology,
and to determine the chief stages in the natural classification
of the vertebrates that must have been passed through by our
earlier vertebrate ancestors. Anthropology thus becomes a
part of zoology. In my History of Creation I further
developed these early evolutionary sketches, and improve
ments were made in the successive editions.
In the meantime, the great master, Darwin, had decided to
deal with this chief evolutionary problem in a special work.
The two volumes of his Descent of Man appeared in 1871.
They contained an able discussion of sexual selection, or the
selective influence of sexual love and high psychic activities
connected therewith, and their significance in regard to the
origin of man. As this part of Darwin’s work was after
wards attacked with particular virulence, I will say that, in
my opinion, it is of the greatest importance, not only for the
general theory of evolution, but also for psychology, anthro
pology, and aesthetics.
My own feeble early efforts (1866), not only to establish the
descent of man from the nearest related apes, but also to
determine more precisely the long series of our earlier and
lower vertebrate ancestors, had not at all satisfied me. In
praticular, I had had to leave unanswered in my General
Morphology the very interesting question : from which in
vertebrate animals the vertebrate stem originally came. A
clear and unexpected light was thrown on it some time after
wards by the astounding discoveries of Kowalevsky, which
revealed an essential agreement in embryonic development
between the lowest vertebrate (Amphioxus) and a lowly
tunicate (Ascidia). In the succeeding years, the numerous
discoveries in connection with the formation of the germinal
layers in different animals so much enlarged our embryo
logical outlook that I was able to prove the complete homo
logy of the two-layered gastrula (a cup-shaped embryonic
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form) in all the tissue-forming- animals (metazoa) in my
Monograph on the Sponges. From this I inferred, in virtue
of the biogenetic law, the common descent of all the metazoa
from one and the same gastrula-shaped stem-form, the
gastrcea. This hypothetical stem-form, to which man’s
earliest multicellular ancestors also belong, was afterwards
proved by Monticelli’s observations to be still in existence.
The evolution of these very simple tissue-forming animals
from still simpler unicellular forms (protozoa) is shown by the
corresponding processes that we witness in what is called
the segmentation of the ovum or gastrulation, in the develop
ment of the two-layered germ from the single cell of the ovum.
Encouraged by these great advances of modern phylogeny,
and with the support of many new discoveries in comparative
anatomy and embryology, in which a number of distinguished
observers were at work, I was able in 1874 to venture on the
first attempt to trace continuously the whole story of man’s
evolution. In doing so, I took my stand on the firm ground
of the biogenetic law, seeking to give a phylogenetic cause
for each fact of embryology. My Evolution of Man, which
made the first attempt to accomplish this difficult task, was
materially improved and enlarged as new and important dis
coveries were made. The latest edition (1903 [1904 in
English]) contains thirty chapters distributed in two
volumes, the first of which deals with embryology (or onto
geny), and the second with the development of species (or
phylogeny).
Though I was quite conscious that there were bound to be
gaps and weak points in these first attempts to frame a
natural anthropogeny I had hoped they would have some in
fluence on modern anthropology, and especially that the first
sketches of a genealogical tree of the animal world would
prove a stimulus to fresh research and improvement. In this
I was much mistaken. The dominant school of anthropology,
especially in Germany, declined to suffer the introduction of
the theory of evolution, declaring it to be an unfounded
hypothesis, and described our carefully prepared ancestral
trees as mere figments. This was due, in the first place, to
the great authority of the founder and president (for many
years) of the German Anthropological Society, Rudolf
Virchow, as I briefly pointed out in the previous chapter. In
view of the great regard that is felt for this distinguished
scientist, and the extent to which his powerful opposition pre-
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vented the spread of the theory, it is necessary to deal more
fully with his position on the subject. I am still further con
strained to do this because of the erroneous views of it that
are circulating, and my own fifty years’ acquaintance with
my eminent teacher enables me to put them right.
Not one of Virchow’s numerous pupils and friends can
appreciate more than I do his real services to medical science.
His Cellular Pathology (1858), his thorough application of the
cell-theory to the science of disease, is, in my opinion, one
of the greatest advances made by modern medicine. I had
the good fortune to begin my medical studies at Würzburg in
1852, and to spend six valuable terms under the personal
guidance of four biologists of the first rank—Albert Kölliker,
Rudolf Virchow, Franz Leydig and Carl Gegenbaur. The
great stimulus that I received from these distinguished
masters in every branch of comparative and microscopic
biology was the starting-point of my whole training in that
science, and enabled me subsequently to follow with ease the
higher intellectual flight of Johannes Müller. From Virchow
especially I learned, not only the analytic art of careful
observation and judicious appreciation of the detailed facts of
anatomy, but also the synthetic conception of the whole
human frame, the profound conviction of the unity of our
nature, the inseparable connection of body and mind, to which
Virchow gave a fine expression in his classic essay on “The
Efforts to bring about Unity in Scientific Medicine ” (1849).
The leading articles which he wrote at that time for the
Journal of Pathological Anatomy and Physiology, which he
had founded, contain much new insight into the wonders of
life, and a number of excellent general reflections on their
significance—pregnant ideas that we can make direct use of
for Monistic purposes. In the controversy that broke out
between empirical rationalism and materialism and the older
vitalism and mysticism, he took the side of the former, and
fought together with Jacob Moleschott, Carl Vogt, and
Ludwig Büchner. I owe the firm conviction of the unity of
organic and inorganic nature, of the mechanical character of
all vital and psychic activity, which I have always held to be
the foundation of my Monistic system, in a great measure to
• Virchow’s teaching and the exhaustive conversations I had
with him when I was his assistant. The profound views of
the nature of the cell and the independent individuality of
these elementary organisms, which he advanced in his great
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work Cellular Pathology, remained guiding principles for me
in the prolonged studies that I made thirty years afterwards
erf the organisation of the radiolaria and other unicellular
protists; and also in regard to the theory of the cell-soul,
which followed naturally from the psychological study of
it.
His life at Wurzburg was the most brilliant period of
Virchow’s indefatigable scientific labours. A change took
place when he removed to Berlin in 1856. He then occupied
himself chiefly with political and social and civic interests. In
the last respect he has done so much for Berlin and the
welfare of the German people that I need not enlarge on it.
Nor will I go into his self-sacrificing and often thankless
political work as leader of the progressive party; there are I
differences of opinion as to its value. But we must carefully
examine his peculiar attitude towards evolution, and especially
its chief application, the ape-theory. He was at first favour
able to it, then sceptical, and finally decidedly hostile.
I
When the Lamarckian theory was brought to light again ■
by Darwin in 1859, many thought that it was Virchow’s
vocation to take the lead in defending it. He had made a
thorough study of the problem of heredity; he had realised
the power of adaptation through his study of pathological
changes; and he had been directed to the great question of
the origin of man by his anthropological studies. He was at
that time regarded as a determined opponent of all dogmas;
he combated transcendentalism either in the form of eccle
siastical creeds or anthropomorphism. After 1862 he de
clared that “the possibility of a transition from species to
species was a necessity of science.” When I opened the first
public discussion of Darwinism at the Stettin Scientific Con
gress in 1863, Virchow and Alexander Braun were among the
few scientists who would admit the subject to be important
and deserving of the most careful study. When I sent to
him in 1865 two lectures that I had delivered at Jena on the
origin and genealogical tree of the human race, he willingly
received them amongst his Collection of Popular Scientific
Lectures. In the course of many long conversations I had
with him on the matter, he agreed with me in the main,
though with the prudent reserve and cool scepticism that •
characterised him. He adopts the same moderate attitude in
the lecture that he delivered to the Artisans’ Union at Berlin
in 1869 on “Human and Ape Skulls.”
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33
His position definitely changed in regard to Darwinism
from 1877 onward. At the Scientific Congress that was then
held at Munich I had, at the pressing request of my Munich
friends, undertaken the first address (on 18th September) on
“Modern Evolution in Relation to the whole of Science.” In
this address I had substantially advanced the same general
views that I afterwards enlarged in my Monism, Riddle of
the Universe, and Wonders of Life. In the ultramontane •
capital of Bavaria, in sight of a great university which em
phatically describes itself as Catholic, it was somewhat bold
to make such a confession of faith. The deep impression
that it had made was indicated by the lively manifestations of
assent on the one hand, and displeasure on the other, that
were at once made in the Congress itself and in the Press.
On the following day I departed for Italy (according to an
arrangement made long before). Virchow did not come to
Munich until two days afterwards, when he delivered (on
22nd September, in response to entreaties from people of
position and influence) his famous antagonistic speech on
“The Freedom of Science in the Modern State.” The gist of
the speech was that this freedom ought to be restricted; that
evolution is an unproved hypothesis, and ought not to be
taught in the school because it is dangerous to the State:
“We must not teach,” he said, “that man descends from the
♦ ape or any other animal.” In 1849, the young Monist,
Virchow, had emphatically declared this conviction, “that he
would never be induced to deny the thesis of the unity of
human nature and its consequences ” ; now, . twenty-eight
years afterwards, the prudent Dualistic politician entirely
denied it. He had formerly taught that all the bodily and
mental processes in the human organism depend on the
mechanism of the cell-life; now he declared the soul to be a
special immaterial entity. But the crowning feature of this
reactionary speech was his compromise with the Church,
which he had fought so vigorously twenty years before.
The character of Virchow’s speech at Munich is best seen
in the delight with which it was at once received by the
reactionary and clerical papers, and the profound concern
of all Liberal journals, either in the political or the religious
sense. When Darwin read the English translation of the
speech he—generally so gentle in his judgments—wrote:
“Virchow’s conduct is shameful, and I hope he will some
day feel the shame.” In 1878, I made a full reply to it in my
>
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LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
Free Science and Free Teaching, in which I collected the
most important press opinions on the matter.1
From this very decided turn at Munich until‘his death
twenty-five years afterwards, Virchow was an indefatigable
and very influential opponent of evolution. In his annual
appearances at congresses he has always contested it, and
has obstinately clung to his statement that “it is quite cer
tain that man does not descend from the ape or any other
animal.” To the question : “Whence does he come, then? ”
he had no answer, and retired to the resigned position of the
Agnostic, which was common before Darwin’s time: “We
do not know how life arose, and how the various species came
into the world.” His son-in-law, Professor Rabi, has tried
to draw attention once more to his earlier conception, and has
declared that even in later years Virchow often recognised
the truth of evolution in private conversation. This only
makes it the more regrettable that he always said the con
trary in public. The fact remains that ever since the oppo-'
nents of evolution, especially the reactionaries and clericals
have appealed to the authority of Virchow.
’
The wholly reactionary system that this led to has been well
described by Robert Drill, (1902) in his Virchow as a Reac
tionary. How little qualified the great pathologist was to
appreciate the scientific bases of the pithecoid theory is clear
from the absurd statement he made, in the opening speech of
the Vienna Congress of Anthropologists, in 1894, that man
might just as well be claimed to descend from a sheep or an
elephant as from an ape. Any competent zoologist can see
from this the little knowledge Virchow had of systematic
zoology and comparative anatomy. However, he retained
his authority as president of the German Anthropological
Society, which remained impervious to Darwinian ideas.
Even such, vigorous controversialists as Carl Vogt, and
such scientific partisans of the ape-man of Neanderthal as
Schaafhausen, could make no impression. Virchow’s
authority was equally great for twenty years in the Berlin
Press, both Liberal and Conservative. The Kreutzzeitung
and the Ewangelische Kirchenzeitung were delighted that
•
. The manuscript letter in which the gentle Darwin expresses so severe
a judgment on Virchow is printed in my Cambridge lecture, The Last
Link. My answer to Virchow’s speech is contained in the second volume
of my Popular Lectures, and has latelv appeared in the Freie Wort
(April, 1905).
�LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
35
“the learned progressist was conservative in the best sense
of the word as regards evolution.” The ultramontane Ger
mania rejoiced that the powerful representative of pure science
had, “with a few strokes of his cudgel, reduced to impo
tence ” the absurd ape-theory and its chief protagonist, Ernst
Haeckel. The National-Zeitung could not sufficiently thank
the free-thinking, popular leader for having lifted from us for
ever the oppressive mountain of the theory of simian descent.
The editor of the Volks-Zeitung, Bernstein, who has done so
much for the spread of knowledge in his excellent popular
manuals of science, obstinately refused to admit articles that
ventured to support the erroneous ape-theory “refuted by
Virchow.
It would take up too much space to attempt to give even a
general survey of the remarkable and enormous literature of
the subject that has accumulated in the last three decades in
the shape of thousands of learned treatises and popular
articles. The greater part of these works have been written
under the influence of conventional religious prejudice, and
without the necessary acquaintance with the subject, that can
only be obtained by a thorough training in biology. The
most curious feature of them is that most of the. authors
restrict their genealogical interests to the most manlike apes,
and do not deal with their origin, or with the deeper roots of
our common ancestral tree. They do not see the wood for
the trees. Yet it is far easier and safer to penetrate the great
mysteries of our animal origin, if we look at the subject from
the higher standpoint of vertebrate phylogeny and go deeper
into the earlier records of the evolutionary history of the
vertebrates.
...
Since the great Lamarck established the idea of the verte
brate at the beginning of the nineteenth century (1801), and
his Parisian colleague, Cuvier, shortly afterwards recognised
the vertebrates as one of his four chief animal groups, the
natural unity of this advanced section of the animal world has
not been contested. In all the vertebrates, from the lowest
fishes and amphibians up to the apes and man,_ we have the
same type of structure, the same characteristic disposition
and relations of the chief organs; and they differ materially
from the corresponding features in all other animals. The
mysterious affinities of the vertebrates induced Goethe, 140
years ago, long before Cuvier, to make prolonged and labori
ous studies in their comparative anatomy at Jena and
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LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION '
Weimar. Just as he had, in his Metamorphosis of Plants
established the unity of organisation by means of the leaf as
the common primitive organ, he, in the metamorphosis of the
vertebrates, found this common eleipent in the vertebral
theory of the skull. And when Cuvier established compara
tive anatomy as an independent science, this branch of
biology was developed to such an extent by the classic re
search of Johannes Müller, Carl Gegenbaur, Richard Owen,
Thomas Huxley, and many other morphologists, that Dar
winism found its most powerful weapons in this arsenal. The
striking differences of external form and internal structure
that we find in the fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and
mammals, are due to adaptation to the various uses of their
organs and their environments. On the other hand, the
4 astonishing agreement in their typical character, that persists
gj in spite of their differences, is due to inheritance from
4 common ancestors.
The evidence thus afforded by comparative anatomy is so
cogent that anyone who goes impartially and attentively
through a collection of skeletons can convince himself at
once of the morphological unity of the vertebrate stem. The
evolutionary evidence of comparative ontogeny, or embryor
,
*s fess easy to grasp and less accessible, but not less
important. It came to light at a much later date, and its
extreme value was only made clear, by means of the biogenetic law, some forty years ago. It shows that every verte
brate, like every other animal, develops from a single cell,
but that the course of its embryonic development is peculiar,
and characterised by embryonic forms that are not found in
the invertebrates. We find in them especially the chordula,
or chorda-larva, a very simple worm-shaped embryonic form,
without limbs, head, or higher sense-organs; the body con
sists merely of six very simple primitive organs. From these
are developed steadily the hundreds of different bones,
muscles, and other organs that we afterwards distinguish in
the mature vertebrate. The remarkable and very complex
course of this embryonic development is essentially the same
in man and the ape, and in the amphibians and fishes. We
see in it, in accordance with the biogenetic law, a new and
important witness to the common descent of all vertebrates
from a single primitive form, the chordcea.
But, important as these arguments of comparative embryo
logy are, one needs many years’ study in the unfamiliar and
�LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
37
difficult province of embryology before one can realise their
evolutionary force. There are, in fact, not a few embryo
logists (especially of the modern school of experimental em
bryology) who do not succeed in doing so. It is otherwise
with the palpable proofs that we take from a remote science,
paleontology. The remarkable fossil remains and impressions
of extinct animals and plants give us directly the historical
evidence we need to understand the successive appearance
and disappearance of the various species and groups.
Geology has firmly established the chronological order of the
sedimentary rocks, which have been successively formed of
mud at the floor of the ocean, and has deduced their age from
the thickness of the strata, and determined the relative date
of their formation. The vast period during which organic
life has been developing on the earth runs to many million
years. The number is variously estimated at less than a
hundred or at several hundred million years. If we take the
smaller number of 200 million years, we find them distributed
amongst the five chief periods of the earth’s organic develop
ment in such a way that the earlier or archeozoic period
absorbs nearly one half. As the sedimentary rocks of this
period, chiefly gneisses and crystalline schists, are in a meta
morphosed condition, the fossil remains in them are unrecog
nisable. In the next succeeding strata of the paleozoic period
we find the earliest remains of fossilised vertebrates, Silurian
primitive fishes (selachii) and ganoids. These are followed,
in the Devonian system, by the first dipneust fishes (a transi
tional form from the fishes to the amphibia). In the next,
the Carboniferous system, we find the first terrestrial or fourfooted vertebrates—amphibians of the order of the stegocephala. A little later, in the Permian rocks, the earliest amniotes, lowly, lizard-like reptiles (tocosauria), make their ap
pearance ; the warm-blooded birds and mammals are still
wanting. We have the first traces of the mammals in the
Triassic, the earliest sedimentary rocks of the mesozoic age;
these are of the monotreme sub-class (pantotheria and allotheria). They are succeeded by the first marsupials (prodidelphia) in the Jurassic, the ancestral forms of the placentals
(mallotheria), in the Cretaceous.
But the richest development of’ the mammal class takes
place in the next or Tertiary age. In the course of its four
periods—the eocene, oligocene, miocene, and pliocene—the
mammal species increase steadily in number, variety, and
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last words on evolution
complexity, down tq? the present time. From the lowest
common ancestral group of the placentals proceed four
djvergent branches, the legions of the carnassia, rodents,
th? rlTS’ Tanl-Pr^at?’i The Primate le£ion surpasses all
the rest. In this Linné long ago included the lemurs, apes
and man. The historical order in which the various staged
of vertebrate development make their successive appearance
corresponds entirely . to the morphological order of their
advance in organisation, as we have learned it from the
study of comparative anatomy and embryology.
These paleontological facts are among the most important
proofs of the descent of man from a long series of higher and
lower vertebrates. There is no other explanation possible
except evolution or the chronological succession of these
classes, which is in perfect harmony with, the morphological
and systematic distribution. The anti-èvolutionists have not
even attempted to give any other explanation. The fishes
dipneusts, amphibians, reptiles, monotremes, marsupials-’
placentals lemurs, apes, anthropoid apes, and ape-men
(pithecanthropi), are inseparable links of a long ancestral
chain, of which the last and most perfect link is man.
One of the paleontological facts I have quoted, namely, the
late appearance of the mammal class in geology—is particu
larly important. This most advanced group of the verte
brates comes on the stage in the Triassic period, in the
second and shorter half of the organic history of the earth.
It is represented only by low and small forms in the whole
of the mesozoic age, during the domination of the reptiles.
Throughout this long period, which is estimated by some
geologists at 8-11, by others at 20 or more, million years,
the.dominant reptile class developed its many remarkable and
curious forms; there were swimming marine reptiles (halisauria), flying reptiles (pterosauria), and colossal land reptiles
(dinosauria). It was much later, in the Tertiary period, that
the mammal class attained the wealth of larg and advanced
e
*
placental forms that secured its predominance over this more
recent period.
The many and thorough investigations made during the last
few decades into the ancestral history of the mammals have
convinced all zoologists who were engaged in them that they
may be traced to a common root. All the mammals, from
the lowest monotremes and marsupials to the ape and man,
have a large number of striking characteristics in common,
�LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
39
and these distinguish them from all oMer vertebrates : the
hair and glands of the skin, the feeding of the young with the
mother’s milk, the peculiar formation of the lower jaw and
the ear-bones connected therewith, and other features in the
structure of the skull; also, the possession of a knee-cap
(patelhW and the loss of the nucleus m the red blood-cells,
further, the complete diaphragm, which entirely separates
the pectoral cavity from the abdominal, is only found m the
mammals; in all the other vertebrates there is still an open
communication between the two cavities. The monophyletic
(or single) origin of the whole mammalian class is therefore
’now regarded by all competent experts as an established fact.
In the face of this important fact, what is called the ape
question ” loses a good deal of the importance that was for
merly ascribed to it. All the momentous consequences that
follow from it in regard to our human nature, our past and
future, and our bodily and psychic life, remain undisturbed
whether we derive man directly from one of the primates, an
ape or lemur, or from some other branch, some unknown
lower form, of the mammalian stem. It is important to point
this out, because certain dangerous attempts have been made
lately by Jesuitical zoologists and zoological Jesuits to cause
fresh confusion on the matter.
In a richly illustrated and widely read work that Hans
Kraemer published a few years ago, under the title, The
Universe and Man, an able and learned anthropologist, Pro
fessor Klaatsch of Heidelberg, deals with the origin and
development of the human race,” and admirably describes the
primitive history of man and his civilisation. However, he
denounces the idea of man’s descent from the ape as
“ irrational, narrow-minded, and false ”; he grounds this
severe censure on the fact that none of the living apes can be
the ancestor of humanity. But no competent scientist had
ever said anything so foolish. If we look closer inti) this
fight with windmills, we find that Klaatsch holds substantially
the same view of the pithecoid theory as I have done since
1866. He says expressly : “The three anthropoid apes, the
gorilla, chimpanzee, and orang, seem to diverge from a com
mon root, which was near to that of the gibbon and man.” I
had long ago given the name of archiprimas to this single
hypothetical root-form of the primates, which he calls the
“primatoid.” It lived in the earliest part of the Tertiary
period, and had probably been developed in the Cretaceous
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LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
from older mammals. The very forced and unnatural hypo
thesis by means of which Klaatsch goes pn to make the
primates depart very widely from the other mammals seems
to me to be quite untenable, like the similar hypothesis that
Alsberg, Wilser, and other anthropologists who deny our
pithecoid descent, have lately advanced.
All these attempts have a common object—to save’s man’s
privileged position in Nature, to widen as much as possible
the gulf between him and the rest of the mammals, and to
. conceal his real origin. It is the familiar tendency of the
■parvenu, which we so often notice in the aristocratic sons of
energetic men who have won a high position by their own ’
exertions. This sort of vanity is acceptable enough to the
ruling powers and the Churches, because it tends to support
their own fossilised pretensions to a “Divine image ” in man
and a special “ Divine grace ” in princes. The zoologist or
anthropologist who studies our genealogy in a strictly scien
tific spirit takes no more notice of these tendencies than of thè
Almanack de Gotha. He seeks to discover the naked truth,
as /t ls yielded by the great results of modern science, in
which there is no longer any doubt that man is really a de
scendant of the ape that is to say, of a long extinct anthro
poid ape. As has been pointed out over and over again by
distinguished supporters of this opinion, the proofs of it are
exceptionally clear and simple—much clearer and simpler
than they are in regard to many other mammals. Thus, for
instance, the origin of the elephants, the armadilloes, the
sirena, or the whales, is a much more difficult problem than
the origin of man.
When Huxley published his powerful essay on “Man’s
Place in Nature ” in 1863, he gave it a frontispiece showing
the skeletons of man and the four living anthropoid apes, the
Asiatic orang and gibbon, and the African chimpanzee and
gorilla. . Plate II. in the first edition of this work differs from
this in giving two young specimens of the orang and the chim
panzee, and raising their size to correspond with the other three
skeletons. Candid comparison of these five skeletons shows
that {hey. are not only very like each other generally, but are
identical in the structure, arrangement, and connection of all
the parts. The same 200 bones compose the skeleton in man
and in the four tailless anthropoid apes, our nearest relatives.
The same 300 muscles serve to move the various parts of the
skeleton. The same hair covers the skin; the same mam-
�LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
4P
mary glands provide food for the young. The same fourchambered heart acts as central pump of the circulation; the
same 32 teeth are found in our jaws; the same reproductive
organs maintain the species; the same groups of neurona or
ganglionic cells compose the wondrous structure of the brain,
and accomplish that highest function of the plasm which we
call the soul, and many still believe to be an immortal entity.
Huxley has thoroughly established this profound truth, and by
further comparison with the lower apes and lemurs he came to
formulate his important pithecometra principle : Whatever
organ we take, the differences between man and the anthro
poid apes are slighter than the corresponding differences
between the latter and the lower apes.” If we make a super
ficial comparison of our skeletons of the anthropomorpha, we
certainly notice a few salient differences in the size of the
various parts; but these are purely quantitative, and are due
to differences in growth, which in turn are caused by adapta
tion to different environments. There are, as is well known,
similar differences between human beings; their arms are
sometimes long, sometimes short; the forehead may be high
or low, the hair thick or thin, and so on.
These anatomic proofs of the pithecoid theory are most
happily supplemented and confirmed by certain recent brilliant
discoveries in physiology. Chief amongst these are the
famous experiments of Dr. Hans Friedenthal at Berlin. He
showed that the human blood acts poisonously on and decom
poses the blood of the lower apes and other mammals, but has
not that effect on the blood of the anthropoid apes.1
From previous transfusion experiments it had been learned
that the affinity of mammals is connected to a certain extent
with their chemical blood-relationship. If the living blood of
two nearly related animals of the same family, such as the
dog and the fox, or the rabbit and the hare, is mixed together,
the living blood-cells of each species remain uninfluenced. But
if we mix the blood of the dog and the rabbit, or the fox and
the hare, a struggle for life immediately takes place between
the two kinds of blood-cells. The watery fluid of serum
destroys the blood-cells of the rodent, and m’ce-'nersd.. It is
the same with specimens of the blood of the various primates.
The blood of the lower apes and lemurs, which are. close to
the common root of the primate stem, has a destructive effect
1 See account of similar experiments in the Lancet, 18th January,
1902. [Trans.]
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LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
on the blooiof the anthropoid apes and man, and mce
On the other hand, the human blood has no injurious effect
when it is mixed with that of the anthropoid apes.
In recent years these interesting experiments have been
continued by other physiologists and physicians, such as Pro
fessor Uhienhuth at Greifswald and Nuttall at London, and
they have proved directly the blood-relationship of various
mammals. Nuttall studied them carefully in 900 different
kinds of blood, which he tested by 16,000 reactions. He
the £r£“Jati°n of affinity to the lowest apes of the New
World ; and Uhienhuth continued as far as the lemurs. By
these results the affinity of man and the anthropoid apes, long
established by anatomy, has now been proved physiologically
to be in real “blood-relationship. ”1
*
?
Not less important are the embryological discoveries
of the deceased zoologist, Emil Selenka.
He made two
long journeys to the East Indies, in order to study on
the spot the embryology, of the Asiatic anthropoid apes
the orang and gibbon.
By means of a number of
embryos that he collected he showed that certain
remarkable peculiarities in the formation of the placenta, that
had up to that time been considered as exclusively human
and regarded as a special distinction of our species, were
found in just the same way in the closely related anthropoid
apes, though not in the rest of the apes. On the ground of
these and other facts, I maintain that the descent of man from
extinct Tertiary anthropoid apes is proved just as plainly as• the descent of birds from reptiles, or the descent of reptiles
from amphibians, which no zoologist hesitates to admit toThe relationship is as close as was claimed by my
former fellow-student, the Berlin anatomist, Robert Hartmann
(with whom I sat at the feet of Johannes Müller fifty years
ago), in his admirable work on the anthropoid apes (1883).
He proposed to divide the order of primates into two families
the primarii (man and the anthropoid apes), and simians (thè
real apes, the catarrhine or eastern, and the platyrrhine or
western apes).
Since? the Dutch physician, Eugen Dubois, discovered the '
famous remains of the fossil ape-man (pithecanthropus
1 Wasmann meets these convincing experiments with mere Jesuitical
sophistry. Of the same character is his attack on my Evolution of Man
an„,°n the instructive work of Robert Wiedersheim, Man’s Structure as
<a Witness to his Past.
�LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
43
erectus) eleven years ago in Java, and thus brought to light
“the missing link,” a large number of works have been pub
lished on this very interesting group of the primates. In this
connection we may particularly note the demonstration by the
Strassburg anatomist, Gustav Schwalbe, that the previously
discovered Neanderthal skull belongs to an extinct species of
man, which was midway between the pithecanthropus and the
true human being—the homo primigenus. After a very
careful examination, Schwalbe at the same time refuted all
the biassed objections that Virchow had made to these and
other fossil discoveries, trying to represent them as patho
logical abnormalities. In all the important relics of fossil
men that prove our descent from anthropoid apes Virchow
saw pathological modifications, due to unsound habits, gout,
rickets, or other diseases of the dwellers in the diluvial caves.
He tried in every way to impair the force of the arguments
for our primate affinity. So in the controversy over the pithe
canthropus he raised the most improbable conjectures, merely
for the purpose of destroying its significance as a real link
between the anthropoid apes and man.
Even now, in the controversy over this important ape
question, amateurs and biassed anthropologists often repeat
the false statement that the gap between man and the anthro
poid ape is not yet filled up and the “ missing link ” not yet
discovered. This is a most perverse statement, and can only
arise either from ignorance of the anatomical, embryological,
and paleontological facts, or incompetence to interpret them
aright.
As a fact, the morphological chain that stretches
from the lemurs to the earlier western apes, from these to the
eastern tailed apes, and to the tailless anthropoid apes, and
from these direct to man, is now uninterrupted and clear. It
would be more plausible to speak of missing links between the
earliest lemurs and their marsupial ancestors, or between the
latter and their monotreme ancestors. But even these gaps
are unimportant, because comparative anatomy and embryo
logy, with the support of paleontology, have dissipated all
doubt as to the unity of the mammalian stem. It is ridiculous
to expect paleontology to furnish an unbroken series of
positive data, when we remember how scanty and imperfect
its material is.
I cannot go further here into the interesting recent research
in regard to special aspects of our simian descent; nor would
it greatly advance our object, because all the general con-
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LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
elusions as to man’s primate descent remain intact, which
ever way we construct hypothetically the special lines of
simian evolution. On the other hand, it is interesting- for us
to see how the most recent form of Darwinism, so happily
described by Escherich as “ecclesiastical evolution,” stands
in regard to these great questions. What does its astutest
representative, Father Erich Wasmann, say about them? The
tenth chapter of his work, in which he deals at length with
‘the application of the theory of evolution to man,” is a
masterpiece of Jesuitical science, calculated to throw the
clearest truths into such confusion and so to misrepresent all
discoveries as to prevent any reader from forming a clear idea
of them. When we compare this tenth chapter with the ninth,
in which Wasmann represents the theory of evolution as an
irresistible truth on the strength of his own able studies, we
can hardly believe that they both came from the same pen—
or, rather, we can only understand when we recollect the rule
of the Jesuit Congregation : “The end justifies the means.”
Untruth is permitted and meritorious in the service of God
and his Church.
The Jesuitical sophistry that Wasmann employs in order
to save man’s unique position in Nature, and to prove that he
was immediately created by God, culminates in the antithesis
of his two natures. The “ purely zoological conception of
man,” which has been established beyond question by the
anatomical and embryological comparison with the ape, is
said to fail because it does not take into account the chief
feature, his “mental life.” It is “psychology that is best
fitted to deal with the nature and origin of man.” All the
facts of anatomy and embryology that I have gathered to
gether in my Evolution of Man in proof of the series of his
ancestors are either ignored or misconstrued and made ridicu
lous by Wasmann. The same is done with the instructive
facts of anthropology, especially the rudimentary organs,
which Robert. Wiederscheim has quoted in his Man’s Struc
ture as a Witness to his Past. It is clear that the Jesuit
writer lacks competence in this department; that he has only
a superficial and inadequate acquaintance with comparative
anatomy and embryology.
If Wasmann had studied the
morphology and physiology of the mammals as thoroughly
as those of the ants, he would have concluded, if he were
impartial, that it is just as necessary to admit a monophyletic
(or single) origin for the former as for the latter.
If, in
�LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
45
Wasmann’s opinion, the 4,000 species of ants form a single
“ natural system ”—that is to say, descend from one original
species—it is just as necessary to admit the same hypothesis
for the 6,000 (2,400 living and 3,600 fossil) species of
mammals, including the human species.
The severe strictures that I have passed on the sophisms
and trickery of this “ ecclesiastical evolution ” are not directed
against the person and the character of Father Wasmann,
but the Jesuitical system which he represents. I do not doubt
that this able naturalist (who is personally unknown to me)
has written his book in good faith, and has an honourable
ambition to reconcile the irreconcilable contradictions between
natural evolution and the story of supernatural creation. But
this reconciliation of reason and superstition is only possible
at the price of a sacrifice of the reason itself. We find this
in the case of all the other Jesuits—Fathers Cathrein, Braun,
y Besmer, Cornet, Linsmeier, and Muckermann—whose am
biguous “Jesuitical science” is aptly dealt with in the article
of R. H. France that I mentioned before (No. 22 of the Freie
Wort, 16th February, 1904, Frankfort).
This interesting attempt of Father Wasmann’s does not .
stand alone. Signs are multiplying that the Church militant
is about to enter on a systematic campaign. I heard from
Vienna on the 17th of February, that on the previous day
(which happened to be my birthday), a Jesuit, Father Giese,
had, in a well-received address, admitted not only evolution
in general, but even its application to man, and declared it
to be reconcilable with Catholic dogmas—and this at a
crowded meeting of “catechists”! It is important to note
that in a new Catholic cyclopaedia, Benziger’s Library of
Science, the first three volumes (issued at Einsiedeln and
Cologne, 1904) deal very fully and ably with the chief problems
of evolution : the first with the formation of the earth, the
second with spontaneous generation, the third with the theory
of descent. The author- of them, Father M. Gander, makes
most remarkable concessions to our theory, and endeavours
to show that they are not inconsistent with the Bible or the
dogmatic treatises of the chief fathers and schoolmen. But,
though there is a profuse expenditure of sophistical logic in
these Jesuitical efforts, Gander will hardly succeed in mis
leading thoughtful people. One of his characteristic positions
is that spontaneous generation (as the development of organ
ised living things by purely material processes) is inconceiv
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LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
able, but that it might be made possible “ by a special Divine
arrangement.” In regard to the descent of man from other
animals (which he grants), he makes the reserve that the
soul must in any case have been produced by a special creative
act.
It would be useless to go through the innumerable fallacies
and untruths of these modern Jesuits in detail, and point out
the rational and scientific'reply. The vast power of this most
dangerous religious congregation consists precisely in its
device of accepting one part of science in order to destroy the
other part more effectively with it. Their masterly act of
sophistry, their equivocal “ probabilism,” their mendacious
“reservado mentalis,” the principle that the higher aim sancti
fies the worst means, the pernicious casuistry of Liguori and
Gury, the cynicism with which they turn the holiest principles
to the gratification of their ambition, have impressed on the
Jesuits that black character that Carl Hoensbroech has so well
exposed recently.
The great dangers that menace real science, owing to
this smuggling into it of the Jesuitical spirit, must not be
undervalued. They have been well pointed out by Francé,
Escherich, and others. They are all the greater in Germany
at the present time, as the Government and the Reichstag are
working together to prepare the way for the Jesuits, and to
yield a most pernicious influence on the school to these deadly
enemies of the free spirit of the country. However, we will
hope that this clerical reaction represents only a passing
episode in modern history. We trust that one permanent result
of it will be the recognition, in principle, even by the Jesuits,
of the great idea of evolution. We may then rest assured
that its most important consequence, the descent of man from
other primate forms, will press on victoriously, and soon be
recognised as a beneficent and helpful truth.
�CHAPTER III
The Controversy
over
the
Soul.
THE IDEAS OF IMMORTALITY AND GOD
Though it was my original intention to deliver only two
lectures, I have been moved by several reasons to add a
supplementary one. In the first place, I notice with regret
that I have been compelled by pressure of time to leave un
touched in my earlier lectures, or to treat very inadequately,
several important points in my theme; there is, in particular,
the very important question of the nature of the soul. In the
second place, I have been convinced by the many contradictory
press-notices during the last few days that many of my in
complete observations have been misunderstood or misinter
preted. And, thirdly, it seemed advisable to give a brief and
clear summary of the whole subject in this farewell lecture,
to take a short survey of the past, present, and future of the
theory of evolution, and especially its relation to the three
great questions of personal immortality, the freedom of the
will, and the personality of God.
I must claim the reader’s patience and indulgence even to
a greater extent than in the previous chapters, as the subject
is one of the most difficult and obscure that the human mind
approaches.
I have dealt at length in my recent works,
The Riddle of the Universe and The Wonders of Life, with
the controversial questions of biology that I treat cursorily
here. But I would like to put before you now, in a general
survey, the powerful arguments that modern science employs
against the prevailing superstition in regard to evolution, and
to show that the Monistic system throws a clear light on the
great questions of God and the world, the soul and life.
In the previous chapters I have tried to give a general idea
•
47
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LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
of the present state of the theory of evolution and its victorious
struggle with the older legend of creation. We have seen
that even the most advanced organism, man, was not brought
into being by a creative act, but gradually developed from a
long series of mammal ancestors. We also saw that the most
man-like mammals, the anthropoid apes, have substantially
the same structure as man, and that the evolution of the
latter from the former can now be regarded as a fully estab
lished hypothesis, or, rather, an historical fact. But in this
study we had in view mainly the structure of the body and
its various organs. We touched very briefly on the evolution
of the human mind, or the immaterial soul that dwells in the
body for a time, according to a venerable tradition. To-day
we turn chiefly to the development of the soul, and consider
whether man’s mental development is controlled by the same
natural laws as that of his body, and whether it also is
inseparably bound up with that of the rest of the mammals.
At the very threshold of this difficult province we encounter
the curious fact that there are two radically distinct tendencies
in psychology at our universities to-day. On one side we
have the metaphysical and professional psychologists. They
still cling to the older view that man’s soul is a special entity,
a unique independent individuality, which dwells for a time
only in the mortal frame, leaving it and living on as an
immortal spirit after death. This dualistic theory is connected
with the doctrine of most religions, and owes its high
authority to the fact that it is associated with the most
important ethical, social, and practical interests. Plato gave
prominence to the idea of the immortality of the soul in
philosophy long ago. Descartes at a later date gave emphasis
to it by ascribing a true soul to man alone and refusing it to
the animals.
This metaphysical psychology, which ruled alone for a
considerable period, began to be opposed in the eighteenth,
and still more in the nineteenth, century by comparative
psychology. An impartial comparison of the psychic processes
in the higher and lower animals proved that there were numer
ous transitions and gradations. A long series of intermediate
stages connects the psychic life of the higher animals with
that of man on the one side, and that of the lower animals
on the other. There was no such thing as a sharp dividing
line, as Descartes supposed.
But the greatest blow was dealt at the predominant meta
�LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
49
physical conception of the life of the soul thirty years ago
by the new methods of psychophysics. By means of a series
of able experiments the physiologists, Theodor Fechner and
Ernst Heinrich Weber, of Leipsic, showed that an important
part of the mental activity can be measured and expressed in
mathematical formulae just as well as other physiological pro
cesses, such as muscular contractions.
Thus the laws of
physics control a part of the life of the soul just as absolutely
as they do the phenomena of inorganic nature. It is true that
psychophysics has only partially realised the very high ex
pectations that were entertained in regard to its Monistic
significance; but the fact remains that a part of the mental
life is just as unconditionally ruled by physical laws as any
other natural phenomena.
Thus physiological psychology was raised by psychophysics
to the rank of a physical and, in principle, exact science. But
it had already obtained solid foundations in other provinces
of biology. Comparative psychology had traced connectedly
the long gradation from man to the higher animals, from these
to the lower, and so on down to the very lowest. At the
lowest stage it found those remarkable beings, invisible with
the naked eye, that were discovered in stagnant water every
where after the invention of the microscope (in the second half
of the seventeenth century) and called “infusoria.”
They
were first accurately described and classified by Gottfried
Ehrenberg, the famous Berlin microscopist. In 1838 he
published a large and beautiful work, illustrating on 64 folio
pages the whole realm of microscopic life; and this is still
the base of all studies of the protists.
Ehrenberg was a
very ardent and imaginative observer, and succeeded in com
municating his zeal for the study of microscopic organisms
to his pupils. I still recall with pleasure the stimulating ex
cursions that I made fifty years ago (in the summer of 1854)
with my teacher, Ehrenberg, and a few other pupils—
including my student-friend, Ferdinand von Richthofen, the
famous geographer—to the Zoological Gardens at Berlin.
Equipped with fine nets and small glasses, we fished in the
ponds of the Zoological Gardens and in the Spree, and caught
thousands of invisible micro-organisms, which then richly
rewarded our curiosity by the beautiful forms and mysterious
movements they disclosed under the microscope.
The way in which Ehrenberg explained to us the structure
and the vital movements of his infusoria was very curious.
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Misled by the'comparison of the real infusoria with the micro-scopic but highly organised rotifers, he had formed the idea
that all animals are alike advanced in organisation, and had
indicated this erroneous theory in the very title of his work :
The Infusoria as Perfect Organisms: a Glance at the Deeper
Life of Organic Nature. He thought he could detect in the
simplest infusoria the same distinct organs as in the higher
animals—stomach, heart, ovaries, kidneys, muscles, and
nerves—and he interpreted their psychic life on the same
peculiar principle of equally advanced organisation.
Ehrenberg’s theory of life was entirely wrong, and was
radically destroyed in the hour of its birth (1838) by the cell
theory which was then formulated, and to which he never
became reconciled. Once Matthias Schleiden had shown the
composition of all the plants, tissues, and organs from micro
scopic cells, the last structural elements of the living organ
ism, and Theodor Schwann had done the same for the animal
.body, the theory attained such an importance that Kolliker
and Leydig based on it the modern science of tissues, or his
tology, and Virchow constructed his cellular pathology by
applying it to diseased human beings. These are the most
important advances of theoretical medicine. But it was still
a long time before the difficult question of the relation of these
microscopic beings to the cell was answered. Carl Theodor
von Siebold had already maintained (in 1845) that) the real
infusoria and the closely related rhizopods were unicellular
organisms, and had distinguished these protozoa from the
rest of the animals. At the same time, Carl Naegeli had de
scribed the lowest algae as “unicellular plants.” But this
important conception was not generally admitted until some
time afterwards, especially after I brought all the unicellular
organisms under the head of “protists” (1872), and defined
their psychic functions as the “cell-soul.”
I was led to make a very close study of these unicellular
protists and their primtive cell-soul through my research on
the radiolaria, a very remarkable class of microscopic organ
isms that float in the sea. I was engaged most of my time
for more than thirty of the best years of my life (1856-87) in
studying them in every aspect, and if I came eventually to
adopt a strictly Monistic attitude on all the great questions of
biology, I owe it for the most part to my innumerable ob
servations and uninterrupted reflections on the wonderful vita!
movements that are disclosed by these smallest and frailest,
.
�LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
51
and at the same time most beautiful and varied, of living
things.
I had undertaken the study of the radiolaria as a kind of
souvenir of my great master, Johannes Muller. He had loved
| to study these animals (of which only a few species were
discovered for the first time in the year of my birth, 1834) in
the last years of his life, and had in 1855 set up the special
group of the rhizopods (protozoa). His last work, which
appeared shortly after his death (1858), and contained a
description of 50 species of radiolaria, went with me to the
I Mediterranean when I made my first long voyage in the
summer of 1859. I was so fortunate as to discover about
150 new species of radiolaria at Messina, and based on these
my first monograph of this very instructive class of protists
(1862). I had no suspicion at that time that fifteen years
afterwards the deep-sea finds of the famous Challenger
expedition would bring to light an incalculable wealth of
these remarkable animals. In my second monograph on them
(1887), I was able to describe more than 4,000 different
species of radiolaria, and illustrate most of them on 140 plates.
I have given a selection of the prettiest forms on ten plates of
If- my Art-forms in Nature.
I have not space here to go into the forms and vital movei ments of the radiolaria, of the general import of which my
t friend, Wilhelm Bolsche, has given a very attractive account
! in his various popular works. I must restrict myself to
pointing out the general phenomena that bear upon our
| particular subject, the question of the mind. The pretty
; flinty skeletons of the radiolaria, which enclose and protect
I the soft unicellular body, are remarkable, not only for their
I extraordinary gracefulness and beauty, but also for the geo
metrical regularity and relative constancy of their forms. The
■ '4,000 species of radiolaria are just as constant as the 4,000
[’■ known species of ants; and, as the Darwinian Jesuit, Father
I Wasmann, has convinced himself that the latter have all
| descended by transformation from a common stem-form, I
s have concluded on the same principles that the 4,000 species
■ of radiolaria have developed from a primitive form in virtue
■ of adaptation and heredity. This primitive form, the stem[ radiolarian (Actissa) is a simple round cell, the soft living
protoplasmic body of which is divided into two different parts,
an inner central capsule (in the middle of which is the solid
■ round nucleus) and an outer gelatinous envelope (calymma).
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LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
From the outer surface of the latter hundreds and thousands
of fine plasmic threads radiate; these are mobile and sensitive
processes of the living internal substance, the plasm (or proto
plasm). 1 hese delicate microscopic threads, or pseudopodia,
are the curious organs that effect the sensations (of touch), the
locomotion (by pushing), and the orderly construction of the
flinty house; at the same time, they maintain the nourishment
of the unicellular body, by seizing infusoria, diatoms, and
other protists, and drawing them within the plasmic body,
where they are digested and assimilated.
The radiolaria
generally reproduce by the formation of spores. The nucleus
within the protoplasmic globule divides into two small nuclei,
each of which surrounds itself with a quantity of plasm, and
forms a new cell.
What is this plasm ? What is this mysterious “ living sub
stance ” that we find everywhere as the material foundation of
the “ wonders of life ” ? Plasm, or protoplasm, is, as Huxley
rightly said thirty years ago, “the physical basis of organic
life ”; to speak more precisely, it is a chemical compound of
carbon that alone accomplishes the various processes of life.
In its simplest form the living cell is merely a soft globule of
plasm, containing a firmer nucleus. The inner nuclear matter
(called caryoplasm) differs somewhat in chemical composition
from the outer cellular matter (or cytoplasm); but both sub
stances are composed of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen,
and sulphur; both belong to the remarkable group of the
albuminates, the nitrogenous carbonates that are distin
guished for the extraordinary size of their molecules and the
unstable arrangement of the numerous atoms (more than a
thousand) that compose them.
There are, however, still simpler organisms in which the
nucleus and the body of the cell have not yet been differentiated. These are the monera, the whole living body of
which is merely a homogeneous particle of plasm (the chromacea and bacteria). The well-known bacteria which now play
so important a part as the causes of most dangerous infectious
diseases, and the agents of putrefaction, fermentation, etc.,
show very clearly that organic life is only a chemical and
physical process, and not the outcome of a mysterious “ vital
force.”
We see this still more clearly in our radiolaria, and at the
same time they show us unmistakably that even the psychic
activity is such a physico-chemical process. All the different
I!
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�LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
53
functions of their cell-soul, the sense-perception of stimuli,
the movement of their plasm, their nutrition, growth, and
reproduction are determined by the particular chemical com
position of each of the 4,000 species; and they have all
descended, in virtue of adaptation and heredity, from the
common stem-form of the naked, round parent-radiolarian
(Actissa).
We may instance, as a peculiarly interesting fact in the
psychic life of the unicellular radiolaria, the extraordinary
power of memory in them. The relative constancy with which
the 4,000 species transmit the orderly and often very complex
form of their protective flinty structure from generation to
generation can only be explained by admitting in the builders,
the invisible plasma-molecules of the pseudopodia, a fine
“plastic sense of distance,” and a tenacious recollection of
• the architectural power of their fathers. The fine, formless
plasma-threads are always building afresh the same delicate
flinty shells with an artistic trellis-work, and with protective
radiating needles and supports always at the same points of
their surface. The physiologist, Ewald Hering (of Leipsic),
had spoken in 1870 of memory as “a general function of
organised matter.” I myself had tried to explain the mole
cular features of heredity by the memory of the plasma-mole
cules, in my essay on “ The Perigenesis of the Plastidules ”
(1875). Recently one of the ablest of my pupils, Professor
Richard Semon (of Munich, 1904), made a profound study of
“Mneme as the principle of constancy in the changes of
organic phenomena,” and reduced the mechanical process of
reproduction to a purely physiological base.
From the cell-soul and its memory in the radiolaria and
other unicellular protists, we pass directly to the similar
phenomenon in the ovum, the unicellular starting-point of the
individual life, from which the complex multicellular frame of
all the histona, or tissue-forming animals and plants, is deve
loped. Even the human organism is at first a simple nucleated
globule of plasm, about-ji^-inch in diameter, barely visible
to the naked eye as a tiny point. This stem-cell (cytula) is
formed at the moment when the ovum is fertilised, or mingled
with the small male spermatozoon. The ovum transmits to
the child by heredity the personal traits of the mother, the
sperm-cell those of the father; and this hereditary trans
mission extends to the finest characteristics of the soul as well
as of the body. The modern research as to heredity, which
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LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
occupies so much space now in biological literature, but was
only started by . Darwin in 1859, is directed immediately to
the visible material processes of impregnation.
The very interesting and important phenomena of impregna
tion have only been known to us in detail for thirty years.
It has been shown conclusively, after a number of delicate
investigations, that the individual development of the embryo
from the stem-cell or fertilised ovum is controlled by the same
laws in . all cases.
The stem-cell divides and subdivides
rapidly into a number of simple cells. From these a few
simple organs, the germinal layers, are formed at first; later
on the various organs, of which there is no trace in the early
embryo, are built up out of these. The biogenetic law teaches
us how, in this development, the original features of the
ancestral history are reproduced or recapitulated in the em
bryonic processes; and these facts in turn can only be
explained by the unconscious memory of the plasm, the
“ mneme of the living substance ” in the germ-cells and
especially in their nuclei.
One important result of these modern discoveries was the
prominence given to the fact that the personal soul has a
beginning of existence, and that we can determine the precise
moment in which this takes place; it is when the parent cells,
the ovum and spermatozoon, coalesce. Hence what we call
the soul of man or the animal has not pre-existed, but begins
its career at the moment of impregnation ; it is bound up with
the chemical constitution of the plasm, which is the material
vehicle of heredity in the nucleus of the maternal ovum and
the paternal spermatozoon. One cannot see how a being
that thus has a beginning of existence can afterwards prove
to be “immortal.”
Further, a candid examination of the simple cell-soul in the
unicellular infusoria, and of the dawn of the individual soul
in the unicellular germ of man and the higher animals, proves
at once that psychic action does not necessarily postulate a
fully formed nervous system, as was previously believed.
There is no such system in many of the lower animals, or any
of the plants, yet we find psychic activities, especially sensa
tion, irritability, and reflex action everywhere. All living
plasm has a psychic life, and in this sense the psyche is a
partial function of organic life generally. But the higher
psychic functions, particularly the phenomena of conscious
ness, only appear gradually in the higher animals, in which
�LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
55
(in consequence of a division of labour among the organs) the
nervous system has assumed these functions.
It is particularly interesting to glance at the central nervous
system of the vertebrates, the great stem of which we regard
ourselves as the crowning point. Here again the anatomical
and embryological facts speak a clear and unambiguous
language. In all vertebrates, from the lowest fishes up to
man, the psychic organ makes its appearance in the embryo, in
the same form—a simple cylindrical tube on the dorsal side t
of the embryonic body, in the middle line.
The anterior
section of this “ medullary tube ” expands into a club-shaped
vesicle, which is the beginning of the brain ; the posterior and
thinner section becomes the spinal cord. The cerebral vesicle
divides, by transverse constrictions, into three, then four, and
eventually five vesicles. The most important of .these is the
first, the cerebrum, the organ of the highest psychic functions.
The more the intelligence develops in the higher vertebrates,
the larger, more voluminous, and more specialised does the
cerebrum become. In particular, the grey mantle or cortex
of the cerebrum, its most important part, only attains in the
higher mammals the degree of quantitative and qualitative
.development that qualifies it to be the “organ of mind” in the
narrower sense. Through the famous discoveries, of Paul
Flechsig eleven years ago we were enabled to distinguish
eight fields in the cortex, four of which serve as the internal
centres of sense-perception, and the four that lie between these
are the thought-centres (or association-centres) of the higher
psychic faculties—the association’ of impressions, the forma
tion of ideas and concepts, induction and deduction. This
real organ of mind, the phronema, is not yet developed in
the lower mammals. It is only gradually built up in the more
advanced, exactly in proportion as their intelligence increases.
It is only in the most intelligent forms of the placentals, the
higher ungulates (horse, elephant), the carnivores (fox, dog),
and especially the primates, that the phronema attains the
high grade of development that leads us from the anthropoid
apes direct to the savage, and from him to civilised man.
We have learned a good deal about the special significance
of the various parts of the brain, as organs of specific
functions, by the progress of the modern science of experi
mental physiology. Careful experiments by Goltz, Munk,
Bernard, and many other physiologists, have shown that the
normal consciousness, speech, and the internal sense-percep
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LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
tions, are connected with definite areas of the cortex, and that
these various parts of the soul are destroyed when the organic
areas connected with them are injured. But in this respect
Nature has unconsciously given us the most instructive
experiments. Diseases in these various areas show how their
functions are partially or totally extinguished when the cere
bral cells that compose them (the neurona or ganglionic cells)
are partially or entirely destroyed. Here again Virchow,
who was the first to make a careful microscopic study of the
finest changes in the diseased cells, and so explain the nature
of the disease, did pioneer work. I still remember very well
a spectacle of this kind (in the summer of 1855, at Wurz
burg), which made a deep impression on me.
Virchow’s
sharp eye had detected a small suspicious spot in the cerebrum
of a lunatic, though there seemed to be nothing remarkable
about it on superficial examination. He handed it to me for
microscopic examination, and I found that a large number of
the ganglionic cells were affected, partly by fatty degenera
tion and partly by calcification. The luminous remarks that
my great teacher made on these and similar finds in other
cases of mental disorder, confirmed my conviction of the unity
of the human organism and the inseparable connection of
mind and body, which he himself at that time expressly shared.
When he abandoned this Monistic conception of the psychic
life for Dualism and Mysticism twenty years afterwards
(especially after his Munich speech in 1877), we must attri
bute this partly to his psychological metamorphosis, and
partly to the political motives of which I spoke in the last
chapter.
We find another series of strong arguments in favour of
our Monistic psychology in the individual development of the
soul in the child and the young animal. We know that the
new-born child has as yet no consciousness, no intelligence,
no independent judgment and thought. We follow the gradual
development of these higher faculties step by step in the
first years of life, in strict proportion to the anatomical
development of the cortex with which they are bound up.
The inquiries into the child-soul which Wilhelm Preyer began
in Jena twenty-five years ago, his careful “observations of
the mental development of man in his early years,” and the
supplementary research of several more recent physiologists,
have shown, from the ontogenetic side, that the soul is not
a special immaterial entity, but the sum-total of a number of
�LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
57
connected functions of the brain. When the brain dies, the
soul comes to an end.
We have further proof in the .stem-history of the soul,
which we gather from the comparative psychology of the lower
and higher mammals, and of savage and civilised rapes.
Modern ethnography shows us in actual existence the various
stages through which the mind rose to its present height.
The most primitive races, such as the Veddahs of Ceylon, or
the Australian natives, are very little above the mental life
of the anthropoid apes. From the higher savages we pass by
a complete gradation of stages to the most civilised races.
But what a gulf there is, even here, between the genius of a
Goethe, a Darwin, or a Lamarck, and an ordinary philistine
or third-rate official. All these facts point to one conclusion :
the human soul has only reached its present height by a long
period of gradual evolution; it differs in degree, not in kind,
from the soul of the higher mammals; and thus it cannot in
any case be immortal.
That a large number of educated people still cling to the
dogma of personal immortality in spite of these luminous
proofs, is owing to the great power of conservative tradition
and the evil methods of instruction that stamp these untenable
dogmas deep on the growing mind in early years. It is for
that very reason that the Churches strive to keep the schools
under their power at any cost; they can control and exploit
the adults at will, if independent thought and judgment have
been stifled in the earlier years.
This brings us to the interesting question : What is the
position of the “ecclesiastical evolution” of the Jesuits (the
“latest course of Darwinism ”), as regards this great question
of the soul? Man is, according to Wasmann, the image of
God and a unique, immaterial being, differing from all other
animals in the possession of an immortal soul, and therefore
having a totally different origin from them. Man’s immortal
soql is, according to this Jesuit sophistry, “spiritual and
sensitive,” while the animal soul is sensitive only. God has
implanted his own spirit in man, and associated it with an
animal soul for the period of life. It is true that Wasmann
believes even man’s body to have been created directly by
God; but, in view of the overwhelming proofs of our animal
descent, he leaves open the possibility of a development from
a series of other animals, in which case the Divine spirit
would be breathed into him in the end. The Christian Fathers,
�58
LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
who were much occupied with the introduction of the soul into
the human embryo, tell us that the immortal soul enters the
soulless embryo on the fortieth day after conception in the
case of the boy, and on the eightieth day in the case of the
girl. If Wasmann . supposes that there was a similar intro
duction of the soul in the development of the race, he must
postulate a moment in the history of the anthropoid apes
when God sent his spirit into the hitherto unspiritual soul of
the ape.
When we look at the matter impartially in the light of
pure reason, the belief in immortality is wholly inconsistent
with the facts of evolution and of physiology. The onto
genetic dogma of the older Church, that the soul is introduced
into the soulless body at a particular moment of its embryonic
development, is just as absurd as the phylogenetic dogma of
the most modern Jesuits, that the Divine spirit was breathed
into the frame of an anthropoid ape at a certain period (in
the Tertiary period), and so converted it into an immortal
soul. We may examine and test this belief as we will, we
can find in it nothing but a piece of mystic superstition. It is
maintained solely by the great power of tradition and the
support of Conservative governments, the leaders of which
have no personal belief in these “revelations,” but cling to
the practical conviction that throne and altar must support
each other. They unfortunately overlook the circumstance
that the throne is apt to become merely the footstool to the
altar, and that the Church exploits the State for its own, not
the State’s, good.
We learn further, from the history of this dogma, that
the belief in immortality did not find its way into science until
a comparatively late date. It is not found in the great
Monistic natural philosophers who, six centuries before the
time of Christ, evinced a profound insight into the real nature
of the world. It is not found in Democritus and Empedocles,
in Seneca and Lucretius Carus. It is not found in the older
Oriental religions, Buddhism, the ancient religion of the,
Chinese, or Confucianism; in fact, there is no question of
individual persistence after death in the Pentateuch or the
earlier books of the Old Testament (which were written before
the Babylonian Exile). It wras Plato and his pupil, Aristotle,
that found a place for it in their dualistic metaphysics; and
its agreement with the Christian and Mohammedan teaching
secured for it a very widespread acceptance.
�LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
59
Another psychological dogma, the belief in man’s free-will,
is equally inconsistent with the truth of evolution. Modern
physiology shows clearly that the will is never really free in
man or in the animal, but determined by the organisation of
the brain ; this in turn is determined in its individual character
by the laws of heredity and the influence of the environment.
It is only because the apparent freedom of the will has such
a great practical significance in the province of religion,
morality, sociology, and law, that it still forms the subject
of the most contradictory claims. Theoretically, determinism,
or the doctrine of the necessary character of our volitions,
was established long ago.
With the belief in the absolute freedom of the will and the
personal immortality of the soul is associated, in the minds of
many highly educated people, a third article of faith, the
belief in a personal God. It is well known that this belief,
often wrongly represented as an indispensable foundation of
religion, assumes the most widely varied shapes. As a rule,
however, it is an open or covert anthropomorphism. God is
conceived as the “Supreme Being,” but turns out, on closer
examination, to be an idealised man.
According to the
Mosaic narrative, “God made man to his own image and
likeness,” but it is usually the reverse; “Man made God
according to his own image and likeness.” This idealised
man becomes creator and architect and produces the world,
forming the various species of plants and animals like a
modeller, governing the world like a wise and all-powerful
monarch, and, at the “Last Judgment,” rewarding the good
and punishing the wicked like a rigorous jud^e. The childish
conceptions of this extramundane God, who is set over against
the world as an independent being, the personal creator,
maintainer, and ruler of all things, are quite incompatible
with the advanced science of the nineteenth century, especially
with its two greatest triumphs, the law of substance and the
law of Monistic evolution.
Critical philosophy, moreover, long ago pronounced its
doom. In the first place, the most famous critical thinker,
Immanuel Kant, proved in his Critique of Pure Reason that
absolute science affords no support to the three central dogmas
of metaphysics, the personal God, the immortality of the soul,
and the freedom of the will. It is true that he afterwards
(in the course of his dualistic and dogmatic metamorphosis)
taught that we must believe these three great mystic forces,
�6o
LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
and that they are indispensable postulates of practical reason ;
and that the latter must take precedence over pure reason.
Modern German philosophy, which clamours for a “ return to
Kant,” sees his chief distinction in this impossible reconcilia
tion of polar contradictions. The Churches, and the ruling
powers in alliance with them, accord a welcome to this
diametrical contradiction, recognised by all candid readers of
the Königsberg philosopher, between the two reasons. They
use the confusion that results for the purpose of putting the
light of the creeds in the darkness of doubting reason, and
imagine that they save religion in this way.
Whilst we are engaged with the important subject of
religion, we must refute the charge, often made, and renewed
of recent years, that our Monistic philosophy and the theory
of evolution that forms its chief foundation destroy religion.
It is only opposed to those lower forms of religion that are
based on superstition and ignorance, and would hold man’s
reason in bondage by empty formalism and belief in' the
miraculous, in order to control it for political purposes. This
is chiefly the case with Romanism or Ultramontanism, that
pitiful caricature of pure Christianity that still plays so im
portant a part in the world. Luther would turn in his grave
if he could see the predominance of the Roman Centre party
in the German Empire to-day. We find the papacy, thé deadly
enemy of Protestant Germany, controlling its destiny, and
the Reichstag submitting willingly to be led by the Jesuits.
Not a voice do we hear raised in it against the three most
dangerous and mischievous institutions of Romanism—the
obligatory celibacy of the clergy, the confessional, and in
dulgences. Though these later institutions of the Roman
Church have nothing to do with the original teaching of the
Church and pure Christianity ; though their immoral conse
quences, so prejudicial to the life of the family and the State,
are known to all, they exist just as they did before the
Reformation. Unfortunately, many German princes foster
the ambition of the Roman clergy, making their “Canossajourney ” to Rome, and bending the knee to the great
charlatan at the Vatican.
It is also very regrettable that the increasing tendency to
external show and festive parade at what is called “the new
court ” does grave injury to real and inner religion. We have
a striking instance of this external religion in the^ new
cathedral at Berlin, which many would have us regard as
�LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
6r
“ Catholic,” not Protestant and Evangelical. I often met in
India priests and pilgrims who believed they were pleasing
their God by turning prayer-wheels, or setting up prayer-mills
that were set in motion by the wind. One might utilise the
modern invention of automatic machines for the same pur
poses, and set up praying automata in the new cathedral, or
indulgence-machines that would give relief from lighter sins
for one mark [shilling], and from graver sins for twenty
marks. It would prove a great source of revenue to the
Church, especially if similar machines were set up in the
other churches that have lately been erected in Berlin at a
cost of millions of marks. It would have been better to have
spent the money on schools.
These observations on the more repellent characters of
modern orthodoxy and piety may be taken as some reply to
the sharp attacks to which I have been exposed for forty years,
and which have lately been renewed with great violence. The
spokesmen of Catholic and Evangelical beliefs, especially the
Romanist Germania and the Lutheran Reichsbote, have vied
with each other in deploring my lectures as “a desecration
of this venerable hall,” and in damning my theory of evolu-»
tion—without, of course, making any attempt to refute its
scientific truth. They have, in their Christian charity, thought
fit to put sandwich-men at the doors of this room, to dis
tribute scurrilous attacks on my person and my teaching to
those who enter. They have made a generous use of the
fanatical calumnies that the court chaplain, Stocker, the
theologian, Loofs, the philologist, Dennert, and other opponents of my Riddle of the Universe, have disseminated, and to
which I make a brief reply at the end of that work. I pass
by the many untruths of these zealous protagonists of
theology. We men of science have a different conception of
truth from that which prevails in ecclesiastical circles.1
1 I may remind those who think that the hall of the Musical Academy
is “desecrated” by my lectures, that it was in the very same place that
Alexander von Humboldt delivered, seventy-seven years ago (1.828), the
remarkable lectures that afterwards made up his Cosmos. The great
traveller, whose clear mind had recognised the unity of Nature, and had,
with Goethe, discovered therein the real knowledge of God, endeavoured
to convey his thoughts in popular form to the educated Berlin public,
and to establish the universality of natural law. It was my aim to
establish, as regards the organic world, precisely what Humboldt had
proved to exist in inorganic nature. I wanted to show how the great
advance of modern biology (since Darwin’s, time) enables us to solve
I the most difficult of all problems, the historical development of plants
�62
LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
As regards the relation of science to Christianity, I will only
point out that it is quite irreconcilable with the mystic and
supernatural Christian beliefs, but that it fully recognises
the high ethical value of Christian morality. It is true that
the highest commands of the Christian religion, especially
those of sympathy and brotherly love, are not discoveries of
its own ; the golden rule was taught and practised centuries
before the time of Christ. However, Christianity has the dis
tinction of. preaching and developing it with a fresh force.
In its time it has had a beneficial influence on the development
of civilisation,, though in the Middle Ages the Roman Church
became, with its Inquisition, its witch-drowning, its burning
of heretics, and its religious wars, the bloodiest caricature of
the gentle religion of love. Orthodox historical Christianity
is not directly destroyed by modern science, but by its own
learned and zealous theologians. The enlightened Protestant
ism that was so effectively advocated by Schleiermacher in
Berlin eighty years ago, the later works of Feuerbach, the
inquiries into the lif-e of Jesus of David Strauss and Ernest
Renan, the lectures recently delivered here by Delitzsch and
aHarnack, have left very little of what strict orthodoxy regards
as the indispensable foundations of historical Christianity.
Kalthoff, of Bremen, goes so far as to declare that all Christian
traditions are myths, and that the development of Christianity
is a necessary outcome of the civilisation of the time.
In view of this broadening tendency in theology and philo
sophy at the beginning of the twentieth century, it is an
unfortunate anachronism that the Ministers of Public Instruct
tion of Prussia and Bavaria sail in the wake of the Catholic
Church, and seek to instil the spirit of the Jesuits in both
lower and higher education. It is only a few weeks since thé
Prussian Minister of Worship made a dangerous attempt to
suppress academic freedom, the palladium of mental life in
Germany. This increasing réaction recalls the sad days of
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when thousands of
the finest citizens of Germany migrated to North America,
in order to develop their mental powers in a free atmosphere.
This selective process formed a blessing to the United States,
but it was certainly very injurious to Germany. Large
and animals in humanity. Humboldt in his day earned the most lively
approval and gratitude of all free-thinking and truth-seeking men, and
the displeasure and suspicion of the orthodox and conservative courtiers
at Berlin.
�LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
63
numbers of weak and servile characters and sycophants were
thus favoured. The fossilised ideas of many of our leading
jurists seem to take us back sometimes to the Cretaceous and
Jurassic periods, while the palaeozoic rhetoric of our theo
logians and synods even goes back to the Permian and
Carboniferous epochs.
However, we must not take too seriously the anxiety that
this increasing political and clerical reaction causes us. We
must remember the vast resources of civilisation that are seen
to-day in our enormous international intercourse, and must
have confidence in the helpful exchange of ideas between East
and West that is being effected daily by our means of transit.
Even in Germany the darkness that now prevails will at
length give place to the dazzling light of the sun. Nothing,
in my opinion, will contribute more to that end than the
unconditional victory of the idea of evolution.
Beside the law of evolution, and closely connected with
it, we have that great triumph of modern science, the law of
substance—the law of the conservation of matter (Lavoisier,
1789), and of the conservation of energy (Robert Mayer, 1842).
These two laws are irreconcilable with the three central
dogmas of metaphysics, which so -many educated people still
regard as the most precious treasures of their spiritual life—
the belief in a personal God, the personal immortality of the
soul, and the liberty of the human will. But these great
objects of belief, so intimately bound up with numbers of our
treasured achievements and institutions, are not on that
account driven out of the world. They merely cease to pose
as truths in the realm of pure science. As imaginative
creations, they retain a certain value in the world of poetry.
Here they will not only, as they have done hitherto, furnish
’thousands of the finest and most lofty motives for every
branch of art—sculpture, painting, or music—but they will
still have a high ethical and social value in the education
of the young and in the organisation of society. Just as we
derive artistic and ethical inspiration from the legends of
classical antiquity (such as the Hercules myth, the Odyssey
and the Iliad) and the story of William Tell, so we shall con
tinue to do in regard to the stories of the Christian mythology.
But we must do the same with the poetical conceptions of
other religions, which have given the most varied forms to
the transcendental ideas of God, freedom, and immortality.
Thus the noble warmth of art will remain, together with—
||
?
;
;
�LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
64
not in opposition to, but in harmony with-—the splendid light
of science, one of the most precious possessions of the human
mind. As Goethe said : “ He who has science and art has
religion ; he who has not these two had better have religion.”
Our Monistic system, the “connecting link between religion
and science,” brings God and the world into unity in the
sense that Goethe willed, the sense that Spinoza clearly ex
pressed long ago and Giordano Bruno had sealed with his
martyrdom. It has been said repeatedly of late that Goethe
was an orthodox Christian. A few years ago a young orator
quoted him in support of the wonderful dogmas of the
Christian religion. We may point out that Goethe himself
expressly said he was “a decided non-Christian.”
The
“great heathen of Weimar ” has given the clearest expression
. to his Pantheistic views in his noblest poems, Faust, Prome
theus, and God and the World. How could so vig'orous a
thinker, in whose mind the evolution of organic life ran
through millions of years, have shared the narrow belief of
a Jewish prophet and enthusiast who sought to give up his
life for humanity 1,900 years ago?
,
Our Monistic god, the all-embracing essence of the world,
the Nature-god of Spinoza and Goethe, is identical with the
1 eternal, all-inspiring energy, and is one, in eternal and infinite
£ substance, with space-filling matter. It “lives and moves in
| all things,” as the Gospel says. And as we see that the law
of substance is universal, that the conservation of matter and
of energy is inseparably connected, and that the ceaseless
development of this substance follows the same “eternal iron
| laws,” we find God in natural law itself. The will of God
is at work in every falling drop of rain and every growing
crystal, in the scent of the rose and the spirit of man.
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Last words on evolution : a popular retrospect and summary
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Haeckel, Ernst Heinrich Philipp August [1834-1919]
McCabe, Joseph [1867-1955]
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 64 p. ; 18 cm.
Series title: Pamphlets for the Millions
Series number: No. 8
Notes: Publisher's advertisements inside and on back cover. Portrait of the author on front cover. Issued for the Rationalist Press Association. Marginal marking of text in pencil. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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1912
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Evolution
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Evolution
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Text
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
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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
�144
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
�1
RECAPITULATION AND CONCLUSION
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191
x
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
Jp’.
■A;rS
MM
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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
i
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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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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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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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Evolution
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Evolution
Evolution (Biology)
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Text
NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
PIONEERS
OF
EVOLUTION
�A Library Edition of this work, with portraits, is
published by Mr. Grant Richards, 48, Leicester Square,
London, W.C., price Five Shillings net.
Uniform with “ Pioneers oj Evolution,” price 6d., by post 8d.
LECTURES AND ESSAYS. By Thomas Henry Huxley. Con
sisting of Autobiography, Three Lectures on Evolution, On the
Physical Basis of Life, Naturalism and Supernaturalism, The Value
of Witness to the Miraculous, Agnosticism, The Christian Tradition
in Relation to Judaic Christianity, Agnosticism and Christianity.
MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT. By S. Laing,
author of Human Origins, Problems of the Future, A Modern
Zoroastrian, etc.
�bi
PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION
FROM THALES TO HUXLEY
WITH
AN INTERMEDIATE CHAPTER ON THE CAUSES OF
ARREST OF THE MOVEMENT
BY
EDWARD CLODD
(Author of t! The Childhood of the World,” “ The Story of Creation,” “ Thomas
Henry Huxley,” etc., etc.)
(issued for the rationalist press association, ltd.,
by arrangement
WITH MR. GRANT RICHARDS)
WATTS & Co.
17, JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, LONDON, E.C.
1902
�TO MY BELOVED
A. A. L.
WHOSE FELLOWSHIP AND HELP
HAVE
SWEETENED LIFE
�PREFACE
This book needs only brief introduction.
It attempts
to tell the story of the origin of the Evolution idea in
Ionia, and, after long arrest, of the revival of that idea
in modern times, when its profound and permanent
influence on thought in all directions, and, therefore, on
human relations and conduct, is apparent.
Between birth and revival there were- the centuries
of suspended animation, when the nepenthe of dogma
drugged the reason ; the Church teaching, and the laity
mechanically accepting, the sufficiency of the Scriptures
and of the General Councils to decide on matters which
lie outside the domain of both.
Hence the necessity
for particularising the causes which actively arrested
advance in knowledge for sixteen hundred years.
In indicating the parts severally played in the
Renascence of Evolution by a small group of illustrious
men, the writer, through the courtesy of Mr. Herbert
Spencer, has been permitted to see the original docu
ments which show that the theory of revolution as a
whole—z>., as dealing with the non-living, as well as
�PRÉFACE
6
the living, contents of the Universe, was formulated by
Mr. Spencer in the year preceding the publication of
the Origin of Species.
Rosemont, Tufnell Park, London, N.
14th December, 1896.
�CONTENTS
PART I
Pioneers of Evolution from Thales to Lucretius—b.c. 6oo-a.d. 50
PART II
The Arrest
i.
of
Inquiry—a.d. 50-A.D. 1600
From the Early Christian Period to the Time
a.d. 50-A.D. 400
of
Augustine—
2. From Augustine to Lord Bacon—a.d. 400-A.D. 1600
PART III
The Renascence of Science—a.d. 1600 onwards
PART IV
Modern Evolution—
I. Darwin and Wallace
2. Herbert Spencer
3.
Thomas Henry Huxley
INDEX
�“Nature, which governs the whole, will soon change all things which thou
seest, and out of their substance will make other things, and again other things from
the substance of them, in order that the world may be ever new.”
Marcus Aurelius, vii. 25.
�PART I
PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION FROM THALES TO LUCRETIUS
B.C. ÔOO-A.D. 50
” These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were
persuaded of them.”—Hebrews xi. 13.
“One event is always the son of
another, and we must never forget the
parentage,saida Bechuana chief to
Casalis the missionary. The barbarian
philosopher spoke wiser than he knew,
for in his words lay that doctrine of con
tinuity and unity which is the creed of
modern science. They are a suitable
text to the discourse of this chapter, the
design of which is to bring out what
the brilliancy of present-day discoveries
tends to throw into shadow—namely, the
antiquity of the ideas of which those
discoveries are the result. Although the
Theory of Evolution, as we define it, is
new, the speculations which made it
possible are, at least, twenty-five centuries
old. Indeed, it is not practicable, since
the remote past yields no documents,
to fix their beginnings.
Moreover,
charged, as they are, with many crudities,
they are not detachable from the bar
baric conceptions of the universe which
are the philosophies of past and the
legends of present times.
Fontenelle, a writer of the last century,
shrewdly remarked that “all nations
made the astounding part of their myths
while they were savage, and retained
them from custom and religious con
servatism.” For, as Walter Bagehot
argues in his brilliant little book on
Physics and Politics, and as all anthropo
logical research goes to prove, the lower
races are non-progressive both through
fear and instinct. And the majority of
the members of higher races have not
escaped from the operation of the same
causes. Hence the persistence of coarse
and grotesque elements in speculations
wherein man has made gradual approach
to the truth of things; hence, too—the
like phenomena having to be interpreted
—the similarity of the explanation of
them. And as primitive myth embodies
primitive theology, primitive morals, and
primitive science, the history of beliefs
shows how few there be who have
escaped from the tyranny of that autho
rity and sanctity with which the lapse of
time invests old ideas.
Dissatisfaction is a necessary condition
of progress ; and dissatisfaction involves
opposition. As Grant Allen puts it, in
one of his most felicitous poems :
If systems that be are the order of God,
Revolt is a part of the order.
Hence a stage in the history of certain
peoples when, in questioning what is
commonly accepted, intellectual freedom
is born. Such a stage was, markedly,
reached whenever, for example, an indi
vidual here and there challenged the
current belief about the beginnings and
nature of things, beliefs held because
they were taught, not because their
correspondence with fact had been
examined.
A pioneer (French, pionnier ; Italian,
pedone; from Latin pedes'} is, literally, a
foot-soldier; one who goes before an
army to clear the road of obstructions.
Hence the application of the term to
men who are in the van of any new
�lo
PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION
movement; hence its special fitness in
the present connection, as designating
men whose speculations cut a pathway
through jungles of myth and legend to
the realities of things. The Pioneers of
Evolution—the first on record to doubt
the truth of the theory of special
creation, whether as the work of depart
mental gods or of one Supreme Deity
matters not—lived in Greece about the'
time already mentioned; six centuries
before Christ. Not, in the early stages
of the Evolution idea, in the Greece
limited, as now, to a rugged peninsula in
the south-eastern corner of Europe and
to the surrounding islands; but in the
Greece which then included Ionia, on
the opposite sea-board of Asia Minor.
From times beyond memory or record,
the islands of the /Egean had been the
nurseries of culture and adventure.
Thence the maritime inhabitants had
spread themselves both east and west,
feeding the spirit of inquiry, and im
bibing influences from older civilisations,
notably of Egypt and Chaldaea. But,
mix as they might with other peoples,
the Greeks never lost their own stronglymarked individuality, and in imparting
what they had acquired or discovered to
younger peoples—that is, younger in
culture—they stamped it with an . impress
all their own.
At the later period with which we are
dealing, refugees from the Peloponnesus,
who would not submit to the Dorean
yoke, had been long settled in Ionia.
To what extent they had been influenced
by contact with their neighbours is a
question which, even were it easy to *
answer, need not occupy us here.
Certain it is that trade and travel had
widened their intellectual horizon, and,
although India lay too remote to touch
them closely (if that incurious, dreamy
East had touched them, it would have
taught them nothing), there was' Baby
lonia with her star-watchers, and Egypt
with her land-surveyors. From the one,
these Ionians probably gained knowledge
of certain periodic movements of some
of the heavenly bodies; and from the I
other, a few rules of mensuration, per
chance a little crude science. But this
is conjecture. For all the rest that she
evolved, and with which she enriched
the world, ancient Greece is in debt to
none.
While the Oriental shrunk from quest
after causes, looking, as Professor
Butcher aptly remarks in his Aspects of
the Greek Genius, on “each fresh gain
of earth as so much robbery of heaven,”
the Greek eagerly sought for the law
governing the facts around him. And
in Ionia was born the idea foreign to the
East, but which has become the startingpoint of all subsequent scientific inquiry—the idea that Nature works by fixed laws.
Sir Henry Maine said that “except the
blind forces of Nature nothing moves
which is not Greek in its origin,” and we
feel how hard it is to avoid exaggeration
when speaking of the heritage bequeathed
by Greece as the giver of every fruitful,
quickening idea which has developed
human faculty on all sides, and enriched
every province of life. Amid serious
defects of character, as craftiness, ava
riciousness, and unscrupulousness, the
Greeks had the redeeming grace of
pursuit after knowledge which nought
could baffle (Plato, Republic, iv., 435),
and that healthy outlook on things which
saved them from morbid introspection.
There arose among them no Simeon
Stylites to mount his profitless pillar; no
filth-engrained fakir to waste life in con
templating the tip of his nose; no school
man to idly speculate how many angels
could dance upon a needle’s point, or to
debate such fatuous questions as the
.language which the saints in heaven will
speak after the Last Judgment.
In his excellent and cautious survey
of Early Greek Philosophy, which we
mainly follow in this section, Professor
Burnet says that the real advance made
by the Ionians was through their “leaving
off telling tales. They gave up the
hopeless task of describing what wa§.
when as yet there was nothing, and asked
jnstead_what all things really are now.”
For the early notions of the~Greeks
�THALES TO LUCRETIUS
if
about nature, being an inheritance from Aristotle, born at Eresus in Lesbos, 371
Perhaps, following Professor
their barbaric ancestors, were embodied b.c.).
in myths and legends bearing strong re Burnet’s able guidance through the com
semblance to those found among the plexities of definitions, the term Bound
uncivilised tribes of Polynesia and else less best expresses the “ one eternal,
where in our day. For example, the old indestructible substance out of which
nature-myth of Cronus separating heaven everything arises, and into which every
and earth by the mutilation of Uranus thing once more returns”; in other words,
occurs among Chinese, Japanese, and the exhaustless stock of matter from
Maoris, and among the ancient Hindus which the waste of existence is being £
continually made good.
and Egyptians.
Anaximander was the first to assert
The earliest school of scientific
^peculation was ( at Miletus, ~the most the origin of life from the non-living, z.<?.
flourishing city^ofloma” Thales, whose “ the moist element as it was evaporated 1
name heads the list of the “Seven Sages,” by the sun,” and to speak of man aS j
was its founder. As with other noted “like another animal-—namely, a fish, in
philosophers of this and later periods, the beginning.” This looks well-nigh
the exact date neither of his birth nor of akin to prevision of the mutability of
his death is known, but the sixth century species, and of what modern biology has
.before Christ may be held to cover the proved concerning the marine ancestry
of the highest animals, although it is j
period~wTien he “-flourished."
That “ nothing"” comes into being out one of many ancient speculations as to
of nothing, and that nothing passes the origin of life in slimy matter. And
away into nothing,” was the conviction when Anaximander adds that, “ while
j with which he, and those who followed other animals quickly find food for
him, started on their quest. All around themselves, man alone requires a pro-'
was change: everything always becoming longed .periotToTsucUing,” heanticipatea
something else; “ all in motion like themodern explanation of thejongm of
streams.” There must be that which is the "rudimentary family through” the
the vehicle of all the changes, and of all development of the social instincts and 1
the motions which produce them. What, affections. The lengthening of the pejioSj
therefore, was this permanent and primary of infancy invoTves^ependenceZoiL-the I
substance? in other words, of what is parents, and evolves the sympathy which
the world made ? And Thales, perhaps lies'" at ATtTTiasc^ATsQuial relations (¿¡A
through observing that it could become Fiske’s Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy, ii.
vaporous, liquid, and solid in turn; 344, 36°)In dealing with speculations so remote,
I perhaps—if, as tradition records, he
visited Egypt—through watching the we have to guard against reading modern
wonder-working, life-giving Nile; perhaps, meanings into writings produced in ages
as doubtless sharing the current belief whose limitations of knowledge werte
in an ocean-washed earth; said that the serious, and whose temper and stand
point are wholly alien to our own. For
primary substance was Water.
Anaximander, his friend and pupil, example, shrewd as are some of the
disagreeing with what seemed to him a guesses made by Anaximander, we find
too concrete answer, argued, in more him describing the sun as “a ring
/abstract fashion, that “the material cause twenty-eight times the size of the earth,
and first element of things was the like a cart-wheel with the felloe hollow
Infinite.” This material cause, which and full of fire, showing the fire at a
he was the first thus to name, “ is neither certain point, as if through the nozzle
water nor any other of what are now of a pair of bellows.” And if he made
called the elements ” (we quote from some approach to truer ideas of the
Theophratus, the famous pupil of earth’s shape as “convex and round,”
�12
ProNEERS OF EVOLUTION
the world of his day, as in the days of
Homer, thought of it as flat, and as
floating on the all-surrounding water.
The Ionian philosophers lacked not
insight, but the scientific method of
starting with working hypotheses, or of
observation before theory, was as yet
unborn.
In this brief survey of the subject
there will be no advantage in detailing
the various speculations which followed
on the heels of those of Thales and
Anaximander, since these varied only in
non-essentials; or, like that of Pythagoras
and his school, which Zeller regards as
an outcome of the teaching of Anaxi
mander, were purely abstract and fanciful.
As is well known, the Pythagoreans,
whose philosophy was ethical as well as
cosmical, held that all things are made
of numbers, each of which was credited
with special character and property. A
belief in such symbols as entities seems
impossible to us, but its existence in
early thought is conceivable, when, as
Aristotle says, they were “ not separated
from the objects of sense.” Even at
the present day, among the eccentric
people who still believe in the modern
sham-Gnosticism known as Theosophy,
and in Astrology, we find the delusion
that numbers possess inherent magic or
mystic virtues. So far as the ancients
are concerned, “consider the lively
emotions excited at a time when multi
plication and division, squaring and
cubing, the rule of three, the construc
tion and equivalence of figures, with all
their manifold applications to industry,
commerce, fine art, and tactics, were
just as strange and wonderful as electrical
phenomena are to us....... and we shall
cease to wonder that a mere form of
thought, a lifeless abstraction, should
once have been regarded as the solution
of every problem ; the cause of all exist
ence ; or that these speculations were
more than once revived in after ages ”
(Benn, Greek Philosophers, i. 12).
Xenophanes of Colophon, onp of the
twelve Ionian cities of Asia Minor,
deserves, however, a passing reference.
He, with Parmenides and Zeno, are the
chief representatives of the Eleatic
school, so named from the city in south
western Italy where a Greek colony had
settled. The tendency of that school
was towards metaphysical theories. He
was the first known observer to detect
the value of fossils as evidences of the
action of water; but his chief claim to
notice rests on the fact that, passing
beyond the purely physical speculations
of the Ionian school, he denied the idea
of a primary substance, and theorised
about the nature and actions of super
human beings. Living at a time when
there was a revival of old and gross
superstitions to which the vulgar had
recourse when fears of invasions arose,
he dared to attack the old and persistent
ideas about the gods, as in the following
sentences from the fragments of his
writings :—
“ Homer and Hesiod have ascribed
to the gods all things that are a shame
and a disgrace among men, theft and
adulteries and deception of one another.”
“ There never was nor will be a man
who has clear certainty as to what I say
about the gods and about all things ; for,
even if he does chance to say what is
right, yet he himself does not know that
it is so. But all are free to guess.”
“ Mortals think that the gods are born
as they are, and have senses, and a voice
and body like their own. So the Ethio
pians make their gods black and snub
nosed; the Thracians give theirs red
hair and blue eyes.”
“There is one god, the greatest among
gods and jnen, unlike mortals both jn
mind and body.” Had such heresies
been spoken in Athens, where the effects
of the religious revival of the sixth
century were still unspent, the “secular
arm” of the archons would probably
have made short work of Xenophanes.
But in Elea, or in whatever other colony
he may have lived, “ the gods were left
to take care of themselves.”
Greater than the philosophers yet
named is geraclitug of Ephesus, nick
named “the dark,” from the obscurity
�TEA LES TO Lt/CRETIUS
of his Style. His original writings have
shared the fate of most documents of
antiquity, and exist, like many of these,
only in fragments preserved in the works
of other authors. Many of his aphorisms
are indeed dark sayings ; but those that
yield their meaning are full of truth and
suggestiveness. As for example—“ The eyes are more exact witnesses
than the ears.”
“You will not find out the boundaries
“Man is kindled and put out like a
'light in the night-time.”
“ Man’s character is his fate.”
But these have special value as keys
to his philosophy:
. “You cannot step twice into the same
Vivers ; for fresh waters are ever flowing
in upon you.”
“ Homer was wrong in saying : ‘Would
that strife might perish from among gods
and men ! He did not see that he was
praying for the destruction of the uni
verse ; for, if his prayer were heard, all
things would pass away.”
Flux or movement, says Heraclitus,
is the all-pervading law of things, and in
the opposition of forces, by which things
áre kept going, there is underlying
harmony. Still on the quest after the
primary substance whose manifestations
are so various, he found it in Fire, since
“ the quantity of it in a flame burning
Steadily appears to remain the same;
the flame seems to be what we call a
‘thing.’ And yet the substance of it
is continually changing. It is always
passing away in smoke, and its place is
always being taken by fresh matter from
the fuelthat feeds it. This is just what
we want. If we regard the world as an
‘ever-living fire’—‘this order, which is the
same in all things, and which no one of
gods or men has made ’—we can under
stand how fire is always becoming all
things, while all things are always re
turning to it.” And as is the world, so
is man, made up, like it, both soul and
body, of the fire, the water, and the earth.
We are and are not the same for two
consecutive moments ; “the fire in us is
perpetually becoming water, and the
water earth, but as the opposite process
goes on simultaneously we appear to
remain the same.”
As speculation advanced, it became
more and more applied to details;
theories of the beginnings of life being
followed by theories of the origin of its
various forms. This is a feature of the
philosophy of Empedocles, who flourished
in the fifth century b.c. The advance
of Persia westward had led to migrations
of Greeks to the south of Italy and
Sicily, and it was at Agrigentum, in that
island, that Empedoclbswas"born about
490. He has an honoured place among
the earliest who supplanted guesses about
the world by inquiry into the world
itself. Many legends are told of hi®
magic arts, one of which, it will be
remembered, Matthew Arnold makes an
occasion of some fine reflections in his
poem, Empedocles in Etna. The philo»’
sopher was said to have brought back to
life a woman who, apparently, had been
dead for thirty days. As he ascends the
mountain, Pausanias of Gela, with am
address to whom the poem of Empe
docles opens, would fain have his curiosity
slaked as to this and other marvels re
ported of him :
Ask not the latest news of the last miracle,
Ask not what days and nights
In trance Pantheia lay,
But ask how thou such sights
May’st see without dismay ;
Ask what most helps when known, thou son
Anchitus.
His speculations about things, lik<3
those of Parmenides before him and of
Lucretius after him, are set down in
verse. From the remains of his Poem on
Nature we learn that he conceived “ the
four roots of all things” to be Fire,
Air, Earth, and Water. They are
“fools, lacking far-reaching thoughts^
who deem that what before was not,,
comes into being, or that aught can
perish and be utterly destroyed.” There
fore the “ roots ” or' elements are eternal
and indestructible. They are acted upon
by two forces, which are also material,
�14
PIONEERS OF EVOLUTltJN
Love and Strife; the one a uniting
agent, the other a disrupting agent.
From the four roots, thus operated upon,
arise “ the colours and forms ” of living
things—trees first, both male and female,
then fragmentary parts of animals, heads
without necks, and “eyes that strayed
up and down in want of a forehead,”
which, combined together, produced
monstrous forms. These, lacking power
to propagate, perished, and were replaced
by “ whole-natured” but sexless “forms”
which “arose from the earth,” and
which, as Strife gained the upper hand,
became male and female.
Herein,
amidst much fantastic speculation, would
appear to be the germ of the modern
theory that the unadapted become ex
tinct, and that only the adapted survive.
Nature kills off her failures to make
room for her successes.
.Anaxagoras, who was a contemporary
of Empedocles, interests us because he
was the first philosopher to repair to
Athens, and the first sufferer for truth’s
sake of whom we have record in Greek
annals. Because he taught that the sun
was a red-hot stone, and that the moon
had plains and ravines in it, he was put
upon his trial, and but for the influence
of his friend, the famous Pericles, might
have suffered death. Speculations, how
ever bold, they be. pass nnheg.dpd till
they collide with the popular creeds and,
in thus attacking the gods, attack a
seemingly divinely settled order. Athens
then, and long after, while indifferent
about natural science, was, under the
influence of the revival referred to above,
actively hostile to free thinking. The
opinions of Anaxagoras struck at the
existence of the gods and emptied
Olympus. If the sky was but an air
filled space, what became of Zeus? if
the sun was only a fiery ball, what became
of Apollo ? Mr. Grote says {History of
Greece, i. 466) that, “in the view of the
early Greek, the description of the sun,
as given in a modern astronomical
treatise, would have appeared not merely
absurd, but repulsive and impious ; even
in later times Anaxagoras and other
astronomers incurred the charge of blas
phemy for dispersonifying Helios.” Of
Socrates, who was himself condemned
to death for impiety in denying old gods
and introducing new ones, the same
authority writes: “Physics and astronomy,
in his opinion, belonged to the divine
class of phenomena, in which human
research was insane, fruitless, and im
pious.” So Demos and his “ betters ”
clung, as the majority still cling, to the
myths of their forefathers. They re
paired to the oracles, and watched for
the will of the gods in signs and omens.
In his philosophy Anaxagoras held that
there was a portion of everything in
everything, and that things are variously
mixed in infinite numbers of seeds, each
after its kind. From these, through the
action of an external cause, called Nous,
which also is material, although 'the
“ thinnest of all things and the purest,”
and “has power over all things,” there
arose plants and animals. It is probable,
as Professor Burnet remarks, “that
Anaxagoras substituted Nous, still con
ceived as a body, for the Love and
Strife of Empedocles, simply because
he wished to retain the old Ionic
doctrine of a substance that ‘ knows ’
all things,' and to identify this with the
new theory of a substance that ‘ moves ’
all things.”
Thus far speculation has run largely
on the origin of life-forms, but now we
find revival of speculation about the
nature of things generally, and the
formulation of a theory of the
constitution of matter which links
Greek cosmology with Dalton’s Atomic
Theory. Democritus of Abdera, who
was born about 460 b.c., has the credit
of having elaborated an atomic theory,
but probably he only further developed
what Leucippus had taught before him.
Of this last-named philosopher nothing
whatever is known; indeed, his existence
has been doubted, but it counts for some
thing that Aristotle gives him the credit
of the discovery, and that TheophrasUis,
in the first book of his Opinions, wrote
of Leucippus as follows : “ He assumed
�TwaTes*to lUcrptius
innumerable and ever-moving elements—
namely, the atoms. And he made their
forms infinite in number, since there was
no reason why they should be of one
kind rather than another, and because
he saw that there was unceasing be
coming and change in things. He held,
further, that what is is no more real than
what is not, and that both are alike
causes of the things that come into
being ; for he laid down that the sub
stance of the atoms was compact and
full, and he called them what is, while
they moved in the void which he called
what is not, but affirmed to be just as
real as what is.” Thus did “ he answer
the question that Thales had been the
first to ask.”
Postponing further reference to this
theory until the great name of Lucretius,
its Roman exponent, is reached, we find
a genuine scientific method making its
first start in the person of Aristotle. This
remarkable man, the founder of the
experimental school, and the Father of
Natural History, was born 384 B.c.__at
Stagira in Macedonia. In his eighteenth
year he left his native place for Athens,
where he became a pupil of Plato.
Disappointed, as it is thought, at not
succeeding his master in the Academy,
he removed to Mytilene in the island of
Lesbos, where he received an invitation
from Philip of Macedon to become
tutor to his son, the famous Alexander
the Great. When Alexander went on
his expedition to Asia, Aristotle returned
to Athens, teaching in the “school”
which his genius raised to the first rank.
■There he wrote the greater part of
his works, the completion of some of
which was stopped by his death at Chaicis
in 322. The range of his studies was
boundless, but in this brief notice we
must limit our survey—and the more
so because Aristotle’s speculations out
side natural history abound in errors—
to his pioneer work in organic evolution.
Here, in the one possible method of
reaching the truth, theory follows obser
vation. Stagira lay on the Strymonic
gulf, and a boyhood spent by the seashore
gave Aristotle ample opportunity for!
noting the variations, and withal gradal
tions, between marine plants and ani
mals, among which last-named it should
be noted as proof of his insight that he
was keen enough to include sponges.
Here was laid the foundation of a classi
fication of life-forms on which all corre
sponding attempts were based. Then,;
he saw, as none other before him had
seen, and as none after him saw foi
centuries, the force of heredity, that still
unsolved problem of biology. Speaking]
broadly of his teaching, the details of
which would fill pages, its main features
are (1) His insistence on observation.
In his History of Animals he says:
“We must not accept a general principle
from logic only, but must prove its
application to each fact. For it is in
facts that we must seek general principles!
and these must always accord with factS.I
Experience furnishes the particular facts
from which induction is the pathway to
general laws.” (2) His rejection of
chance and assertion of law, not, follow
ing a common error, of law personified
as cause, but as the term by which we
express the fact that certain phenomena
always occur in a certain order. In his
Physics Aristotle says that “Zeus rains
not that corn may be increased, but
from necessity. Similarly, if some one’s*
corn is destroyed-by raTrijTt "does ndgl
rain forthis purpose, but as an accidental
circumstance. It does not appear to be
from fortune or chance that it frequently
rains in winter, but from necessity.” (3)
On the question of the origin of life
forms he was nearest of all to its modern
solution, setting forth the necessity “ that
germs should have been first produced,
and not immediately animals ; and that
soft mass which first subsisted was the
germ. In plants, also, there is purpose,
but it is less distinct; and this shows
that plants were produced in the same
manner as animals, not by chance, as by
the union of olives with grape vines.
Similarly, it may be argued that there
should be an accidental generation of
the germs of things; but he who asserts
�i6
PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION
this subverts Nature herself, for Nature
produces those things which, being con
tinually moved by a certain principle
contained in themselves, arrive at a
certain end.” In the eagerness of theo
logians to discover proof of a belief in
one God among the old philosophies,
the references made by Aristotle to a
“perfecting principle,” an “efficient
cause,” a “prime mover,” and so forth,
have been too readily construed as de
noting a Monotheistic creed, which, re
minding us of the “ one god ” of Xeno
phanes, is also akin to the Personal God
of Christianity.
“The Stagirite,” as
Mr. Benn remarks (Greek Philos., i.
352), “agrees with Catholic theism, and
he agrees with the First Article of the
English Church, though not with the
Pentateuch, in saying that God is with
out parts or passions ; but there his agree
ment ceases. Excluding such a thing as
divine interference with nature, his theo
logy of course excludes the" possTEflity
of revelation, inspiration, miracles, and
grace?’ He is a being who “does not~
interest himself in human affairs.”
But, differ as the commentators may
as to what Aristotle meant, his assumed
place in the orthodox line led, as will be
seen hereafter, to the acceptance of his
philosophy by Augustine, Bishop of
Hippo, in the fourth century, and by
other Fathers of the Church, so that the
mediaeval theories of the Bible, blended
with Aristotle, represent the sum of
knowledge held as sufficient until the
discoveries o_f Copernicus in the six
teenth century upset the Ptolemaic
theory, with its fixed earth, and system
of cycles and epicycles in which the
heavenly bodies moved.
He thereby
upset very much besides. Like Anaxi
mander and others, Aristotle believed in
spontaneous generation, although only in
the case of certain animals, as of eels
from the mud of ponds, and of insects
from putrid matter. However, in this,
both Augustine and Thomas Aquinas,
and many men of science down to the
latter part of the seventeenth century,
followed him.
For example, Van
Helmont, an experimental chemist of
that period, gave a recipe for making
fleas; and another scholar showed him
self on a level with the unlettered rustics
of to-day, who believe that eels are
produced from horse-hairs thrown into a
pond.
Of deeper interest, as marking Aris
totle’s prevision, is his anticipation of
what is known as Epigenesis, or the
theory of the development of the gerrft
individuals through the union of thp
fertilising"powers of the male and female
organs. This theory, which was proved,
by the? researches of Harvey,-the'dis
coverer of the circulation of the blood,
and is accepted by all biologists to-day,
was opposed by Malpighi, an Italian
physician, born in 1628, the year in
which Harvey published his great dis
covery, and by other prominent men
of science down to the last century.
Malpighi and his school contended that
the perfect animal is already “preformed”
in the germ; for example, the hen’s egg,
before fecundation, containing an ex
cessively minute, but complete, chick.
It therefore followed that in any germ
the germs of all subsequent offspring
must be contained, and in the application
of this “ box-within-box ” theory its de
fenders even computed the number of
human germs concentrated in the ovary
of mother Eve, estimating these at two
hundred thousand millions !
When the “ preformation ” theory was
revived by Bonnet and others in the
eighteenth century, Erasmus Darwin,
grandfather of Charles Darwin, passed
the following shrewd criticism on it:—
“Many ingenious philosophers have
found so great difficulty in conceiving
the manner of reproduction in animals
that they have supposed all the numerous
progeny to have existed in miniature in
the animal originally created.
This
idea, besides its being unsupported by
any analogy we are acquainted with,
ascribes a greater continuity to organised
matter than we can readily admit. These
embryons........ must possess a greater
�THALES TO LUCRETIUS
degree of minuteness than that which
was ascribed to the devils who tempted
St Anthony, of whom twenty thousand
were said to have been able to dance a
saraband on the point of a needle with
out the least incommoding each other.”
Although no theistic element could be
extracted by the theologians of the
Early Christian Church from the systems
of Empedocles and Democritus; thereby
securing them a share in the influence
exercised by the great Stagirite, they
were formative powers in Greek philo
sophy, and, moreover, have “ come by
their own ” in these latter days. Their
chief representative in what is known as
the Post-Aristotelian period is Epicurus,
who was born at Samos, 342 b.c. As
with Zeno, the founder of the Stoic
school, his teaching has been perverted,
so that his name has become loosely
identified with indulgence in gross and
sensual living. He saw in pleasure the
highest happiness, and therefore advo
cated the pursuit of pleasure to attain
happiness ; but he did not thereby mean
the pursuit of the unworthy. Rather
did he counsel the following after pure,
high, and noble aims, whereby alone a
man could have peace of mind. It is
not hard to see that in the minds of men
of low ideals the tendency towards
passivity which lurked in such teaching
would aid their sliding into the pursuit
of mere animal enjoyment ; hence the
gross and limited association of the term
Epicurean. Epicurus accepted the theory
of Leucippus, and applied it all round.
The fainéant gods, who dwell serenely
indifferent to human affairs, and about
whom men should therefore have no
dread; all things, whether dead or living;
even the ideas that enter the mind ; are
alike composed of atoms. He also ac
cepted the theory broached by Empe
docles as to the survival of fit and
Capable forms, after life had arrived at
these through the processes of sponta
neous generation and the production of
monstrosities.
Adopting the physical
Speculations of these forerunners, he
made them the vehicle of didactic and
ïj
ethical philosophies which inspired the
production of the wonderful poem of
Lucretius.
Between this great Roman and Epi
curus—a period of some two centuries
—there is no name of sufficient promi
nence to warrant attention. The decline
of Greece had culminated in her conquest
by the semi-barbarian Mummius, and in
her consequent addition to the provinces
of the Roman Empire. What life lin
gered in her philosophy within her own
borders expired with the loss of freedom,
and the work done by the Pioneers of
Evolution in Greece was to be resumed
elsewhere. In the few years of the pre*
Christian period that remained, the
teaching of Empedocles, and of Epicurus
as the mouthpiece of the atomic theory,
was revived by Lucretius in his De Re-rum.
Natura. Of that remarkable man but
little is recorded, and the record is un
trustworthy. He was probably born 99
b.c. and died—-by his own hand, Jerome
says, but of this there is no proof—in
his forty-fourth year.
It is difficult,
taking up his wonderful poem, to resist
temptation to make copious extracts from
it, since, even through the vehicle of
Mr. Munro’s exquisite translation, it is
probably little known to the general
reader in these evil days of snippety
literature. But the temptation must be
resisted save in moderate degree.
With the dignity which his high
mission inspires, Lucretius appeals to us
in the threefold character of teacher,
reformer, and poet. “ First, by reason
of the greatness of my argument, and
because I set the mind free from the
close-drawn bonds of superstition; and
next because, on so dark a theme, I
compose such lucid verse, touching every
point with the grace of poesy.” As a
teacher he expounds the doctrines of
Epicurus concerning life and nature; as
a reformer he attacks superstition; as
a poet he informs both the atomic philo
sophy and its moral application with
harmonious and beautiful verse swayed
by a fervour that is akin to religious
emotion.
c
�PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION
Discussing at the outset various theories
of origins, and dismissing these, notably
that which asserts that things came from
nothing—for, if so, “ any kind might be
born of anything, nothing would require
seed,” Lucretius proceeds to expound
the teaching of Leucippus and other
atomists as to the constitution of things
by particles of matter ruled in their move
ments by unvarying laws. This theory
he works all round, explaining the pro
cesses by which the atoms unite to carry
on the birth, growth, and decay of
things, the variety of which is due to
variety of form of the atoms and to
differences in modes of their combina
tion; the combinations being determined
by the affinities or properties of the
atoms themselves, “since it is absolutely
decreed, what each thing can and what
it cannot do, by the conditions of
nature.” Change is the law of the uni
verse ; what is, will perish, but only to
reappear in another form.
Death is
“ the only immortal and it is that and
what may follow it which are the chief
tormentors of men. “This terror of the
soul, therefore, and this darkness, must
be dispelled, not by the rays of the sun
or the bright shafts of day, but by the
outward aspect and harmonious plan of
nature.” Lucretius explains that’ the
soul, which he places in the centre
of the breast, is also formed of very
minute atoms of heat, wind, calm air,
and a finer essence, the proportions of
which determine the character of both
men and animals. It dies with the body,
in support of which statement Lucretius
advances seventeen arguments, so deter
mined is he to “ deliver those who
through fear of death are all their life
time subject to bondage.”
These themes fill the first three books.
In the fourth he grapples with the mental
problems of sensation and conception,
and explains the origin of belief in
immortality as due to ghosts and appari
tions which appear in dreams. “ When
sleep has prostrated the body, for no
other reason does the mind’s intelligence
wake, except because the very same
images provoke our minds which provoke
them when we are awake, and to such a
degree that we seem without a doubt to
perceive him whom life has left, and
death and earth gotten hold of. This
nature constrains to come to pass be
cause all the senses of the body are then
hampered and at rest throughout the
limbs, and cannot refute the unreal by
real things” (cf. bk. i. 134, 135; iv. 462468; v. 1169-1176.).
In the fifth book Lucretius deals with
origins—of the sun, the moon, the earth
(which he held to be flat, denying the
existence of the antipodes); of life and
its development; and of civilisation.
In all this he excludes design, explaining
everything as produced and maintained
by natural agents; “the masses, suddenly
brought together, became the rudiments
of earth, sea, and heaven, and the race
of living things.” He believed in the
successive appearance of plants and ani
mals, but in their arising separately and
directly out of the earth, “under the
influence of rain and the heat of the
sun,” thus repeating the old speculations
of the emergence of life from slime,
“ wherefore the earth with good title has
gotten and keeps the name of mother.”
He did not adopt Empedocles’ theory
of the “ four roots of all things,” and he
will have none of the monsters—the
hippogriffs, chimeras, and centaurs—
which form a part of the scheme of that
philosopher. These, he says, “ have
never existed,” thus showing himself far
in advance of ages when unicorns,
dragons, and suchlike fabled beasts were
seriously believed to exist. In one re
spect, more discerning than Aristotle, he
accepts the doctrine of the survival of
the fittest as taught by the sage of
Agrigentum. For he argues that since
upon “the increase of some nature set a
ban, so that they could not reach the
coveted flower of age, nor find food, nor
be united in marriage....... many races
of living things have died out, and been
unable to beget and continue their breed.”
Lucretius speaks of Empedocles in terms
scarcely less exaggerated than those
�THALES TO LUCRETIUS
which he applied to Epicurus. The
latter is “ a god who first found out that
plan of life which is now termed wisdom,
and who by tried skill rescued life from
such great billows and such thick dark
ness, and moored it in so perfect a calm
and in so brilliant a light....... he cleared
men’s breasts with truth-telling precepts,
and fixed a limit to lust and fear, and
explained what was the chief good
which we all strive to reach.” As to
Empedocles, “that great country (Sicily)
seems to have held within it nothing
more glorious than this man, nothing
more holy, marvellous, and dear. The
verses, too, of this god-like genius cry
with a loud voice, and make known his
great discoveries, so that he seems
scarcely born of a mortal stock.”
Continuing his speculations on the
development of living things, Lucretius
strikes out in bolder and original vein.
The past history of man, he says, lies
in no heroic or golden age, but in one
of struggle out of savagery. Only when
“ children, by their coaxing ways, easily
broke down the proud temper of their
fathers,” did there arise the family ties
out of which the wider social bond has
grown, and softening and civilising
agencies begin their fair offices. In
his battle for food and shelter, “man’s
first arms were hands, nails and teeth
and stones and boughs broken of from
the forests, and flame and fire, as soon
as they had become known. Afterwards
the force of iron and copper was dis
covered, and the use of copper was
known before that of iron, as its nature
is easier to work, and it is found in
greater quantity. With copper they
would labour the soil of the earth and
stir up the billows of war........ Then by
slow steps the sword of iron gained
ground, and the make of the copper
sickle became a byword, and with iron
they began to plough through the earth’s
soil, and the struggles of wavering man
were rendered equal.” As to language
“ nature impelled them to utter the
various sounds of the tongue, and use
struck out the names of things.” Thus j
19
does Lucretius point the road along
which physical and mental evolution
have since travelled, and make the whole
story subordinate to the high purpose of
his poem in deliverance of the beings,
whose career he thus traces, from super
stition. Man, “ seeing the system of
heaven and the different seasons of the
years, could not find out by what causes
this was done, and sought refuge in
handing over all things to the gods and
supposing all things to be guided by
their nod.” Then, in the sixth and last
book, the completion of which would
seem to have been arrested by his death,
Lucretius explains the “law of winds and
storms,” of earthquakes and volcanic
outbursts, which men “foolishly lay to
the charge of the gods,” who thereby
make known their anger.
So, loath to suffer mute,
We, peopling the void air,
Make Gods to whom to impute
The ills we ought to bear ;
With God and Fate to rail at, suffering easily.
And what a motley crowd of gods
they were on whose caprice or in
difference he pours his vials of anger
and contempt ! The tolerant pantheon
of Rome gave welcome to any foreign
deity with respectable credentials; to
Cybele, the Great Mother, imported in
the shape of a rough-hewn stone with
pomp and rejoicings from Phrygia 204
b.c. ; to Isis, welcomed from Egypt; to
Herakles, Demeter, Asklepios, and many
another god from Greece. But these
were dismissed from a man’s thought
when the prayer or sacrifice to them
had been offered at the due season.
They had less influence on the Roman’s
life than the crowd of native godlings
who were thinly-disguised fetishes, and
who controlled every action of the day.
For the minor gods survive the changes
in the pantheon of every race. Of the
Greek peasant of to-day Mr. Rennell
Rodd testifies, in his Custom and Lore of
Modern Greece, that much as he would
shudder at the accusation of any taint
of paganism, the ruling of the Fates is
more immediately real to him than
�20
PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION
divine omnipotence. Mr. Tozer con
firms this in his Highlands of Turkey.
He says : “ It is rather the minor deities
and those associated with man’s ordinary
life that have escaped the brunt of the
storm, and returned to live in a dim
twilight of popular belief.” In India,
Sir Alfred Lyall tells us that “ even the
supreme triad of Hindu allegory, which
represents the almighty powers of creation,
preservation, and destruction, have long
ceased to preside actively over any such
corresponding distribution of functions.”
Like limited monarchs, they reign, but do
not govern. They are superseded by
the ever-increasing crowd of godlings
whose influence is personal and special,
as shown by Mr. Crooke in his instruc
tive Introduction to the Popular Religion
and Folk-lore of Northern India.
The old Roman catalogue of spiritual
beings, abstractions as they were, who
guarded life in minute detail, is a long
one. From the indigitamenta, as such
lists are called, we learn that no less
than forty-three were concerned with
the actions of a child. When the
farmer asked Mother Earth for a good
harvest, the prayer would not avail
unless he also invoked “the spirit of
breaking up the land and the spirit of
ploughing it crosswise; the spirit of
furrowing and the spirit of ploughing in
the seed ; and the spirit of harrowing;
the spirit of weeding and the spirit of
reaping; the spirit of carrying corn to
the barn; and the spirit of bringing it
out again.” The country, moreover,
swarmed with Chaldaean astrologers and
casters of nativities ; with Etruscan
haruspices full of “childish lightning
lore,” who foretold events from the
entrails of sacrificed animals ; while in
competition with these there was the
State-supported college of augurs to
divine the will of the gods by the cries,
and direction of the flight, of birds.
'Well might the satirist of such a time
say that the “ place was so densely
populated with gods as to leave hardly
room for the men.”
It will be seen that the justification I
for including Lucretius among the
Pioneers of Evolution lies in his two
signal and momentous contributions to
the science of man ; namely, the
primitive savagery of the human race,
and the origin of the belief in a soul
and a future life. Concerning the first,
anthropological research, in its vast
accumulation of materials during the
last sixty years, has done little more than
fill in the outline which the insight of
Lucretius enabled him to sketch. As
to the second, he anticipates, well-nigh
in detail, the ghost-theory of the origin
of belief in spirits generally which
Herbert Spencer and Dr. Tylor, follow
ing the lines laid down by Hume and
Turgot (see Part IV., sec. 3), have formu
lated, and sustained by an enormous mass
of evidence. The credit thus due to
Lucretius for the original ideas in his
majestic poem—Greek in conception,
and Roman in execution—has been ob
scured in the general eclipse which that
poem suffered for centuries through its
anti-theological spirit. Grinding at the
same philosophical mill, Aristotle, be
cause of the theism assumed to be in
volved in his “perfecting principle,” was
cited as “ a pillar of the faith ” by the
Fathers and Schoolmen; while Lucre
tius, because of his denial of design,
was “anathema maranatha.” Only in
these days, when the far-reaching effects
of the Theory of Evolution, supported
by observation in every branch of en
quiry, are apparent, are the merits of
Lucretius as an original seer, more than
as an expounder of the teachings of
Empedocles and Epicurus, made clear.
Standing well-nigh on the threshold of
the Christian era, we may pause to ask
what is the sum of the speculation into
the causes and nature of things which,
begun in Ionia (with impulse more or
less slight from the East, in the sixth cen
tury before Christ) by Thales, ceased, for
many centuries, in the poem of Lucre
tius, thus covering an active period of
about five hundred years. The caution
not to see in these speculations more
�THALES Tü HTCRET/US
2f
than an approximate approach to modern phenomena as due to the antagonism of
repelling and attracting modes of motion ;
theories must be kept in mind.
1. There is a primary substance which when the latter overcome the former,
abides amidst the general flux of things. equilibrium will be reached, and the
All modern research tends to shozv that present state of things will come to an
the various combinations of matter are end.
6. Water is a necessary condition of
formed of some prima materia. But its
life.
ultimate nature remains unknown.
Therefore life had its beginnings tn
2. Out of nothing comes nothing.
Modern science knows nothing of a water; a theory wholly endorsed ¿p'
beginning, and, moreover, holds it to be modern biology’.
7. Life arose out of non-living matter.
unthinkable. In this it stands in direct
Although modern biology leaves the
opposition to the theological dogma that
God created the universe out of nothing ; origin of life as an insoluble problem, it
a dogma still accepted by the majority of supports the theory of fundamental con
Prostestants and binding on Roman tinuity between the inorganic and the
Catholics. For the doctrine of the Church organic.
8. Plants came before animals : the
of Rome thereon, as expressed in the
Canons of the Vatican Council, is as higher organisms are of separate sex, and
follows:—“ If any one confesses not that appeared subsequent to the lower.
Generally confirmed by modern biology,
the world and all things which are con
tained in it, both spiritual and mental, but with qualification as to the undefined
have been, in their whole substance, pro borderland between the lowest plants and
duced by God out of nothing; or shall the lowest animals. And, of course,
say that God created, not by His free will recognises a continuity in the order and
from all necessity, but by a necessity equal succession of life which was not
to the necessity whereby He loves Himself, by the Greeks. Aristotle and others be
or shall deny that the world was made fore him believed that some of the higher
for the glory of God: let him be forms sprang from slimy matter direct.
9. Adverse conditions cause the ex
anathema!
3. The primary substance is inde tinction of some organisms, thus leaving ]
room for those better fitted.
structible.
Herein lay the crude germ of the modem 1
The modern doctrine of the Conserva
tion of Energy teaches that both matter doctrine of the “ survival of the fittest!
10. Man was the last to appear, and
and motion can neither be created nor
his primitive state was one of savagery. 1
destroyed.
4. The universe is made up of indi His first tools and weapons were of
visible particles called atoms, whose stone; then, after the discovery of
manifold combinations, ruled by un metals, of copper; and, following that, of
alterable affinities, result in the variety iron. His body and soul are alike com
pounded of atoms, and the soul is ex- J
of things.
With modifications based on chemical as tinguished at death.
The science of Prehistoric Archeology 1
well as mechanical changes among the
atoms, this theory of leucippus and Demo confirms the theory of mads slow passage 1
critus is confirmed. (But recent experi from barbarism to civilisation; and the
ments and discoveries show that recon science of Comparative Psychology declares
struction of chemical theories as to the that the evidence of his immortality is 1
neither stronger nor weaker than the I
Properties of the atom may happen.)
5. Change is the law of things, and is evidence of the immortality of the lower 1
brought about by the play of opposing animals.
forces.
Modern science explains the changes in
Such, in very broad outline, is the
�22
PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION
legacy of suggestive theories bequeathed
by the Ionian school and its successors,
theories which fell into the rear when
Athens became a centre of intellectual
life in which discussion passed from the
physical to those ethical problems which
lie outside the range of this survey.
Although Aristotle, by his prolonged
and careful observations, forms a con
spicuous exception, the fact abides that
insight, rather than experiment, ruled
Greek speculation, the fantastic guesses
of parts of which themselves evidence
the survival of the crude and false ideas
about earth and sky long prevailing.
The more wonderful is it, therefore,
that so much therein points the way
along which inquiry travelled after its
subsequent long arrest; and the more
apparent is it that nothing in the history
of science or art, and but little in theo
logical speculations, at least among us
Westerns, can be understood without
reference to Greece.
TABLE
Name.
Thales
Anaximander
Anaximenes
Pythagoras
Xenophanes
Heraclitus
Empedocles
Anaxagoras
Leucippus
Democritus
Aristotle
Epicurus
Lucretius
Place.
Miletus
(Ionia)
5>
5?
Samos (near the
Ionian coast)
Approximate
Date
15. C.
6oo
570
500
500
Speciality.
Cosmological Theory as tol
.
the Primary Substance
iWater
the Boundless
Air
Numbers:
“ a Cosmos built up
of geometrical fig
ures,” or (Grote,
Plato, x. 12) “generated out of num
ber.”
Colophon
(Ionia)
Ephesus
(Ionia)
Agrigentum
(Sicily)
500
450
Fire, Air, Earth,
and Water :
ruled by Love
and Strife
. Clazomenae
(Ionia)
450
Nous
Abdera
(Thrace)
Stagira
(Macedonia)
Samos
Rome
i'ounder of the
Eleatic School
Fire
500
460
350
¡-Formulators of the Atomic Theory
!Naturalist
300
Expounder of the Atomic Theory and ethical
philosopher
50
Interpreter of Epicurus and Empedocles : the
first Anthropologist
�PART II
THE ARREST OF INQUIRY
A.D. 50-A.D. 400
i. From the Early Christian Period to the Time of Augustine
“A revealed dogma is always opposed to the free research that may contradict it. The result of
science is not to banish the divine altogether, but ever to place it at a greater distance from the world
of particular facts in which men once believed they saw it.”—Renan, Essay on Islamism and
Science.
A detailed account of the rise and
progress of the Christian religion is not
within the scope of this book. But as
that religion, more especially in the
elaborated theological form which it
, ultimately assumed, became the chief
barrier to the development of Greek
ideas; except, as has been remarked,
in the degree that these were represented
by Aristotle, and brought into harmony
with it; a short survey of its origin and
early stages is necessary to the continuity
of our story.
The history of that great movement is
told according to the bias of the writers.
They explain its rapid diffusion and its
ultimate triumph over Paganism as due
either to its divine origin and guidance,
or to the favourable conditions of the
time of its early propagation, and to that
wise adaptation to circumstances which
linked its fortunes with those of the
progressive peoples of Western Europe.
In the judgment of every unofficial
narrator, this latter explanation best
accords with the facts of history, and
with the natural causes which largely
determine success or failure. The most
partisan advocates of its supernatural,'
and, therefore, special, character, have
to show reason why the fortunes of the
Christian religion have varied like those
of other great religions, both older and
younger than it; why, like Buddhism, it i
has been ousted from the country in
which it rose; and why, in competition
with Brahmanism, as Sir Alfred Lyall
testifies in his Asiatic Studies (p. no),
and with Mohammedanism in Africa, it
has less success than these in the
mission fields where it comes into
rivalry with them. Riven into wrangling
sects from an early period of its history,
it has, while exercising a beneficent
influence in turbulent and lawless ages3
brought not “peace on earth, but a'
sword.” It has been the cause of un
dying hate, of bloody wars, and of
persecutions between parties and nations,
whose animosity seems the deeper when
stirred by matters which are incapable!
of proof. As Montaigne says, “ Nothing!
is so firmly believed as that which is
least known.” To bring the Christian
religion, or, rather, its manifold forms,
from the purest spiritualistic to such
degraded type as exists, for example, in j
Abyssinia, within the operation of the
law which governs development, and
which, therefore, includes partial and
local corruption, is to make its history
as clear as it is profoundly instructive;
while to demand for it an origin and
character different in kind from other
religions is to import confusion into the
story of mankind, and to raise a swarm
of artificial difficulties. “If,” as John
Morley observes in his criticism of
�24
PIONEEPS OF E VOL UTION
Turgot’s dissertation upon “The Ad
vantages that the Establishment of
Christianity has conferred upon the
Human Race” (Miscell., ii. 90), “there
had been in the Christian idea the
mysterious self-sowing quality so con
stantly claimed for it, how came it that
in the Eastern part of the Empire it was
as powerless for spiritual or moral
regeneration as it was for political health
and vitality; while in the Western part
it became the organ of the most im
portant of all the past transformations of
the civilised world? Is not the differ
ence to be explained by the difference
in the surrounding medium, and what
is the effect of such an explanation
upon the supernatural claims of the
Christian idea?” Its inclusion as one
of other modes, varying only in degree,
by which man has progressed from the
“ape and tiger” stage to the highest
ideals of the race, makes clear what
concerns us here—namely, its attitude
towards secular knowledge, and the
consequent serious arrest of that know
ledge. That a religion which its followers
claim to be of supernatural origin, and
secured from error by the perpetual
guidance of a Holy Spirit, should have
opposed inquiry into matters the faculty
for investigating which lay within human
power and province; that it should
actually have put to death those who
dared thus to inquire, and to make
known what they had discovered; is a
problem which its advocates may settle
among themselves. It is no problem
to those who take the opposite view.
In outlining the history of Christianity
stress will be here laid only upon those
elements which caused it to be an
arresting force in man’s intellectual
development, and, therefore, in his
spiritual emancipation from terrors be
gotten of ignorance. It does not fall
within our survey to speak of that
primary element in it which was before
all dogma, and which may survive when
dogma has become only a matter of
antiquarian interest.
That element,
born of emotion which, as a crowd of '
kindred examples show, incarnates and
then deifies the object of its worship,
was the belief in the manifestation of the
divine through the human Jesus who
had borne men’s griefs, carried their
sorrows, and offered rest to the weary
and heavy-laden. For no religion—and
here Evolution comes in as witness—
can take root which does not adapt
itself to, and answer some need of, the
heart of man. Hence the importance
of study of the history of all religions.
Evolution knows only one heresy—the denial of continuity. Recognising
the present as the outcome of the
past, it searches after origins. It knows
that that which revolts us in man’s
spiritual history has, alike with that
which attracts, its place, its necessary
place, in the development of ideas, and
is, therefore, capable of explanation
from its roots upwards. For this age
is. sympathetic, not flippant. It looks
with no favour on criticism that is only,
destructive, or on ridicule or ribaldry as
modes of attack on current beliefs.
Hence we have the modern science of
comparative theology, with its Hibbert
Lectures, and Gifford Lectures, which
are critical and constructive ; as opposed
to Bampton Lectures, Boyle and Hulse
Lectures, which are apologetic, the
speaker holding an official brief. Of
the Boyle Lectures, Collins the “ Deist ”
caustically said that nobody doubted the
existence of the Deity till they set to
work to prove it. Religions are no
longer treated as true or false, as in
ventions of priests or of divine origin,
but as the product of man’s intellectual
speculations, however crude or coarse;
and of his spiritual needs, no matter in
what repulsive form they are satisfied.
For “ proofs ” and “ evidences ” we have
substituted explanations. Nevertheless,
so strong, often so bitter, are the feelings
aroused over the most temperate dis
cussion of the origin of Christianity
that it remains necessary to repeat that
to explain is not to attack, and that to
narrate is not to apportion blame. For
no religion can do aught than reflect the
�THE ARREST OF INQUIRY
25
temper of the age in which it flourishes. from home was the preaching of an
Let us now summarise certain occur enthusiastic ascetic named John the
rences which, although familiar enough, Baptist. At his hands Jesus sub
must be repeated for the clear under mitted to the baptismal rite, and then
entered on his career, wandering from
standing of their effects.
Some sixty years after the death of place to place. The fragments of his
Lucretius there happened, in the sub discourses, which have survived in the
sequent belief of millions of mankind, short biographies known as the Gospels,
an event for which all that had gone show him to have been gifted with a
before in the history of this planet is simple, winning style, and his sermons»
said to have been a preparation. In brightened by happy illustration or
the fulness of time the Omnipotent striking parable, went home to the hearts
maker and ruler of a universe to which of his hearers. Women, often of the
no boundaries can be set by human outcast class, were drawn to him by the
thought, sent to this earth-speck no less sympathy which attracted even more
a person than His Eternal Son. He than his teaching. Among a people
was said to have been born, not by the to whom the unvarying order of nature
natural processes of generation, but to was an idea wholly foreign—for Greek
have been incarnated in the womb of a speculations had not penetrated into
virgin, retaining his divine nature while Palestine—stories of miracle-working
Subjecting it to human limitations. found easy credit, falling-in, as they did,
This he had done that he might, as sin with popular belief in the constant in
less man, become an expiatory sacrifice tervention of deity. Thus to the reports
to offended deity, and to the require of what Jesus taught were added those
ments of divine justice, for the sins of the wonders which he had wrought,
which the human race had committed from feeding thousands of folk with a
since the transgression of Adam and few loaves of bread to raising the dead
Eve, or which men yet to be born might to life. His itinerant mission secured
him a few devoted followers from various
commit.
The “ miraculous ” birth of Jesus took towns and villages ; while the effect of
place at Nazareth in Galilee, in the success upon himself was to heighten his
reign of Caesar Augustus, about 750 own conception of the importance of his
work. The skill of the Romans in fusing
a.u.c. as the Romans reckoned time.
Tradition afterwards fixed his birthday together subject-races had failed them in
on the 25th December, which, curiously the case of the Jews, whose belief in
enough, although, perhaps, explaining their special place in the world as the
the choice, was the day dedicated to the “ chosen people ” never forsook them.
sun-god Mithra, an Oriental deity to Nor had their misfortunes weakened
whom altars had been raised and their belief that the Messiah predicted
sacrifices performed, with rites of bap by their prophets would appear to deliver
them, and plant their feet on the neck
tisms of blood, in hospitable Rome.
Jesus is said to have lived in the of the hated conqueror. This hope, as
obscurity of his native mountain village became a pious Jew, Jesus shared, but
till his thirtieth year.
Except one it set him brooding on some nobler,
doubtful story of his going to Jerusalem because more spiritual, conception of it
with his parents when he was twelve than his fellow-countrymen nurtured.
years old, nothing is recorded in the Finally, it led him to the belief, fostered
various biographies of him between his by the ambition of his nearer disciples,
birth and his appearance as a public which was, however, material in its hopes,
teacher. Probably he followed his that he was the spiritual Messiah. In
father’s trade as a carpenter. The that faith he repaired to Jerusalem at the
event that seems to have called him time of the Passover feast when the city
�2Ô
PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION
was crowded with devotees, that he might,
before the chief priests and elders, make
his appeal to the nation. According to
the story, his daring in clearing the holy
temple of moneychangers and traders led
to his appearance before the Sanhedrin,
the highest judicial council; his plain
ness of speech raised the fury of the
sects; and when, dreaming of a purer
faith, he spoke ominous words about the
destruction of the temple, the charge of
blasphemy was laid against him. His
guilt was made clear to his judges when,
answering a question of the high priest,
he declared himself to be the Messiah.
This, involving claim to kingship over
the Jews, and therefore rebellion against
the Empire, was made the plea of haling
him before the Roman governor, Pontius
Pilate, for trial. Pilate, looking upon
the whole affair as a local ¿meute, was
disinclined to severity, but nothing short
of the death of Jesus as a blasphemer
(although his chief offence appears to
have been his disclaimer of earthly
sovereignty) would satisfy the angry mob.
Amidst their taunts and jeers he was
taken to a place named Calvary, and
there put to death by the torturing
process of crucifixion, or, the particular
mode not being clear, of transfixion on
a stake.
The tragic event, on which, as is still
widely held, hang the destinies of man
kind to the end of time, attracted no
attention outside Judsea. In the Roman
eye, cold, contemptuous, and practical,
it was but the execution of a troublesome
fanatic who had embroiled himself with
his fellow-countrymen, and added the
crime of sedition to the folly of blas
phemy. Pilate himself passed on,
without more ado, to the next duty.
Tradition, anxious to prove that retribu
tion followed his criminal act, as it was
judged in after-time to be, tells how he
flung himself in remorse from the moun
tain known as Pilatus, which overlooks
the lake of Lucerne. With truer insight,
a striking modern story, EEtui de Nacre,
by Anatole France, makes Pilate, on his
retirement to Sicily in old age, thus refer
to the incident in conversation with a
Roman friend who had loved a Jewish
maiden :—
“ A few months after I had lost sight of her I
heard by accident that she had joined a small
party of men and women who were following a
young Galilean miracle-worker. His name was
Jesus, he came from Nazareth, and he was
crucified for I don’t know what crime. Pontius,
do you remember this man?” Pontius Pilate
knit his brow, and put his hand to his forehead
like one who is searching his memory; then, after
a few moments of silence : “Jesus,” murmured
he, “Jesus of Nazareth. No, I don’t remember
him.”
On the third day after his death Jesus
is said to have risen from the grave, and
appeared to a faithful few of his disciples.
On the fortieth day after his resurrection
he is said to have ascended to heaven.
Both these statements rest on the
authority of the biographies which were
compiled some years after his death.
Jesus wrote nothing himself; therefore
the “brethren,” as his intimate followers
called one another, had no other sacred
books than those of the Old Testament.
They believed that Jesus was the Messiah
predicted in Daniel and some of the
apocryphal writings, and they cherished
certain “ logia ” or sayings of his which
formed the basis of the first three
Gospels. The earliest of these, that
bearing the name of Mark, probably
took the shape in which we have it (some
spurious verses at the end excepted)
about 70 a.d. The fourth Gospel, which
tradition attributes to John, is generally
believed to be half a century later than
Mark. It seems likely that the impor
tance of collecting the words of Jesus
into any permanent form did not occur
to those who had heard them, because *
the belief in his speedy return was allpowerful among them, and their life
and attitude towards everything shaped
accordingly.
Without sacred books, priesthood, or
organisation, these earliest disciples,
whom the fate of the leader had driven
into hiding for a time, gathered them
selves into groups for communion and
worship.
“ In the church of Jeru
salem,” says Selden in his Table Talk
�The arrest of inquiry
(xiv.), “the Christians were but another
sect of Jews that did believe the Messias
was come.” From that sacred city there
went forth preachers of this simple doc
trine through the lands where Greek
speaking Jews, known as those of the
Dispersion, had been long settled.
These formed a very important element
in the Roman Empire, being scattered
from Asia Minor to Egypt, and thence
in all the lands washed by the Mediter
ranean. As their racial isolation and
national hopes made them the least
contented among the subject-peoples, a
series of tolerant measures securing them
certain privileges, subject to loyal be
haviour, had been prudently granted by
their Roman masters. The new teaching
spread from Antioch to Alexandria and
Rome. But early in the onward career
of the movement a division broke out
among the immediate disciples of Jesus
which ended in lasting rupture. A dis
tinguished convert had been won to
the faith in the person of the Apostle
Paul. He is the real founder of Chris
tianity as a more or less systematised
creed, and all the developments of dogma
which followed are integral parts of the
structure raised by him. He converted
it from a local religion into a widespread
faith. This came about, at the start,
through his defeat of the narrower
section headed by Peter, who would
have compelled all non-Jewish con
verts to submit to the rite of circum
cision.
The unity of the Empire gave Chris
tianity its chance. Through the con
nection of Eurasia from the Euphrates to
the Atlantic by magnificent roads, com
munication between peoples followed
the lines of least resistance. Happily
for the future of Christianity, the early
missionaries travelled westward, in the
wake of the dispersed Jews, along the
Mediterranean seaboard, and thus its
fortunes became identified with the civi
lising portion of mankind. Had they
travelled eastward, it might have been
blended with Buddhism, or, as its
Gnostic phases show, become merged
in Oriental mysticism. The story of
progress ran smoothly till a.d. 64, when
we first hear of the “Christians”—-for
by such name they had become known
—in “ profane ” history, as it was once
oddly called. Tacitus, writing many
years after the event, tells how on the
night of the 18th July, in the sixty-fourth
year of our era, a fierce fire broke out
in Rome, causing the drestruction of
magnificent buildings raised by Augustus,
and of priceless works of Greek art.
Suspicion fell on Nero, and he, as has
been suggested, was instigated by his wife
Poppaea Sabina, an unscrupulous woman,
and, according to some authorities, a
convert to Judaism, “to put an end to
the common talk, by imputing the fire to
others, visiting, with a- refinement of
punishment, those detestable criminals
who went by the name of Christians.
The author of that denomination was
Christus, who had been executed in the
time of Tiberius, by the procurator,
Pontius Pilate.”
Tacitus goes on to
describe Christianity as “a pestilent
superstition,” and its adherents as guilty
of “hatred to the human race.” The
indictment, on the face of it, seems
strange, but it has an explanation,
although the Christians were brutally
murdered on the charge of arson, and
not of superstition. So far as religious
persecution went, they suffered this first
at the hands of Jews, the Empire inter
vening to protect them. Broadly speak
ing, the Roman note was toleration.
Throughout the Empire religion was a
national affair, because it began and
ended with the preservation of the State.
Thereupon it was the binding duty—
religio—of every citizen to pay due
honour to the protecting gods on whose
favour the safety of the State depended.
That done, a man might believe what
he chose. Polytheism is, from its nature,
easy-going and tolerant; so long as
there was no open opposition to the
authorised public worship, the wor
shipper could explain it any way he
chose. In Greece a man “might believe
or disbelieve that the Mysteries taught
�28
PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION
the doctrine of immortality; the essen
tial thing was that he should duly
sacrifice his pig.” In Rome, that vast
Cosmopolis, “the ordinary pagan did
not care two straws whether his neigh
bour worshipped twenty gods or twentyone.” Why should he care ?
Now, against all this the Christians
set their faces sternly, and the result was
to make them regarded as anti-patriotic
and anti-social. Their success among
the lower classes had been rapid. Chris
tianity levelled all distinctions:
it
welcomed the master and his slave, the
outcast and the pure : it treated woman
as the spiritual equal of man: it held
out to each the hope of a future life.
Thus far all was to the good, although
the old Mithraic religion had done wellnigh as much. But Christianity held
aloof from the common social life,
putting itself out of touch with the mani
fold activity of Rome. It sought to
apply certain maxims of Jesus literally ;
it discouraged marriage, it brought dis
union into family life; it counselled
avoidance of service in the army or accep
tance of any public office. This general
attitude was wholly due to the belief
that with the return of Jesus the end of
the world was at hand. For Jesus had
foretold his second coming, and the
earliest epistles of the apostles bade the
faithful prepare for it. Here there was
no continuing city; citizenship was in
heaven, for the kingdom of Christ was
not of this world. Therefore to give
thought to the earthly and fleeting was
folly and impiety, for who would care to
heap up wealth, to strive for place or to
pursue pleasure, or to search after what
men call “wisdom,” when these im
perilled the soul, and blocked the way to
heaven?
The prejudice created by this belief,
expressed in such direct action as refusal
to worship the guardian gods and the
“genius ” of the Emperor, was deepened
by ugly, although baseless, rumours as to
the cruel and immoral things done by
the Christians at their secret meetings.
And so it came to pass that Tacitus spoke J
of Christianity in the terms quoted; that
Epictetus and AJarcus Aurelius (who
refers to it only once in his Meditations)
dismissed it with a scornful phrase ; that
the common people called it atheistic;
that, finally, it became a proscribed and
persecuted religion.
Further than this there is no need to
pursue its career until, with wholly changed
fortunes, we meet it as a tolerated
religion under a so called Christian
Emperor. The object in tracing it thus
far is to indicate how enthusiasts, thus
filled with an anti-worldly spirit, would
become and remain an arresting force
against the advance of inquiry and,
therefore, of knowledge; and how, as
their religion gathered power, and itself
became worldly in policy, it would the
more strongly assert supremacy over
the reason.
For intellectual activity
would lead to inquiry into the claims and
authority of the Church, and inquiry,
therefore, was the thing to be proscribed.
Then, too, the committal of the floating
biographies of Jesus to written form,
and their grouping, with the letters of the
apostles, into one more or less complete
collection, to be afterwards called the
New Testament (a collection held to
embrace, as the theory of inspiration be
came formulated, all that it is needful
for man to know), would create a further
barrier against intellectual activity. Then,
as Christianity came into nearer touch
with the enfeebled remnants of Greek
philosophy, and with other foreign in
fluences shaping its dogmas, discussions
about the person of Christ became active.
The simple fluent creed of the early
Christians took rigid form in the sub
tleties of the Nicene Creed, and as “Very
God of Very God” the final appeal was,
logically, to the words of Jesus. Hence
another barrier against inquiry.
Conflict has never arisen on the ethical
sayings of Jesus, which, making allowance
for the impracticableness of a few, place
him high among the sages of antiquity.
Comparing their teaching with his, it is
easy to group together maxims which do
not yield to the more famous examples
�THE ARREST OF INQUIRY
in the Sermon on the Mount as guides
to conduct, or as inspiration to high
ideals. The “golden rule” is anticipated
by Plato’s “Thou shalt not take that
which is mine, and may I do to others
as I would that they should do to me ”
(Jowett, Trans, v. 483). And it is
paralleled by Isocrates, a contemporary
of Plato, in these words, which he puts
into the mouth of King Nicocles, when
addressing governors: “You should
be to others what you think I should be
to you.” But if there was nothing new
in what Jesus taught, there was freshness
in the method. Conflict is waged only
over statements the nature and limits of
which might be expected from the place
and age when they were delivered. They
who hold that Jesus was God the Son
Eternal, and therefore incapable of error,
may reconcile, as best they can with this,
his belief in the mischievous delusions
■of his time. If they say that so much of
this as may be reported in the records of
his life are spurious, they throw the
whole contents of the gospels into the
melting-pot of criticism.
Taking the narratives as we have them,
documents stamped with the hall-mark
of the centuries, “declaring,” as a body
of clergymen proclaimed recently, “incontrovertibly the actual historical truth
in all records, both of past events, and
of the delivery of predictions to be
thereafter fulfilled,” we learn that Jesus
accepted the accuracy of the sacred
writings of his people ; that he spoke of
Moses as the author of the Pentateuch .;
that he referred to its legends as dealing
with historical persons, and as reporting
actual events. All these beliefs are
refuted by the critical scholarship of to
day. We need not go to Germany for
the verdict; it is endorsed by eminent
Hebraists, officials of the Church of
England. Canon Driver, Professor of
Hebrew at Oxford, says that, “ like other
people, the Jews formed theories to
account for the beginnings of the earth
and man”; that “they either did this for
themselves, or borrowed from their
neighbours,” and that “of the theories j
29
current in Assyria and Phoenicia frag
ments have been preserved which exhibit
parts of resemblance to the Bible narra
tives sufficient to warrant the inference
that both are derived from the same
cycle of traditions.” If, therefore, the
cosmogonic and other legends are in
spired, so must also the common original
of these and their corresponding stories
be inspired. The matter might be
pursued through .the patriarchal age to
the eve of the Exodus, showing that
here also the mythical element is domi
nant, the existence of Abraham him
self dissolving in the solution of the
“higher criticism.” As to the Pentateuch,
the larger number of scholars place its
composition, in the form in which we
have it—older documents being blended
therein—about the sixth and fifth cen
turies B.C.
Jesus spoke of the earth as if it were
flat, and the most important among the
heavenly bodies. Knowledge of the
active speculations that went on centuries
before his time on the Ionian seaboard;
prevision of what secrets men would
wrest from the stars centuries hence-—of
neither did he dream. That Homer and
Virgil had sung; that Plato had dis
coursed ; that Buddha had founded a
religion with which his, when Western
activity met Eastern passivity, would
vainly compete ; these, and aught else
that had moved the great world without,
were unknown to the Syrian teacher.
Jesus believed in an arch-fiend, who
was permitted by Omnipotence, the
Omnipotence against which he had re
belled, to set loose countless numbers of
evil spirits to work havoc on men and
animals. Jesus also believed in a hell of
eternal torment for the wicked, and in
a heaven of unending happiness for the
good. There is no surer index of the
intellectual stage of any people than the
degree in which belief in the supernatural,
and especially in the activity of super
natural agents, rules their lives. . The
lower we descend, the more detailed and
familiar is the assumption of knowledge
of the behaviour of these agents, and of
�PIONEERS OP EVOLUTION
the nature of the places they come from
or haunt. Of this, mediaeval speculations
on demonology, and modern books of
anthropology, supply any number of
examples. Here we are concerned only
with the momentous fact that belief in
demoniacal activity pervades the New
Testament from beginning to end, and,
therefore, gave the warrant for the un
speakable cruelties with which that belief
has stained the annals of Christendom.
John Wesley was consistent when he
wrote that “ Giving up the belief in witch
craft was in effect giving up the Bible,”
and it may be added that giving up
belief in the devil is, practically, giving
up belief in the atonement—the central
doctrine of the Christian faith. To this
the early Christians would have sub
scribed : so, also, would the great
Augustine, who said that “ nothing is to
be accepted save on the authority of
Scripture, since greater is that authority
than all the powers of the human mind”;
so would all who have followed him in
ancient confessions of the faith. It is
only the amorphous form of that faith
which, lingering on, anaemic and bone
less, denies by evasion.
But they who abandon belief in male
ficent demons and witches; as also, for
this follows, in beneficent agents, as
angels; land themselves in serious
dilemma. For to this are such com
mitted. If Jesus, who came “that he
might destroy the works of the devil,”
and who is reported, among other proofs
of his divine ministry, to have cast out
demons from “possessed” human beings,
and, in one case, to have permitted a crowd
of the infernal agents to enter into a herd
of swine; if he verily believed that he
actually did these things; and if it be
true that the belief is a superstition
limited to the ignorant or barbaric mind;
what value can be attached to any state
ment that Jesus is reported to have made
about a spiritual world ?
Here then (i) in the attitude of the
early Christians towards all mundane
affairs as of no moment compared with
those affecting their soul’s salvation; (2) j
in the assumed authority of Scripture as
a full. revelation of both earthly and
heavenly things, and (3) in the assumed
infallibility of the words of Jesus reported
therein; we have three factors Which
suffice to explain why the great move
ment towards discovery of the orderly
relations of phenomena was arrested for
centuries, and theories of capricious
government of the universe sheltered
and upheld.
While, as has been said, the unity of
the Empire secured Christianity its for
tunate start; the multiform elements of
which the Empire was made upphilosophic and pagan—being gradually
absorbed by Christianity, secured it
acceptance among the different subject
peoples. The break-up of the Empire
secured its supremacy.
The absorption of foreign ideas and
practices by Christianity, largely through
the influence of Hellenic Jews, was an
added cause of arrest of inquiry. The
adoption of pagan rites and customs,
resting, as these did, on the bed-rock of
barbarism, dragged it to a lower level.
The intrusion of philosophic subtleties
led to terms being mistaken for explana
tions : as Gibbon says, “ the pride of
the professors and of their disciples was
satisfied with the science of words.”
The inchoate and mobile character of
Christianity during the first three cen
turies gave both influences—pagan and
philosophic—their opportunity. For long
years the converts scattered throughout
the Empire were linked together, in more
or less regular federation, by the acknow
ledgment of Christ as Lord, and by the
expectation of his second coming.
There was no official priesthood, only
overseers—episkopoi ” for social pur
poses, who made no claims to apostolic
succession; ho formulated set of doc
trines ; no Apostles’ Creed ; no dogmas
of baptismal regeneration or of the real
presence; no worship or apotheosis of
Mary as the Mother of God; no worship
of saints or relics.
On the philosophic side, it was the
Greek influence in the person of the
�W A RREST OF INQ UIRY
more educated converts that shaped
the dogmas of the Church and sought to
blend them with the occult and mys
terious elements in Oriental systems, of
which modern “ Theosophy ” is the
tenuous parody. That old Greek habit
of asking questions, of seeking to reach
the reason of things, which, as has been
seen, gave the great impulse to scientific
inquiry, was as active as ever. Appeals
to the Old Testament touched not the
Greek as they did the Jewish Christian,
and the Canon of the New Testament
was as yet unsettled. Strange as it may
seem in view of the assumed divine
origin of the Gospels and Epistles,
human judgment took upon itself to
decide which of them were, and which
were not, an integral part of supernatural
revelation. The ultimate verdict, so far
as the Western Church was concerned,
was delivered by the Council of Carthage
in the early part of the fifth century.
There arose a school of Apologists,
founders of theology, who, to quote
Gibbon, “equipped the Christian religion
for the conquest of the Roman world by
changing it into a philosophy, attested
by Revelation. They mingled together
the metaphysics of Platonism, the doc
trine of the Logos, which came from the
Stoics, morality partly Platonic, partly
.Stoic, methods of argument and inter
pretation learnt from Philo, with the
pregnant maxims of Jesus and the reli
gious language of the Christian congre
gations.” Thus the road was opened
for additions to dogmatic theology, doc
trines of the Trinity, of the Virgin Birth,
and whatever else could be inferentially
extracted from the Scriptures, and
blended with foreign ideas. The grow
ing complexity of creed called for inter
pretation of it, and this obviously fell to
the overseers or bishops, chosen for their
special gifts of “ the grace of the truth.”
These met, as occasion required, to
discuss subjects affecting the faith and
discipline of the several groups. Among
such, precedence, as a matter of course,
would be accorded to the overseer of the
most important Christian society in the
31
Empire ; and hence the prominence and
authority, from an early period, of the
bishop of Rome. In the simple and
business-like act of his election as chair
man of the gatherings lay the germ of
the audacious and preposterous claims
of the Papacy.
On the pagan side, the course of de
velopment is not so easily traced. To
determine when and where this or that
custom or rite arose is now impossible ;
indeed, we may say, without exaggeration,
that it never arose at all, because the
conditions for its adoption were present
throughout in human tendencies. The
first Christian disciples were Jews ; and
the ritual which they followed was the
direct outcome of ideas common to all
barbaric religions, so that certain of the
pagan rites and ceremonies with which
they came in contact in all parts of the
Empire fitted-in with custom, tradition,
and desire. And this applies, with
stronger force, to the converts scattered
from Edessa, east of the Euphrates, to
the Empire’s westernmost limits in
Britain. Moreover, we know that a
policy of adaptation and conciliation
wisely governed the ruling minds of the
Church, in whom, stripped of all the
verbiage about them as semi-inspired
successors of the apostles, there was
deep - seated superstition.
Paganism
might, in its turn, be suppressed by
Imperial edict, but it had too much in
common with the later forms of Chris
tianity not to survive in fact, however
changed in name.
It may be taken as a truism that in
the ceremonies of the higher religions
there are no inventions, only survivals.
This fact set thinkers like Hobbes, and
dealers in antiquities of the type of
Burton, Bishop Newton, and, notablest
of all, Conyers Middleton, on the search
after parallels, which have received
astonishing confirmation in our day.
Burton sees the mimicry of the “ arch
deceiver in the strange sacraments, the
priests, and the sacrifices,” as the
Romanist missionaries to Tibet saw the
same diabolical parody of their rites in
�32
PIONEERS OF E VOL UTION
Buddhist temples. But Hobbes, with
the sagacity which might be expected of
him, recognises the continuity of ideas :
“mutato nomine tantum ; Venus and
Cupid (Hobbes might have added Isis
and Horus) appearing as ‘the Virgin
Mary and her Sonne,’ and the ’Atto0€wo-is
of the Heathen surviving in the Canoni
sation of Saints. The carrying of the
Popes ‘by Switzers under a Canopie’
is a ‘ Relique of the Divine Honours
given to Caesar ’; the carriage of Images
in Procession ‘a Relique of the Greeks
and Romans.’....... ‘The Heathen had
also their Aqua Lustralis, that is to say,
Holy Water. The Church of Rome
imitates them also in their Holy Dayes.
They had their Bacchanalia, and we
have our Wakes answering to them;
They their Saturnalia, and we our Car
nevalis and Shrove-tuesdays liberty of
Servants; They their Procession of
Priapus, we our fetching-in, erection,
and dancing about May-Poles; and
Dancing is one kind of worship ; They
had their Procession called Ambarvalia,
and we our Procession about the Fields
in the Rogation week.'”
Middleton examined the matter on the
spot, and in his celebrated Letter from
Rome gives numerous examples of “an
exact Conformity between Popery and
Paganism.” Since few read his book
nowadays, some of these may be cited,
because their presence goes far to explain
why the. conglomerate religion which
Christianity had become was proof
against ideas spurned alike by pagans
and ecclesiastics. Visiting the place for
classical study, and not “ to notice the
fopperies and ridiculous ceremonies of
the present Religion,” Middleton soon
found himself “still in old Heathen
Rome ” with its rituals of primitive
Paganism, as if handed dow7n by an
uninterrupted succession from the priests
of old to the priests of new Rome. The '
“ smoak of the incense ” in the churches
transports him to the temple of the
Paphian Venus described by Virgil
{gEneid, i. 420); the surpliced boy wait
ing on the priest with the thurible reminds
him of sculptures on ancient bas-reliefs
representing heathen sacrifice, with a
white-clad attendant on a priest holding
a little chest or box in his hand. The
use of holy water suggests numerous
parallels. At the entrance to Pagan
temples stood vases of holy liquid, a
mixture of salt and common water; and,
on bas-reliefs, the aspergillum or brush
for the ceremony of sprinkling is carved.
In the annual festival of the benediction
of horses, when the animals were sent
to the convent of St. Anthony to be
sprinkled (Middleton had his own horses
thus blest “for about eighteenpence of
our money ”), there is the survival of a
ceremony in the Circensian games. In
the lamps and wax candles before the
shrines of the Madonna and Saints he
is reminded of a passage in Herodotus
as to the use of lights in the Egyptian
temples, while we know that lamps to
the Madonna took the place of those
before the images of the Lares, whose
chapels stood at the corners of the
streets. The Synod of Elviri (305 a.d.)
forbade the lighting of wax candles
during the day in cemeteries lest the
spirits of the saints should be disquieted,
but the custom was too deeply-rooted
to be abolished. As for votive offerings,
Middleton truly says that “ no one
custom of antiquity is so frequently
mentioned by all their writers....... but
the most common of all offerings were
pictures representing the history of the
miraculous cure or deliverance vouch
safed upon the vow of the donor.” Of
which offerings, the blessed Virgin is so
sure always to carry off the greatest
share that it may be truly said of her
what Juvenal says of the Goddess Isis,
whose religion was at that time in the
greatest vogue in Rome, that the painters
got their livelihood out of her. Middleton
tells the story from Cicero which, not
without covert sympathy, Montaigne
quotes in his Essay on “ Prognostica
tions.” Diagoras, surnamed the Atheist,
being found one day in a temple, was
thus addressed by a friend : “ You, who
think the gods take no care of human
�TH£ ARREST OF INQUIRY
affaire, do not you see here by this
number of pictures how many people,
for the sake of their vows, have been
saved in storms at sea, and got safe into
harbour?” “Yes,” answered Diagoras,
I see how it is; for those are never
painted who happen to be drowned.”
There is nothing new under the sun.
Horace {Odes, bk. i., v.) tells of the
shipwrecked sailor who hung up his
clothes as a thankoffering in the temple
of the sea-god who had preserved him ;
Polydorus Vergil ius, who lived in the
early part of the sixteenth century—that
is, some 1,500 years after Horace—
describes the classic custom of ex voto
offerings at length, while Pennant the
antiquary, describing the well of Saint
Winifred in Flintshire in the last cen
tury, tells of the votive offerings, in the
shape of crutches and other objects,
which were hung about it. To this day
the store is receiving additions. The
sick crowd thither as of old they crowded
into the temples of ZEsculapius and
Serapis; mothers bring their sick children
Ms in Imperial Rome they took them to
the Temple of Romulus and Remus.
A draught of water from the basin near
the bath, or a plunge in the bath itself,
is followed by prayers at the altar of the
chapel which encloses the well. When
the saint’s feast-day is held, the afflicted
gather to kiss the reliquary that holds
her bones. Perhaps one of the most
pathetic sights in Catholic churches,
especially in out-of-the-way villages, is
the altars on which are hung votive
offerings, rude daubs depicting the
disease or danger from which the
worshipper has been delivered.
As to the images, tricked-out in curious
robes and gewgaws, Middleton “ could
not help recollecting the picture which
old Homer draws of Q. Hecuba of Troy,
prostrating herself before the miraculous
Image of Pallas,” while his wonder at
tiie Loretto image of the “ Queen of
Heaven ” with “ a face as black as a
Negus” reminds him of the reference in
Baruch to the idols black with the
“perpetual smoak of lamps and incense.”
33
In his Hibbert Lectures Professor Rhys
refers to churches dedicated to Notre
Dame in virtue of legends of discovery
of images of the Virgin on the spot.
These were usually of wood, which had
turned black in the soil. Such a black
“ Madonna ” was found near Grenoble,
in the commune of La Zouche. Then,
in the titles of the new deities, Middleton
correctly sees those of the old. The
Queen of Heaven reminds him of Astarte
or Mylitta; the Divine Mother of the
Magna Mater, the “great mother” of
Oriental cults. In other attributes of
Mary, lineal descendant of Isis, there
survive those of Venus, Lucina, Cybele,
or Maria. He gives amusing examples
of myths and misreadings through which
certain “ saints ” have a place in the
Roman Calendar. He apparently knew
nothing of the strange confusion by which
Buddha appears therein under the title
of Saint Josaphat; but he tells how, by
misinterpretation of a boundary stone
(Praefectu-S.), Viarum, an overseer of
highways, became S. Viar; how S.
Veronica secured canonisation through
a blunder over the words Vera Icon t
still more droll, how hagiology includes
both a mountain and a mantle !
The marks of hands or feet on rocks,
said to be made by the apparition of
some saint or angel, call to mind “ the
impression of Hercules’ feet on a stone
in Scythia”; the picture of the Virgin,
which came from heaven, suggests the
descent of Numa’s shield “from the
clouds
that of the weeping Madonna
the statue of Apollo, which Livy says
wept for three successive days and nights;
while the periodical miracle of the lique
faction of the blood of St. Januarius is
obviously paralleled in the incidents
named by Horace on his journey to
Brundusium, when the priests of the
temple at Gnatia sought to persuade him
that “the frankincense used to dissolve
and melt miraculously without the help
of fire” {Sat. v. 97-100).
Middleton, and those of his school,
thought that they were near primary
formations when they struck on these
D
�34
PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION
suggestive classic or pagan parallels to
Christian belief and custom. But in truth
they had probed a comparatively recent
layer; since, far beneath, lay the un
suspected prehistoric deposits of barbaric
ideas which are coincident with, and
composed of, man’s earliest speculations
about himself and his surroundings.
When, however, we borrow an illustration
from geology, it must be remembered
that our divisions, like those into which
the strata of the globe are separated, are
artificial. There is no real detachment.
The difference between former and
present methods of research is that now
adays we have gone further down for
discovery of the common materials of
which barbaric, pagan, and civilised ideas
are compounded. They arise in the
comparison which exists in the savage
mind between the living and the non
living, and in the attribution of like
qualities to things superficially resembling
one another; hence belief in their efficacy,
which takes active form in what may be
generally termed magic. For example,
the rite of baptism is explained when we
connect it with barbaric lustrations and
water-worship generally; as also that of
the Eucharist by reference to sacrificial
feasts in honour of the gods; feasts at
which they were held to be both the
eaters and the eaten. Middleton, him
self a clergyman, shows perplexity when
watching the elevation of the host at
mass. He lacked that knowledge of the
origin of sacramental rites which study
of barbaric customs has since supplied.
In Mr. Frazer’s Golden Bough, the
“ central idea ” of which is “ the concep
tion of the slain god,” he shows at what
an early stage in his speculations man
formulated the conception of deity in
carnated in himself, or in plant or
animal, and as afterwards slain, both the
incarnation and the death being for the
benefit of mankind. The god is his own
sacrifice, and in perhaps the most striking
form, as insisted upon by Mr. Frazer, he
is, as corn-spirit, killed in the person of
his representative; the passage in this
mode of incarnation to the custom of
eating bread sacramentally being obvious.
The fundamental idea of this sacramental
act, as the mass of examples collected
by Mr. Frazer further goes to show, is
that by eating a thing its physical and
mental qualities are acquired. So the
barbaric mind reasons, and extends the
notion to all beings. To quote Mr.
Frazer : “By eating the body of the god
he shares in the god’s attributes and
powers. And when the god is a corn
god, the corn is his proper body ; when
he is a vine-god, the juice of the grape
is his blood ■ and so by eating the bread
and drinking the wine the worshipper
partakes of the real body and blood of
his god. Thus the drinking of wine in
the rites of a wine-god like Dionysus is
not an act of revelry; it is a solemn
sacrament.” It is, perhaps, needless to
point out that the same explanation
applies to the rites attaching to Demeter,
or to add what further parallels are
suggested in the belief that Dionysus
was slain, rose again, and descended into
Hades to bring up his mother Semele
from the dead. This, however, by the
way. What has to be emphasised is,
that in the quotation just given we have
transubstantiation clearly anticipated as
the barbaric idea of eating the god. In
proof of the underlying continuity of
that idea two witnesses—Catholic and
Protestant—may be cited.
The Church of Rome, and in this the
Greek Church is at one therewith, thus
defines the term transubstantiation in the
Canon of the Council of Trent:—
If any one shall say that in the most holy
sacrament of the Eucharist there remains the
substance of bread and wine together with the
body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and
shall deny that wonderful and singular conver
sion of the whole substance of the bread into the
body, and of the whole substance of the wine
into the blood, the species of bread and wine
alone remaining—which conversion the Catholic
Church most fittingly calls Transubstantiation—
let him be anathema.
The Church of England, through the
medium of a letter to a well-known
newspaper, the British Weekly (29th
August, 1895), supplies the following
�THE ARREST OF INQUIRY
illustration of the position of its “High”
section, and this, it is interesting to note,
from the church of which Mr. Gladstone’s
son is rector, and in which the dis
tinguished statesman himself often read
the lessons :—
A few Sundays ago—8 o’clock celebration of
Holy Communion. Rector, officiating minister
(Hawarden Church).
When the point was reached for the communi
cants to partake, cards containing a hymn to be
sung after Communion were distributed among
the congregation. This hymn opened with the
following couplet:—•
“ Jesu, mighty Saviour,
Thou art in us now.”
And my attention was arrested by an asterisk
referring to a footnote. The word “in,” in the
second line, was printed in italics, and the note
intimated that those who had not communicated
should sing “■with" instead of “in"—i.e., those
who had taken the consecrated elements to sing
“ Thou art in us now,” and those who had not,
to sing “ Thou art with us now.”
Whether, therefore, the cult be bar
baric or civilised, we find theory and
practice identical. The god is eaten so
that the communicant thereby becomes
a “partaker of the divine nature.”
In the gestures denoting sacerdotal
benediction we have probably an old form
of averting the evil eye; in the breathing
on a bishop at a service of consecration
there was the survival of belief in trans
ference of spiritual qualities, the soul
being, as language evidences, well-nigh
universally identified with breath. The
modern spiritualist who describes appari
tions as having the “consistency of
cigar-smoke” is one with the Congo
negroes who leave the house of the dead
unswept for a time lest the dust should
injure the delicate substance of the
ghost. The inhaling of the last breath
of the dying Roman by his nearest kins
man has parallel in the’ breathing of
the risen Jesus on his disciples that they
might receive the Holy Ghost (Johnxx.
22). In the offering of prayers for the
dead; in the canonisation and intercession
of saints ; in the prayers and offerings at
the shrines of the Virgin and saints, and at
the graves of martyrs; there are the
35
manifold forms of that great cult of the
departed which is found throughout the
world. To this may be linked the belief
in angels, whether good or bad, or
guardian, because the element common
to the whole is animistic, the peopling of
the heavens above, as well as the earth
beneath, with an innumerable company
of spiritual beings influencing the des
tinies of men. Well might Jews and
Moslems reproach the Christians, asj
they did down to the eighth centuryp
with having filled the world with morei
gods than they had overthrown in the'
pagan temples ; while we have Erasmus,
in his Encomium Moriae, when reciting
the names and functions of saints,
adding that “ as many things as we wish
so many gods have we made.” Closely
related to this group of beliefs is the
adoration of relics, the vitality of which
has springs too deep in human nature to
be wholly abolished, whether we carry
about us a lock from the hair of some
dead loved one, or read of the fragments
of saints or martyrs which lie beneath
every Catholic altar, or of the skull-bones
of his ancestor which the savage carries
about with him as a charm. Then there?
is the long list of church festivals, the
reference of which to pagan prototypes
is but one step towards their ultimate
explanation of nature-worship ; there are I
the procession's which are the successors
of Corybantic frenzies, and, more re
motely, of savage dances and other!
forms of excitation; there is that now
somewhat casual belief in the Second
Advent which is a member of the wide
spread group wherein human hopes fix
eyes on the return of long-sleeping
heroes; of Arthur and Olger Dansk, of
Vainamoinen and Quetzalcoatl, of Charle
magne and Barbarossa, of the lost Marko
of Servia and the lost King Sebastian.
We speak of it as “casual,” because
among the two hundred and eighty-odd
sects scheduled in Whitaker1s Almanack
the curious in such inquiries will note
only three distinctive bodies of Adven
tists.
All changes in popular belief have been,
�36
PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION
and practically remain, superficial; the
old animism pervades the higher creeds.
In our own island, for example, the
Celtic and pre-Celtic paganism remained
unleavened by the old- Roman religion.
The legions took back to Rome the gods
which they brought with them. The
names of Mithra and Serapis occur on
numerous tablets, the worship of the one
—that “ Sol invictus ” whose birthday at
the winter solstice became (see p. 25)
the anniversary of the birth of Christ—
had ranged as far west as South Wales
and Northumberland; while the founda
tions of a temple to the other have been
unearthed at York. The chief Celtic
gods, in virtue of common attributes as
elemental nature-deities, were identified
with certain dii majores of the Roman
pantheon, and the dece matres equated
with the gracious or malevolent spirits of
the indigenous faith. But the old names
were not displaced. Neither did the
earlier Christian missionaries effect any
organic change in popular beliefs, while,
during the submergence of Christianity
under waves of barbaric invasion, there
were infused into the old religion kindred
elements from oversea which gave it yet
more vigorous life. The eagle penetra
tion of Gibbon detected this persistent
element at work when he describes the
sequel to the futile efforts of Theodosius
to extirpate paganism. The ancestor
worship which lay at the core of much
of it took shape among the Christianised
pagans in the worship of martyrs and in
the scramble after their relics. The
bodies of prophets and apostles were
discovered by the strangest coincidences,
and transported to the churches by the
Tiber and the Bosphorus ; and, although
the supply of these more important
remains were soon exhausted, there was
no limit to the production of relics of
their person or belongings, as of filings
from the chains of S. Peter, and from the
gridiron of S. Lawrence. TheYatacombs
yielded any number of the bodies of
martyrs, and Rome became a huge
manufactory to meet the demands for
wonder-working relics from every part of
Christendom. A sceptical feeling might
be aroused at the claims of a dozen
abbeys to possession of the veritable
crown of thorns wherewith the majesty
of the suffering Christ was mocked, but
it was silenced before the numerous
fragments of his cross, since ingenuity
has computed that this must have con
tained at least one hundred and eighty
million cubic millimetres, whereas the
total cubic volume of all the known
relics is but five millions. “ It must,”
remarks Gibbon (Decline and Fall, end
of chap, xxviii.), “ingeniously be con
fessed that the ministers of the Catholic
Church imitated the profane model which
they were impotent to destroy. The
most respectable bishops had persuaded
themselves that the ignorant rustics would
more cheerfully renounce the supersti
tions of paganism if they found some
resemblance, some compensation, in the
bosom of Christianity. The religion of
Constantine achieved, in less than a
century, the final conquest of the Roman
Empire, but the victors themselves were
insensibly subdued by the arts of their
vanquished rivals.”
Enough has been said on a topic to
which prominence has been given
because it brings into fuller relief the
fact that in a religion for which its
apologists claim divine origin and gui
dance “to the end of the world ” we have
the same intrusion of the rites and
customs of lower cults which marks other
advanced faiths. Hence, science and
superstition being deadly foes, the ex
planation of that hostile attitude towards
inquiry, and that dread of its results,
which marked Christianity down to
modern times. While the intrusion of
corrupting elements presents difficulties
which the theory of the supernatural
history of Christianity alone creates, it
accords with all that might be predicted
of a religion whose success was due to
its early escape from the narrow confines
of Judaism, and to its fortunate contact
with the enterprising peoples to whom
the civilisation of Europe and the New
World is due.
�THE ARREST OF INQUIRY
37
2. From, Augustine to Lord Bacon
A.D. 400-A.D.
600
The foregoing slight outline of the ments of Redi refute a doctrine which
causes which operated for centuries had held part of the biological field for
against the freedom of the human mind about two thousand years, and which
will render it needless to follow the still has adherents. Of course Augus
history of the development of Christian tine, as do modern Catholic biologists,
polity and dogma—the temporalising of excepted man from the operation of
the one, and the crystallising of the other. secondary causes, and held that his soul
Yet one prominent actor in that history was created by the direct intervention of
demands a brief notice, because of the the Creator. Augustine’s concessions
influence which his teaching wielded from are, therefore, more seeming than real,
the fifth to the fifteenth centuries. The and, moreover, we find him denying the
ftnnals of the churches in Africa, along existence of the antipodes on the ground
whose northern shores Christianity had that Scripture is silent about them, and
spread early and rapidly, yield notable also that, if God had placed any races
names, but none so distinguished as that there, they could not see Christ descend
of Augustine, Bishop of Hippo from 395 ing at his second coming. To Augustine
to 430 a.d. This greatest of the Fathers the air was full of devils, who are the
©f the Church sought, as has been re cause of “all diseases of Christians.”
marked already, to bring the system of In other words, he was not ahead of the
Aristotle, the greatest of ancient natural illusions of his age. Then, too, he
ists, into line with Christian theology. shows that allegorising spirit which was
His range of study was well-nigh as wide manifest in Greece a thousand years
as that of the famous Stagirite, but we earlier; the spirit which reads hidden
are here concerned only with so much of meanings in Homer, in Horace, and in
it as bears on an attempt to graft the Omar Khayyam; and which, in the
development theory on the dogma of hands of present-day Gnostics, mostly
special creation. Augustine, accepting fantastic or illiterate cabalists, converts
the Old Testament cosmogony as a the plain narratives of Old and New
revelation, believed that the world was Testaments into vehicles of mysterious
created out of nothing; but, this initial types and esoteric symbols. It is in
paradox accepted, he argued that God such allegorical vein that Augustine
had endowed matter with certain powers explains the outside and inside pitching
©f self-development which left free the of the ark as typifying the safety of the
Operation of natural causes in the pro Church from the leaking-in of heresy;
duction of plants and animals. With while the ghastly application of sym
this, however, as already noted, he held, bolical exegetics is seen in his citation of
with preceding philosophers and with the words of Jesus, “Compel them to
his fellow-theologians, the doctrine of come in,” as a divine warrant for the
spontaneous generation. It explained to slaughter of heretics.
We shall meet with no other such
him the existence of apparently purpose
less creatures, as flies, frogs, mice, etc. commanding figure in Church history
4< Certain very small animals,” he says, till nine hundred years have passed,
** may not have been created on the fifth when Thomas Aquinas, the “ Angel of
and sixth days, but may have originated the Schools,” appears. But, although
later from putrefying matter.” Not till that period marks no advance of the
the seventeenth century did the experi- Church from her central position, it
�3«
PIONEERS OE EVOLUTION
witnessed changes in her fortune through
the intrusion of a strange people into
her territory and sanctuaries.
Perhaps there are few events in history
more impressive than the conversion of
the wild and ignorant Arab tribes of the
seventh century from stone-worship to
monotheism. The series of conquests
which followed had also, as an indirect
and unforeseen result, effects of vast im
portance in the revival and spread of
Greek culture from the Tigris to the
Guadalquivir. It is not easy, neither
does the inquiry fall within our present
purpose, to discover the special impulses
which led Mohammed, the leader of the
movement, to preach a new faith whose
one creed, stripped of all subtleties, was
the unity of God. Large numbers of
Jews and Christians had settled in Arabia
long before his time, and he had become
acquainted with the narrowness of the
one, and with the causes of the wranglings of the other, riven, as these lastnamed were, into sects quarrelling over
the nature of the Person of Christ.
These, and the fetichism of his fellowcountrymen, may, perhaps, have impelled
him to start a crusade the mandate for
which he, in fanatic impulse, believed
came from heaven. The result is well
known. The hitherto untamed nomads
became the eager instruments of the
prophet. Under his leadership, and that
of the able Khalifs who succeeded him,
the flag of Islam was carried from East
to West, till within one hundred years of
the flight of Mohammed from Mecca
(622 a.d.) it waved from the Indian
Ocean to the Atlantic. With the. con
quest of Syria there was achieved one of
the greatest and most momentous of
triumphs in the capture'of Jerusalem,
and the seizure of sites sanctified to
Christians by association with the cruci
fixion, burial, and resurrection of Jesus.
Only a few years before (614 a.d.) the
holy city had been taken by Chosroes;
the sacred buildings raised over the
venerated tomb had been burned, and
the cross—a spurious relic—carried off
by the Persian king. These places have
been, as it were, the cockpit of Christen
dom from the time of the siege of
Jerusalem under Titus to that of the
Crimean War, when blood was spilt like
water in a conflict stirred by squabbles
between Latin and Greek Christians over
possession of the key of the Church of
the Nativity at Bethlehem. In the
Church of the Holy Sepulchre these
sectaries are still kept from flying at one
another’s throats by the muskets of
Mohammedan soldiers.
The Arabian conquest of Persia fol
lowed that of Syria. The turn of Egypt
soon came, the city of Alexandria being
taken in 640, seven years after the
prophet’s death. Since the loss of Greek
freedom, and the decay of intellectual
life at Athens, that renowned place had
become, notably under the Ptolemies,
the chief home of science and philosophy.
Through the propagandism of Christian
ity among the Hellenised Jews, of whom,
as of Greeks, large numbers had settled
there, it was also the birthplace of
dogmatic theology, and, therefore, the
fountain whence welled the controversies
whose logomachies were the gossip of
the streets of Constantinople and the
cause of bloody persecution. After a
few years’ pause, the Saracens (Ar.
sharkiin, orientals) resumed their conquer
ing march. They captured and burnt
Carthage, another famous centre of
Christianity, and then crossed over to
Spain. In “the fair and fertile isle of
Andalusia” the Gothic king Roderick
was aroused from his luxurious life in
Toledo to lead his army in gallant, but
vain, attempt to repel the infidel invaders.
So rapid was their advance that in six
years they had subdued the whole of
Spain, the north and north-western
portions excepted, for the hardy Basque
mountaineers maintained their indepen
dence against the Arabs, as they had
maintained it against Celt, Roman, and
Goth. Only before the walls of Tours
did the invaders meet with a rebuff from
Charles Martel and his Franks, which
arrested their advance in Western
�the arrest of inquiry
Europe; as, in a more momentous defeat
before Constantinople by Leo III. in
7x8, fourteen years earlier, the torrent
of Mohammedan conquest was first
checked.
Enough, however, of Saracenic wars
and their destructive work, which, if
tradition lies not, included the burning
of the remnants of the vast Alexandrian
library. “A revealed dogma is always
opposed to the free research that may
Contradict it,” and Islam has ever been
a worse foe to science than Christianity.
Its association, as a religion, with the
renaissance of knowledge was as wholly
accidental as the story of it is in
teresting.
Under the Sassanian kings, Persia had
become an active centre of intellectual
life, reaching the climax of its Augustan
age in the reign of Chosroes. Jew,
Greek, and Christian alike had welcome
at his court, and translations of the
writings of the Indian sages completed
the eclecticism of that enlightened
monarch.
Then came the ruthless
Arab, and philosophy and science were
eclipsed. But with the advent of the
Abbaside Khalifs, who number the
famous Haroun al-Raschid among them,
there came revival of the widest tolera
tion, and consequent return of intellec
tual activity. Baghdad arose as the seat
of Empire. Situated on the high road
of Oriental commerce, along which
travelled foreign ideas and foreign culture,
that city became also the Oxford of her
time. Arabic was the language of the
conquerors, and into that poetic but unphilosophic tongue Greek philosophy
and science were rendered. Under the
rule of those Khalifs, says Renan, “nontolerant, non-reluctant persecutors,” free
thought developed; the Motecallenim
or “ disputants ” held debates, where all
religions were examined in the light of
reason. Aristotle, Euclid, Galen, and
Ptolemy were text-books in the colleges,
the repute of whose teachers brought to
Baghdad and Naishapur (dear to lovers of
“old Khayyam ”) students westward from
Spain, and eastward from Transoxiana.
39
“ Arab ” philosophy, therefore, is only
a name. It has been well described as
“a system of Greek thought expressed in
a Semitic tongue; and modified by
Oriental influences called into existence
by the patronage of the more liberal
princes, and kept alive by the zeal of
a small band of thinkers.” In the main,
it began and ended with the study of
Aristotle, commentaries on whom became
the chief work of scholars, at whose head
stands the great name of Averroes.
Through these—a handful of Jews and
Moslems—knowledge of Greek science,
of astronomy, algebra, chemistry, and
medicine, was carried into Western
Europe. By the latter half of the tenth
century, one hundred and fifty years
after the translation of Aristotle into
Arabic, Spain had become no mean riva
of Baghdad and Cairo. Schools were
founded; colleges to which the Girton
girls of the period could repair to learn
mathematics and history were set up by
lady principals; manufactures and agri
culture were encouraged; and lovely and
stately palaces and mosques beautified
Seville, Cordova, Toledo, and Granada,
which last-named city the far-famed
Alh^mra or Red Fortress still overlooks.
Seven hundred years before there was a'
public lamp in London, and when Paris
was a town of swampy roadways bordered
by windowless dwellings, Cordova had
miles of well-lighted, well-paved streets;
and the constant use of the bath by the
“ infidel ” contrasted with the saintly
filth and rags which were the pride of
flesh-mortifying devotees and the out
ward and odorous signs of their religion.
The pages of our dictionaries evidence
in familiar mathematical and chemical
terms; in the names of the principal
“fixed” stars; and in the words “adj
miral ” and “ chemise ”; the influence of
the “ Arab ” in science, war, and dress.
It forms no part of our story to tell
how feuds between rival dynasties and
rival sects of Islam, becoming more
acute as time went on, enabled Chris
tianity to recover lost ground, and, in
the capture of Granada in 1492, to put
�40
PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION
an end to Moorish rule in Spain. Before
that event, a knowledge of Greek philo
sophy had been diffused through Chris
tendom by the translation of the works
of Avicenna, Averroes, and other scholars,
into Latin. That was about the middle
of the twelfth century, when Aristotle,
who had been translated into Arabic
some three centuries earlier, also appeared
in Latin dress. The detachment of any
branch of knowledge from theology
being a thing undreamed-of, the deep
reverence in which the Stagirite was held
by his Arabian commentators ultimately
led to his becoming “ suspect ” by the
Christians, since that which approved
itself to the followers of Mohammed
must, ipso facto, be condemned by the
followers of Jesus. Hence came re
action, and recourse to the Scriptures as
sole guide to secular as well as sacred
knowledge; recourse to a method which,
as Hallam says, “had not untied a
single knot, or added one unequivocal
truth to the domain of philosophy.”
So far as the scanty records tell (for
we may never know how much was
suppressed, or fell into oblivion, under
ecclesiastical frowns and threats; nor
how many thinkers toiled in secret and
in dread), none seemed possessed either
of courage or desire to supplement the
revealed word by examination into things
themselves. To supplant it was not
dreamed-of. But in the middle of the
thirteenth century one notable exception
occurred in the person of Roger Bacon,
sometimes called Friar Bacon in virtue
of his belonging to the order of Fran
ciscans. He was born in 1214 at
Ilchester, in Somerset, whence he after
wards removed to Oxford, and thence to
Paris. That this remarkable and manysided man, classic and Arabic scholar,
mathematician, and natural philosopher,
has not more recognised place in the
annals of science is strange, although it
is, perhaps, _ partly explained by the fact
that his writings were not reissued for
more than three centuries after his death.
He has been credited with a number of
inventions, his title to which is however
doubtful, although the doubt in nowise
impairs the greatness of his name. He
shared the current belief in alchemy,
but made a number of experiments in
chemistry pointing to his knowledge of
the properties of the various gases, and
of the components of gunpowder. If
he did not invent spectacles, or the
microscope and telescope, he was skilled
in optics, and knew the principles on
which those instruments are made, as
the following extract from his Opus
Majus shows : “We can place trans
parent bodies in such a form and
position between our eyes and other
objects that the rays shall be refracted
and bent towards any place we please,
so that we shall see the object near at
hand, or at a distance, under any angle
we please; and thus from an incredible
distance we may read the smallest letters,
and may number the smallest particles
of sand, by reason of the greatness of the
angle under which they appear.” He
knew the “wisdom of the ancients” in
the cataloguing of the stars, and suggested
a reform of the calendar—following the
then unknown poet-astronomer of Naishapur. But he believed in astrology,
that bastard science which from remotest
times had ruled the life of man, and
which has no small number of votaries
among ourselves to this day. Roger
Bacon’s abiding title to fame rests, how
ever, on his insistence on the necessity
of experiment, and his enforcement of
this precept by practice. As a mathe
matician he laid stress on the application
of this “first of all the sciences”; indeed,
as “preceding all others, and as dis
posing us to them.” His experiments,
both from their nature and the seclusion
in which they were made, laid him open
to the charge of black magic—in other
words, of being in league with the devil.
This, in the hands of a theology thus
“possessed,” became an instrument of
awful torture to mankind.
Roger
Bacon’s denial of magic only aggravated
his crime, since in ecclesiastical ears
this was tantamount to a denial of the
activity, nay more, of the very existence,
�THE ARREST OF fHQV/RV
of Satan. So, despite certain encourage
ment in his scientific work from an old
friend, who afterwards became Pope
Clement IV., for whose information he
wrote his Opus Majus, he was, on the
death of that potentate, thrown into
prison, whence tradition says he emerged,
after ten years, only to die.
The theories of mediaeval schoolmen
—a monotonous record of unprogressive
ideas—need not be scheduled here, the
more so as we approach the period of
discoveries momentous in their ultimate
effect upon opinions which now possess
. only the value attaching to the history of
discredited conceptions of the universe.
Commerce, more than scientific curiosity,
gave the impetus to the discovery that the
®rth is a globe. Trade with the East
was divided between Genoa and Venice.
These cities were rivals, and the Genoese,
alarmed at the growing success of the
Venetians, resolved to try to reach
India from the West. Their schemes
were justified by reports of land indica
tions brought by seamen who had passed
through the “ Pillars of Hercules ” to
the Atlantic. The sequel is well known.
Columbus, after clerical opposition, and
rebuffs from other states, “ offering,” as
Mr. Payne says, in his excellent History
of America, “ though he knew it not, the
New World in exchange for three ships
and provisions for twelve months,” finally
secured the support of the Spanish king,
and sailed from Cadiz on the 3rd August,
1492. On nth October he sighted the
fringes of the New World, and, believing
that he had sailed from Spain to India,
gave the name West Indies to the islandgroup. America itself had been dis
covered by roving Norsemen five hundred
years before, but the fact was buried in
Icelandic tradition. Following Colum
bus, Vasco de Gama, a Portuguese, set
sail in 1497, and, taking a southerly
course, doubled the Cape of Good Hope.
Twenty-two years later, Ferdinand Magel
lan started on a voyage more famous
than that of Columbus, since his ambi
tion was to sail round the world, and
thus complete the chain of proof against
41
the theory of its flatness. For “though
the Church hath evermore from Holy
Writ affirmed that the earth should be a
widespread plain bordered by the waters,
yet he comforted himself when he con
sidered that in the eclipses of the moon
the shadow cast of the earth is round;
and as is the shadow, such, in like
manner, is the substance.” Doubling
Cape Horn through the straits that bear
his name, Magellan entered the vast
ocean whose calm surface caused him to
call it the Pacific, and, after terrible
sufferings, reached the Ladrone Islands,
where, either at the hands of a mutinous
crew or of savages, he was killed. His
chief lieutenant, Sebastian d’Eleano, con
tinued the voyage, and, after rounding
the Cape of Good Hope, brought the
San Vittoria—name of happy omen—-to
anchor at St. Lucar, near Seville, on
7th September, 1522. Brought, too, the
story of a circumnavigated globe, and of
new groups of stars never seen under
northern skies.
The scene shifts, for the time being,
from the earth to the heavens. The
Church had barely recovered from the
blow struck at her authority on matter!
of secular knowledge, when another is
dealt, and that by an ecclesiastic, Co
pernicus, Canon of Frauenburg, in
Prussia. But before pursuing this, some
reference to the revolt against the
Church of Rome, which is the great
event of the sixteenth century, is neces
sary, if only to inquire whether the
movement known as the Reformation
justified its name as freeing the intellect
from theological thraldom. Far-reaching
as were the areas which it covered and
the effects which it wrought, its quarrel
with the Church of Rome was not
because of that Church’s attitude towards
freedom of thought. On the Continent
it was a protest of nobler minds against
the corruptions fostered by the Papacy ;
in England, it was personal and political
in origin, securing popular support by
its anti-sacerdotal character, and its
appeal to national irritation against
foreign control. But, both here and
�42
PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION
abroad, it sought mending rather than
ending; “ not to vary in any jot from
the faith Catholic.” It disputed the
claim of the Church to be the sole in
terpreter of Scripture, and contended
that such interpretation was the right
and duty of the individual. But it
would not admit the right of the indi
vidual to call in question the authority
of the Bible itself: to that book alone
must a man go for knowledge of things
temporal as of things spiritual. So that
the Reformation was but an exchange of
fetters, or, as Huxley happily puts it, the
scraping of a little rust off the chains
which still bound the mind. “ Learning
perished where Luther reigned,” said
Erasmus, and in proof of it we find the
Reformer agreeing with his coadjutor,
Melancthon, in permitting no tampering
with the written Word. Copernicus not
withstanding, they had no doubt that
the earth was fixed, and that sun and
stars travelled round it, because the
Bible said so. Peter Martyr, one of the
early Lutheran converts, in his Com
mentary on Genesis, declared that
wrong opinions about the creation as
narrated in that book would render
valueless all the promises of Christ.
Wherein he spoke truly. As for the
schoolmen, Luther called them “ locusts,
caterpillars, frogs, and lice.” Reason he
denounced as the “ arch whore ” and the
“devil’s bride”; Aristotle is a “prince
of darkness, horrid impostor, public and
professed liar, beast, and twice execrable.”
Consistently enough, Luther believed
vehemently in a personal devil, and in
witches; “ I would myself burn them,”
he says, “even as it is written in the
Bible that the priests stoned offenders.”
To him demoniacal possession was a
fact clear as noonday : idiocy, lunacy,
epilepsy, and all other mental and
nervous disorders, were due to it. Hence,
a movement whose intent appeared to
be the freeing of the human spirit riveted
more tightly the bolts that imprisoned it;
arresting the physical explanation of
mental diseases and that curative treat
ment of them which is one of the
countless services of science to suffering
mankind. To Luther, the descent of
Christ into hell, which modern research
has shown to be a variant of an Orphic
legend of the underworld, was a real
event, Jesus going thither that he might
conquer Satan in a hand - to - hand
struggle.
Therefore, freedom of thought, as we
define it, had the bitterest foe in Luther,
although, in his condemnation of
“works,” and his fanatical dogma of
man’s “justification by faith alone,”
which made him reject the Epistle of
James as one “of straw,” and as un
worthy of a place in the Canon, he
unwittingly drove-in the thin end of the
rationalist wedge. The Reformers had
hedged the canonical books with theories
of verbal inspiration which extended
even to the punctuation of the sentences.
They thus rendered intelligent study of
the Bible impossible, and did grievous
injury to a collection of writings of vast
historical value, and of abiding interest
as records of man’s primitive speculations
and spiritual development. But Luther’s
application of the right of private judg
ment to the omission or addition of this
or that book into a canon which had
been closed by a Council of the Church,
surrendered the whole position, since there
was no telling where the thing might stop.
Copernicus waited full thirty years
before he ventured to make his theory
public. The Ptolemaic system, which
assumed a fixed earth with sun, moon,
and stars revolving above it, had held
the field for about fourteen hundred
years. It accorded with Scripture; it
was adopted by the Church; and, more
over, it was confirmed by the senses, the
correction of which still remains, and
will long remain, a condition of intellec
tual advance. Little wonder is it, then,
that Copernicus hesitated to broach a
theory thus supported, or that, when
published, it was put forth in tentative
form as a possible explanation more in
accord with the phenomena. A preface,
presumably by a friendly hand, com
mended the Revolutions of the Heavenly
�THE ARREST OF INQUIRY
Bodies to Pope Paul III. It urged that
“as in previous times others had been
allowed the privilege of feigning what
circles they chose in order to explain
the "phenomena,” Copernicus “had con
ceived that he might take the liberty of
trying whether, on the supposition of the
earth’s motion, it was possible to find
better explanations than the ancient ones
of the revolutions of the celestial orbs.”
A copy of the book was placed in
the hands of its author only a few
hours before his death on 23rd May,
1543This “upstart astrologer”; this “fool
who wishes to reverse the entire science
of astronomy,” for “sacred Scripture
tells us that Joshua commanded the sun
to stand still, and not the earth ”—these
are . Luther’s words — was, therefore,
beyond the grip of the Holy Inquisi
tion. But a substitute was forthcoming.
Giordano Bruno, a Dominican monk,
had added to certain heterodox beliefs
the heresy of Copernicanism, which he
publicly taught from Oxford to Venice.
For these cumulative crimes he was
imprisoned and, after two years, con
demned to be put to death “ as merci
fully as possible and without the shedding
of his blood,” a Catholic euphemism for
burning a man alive. The murder was
committed in Rome on 17th February,
1600.
The year 1543 marks an epoch in
biology as in astronomy. As shown in
the researches of Galen, an Alexandrian
physician of the second century, there
had been no difficulty in studying the
structure of the lower animals, but,
fortified both by tradition and by pre
judice, the Church refused to permit dis
section of the human body, and in the
latter part of the thirteenth Century
Boniface VIII. issued a Bull of the
major excommunication against offenders.
Prohibition, as usual, led to evasion, and
Vesalius, Professor of Anatomy in Padua
University, resorted to various devices
to procure “subjects,” the bodies of
criminals being easiest to obtain. The
end justified the means, as he was able
43
to correct certain errors of Galen, and to
give the quietus to the old legend, based
upon the myth of the creation of Eve,
that man has one rib less than woman.
This was among the discoveries an
nounced in his De Corporis Human!
Fabrica, published when he was only
twenty-eight years of age. The book
fell under the ban of the Church because
Vesalius gave no support to the belief in
an indestructible bone, nucleus of the
resurrection body, in man. The belief
had, no doubt, near relation to that of
the Jews in the os sacrum, and may
remind us of Descartes’ fanciful loca-,
tion of the soul in the minute cone-like
part of the brain known as the conarium,
or pineal gland. On some baseless
charge of attempting the dissection of a
living subject, the Inquisition haled
Vesalius to prison, and would have put
him to death “as mercifully as possible,”
but for the intervention of King Charles V.
of Spain, to whom Vesalius had been
physician. Returning in October, 1564,
from a pilgrimage taken, presumably, as
atonement for his alleged offence, he was
shipwrecked on the coast of Zante, and
died of exhaustion.
While the heretical character and ten
dencies of discoveries in astronomy and
anatomy awoke active opposition from the
Church, the work of men of the type of
Gesner, the eminent Swiss naturalist, and
of Csesalpino, professor of botany at Padua,
passed unquestioned. No dogma was
endangered by the classification of plants
and animals. But when a couple of
generations after the death of Coper
nicus had passed, the Inquisition found
a second victim in the famous Galileo,
who was born at Pisa in 1564. After
spending some years in mechanical and
mathematical pursuits, he began a series
of observations in confirmation of the
Copernican theory, of the truth of which
he had been convinced in early life.
With the aid of a rude telescope, made
by his own hands, he discovered the
satellites of Jupiter; the moon-like
phases of Venus and Mars ; mountains
and valleys in the moon; spots on the
�44
PIONEERS OP EVOLUTION
sun’s disk; and the countless stars which
compose the luminous band known as
the Milky Way. Nought occurred to
disturb his observations till, in a work
on the Solar Spots, he explained the
movements of the earth and of the
heavenly bodies according to Copernicus.
On the appearance of that book the
authorities contented themselves with a
caution to the author. But action fol
lowed his supplemental Dialogue on the
Copernican and Ptolemaic Systems.
Through that convenient medium which
the title implies, Galileo makes the
defender of the Copernican theory an
easy victor, and for this he was
brought before the Inquisition in
1633. After a tedious trial, and
threats of “rigorous personal examina
tion,” a euphemism for “ torture,” he was,
despite the plea—too specious to deceive
—that he had merely put the pros and
cons as between the rival theories, con
demned to abjure all that he had taught.
There is a story, probably fictitious, since
it was first told in 1789, that when the
old man rose from his knees he muttered
his conviction that the earth moves, in
the words “e pur si muove.” As a
sample of the arguments used by the
ecclesiastics when they substituted, as
rare exception, the pen for the faggot,
the reasoning advanced by one Sizzi
against the existence of Jupiter’s moons
may be cited : “ There are seven win
dows given to animals in the domicile of
the head, through which the air is ad
mitted to the tabernacle of the body, viz.:
two nostrils, two eyes, two ears, and one
mouth. So, in the heavens, as in a
macrocosm, or great world, there are
two favourable stars, Jupiter and Venus;
two unpropitious, Mars and Saturn; two
luminaries, the sun and moon, and
Mercury alone undecided and indifferent.
From these and many other phenomena
of nature, which it were tedious to
enumerate, we gather that the number of
planets is necessarily seven. Moreover,
the satellites are invisible to the naked
eye, and, therefore, can exercise no
influence over the earth, and would, of
'
1
I
I
course, be useless ; and, therefore, do
not exist.”
In this brief summary of the attitude
of the Church towards science it is not
possible, and, if it were so, it is not
needful, to refer in detail to the con
tributions of the more speculative philo
sophers, who, although they made no
discoveries, advocated those methods of
research and directions of inquiry which
made the discoveries possible. Among
these a prominent name is that of Lord
Bacon, whose system of philosophy,
known as the inductive, proceeds from
the collection, examination, and com
parison of any group of connected facts
to the relation of them to some general
principle. The universal is thus ex
plained by the particular. But the in
ductive method was no invention of
Bacon’s ; wherever observation or testing
of a thing preceded speculation about it,
as with his greater namesake, there the
Baconian system had its application.
Lord Bacon, moreover, undervalued
Greek science; he argued against the
Copernican theory ; and either knew
nothing of, or ignored, Harvey’s momen
tous discovery of the circulation of the
blood. A more illustrious name than
his is that of René Descartes, a man
who combined theory with observation ;
“one who,” in Huxley’s words, “saw
that the discoveries of Galileo meant
that the remotest parts of the universe
were governed by mechanical laws, while
those of Harvey meant that the same
laws presided over the operations of that
portion of the world which is nearest to
us—namely, our own bodily frame.” The
greatness of this man, a good Catholic,
whom the Jesuits charged with Atheism,
has no mean tribute in his influence on
an equally remarkable man, Benedict
Spinoza. Spinoza reduced the Cartesian
analysis of phenomena into God, mind
and matter, to one phenomenon—namely,
God, of whom matter and spirit, ex
tension and thought, are but attributes.
His short life fell within the longer
span of Newton’s, whose strange sub
jection to the theological influences of
�THE ARREST OF INQUIRY
his age is seen in this immortal inter
preter of the laws of the universe wasting
Bis later years on an attempt to interpret
Unfulfilled prophecy. These and others,
as Locke, Leibnitz, Herder, and Schel
ling, like the great Hebrew leader, had
glimpses of a goodly land which they
were not themselves to enter. But,
perhaps, in the roll of illustrious men to
whom prevision came, none have better
claim to everlasting remembrance than
Immanuel Kant. For in his Theory of
the Heavens, published in 1755, he
anticipates that hypothesis of the origin
of the present universe which, associated
with the succeeding names of Laplace
and Herschel, has, under corrections
furnished by modern physics, common
acceptance among us. Then, as shown
in the following extract, Kant foresees
the theory of the development of life
from formless stuff to the highest types :
“ It is desirable to examine the great
domain of organised beings by means of
a methodical comparative anatomy, in
order to discover whether we may not
find in them something resembling a
system, and that too in connection with
their mode of generation, so that we may
not be compelled to stop short with a
mere consideration of forms as they are
—which gives no insight into their gene
ration—and need not despair of gaining
a full insight into this department of
Nature. The agreement of so many
kinds of animals in a certain common
plan of structure, which seems to be
visible not only in their skeletons, but
also in the arrangement of the other
parts—so that a wonderfully simple
typical form, by the shortening or length
ening of some parts, and by the sup
pression and development of others,
might be able to produce an immense
variety of species—gives us a ray of
hope, though feeble, that here perhaps
some results may be obtained, by the
application of the principle of the mecha
nism of Nature; without which, in fact,
Ho science can exist. This analogy of
forms (in so far as they seem to have
been produced in accordance with a
45
common prototype, notwithstanding their
great variety) strengthens the supposition
that they have an actual blood-relationship,
due to derivation from a common parent;
a supposition which is arrived at by
observation of the graduated approxima
tion of one class of animals to another,
beginning with the one in which the
principle of purposiveness seems to be
most conspicuous—namely, man, and
extending down to the polyps, and from
these even down to mosses and lichens,
and arriving finally at raw matter, the
lowest stage of Nature observable by us.
From this raw matter and its forces, the
whole apparatus of Nature seems to have
been derived according to mechanical
laws (such as those which resulted in
the production of crystals); yet this
apparatus, as seen in organic beings, is
so incomprehensible to us that we feel
ourselves compelled to conceive for it a
different principle. But it would seem
that the archgeologist of Nature is at
liberty to regard the great Family of
creatures (for as a Family we must
conceive it, if the above-mentioned con
tinuous and connected relationship has
a real foundation) as having sprung from
the immediate results of her earliest
revolutions, judging from all the laws of
their mechanisms known to or con
jectured by him.”
In our arrival at the age of these seers,
we feel the play of a freer, purer air; a
lull in the miasmatic currents that bring
intolerance on their wings. The tole
rance that approaches is due to no
surrender of its main position by dog
matic theology, but to that larger percep
tion of the variety and complexity of life,
ignorance of, or wilful blindness to,
which, is the secret of the survival of
rigid opinion. The demonstration of
the earth’s roundness ; the discovery of
America; the growing conception of
inter-relation between the lowest and
the highest life-forms ; the slow but sure
acceptance of the Corpernican theory;
and, above all, the idea of a Cosmos, an
unbroken order, to which every advance
in knowledge contributes, justified and
�46
PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION
fostered the free play of the intellect.
Hume certainly did not overrate the
Foreign as yet, however, to the minds force of the blow which he dealt at
of widest breadth, was the conception of supernaturalism, one of a series of
the inclusion of Man himself in the uni attacks which, in France and Britain,
versal order.
Duality—nature over carried the war into the camp of the
ruled by supernature—-was the un enemy, and changed its tactics from
altered note ; the supernature as part of aggressive to defensive. But none the
nature a thing undreamed-of.
Nor less is it true that the “superstitious
could it be otherwise while the belief in delusions ” against which he planted his
diabolical agencies still held the field, logical artillery were killed neither by
sending wretched victims to the stake on ! argument nor by evidence.
Delusion
the evidence of conscientious witnesses, and error do not perish by controversial
and with the concurrence of humane warfare. They perish under the slow
judges. Animism, the root of all per and silent operation of changes to which
sonification, whether of good or evil,
they are unable to adapt themselves.
had lost none of its essential character,
The atmosphere is altered: the organ
and but little of its vigour.
ism can neither respond nor respire;
“ I flatter myself,” says Hume, in the
therefore, it dies. Thus, save where
opening words of the essay upon “ Mira lurks the ignorance which is its breath
cles,” in his Inquiry Concerning Human of life, has wholly perished belief in
Understanding, li that I have discovered witchcraft; thus, too, is slowly perishing
an argument of a like nature (he is refer belief in miracles, and, with this, belief
ring to Archbishop Tillotson’s argument in the miraculous events, the incarna
on Transubstantiation) which, if just, tion, resurrection, and ascension of
will, with the wise and learned, be an Jesus, on which the fundamental tenets
everlasting check to all kind of super of Christianity are based, and in which
stitious delusion, and, consequently, will lies so largely the secret of its long hos
be useful as long as the world endures.” ! tility to knowledge.
�PART III
THE RENASCENCE OF SCIENCE
A.D. 1600 ONWARDS
“ Though Science, like Nature, may be driven out with a fork, ecclesiastical or other, yet she
surely comes back again.”—Huxley, Prologue to Collected Essays, vol. v.
The exercise of a more tolerant spirit,
to which reference has been made, had
its limits. It is true that Dr. South, a
famous divine, denounced the Royal
Society (founded 1645) as an irreligious
body; although a Dr. Wallis, one of the
first members, especially declared that
“matters of theology” were “precluded”;
the business being “ to discourse and
consider of philosophical inquiries and
such as related thereunto; as Physick,
Anatomy, Geometry, Astronomy, Navi;
gation, Staticks, Magnetics, Chymicks,
and Natural Experiments; with the
state of these studies, and their culti
vation at home and abroad.” Regardless
I of South and such as agreed with him,
I Torricelli worked at hydrodynamics, and
I discovered the principle of the barometer;
I Boyle inquired into the law of the com1 pressibility of gases; Malpighi examined
I minute life-forms and the structure of
I organs under the microscope; Ray and
I Willughby classified plants and animals ;
j Newton theorised on the nature of light,
| and Roemer measured its speed; Halley
1 estimated the sun’s distance, predicted
I the return of comets, and observed the
I transits of Venus and Mercury; Hunter
■ dissected specimens, and laid the foundaI tions of the science of comparative
| anatomy; and many another illustrious
I worker contributed to the world’s stock
■ of knowledge “without let or hindrance,”
I for in all this “ matters of theology were
j
precluded.”
I
I
|
I
!
|
|
I
i
But the old spirit of resistance was
aroused when, after a long lapse of time,
inquiry was revived in a, branch of science
which, it will be noticed, has no distinct
place in the subjects dealt with by the
Royal Society at the start. That science
was Geology, a science destined, in its
ultimate scope, to prove a far more
powerful dissolvent of dogma than any
of its compeers.
It seems strange that the discovery of
the earth’s true shape and movements
was not sooner followed by investigation
into her contents, but the old ideas of
special creation remained unaffected by
these and other discoveries, and the
more or less detailed account of the
process of creation furnished in the book
of Genesis sufficed to arrest curiosity.
In the various departments of the in
organic universe the earth was the last
to become the subject of scientific
research; as, in study of the organic
universe, man excluded himself till
science compelled his inclusion.
After more than two thousand years,
the Ionian philosophers “came to their
own ” again. Xenophanes of Colophon
has been referred to as arriving, five
centuries B.c., at a true explanation of
the imprints of plants and animals in
rocks. Pythagoras, who lived before
him, may, if Ovid, writing near the
Christian era, is to be trusted, have
reached some sound conclusions about
the action of water in the changes of
�48
PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION
land and sea areas. But we are on
surer ground when we meet the geo
grapher Strabo, who lived in the reign
of Augustus. Describing the countries
in which he travelled, he notes their
various features, and explains the causes
of earthquakes and allied phenomena.
Then eleven hundred years pass before
we find any explanation of like rational
character supplied. This was furnished
by the Arabian philosopher, Avicenna,
whose theory of the origin of mountains
is the more marvellous when we remem
ber what intellectual darkness surrounded
him. He says that “ mountains may be
due to two different causes. Either they
are effects of upheavals of the crust of
the earth, such as might occur during a
violent earthquake, or they are the effect
of water, which, cutting for itself a new
route, has denuded the valleys, the strata
being of different kinds, some soft, some
hard. The winds and waters disintegrate
the one, but leave the other intact. Most
of the eminences of the earth have had
this latter origin. It would require a
long period of time for all such changes
to be accomplished, during which the
mountains themselves might be some
what diminished in size. But that water
has been the main cause of these effects
is proved by the existence of fossil re
mains of aquatic and other animals on
many mountains”
Osborn’s From the
Greeks to Darwin, p. 76). A similar
explanation of fossils was given by the
engineer-artist Leonardo de Vinci in the
fifteenth century, and by the potter
Bernard Palissy in the sixteenth century;
but thence onwards, for more than a
hundred years, the earth was as a sealed
book to man. The earlier chapters of
its history, once reopened, have never
been closed again. Varied as were the
theories of the causes which wrought
manifold changes on its surface, they
agreed in demanding a far longer time
history than the Church was willing to
allow. If the reasoning of the geologists
was sound, the narrative in Genesis was
a myth. Hence the renewal of struggle
between the Christian Church and Science,
waged, at first, over the six days of the
Creation.
Here and there, in bygone days, a
sceptical voice had been raised in denial
of the Mosaic authorship of the Penta
teuch. Such was that of La Peyrere, who,
in 1655, published an instalment of a
work in which he anticipated what is
nowadays accepted, but what then was
akin to blasphemy to utter. For not
only does he doubt whether Moses had
any hand in the writings attributed to
him ; he rejects the orthodox view of
suffering and death as the penalties of
Adam’s disobedience, and gives rational
istic interpretation of the appearance of
the star of Bethlehem, and of the dark
ness at the Crucifixion. But La Peyrere
became a Roman Catholic, and, of course,
recanted his opinions. Then, nearer the
time when controversy on the historical
character of the Scriptures was becoming
active, one Astruc, a French physician,
suggested, in a work published in 1753,
that Moses may have used older mate
rials in his compilation of the earlier
parts of the Pentateuch.
But, practically, the five books in
cluded under that name were believed
to have been written by Moses under
divine authority.
The statement in
Genesis, that God made the universe
and its contents, both living and non
living, in six days of twenty-four hours
each, was explicit. Thus interpreted, as
their plain meaning warranted, Arch
bishop Usher made his famous calcula
tion as to the time elapsing between the
creation and the birth of Christ. Dr.
White, in his important Warfare of
Science with Theology, gives an amusing
example of the application of Usher’s
method in detail. A seventeenth-century
divine, Dr. Lightfoot, Vice-Chancellor
of Cambridge University, computed that
“man was created by the Trinity on
23rd October, 4004 B.c., at nine o’clock
in the morning.” The same theologian,
who, by the way, was a very eminent
Hebrew scholar, following the interpre
tation of the great Fathers of the
Church, “ declared, as the result of pro
�THE RENASCENCE ON SCIENCE
49
found and exhaustive study of the Scrip published his recantation: “I declare
tures, that ‘ heaven and earth, centre that I had no intention to contradict the
and circumference, and clouds full of text of Scripture ; that I believe most
water, were created all together, in the firmly all therein related about the
creation, both as to order of time and
same instant.’ ”
The story of the Deluge was held to matter of fact. I abandon everything
furnish sufficing explanation of the in my book respecting the formation of
organic remains yielded by the rocks; the earth, and generally all which may
but, failing this, a multitude of fantastic be contrary to the narrative of Moses.”
theories were at hand to explain the That was in the year 1751.
If the English theologians could not
fossils. They were said to be due to a
“ formative quality ” in the soil; to its deliver heretics of the type of Buffon to
“ plastic virtue ”; to a “ lapidific juice ”; the secular arm, they used all the means
to the “ fermentation of fatty matter ” ; ■that denunciation supplied for delivering
to “the influence of the heavenly bodies,” them over to Satan. Epithets were
or, as the late eminent naturalist, Philip hurled at them ; arguments drawn from
Gosse, seriously suggested in his whimsi a world accursed of God levelled at
cal book, Omphalos: An Attempt to Untie them. Saint Jerome, living in the fourth
the Geological Knot, they were but century, had pointed to the cracked and
simulacra wherewith a mocking Deity crumpled rocks as proof of divine anger;
rebuked the curiosity of man. Every now Wesley and others saw in “ sin the
explanation, save the right and obvious moral cause of earthquakes, whatever
one, had its defenders, because it was their natural cause might be,” since
essential to support some theory to rebut before Adam’s transgression no convul
the evidence supplied by remains of sions or eruptions ruffled the calm of
animals as to the existence of death in Paradise. Meanwhile, the probing of
the world before the fall of Adam. the earth’s crust went on; revealing,
Otherwise, the statements in the Old amidst all the seeming confusion of
Testament, on which the Pauline reason distorted and metamorphosed rocks, an
ing rested, were baseless, and to discredit unvarying sequence of strata, and of the
these was to undermine the authority fossils embedded in them. Different
of the Scriptures from Genesis to the causes were assigned for the vast changes
Apocalypse.
No wonder, therefore,
ranging over vast periods ; one school
that theology was up in arms, or that it believing in the action of volcanic and
saw in geology a deadlier foe than astro such-like catastrophic agents ; another in
nomy had seemed to be in ages past. the action of aqueous agents, seeing,
The Sorbonne, or Faculty of Theology,
more consistently, in present operations
in Paris, burnt the books of the geologists, the explanation of the causes of past
banished their authors, and, in the case changes. But there was no diversity of
of Buffon, the famous naturalist, con opinion concerning the extension of the
demned him to retract the awful heresy,
earth’s time-history and life-history to
which was declared “contrary to the millions on millions of years.
creed of the Church,” contained in these
So, when this was to be no longer
words: “ The waters of the sea have resisted, theologians sought some basis
produced the mountains and valleys of of compromise on such non-fundamental
the land; the waters of the heavens,
points as the six days of creation. It
reducing all to a level, will at last deliver was suggested that perhaps these did not
the whole land over to the sea, and the mean the seventh part of a week, but
Sea, successively prevailing over the land,
periods, or aeons, or something equally
will leave dry new continents like those , elastic ; and that, if the Mosaic narrative
which we inhabit.” So’ the old man was regarded as a poetic revelation of
repeated the submission of Galileo, and
the general succession of phenomena,
E
�PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION
beginning with the development of order pression at variance with the facts re
out of chaos, and ending with the creation vealed by science ”; all efforts at recon
of man, Scripture would be found to ciliation being only “ different modes of
have anticipated or revealed what science obliterating the characteristic features of
confirms. It was impossible, so theo Genesis, and of reading into it a view
logians argued, that there could be aught which it does not express.”
else than harmony between the divine
While the ground in favour of the
works and the writings which were literal interpretation of Genesis was
assumed to be of divine origin. Science being contested, an invading force, that
could not contradict revelation, and what had been gathering strength with the years,
ever seemed contradictory was due to was advancing in the shape of the science
misapprehension either of the natural of Biology. The workers therein fall
fact or to misreading of the written into two classes : the one, represented by
word. But although the story of the Linnaeus and his school, applied them
creation might be clothed, as so exalted selves to the classifying and naming of
and moving a theme warranted, in poetic plants and animals; the other, repre
form, that of the fall of Adam and of sented by Cuvier and his school, examined
the drowning of his descendants, eight into structure and function. Anatomy
persons excepted, must be taken in all made clear the machinery; physiology
its appalling literalness. Confirmation the work which it did, and the conditions
of the Deluge story was found in the under which the work was done. Then,
fossil shells on high mountain tops; through comparison of corresponding
while as for the giants of antediluvian organs and their functions in various
times, there were the huge bones in life-forms, came growing perception of
proof. Some of these relics of mastodon their unity. But only to a few came
and mammoth were actually hung up in gleams of that unity as proof of common
churches as evidence that “ there were descent of plant and animal, for, save in
giants in those days ” ! Geoffroy Saint- scattered hints of inter-relation between
Hilaire tells of one Henrion, who pub species, which occur from the time of
lished a book in 1718, giving the height Lord Bacon onwards, the theory of their
of Adam as one hundred and twenty- immutability was dominant until forty
three feet nine inches, and of Eve as years ago.
Four men form the chief vanguard
one hundred and eighteen feet nine
inches, Noah being of rather less stature. of the biological movement. “ Modern
But to parley with science is fatal to classificatory method and nomenclature
theology. Moreover, arguments which have largely grown out of the work of
involve the cause they support in ridicule Linnaeus; the modern conception of
may be left to refute themselves. And biology as a science, and of its relation
while theology was hesitating, as in the to climatology, geography, and geology,
amusing example supplied by Dr. William are as largely rooted in the labours of
Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible (published Buffon; comparative anatomy and palae
in 1863), wherein the reader, turning ontology owe a vast debt to Cuvier’s
up the article “ Deluge,” is referred results; while invertebrate zoology and
to “Flood,” and thence to “Noah”; the revival of the idea of Evolution are
archaeology produced the Chaldean intimately dependent on the results of
original of the legend whence the story the work of Lamarck. In other words,
of the flood is derived. With candour the main results of biology up to the
as commendable as it is rare, the Rever early years of this century are to be
end Professor Driver, from whom quota found in, or spring out of, the works of
tion has been made already, admits that, these men.”
Linnaeus, son of a Lutheran pastor,
“read without prejudice or bias, the
narrative of Genesis i. creates an im born at Roeshult, in Sweden, in 1707,
�TNE RENASCENCE OF SCIENCE
had barely passed his twenty-fifth year
before laying the ground-plan of the
system of classification which bears his
name, a system which advance in knowledge has since modified. Based on
external resemblances, its formulation
was possible only to a mind intent on
minute and accurate detail, and less
observant of general principles. In
brief, the work of Linnaeus was con
structive, not interpretative.
Hence,
perhaps, conjoined to the theological
ideas then current, the reason why the
larger question of the fixity of species
entered not into his purview. To him
each plant and animal retained the im
press of the creative hand that had
shaped it “in the beginning,” and
throughout his working life he departed
but slightly from the plan with which he
Started—namely, “ reckoning as many
species as issued in pairs” from the
Almighty fiat.
Not so Buffon, born on his father’s
estate in Burgundy in the same year as
Linnseus, whom he survived ten years,
dying in 1788. His opinions, clashing
as they did with orthodox creeds, were
given in a tentative, questioning fashion,
so that where ecclesiastical censure fell,
retreat was easier. As has been seen in
his submission to the Sorbonne, he was
not of the stuff of which martyrs are
made. Perhaps hefelt that the ultimate
victory of his opinions was sufficiently
assured to make self-sacrifice needless.
But, under cover of pretence at inquiry,
his convictions are clear enough. He
was no believer in the permanent stability
of species, and noted, as warrant of this,
the otherwise unexplained presence of
aborted or rudimentary structures. For
example, he says : “ The pig does not
appear to have been formed upon an
original, special, and perfect plan, since
it is a compound of other animals; it
has evidently useless parts, or rather
parts of which it cannot make any use ;
toes, all the bones of which are perfectly
formed, and which, nevertheless, are of
HO service to it. Nature is far from sub
jecting herself to final causes in the
51
formation of her creatures.” Then,
further, as showing his convictions on
the non-fixity of species, he says, how
many of them, “ being perfected or
degenerated by the great changes in
land and sea, by the favours or dis
favours of Nature, by food, by the pro
longed influences of climate, contrary or
favourable, are no longer what they
formerly were.” But he writes with an
eye on the Sorbonne when, hinting at a
possible common ancestor of horse and
ass, and of ape and man, he slyly adds
that, since the Bible teaches the contrary,
the thing cannot be. Thus he attacked
covertly; by adit, not by direct assault;
and to those who read between the lines
there was given a key wherewith to
unlock the door to the solution of many
biological problems.
Buffon, conse
quently, was the most stimulating and
suggestive naturalist of the eighteenth
century. There comes between him
and Lamarck, both in order of time and
sequence of ideas, Erasmus Darwin, the
distinguished grandfather of Charles
Darwin.
Born at Elton, near Newark, in 1731,
he walked the hospitals at London and
Edinburgh, and settled for some years
at Lichfield, ultimately removing to
Derby. Since Lucretius, no scientific
writer had put his cosmogonic specula
tions into verse until Dr. Darwin made
the heroic metre, in which stereotyped
form the poetry of his time was cast, the
vehicle of rhetorical descriptions of the
amours of flowers and the evolution of
the thumb. The Loves of the Plants,
ridiculed in The Loves of the Triangles
in the Anti-Jacobin, is not to be named
in the same breath, for stateliness of
diction and majesty of movement, as
the De rerum Natura. But both the
prose work Zoonomia and the poem The
Temple of Nature (published after the
author’s death in 1802) have claim to
notice as the matured expression of con-,
elusions at which the clear-sighted,
thoughtful, and withal eccentric doctor
had arrived in the closing years of his
life. Krause’s Life and Study of the
�52
PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION
Works of Erasmus Darwin supplies an
excellent outline of the contents of books
which are now rarely taken down from
the shelves, and makes clear that their
author had the root of the matter in him.
His observations and reading—for the
influence of Buffon and others is appa
rent in his writings—led him to reject
the current belief in the separate creation
of species. He saw that this theory
wholly failed to account for the existence
of abnormal forms, of adaptations of the
structure of organs to their work, of
gradations between living things, and
other features inconsistent with the doc
trine of “let lions be, and there were
lions.” His shrewd comment on the
preformation notion of development has
been quoted (pp. 16, 17). The substance
of his argument in support of a “physical
basis of life ” is as follows : “ When we
revolve in our minds the metamorphoses
of animals, as from the tadpole to the
frog; secondly, the changes produced
by artificial cultivation, as in the breeds
of horses, dogs, and sheep; thirdly, the
changes produced by conditions of
climate and of season, as in the sheep
of warm climates being covered with
hair instead of wool, and the hares and
partridges of northern climates becoming
white in winter; when, further, we ob
serve the changes of structure produced
by habit, as seen especially by men of
different occupations; or the changes
produced by artificial mutilation and
prenatal influences, as in the crossing of
species and production of monsters;
fourth, when we observe the essential
unity of pain in all warm-blooded animals
—we are led to conclude that they have
been alike produced from a similar living
filament.” The concluding words of
this extract make remarkable approach
to the modern theory of the origin of
life in the complex jelly-like protoplasm.
And, on this, Erasmus Darwin further
remarks : “ As the earth and ocean were
probably peopled with vegetable pro
ductions long before the existence of
animals, and many families of these
animals long before other families of
them, shall we conjecture that one and
the same kind of living filament is and
has been the cause of all organic life ? ”
Nor does he make any exception to this
law of organic development. He quotes
Buffon and Helvetius to the effect—
“ that many features ih the anatomy of
man point to a former quadrupedal
position, and indicate that he is not yet
fully adapted to the erect position; that,
further, man may have arisen from a
single family of monkeys, in which,
accidentally, the opposing muscle brought
the thumb against the tips of the fingers,
and that this muscle gradually increased
in size by use in successive generations.”
While we who live in these days of fuller
knowledge of agents of variation may
detect the minus in all foregoing specu
lations, our interest is increased in the
thought of their near approach to the
cardinal discovery. And a rapid run
through the later writings of Dr. Darwin
shows that there is scarcely a side of
the great theory of Evolution which has
escaped his notice or suggestive comment.
Grant Allen, in his excellent little mono
graph on Charles Darwin, says that the
theory of “natural selection was the only
cardinal one in the evolutionary system
on which Erasmus Darwin did not
actually forestall his more famous and
greater namesake. For its full percep
tion, the discovery of Malthus had to
be collated with the speculations of
Buffon.”
In the “ Historical Sketch on the
Progress of Opinion on the Origin of
Species,” which Darwin prefixed to his
book, he refers to Lamarck as “the
first man whose conclusions on the sub
ject excited much attention ”; rendering
“the eminent service of arousing atten
tion to the probability of all change in
the organic as well as in the inorganic
w’orld being the result of law, and not
of miraculous interposition.” Lamarck
was born at Bezantin, in Picardy, in
1744. Intended for the Church, he
chose the army, but an injury resulting
from a practical joke cut short his career
as a soldier. He then became a banker’s
�THE RENASCENCE OF SCIENCE
clerk, in which occupation he secured
leisure for his favourite pursuit of natural
history. Through Buffon’s influence he
procured a civil appointment, and ulti
mately became a colleague of Cuvier
and Geoffroy St. Hilaire in the Museum
of Natural History at Paris. Of Cuvier
it will here suffice to say that he remained
to the end of his life a believer in special
creation, or, what amounts to the same
thing, a series of special creations, which,
he held, followed the catastrophic anni
hilations of prior plants and animals.
Although orthodox by conviction, his
researches told against his tenets, because
his important work in the recon
struction of skeletons of long extinct
animals laid the foundation of palaeon
tology.
To Lamarck, says Haeckel, “ will
always belong the immortal glory of
having for the first time worked out the
Theory of Descent as an independent
scientific theory of the first order, and as
the philosophical foundation of the
whole science of Biology.” He taught
that in the beginnings of life only the
very simplest and lowest animals and
plants came into existence; those of
more complex structure developing from
these; man himself being descended
from ape-like mammals. For the Aris
totelian mechanical figure of life as a
ladder, with its detached steps, he sub
stituted the more appropriate figure of
a tree, as an inter-related organism. He
argued that the course of the earth’s
development, and also of all life upon
it, was continuous, and not interrupted by
violent revolutions. In this he followed
Buffon and Hutton. Buffon, in his
Theory of the Earth, argues that “in
order to understand what had taken
place in the past, or what will happen
in the future, we have but to observe
what is going on in the present.” This is
the keynote of modern geology. “ Life,”
adds Lamarck, “is a purely physical
phenomenon. All its phenomena de
pend on mechanical, physical, and
chemical causes which are inherent in
the nature of matter itself.” He believed
53
in a form of spontaneous generation.
Rejecting Buffon’s theory of the direct
action of the surroundings as agents of
change in living things, he sums up the
causes of organic evolution in the follow
ing propositions 1. Life tends by its inherent forces to
increase the volume of each living body,
and of all its parts, up to a limit deter
mined by its own needs.
2. New wants in animals give rise to
new movements which produce organs,
3. The development of these organs
is in proportion to their employment.
4. New developments are transmitted
to offspring.
The second and third propositions
were illustrated by examples which have,
with good reason, provoked ridicule.
Lamarck accounts for the long neck of
the giraffe by that organ being con
tinually stretched out to reach the leaves
at the tree-tops; for the long tongue of the
ant-eater or the woodpecker by these
creatures protruding it to get at food in
channel or crevice; for the webbed feet
of aquatic animals by the outstretching
of the membranes between the toes in
swimming; and for the erect position of
man by the constant efforts of his ape
like ancestors to keep upright. The
legless condition of the serpent, which;
in the legend of the Garden of Eden, is
accounted for on moral grounds, is thus
explained by Lamarck : “ Snakes sprang
from reptiles with four extremities ; but,
having taken up the habit of moving
along the earth and concealing them
selves among bushes, their bodies, owing
to repeated efforts to elongate themselves
and to pass through narrow spaces, have
acquired a considerable length out of all
proportion to their width. Since long
feet would have been very useless, and
short feet would have been incapable of
moving their bodies, there resulted a
cessation of use of these parts, which
has finally caused them to totally dis
appear, although they were originally
part of the plan of organisation in these
animals.” The discovery of an efficient
cause of modifications, which Lamarck
�54
PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION
refers to the efforts of the creatures them
selves, has placed his speculations in the
museum of biological curiosities; but
sharp controversy rages to-day over the
question raised in Lamarck’s fourth pro
position—namely, the transmission of
characters acquired by the parent during
its lifetime to the offspring. This burning
question between Weismann and his
opponents, involving the serious problem
of heredity, will remain unsettled till a
long series of observations supply material
for judgment.
Lamarck, poor, neglected, and blind
in his old age, died in 1829. Both
Cuvier, who ridiculed him, and Goethe,
who never heard of him, passed away
three years later. The year following his
death, when Darwin was an under
graduate at Cambridge, Lyell published
his Principles of Geology, a work destined
to assist in paving the way for the re
moval of one difficulty attending the
solution of the theory of the origin of
species—namely, the vast period of time
for the life-history of the globe which
that theory demands. As Lyell, how
ever, was then a believer—although, like
a few others of his time, of wavering
type—in the fixity of species, he had
other aims in view than those to which
his book contributed. But he wrote
with an open mind, not being, as Herbert
Spencer says Hugh Miller was, “ a theo
logian studying geology.” Following the
theories of uniformity of action laid down
by Hutton, by Buffon, and by that in
dustrious surveyor, William Smith, who
travelled the length and breadth of
England, mapping out the sequence of
the rocks and tabulating the fossils
special to each stratum, Lyell demon
strated in detail that the formations and
features of the earth’s crust are explained
by the operation of causes still active.
He was one among others, each working
independently at different branches of
research; each, unwittingly, collecting
evidence which would help to demolish
old ideas and support new theories.
A year after the Principles of Geology i
appeared there crept unnoticed into the {
world a treatise, by one Patrick Matthew,
on Naval Timber and Arboriculture,
under which unexciting title Darwin’s
theory was anticipated. Of this, how
ever, as of a still earlier anticipation,
more presently. About this period von
Baer, in examining the embryos of
animals, showed that creatures so unlike
one another in their adult state as fishes,
lizards, lions, and men, resemble one
another so closely in the earlier stages of
their development that no differences
can be detected between them. But
von Baer was himself anticipated by
Meckel, who wrote as follows in 1811 :
“ There is no good physiologist who has
not been struck, incidentally, by the
observation that the original form of all
organisms is one and the same, and that
out of this one form all, the lowest as
well as the highest, are developed in
such a manner that the latter pass
through the permanent forms of the
former as transitory stages” (Osborn’s
From the Greeks to Darwin, p. 212).
In botany Conrad Sprengel, who belongs
to the eighteenth century, had shown
the work effected by insects in the fer
tilisation of plants. Following his re
searches, Robert Brown made clear the
mode of the development of plants, and
Sir William Hooker traced their habits
and geographical distribution. Von Mohl
discovered that material basis of both
plant and animal which he named
“protoplasm.” In 1844, nine years
before von Mohl told the story of the
building-up of life from a seemingly
structureless jelly, a book appeared which
critics of the time charged with “poison
ing the fountains of science and sapping
the foundations of religion.” This was
the once famous Vestiges of Creation,
acknowledged after his death as the
work of Robert Chambers, in which the
origin and movements of the solar
system were explained as determined by
uniform laws, themselves the expression
of Divine power. Organisms, “ from the
simplest and oldest up to the highest
and most recent,” were the result of an
“inherent impulse imparted by the
�of sctkiwf
Almighty both to advance them from
the several grades and modify their
structure as circumstances required.”
Although now referred to only as “ mark
ing time ” in the history of the theory
of Evolution, the book created a sensa
tion which died away only some years
after its publication. Darwin remarks
upon it in his “ Historical Sketch ” that,
although displaying “ in the earlier
editions little accurate knowledge and a
great want of scientific knowledge, it did
excellent service in this country in
calling attention to the subject, in
removing prejudice, and in thus pre
paring the ground for the reception of
analogous views.”
Three years after the Festiges, although
none then knew it, or, knowing the
fact, would have admitted it, there
was more “ sapping of the foundations ”
of orthodox belief, when M. Boucher de
Perthes exhibited some rudely-shaped
flint implements which had been found
at intervals in hitherto undisturbed
deposits of sand and gravel—old river
beds—-in the Somme valley, near Abbe
ville, in Picardy. For these rough stone
tools and weapons, being of human
workmanship, evidenced the existence
of savage races of men in Europe in a
dim and dateless past, and went far to
refute the theories of his paradisaical
state on that memorable “23 October,
4004 b.c.,” when, according to Dr. Light
foot’s reckoning (see p. 48), Adam was
created. While the pickaxe, in disturbing
flint knives and spearheads, that had lain
for countless ages, was disturbing much
besides, English and German philosophers
were formulating the imposing theory
which, under the name of the Conserva
tion of Energy, makes clear the inde
structibility of both matter and motion.
Then, to complete the work of prepara
tion effected by the discoveries here
briefly outlined, there appeared, in a
defunct newspaper, the Leader, in its
issue of 20th March, 1852, an article by
Herbert Spencer on the “ Development
Hypothesis,” in which the following
Striking passage occurs: “ Those who
If
cavalierly reject the Theory of Evolution,
as not adequately supported by facts,
seem quite to forget that their own
theory is supported by no facts at all.
Like the majority of men who are born
to a given belief, they demand the most
rigorous proof of any adverse belief, but
assume that their own needs none. Here
we find, scattered over the globe, vege
table and animal organisms numbering,
of the one kind (according to Humboldt)
some 320,000 species, and of the other
some 2,000,000 species (see Carpenter) ;
and if to these we add the numbers of
animal and vegetable species that have
become extinct, we may safely estimate
the number of species that have existed,
and are existing, on the earth, at not less
than ten millions. Well, which is the
most rational theory about these ten
millions of species? Is it most likely
that there have been ten millions of
special creations? or is it most likely
that by continual modifications, due to
change of circumstances, ten millions of
varieties have been produced, as varieties
are being produced still? ....... Even
could the supporters of the Development
Hypothesis merely show that the origina
tion of species by the process of modifi
cation is conceivable, they would be in
a better position than their opponents.
But they can do much more than this.
They can show that the process of modi
fication has effected, and is effecting,.]
decided changes in all organisms subject;
to modifying influences....... They can I
show that in successive generations these I
changes continue, until ultimately the
new conditions become the natural ones.
They can show that in cultivated plants,
domesticated animals, and in the several
races of men, such alterations have taken ]
place. They can show that the degrees
of difference so produced are often, as ini
dogs, greater than those on which dis
tinctions of species are in other cases
founded. They can show, too, that the 1
changes daily taking place in ourselves— ij
the facility that attends long practice,
and the loss of aptitude that begins when
practice ceases — the strengthening of
�PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION
5û
passions habitually gratified, and the
weakening of those habitually curbed—
the development of every faculty, bodily,
moral, or intellectual, according to the
use made of it—are all explicable on this
same principle. And thus they can show
that throughout all organic nature there
is at work a modifying influence of the
kind they assign as the cause of these
specific differences ; an influence which,
though slow in its action, does, in time,
if the circumstances demand it, produce
marked changes—an influence which,
to all appearance, would produce in
the millions of years, and under the
great varieties of condition which geo
logical records imply, any amount of
change.”
This quotation shows, as perhaps no
other reference might show, how, by the
middle of the present century, science
was trembling on the verge of discovery
of that “ modifying influence ” of which
Mr. Spencer speaks. That discovery
made clear how all that had preceded it
not only contributed thereto, but gained
a significance and value which, apart
from it, could not have been secured.
When the relation of the several parts to
the whole became manifest, each fell into
its place like the pieces of a child’s
puzzle map.
Leading Men of Science
a.d.
Name.
8oo-a.d. 1800.
Place and Date of Birth. Died.
Geber (Djafer)
Avicenna (Ibu Sina)
Mesopotamia, 830
Bokhara, 980
1037
Averroes (Ibu Roshd)
Spain, 1126
1198
Roger Bacon
Christopher Columbus
Vasco de Gama
Ilchester, 1214
Genoa, 1445
Sines, 1469 (Portugal)
1292
1306
1525
i Ferdinand Magellan
Nicholas Copernicus
Ville de Sabroza, 1470
Thorn, 1473 (Prussia)
I Ç2I
1543
Andreas Vesalius
■ Conrad Gesner
Andrew Caesalpino
Tycho Brahe
1564
1565
1603
l60I
Giordano Bruno
Brussels, 1514
Zurich, 1516
Arezzo, 1519 (Tuscany)
Knudstrup, 1546
(Sweden)
Nola, 1550
Francis, Lord Bacon
London, 1561
1626
Galileo Galilei
Johann Kepler
Pisa, 1564
Wiirtemburg, 1571
1642
1630
William Harvey
Folkestone, 1578
1657
Thomas Hobbes
Malmesbury, 1578
i679
1
16OO
Speciality.
Earliest known Chemist
Expositor of Aristotle ; Physician
and Geologist
Translator and Commentator of
Aristotle
First English Experimentalist
Discoverer of America, 1492
Sailed round the South of Africa, 1
.1497
Circumnavigator of the Globe, 1519
Discoverer of the Sun as the Centre
of our System
Human Anatomy
Classification of Plants and Animals
Comparative Botanist
Collector of Astronomical Data
Expounder of the Copernican System,
and Philosopher
Expounder of the Inductive Philo- ;
sophy
Numerous Astronomical Discoveries
Discoverer of the Three Laws of ’
Planetary Movements
Discovered the Circulation of the
Blood
One of the Founders of Modern
Ethics
�THE RENASCENCE OF SCIENCE
Leading Men
Name.
of
57
Science—Continued.
Place and Date of Birth. Died.
Speciality.
René Descartes
La Haye, 1596
(Touraine)
1650
Benedict Spinoza
Amsterdam, 1632
1677
John Locke
Wrington, 1632
(Somerset)
Leipsic, 1646
1704
Resolution of all Phenomena in
terms of Matter and Motion (Dual- •
ism)
Resolution of all Phenomena in
terms of Substance — God (Mo
nism)
Moral Philosopher
!
1716
Philosopher and Mathematician
1727
Expounder of the Law of Gravitation
Astronomer
Psychology of Man
Systematic Botany and Zoology
Count de Buffon
Woolsthorpe, 1642
(Lincoln)
London, 1656
Illingworth, 1705
Roeshult, 1707
(Sweden)
Burgundy, 1707
David Hume
Edinburgh, 1711
1776
Immanuel Kant
James Hutton
Erasmus Darwin
Kdnigsburg, 1724
Edinburgh, 1726
Elton, 1731
(Lincolnshire)
Bezantin, 1744
1804
1797
1802
Hanover, 1738
Beaumont
en-Ange,
1749
Pomerania, 1766
Eaglesfield, 1767
(Cumberland)
Montbéliard, 1769
Etampes, 1772
Berlin, 1769
1822
1827
J 833
1844
Churchill, 1769 (Oxon)
1840
Boucher de Perthes
Rèthel, 1788
1868
Sir William Hooker
Sir Charles Lyell
Norwich, 1785
Kinnordy, 1797
(Forfarshire)
Esthonia, 1792
1865
1875
Lancaster, 1804
Germany, 1805
Neuss, 1810 (Prussia)
Potsdam, 1821
1892
1872
1882
1894
Gottfried Wilhelm
Leibnitz
Sir Isaac Newton
Edmund Halley
David Hartley
Carl von Linnaeus
Jean Baptiste Lamarck
Sir William Herschel
Marquis de Laplace
Conrad Sprengel
John Dalton
Baron Cuvier
Geoff. St. Hilaire
Alexander von Humboldt
William Smith
Ernst von Baer
Sir Richard Owen
Hugo von Mohl
Theodor Schwann
Hermann von Helmholtz
1741
1757
1778
1788
1829
1832
1844
1859
1876
Contributions from Biology and i
Geology towards Theory of Evo
lution
Philosophy of the Anti-Supernatural, converging in Man
Formulator of the Nebular Theory
Geologist : Uniformitarian
{See Buffon)
Biologist : Contributions against
Theory of Fixity of Species
Astronomer
Expounder of the Nebular Theory
Botanist
P'ormulator of the Modern Atomic
Theory
Palaeontologist and Anatomist
Zoologist
Explorer
Geologist ; mapped Strata of Great
Britain
Discoverer of Evidences of Man’s
Antiquity
Botanist
Geologist ;
developed
Hutton’s
Theory
Embryologist ; Law of Organic
Development
Palaeontologist
Discoverer of Protoplasm
Founder of the Cell Theory
Formulator of the Doctrine of the
Conservation of Energy
�PART IV
MODERN EVOLUTION
i. Darwin and Wallace
. “We have to deal with Man as a product of Evolution ; with Society as a product of Evolu
tion ; and with Moral Phenomena as products of Evolution.”—Herbert Spencer, Principles
of Ethics, § 193.
Charles Robert Darwin (the second
1873 by his distinguished cousin, Francis
name was rarely used by him) was born Galton, he says : “I consider that all I
at Shrewsbury on the 12 th February, have learnt of any value has been self1809. He came of a long line of Lincoln taught ”; and he adds that his education
shire yeomen, whose forbears spelt the ■ fostered no methods of observation or
name variously, as Darwen, Derwent, and reasoning. Of the Shrewsbury Grammar
Darwynne, perhaps deriving it from the School, where, after the death of his
river of kindred name. His father was mother (daughter of Josiah Wedgwood,
a kindly, prosperous doctor, of sufficient the celebrated potter), in his ninth year,
scientific reputation to secure his election he was placed as a border till his six
into the Royal Society, although that teenth year, he tells us, in the modest
coveted honour was then more easily and candid “ Autobiography ” printed in
obtained than now.
Of the more the Life and Letters, “nothing could
famous grandfather, Erasmus Darwin,
have been worse for the development of
the reminder suffices that both his prose my mind.” All that he was taught were
and poetry were vehicles of suggestive the classics, and a little ancient geo
speculations on the development of life graphy and history; no mathematics,
forms. Dealing with bald facts and and no modern languages. Happily, he
dates for clearance of what follows, it had inherited a taste for natural history
may be added that Charles Darwin was and for collecting, his spoils including
educated at the Grammar School of his not only shells and plants, but also coins
native town; that he passed thence to and seals. When the fact that he helped
Edinburgh and Cambridge Universities; | his brother in chemical experiments be
was occupied as volunteer naturalist on came known to Dr. Butler, the headboard the Beagle from December, 1831, . master, that desiccated pedagogue pub
till October, 1836; that he published his
licly rebuked him “ for wasting time on
epoch-making Origin of Species in Novem ■ such useless subjects.” Then his father,
ber, 1859; and that he was buried by I angry at finding that he was doing no
the side of Sir Isaac Newton in West good at school, reproved him for caring
minster Abbey on the 26th April, 1882.
for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat
As with not a few other men of “ light catching, and declared that he would be
and leading,” neither school nor univer a disgrace to the family ! He sent him
sity did much for him, nor did his boy to Edinburgh University with his brother
hood give indication of future greatness. to study medicine, but Darwin found the
In his answers to the series of questions dulness of the lectures intolerable, and
addressed to various scientific men in the sight of blood sickened him, as it
�modernevolution
did his father. Although the effect of
the u incredibly ” dry lectures on geology
made him—the future Secretary of the
Geological Society !—vow never to read a
book on the science, or in any way study
it, his interest in biological subjects grew,
and its firstfruits were shown in a paper
read before-the Plinian Society at Edin
burgh in 1826, in which he reported his
discovery that the so-called ova of
Flustra, or the sea-mat, were larvae.
But his father had to accept the fact
that Darwin disliked the idea of being a
doctor, and, fearing that he would de
generate into an idle sporting-man, pro
posed that he should become a clergy
man ! Darwin says upon this
I asked for some time to consider, as from what
little I had heard or thought on the subject I
had scruples about declaring my belief in all the
dogmas of the Church of England, though other
wise I liked the thought of being a country
clergyman.
Accordingly I read with care
Pearson on the Creed, and a few other books on
divinity; and, as I did not then in the least
doubt the strict and literal truth of every word
in the Bible, I soon persuaded myself that our
creed must be fully accepted. Considering how
fiercely I have been attacked by the orthodox,
it seems ludicrous that I once intended to be a
clergyman. Nor was this intention and my
father’s wish ever formally given up, but died a
natural death when, on leaving Cambridge, I
joined the Beagle as naturalist. If the phreno
logists are to be trusted, I was well fitted in one
respect to be a clergyman. A few years ago the
secretaries of a German psychological society
asked me earnestly by letter for a photograph of
myself; and some time afterwards I received the
proceedings of one of the meetings, in which it
seemed that the shape of my head had been the
subject of a public discussion, and one of the
speakers declared that I had the bump of
reverence developed enough for ten priests.
The result was that early in 1828
Darwin went to Cambridge, the three
years spent at which were “ time wasted,
as far as the academical studies were
concerned.” His passion for shooting
and hunting led him into a sporting,
card-playing, drinking company, but
science was his redemption. No pursuit
gave him so much pleasure as collecting
beetles, of his zeal in which the following
is an example : “ One day, on tearing off
gome old bark, I saw two rare beetles,
59
and seized one in each hand; then I saw
a third and a new kind, which I could
not bear to lose, so I popped the one
which I held in my right hand into my
mouth. Alas ! it ejected some intensely
acrid fluid, which burnt my tongue so
that I was forced to spit the beetle out,
which was lost, as was the third one.”
Happily for his future career, and
therefore for the interests of science,
Darwin became intimate with men like
Whewell, Henslow, and Sedgwick, while
the reading of Humboldt’s Personal
Narrative, and of Sir John Herschel’s
Introduction to Natural Philosophy,
stirred up in him “ a burning zeal to add
even the most humble contribution to
the noble structure of Natural Science.”
The vow. to eschew geology was quickly
broken when he came under the spell of
Sedgwick’s influence, but it was the
friendship of Henslow that determined
his after career, and prevented him from
becoming the “Rev. Charles Darwin.”
For on his return from a geological tour
in Wales with Sedgwick he found a letter
from Henslow awaiting him, the purport
of which is in the following extract:—
“ I have been asked by Peacock
(Lowndean Professor of Astronomy at
Cambridge) to recommend him a
naturalist as companion to Captain Fitz
Roy, employed by Government to survey
the southern extremity of America. I
have stated that I consider you to be
the best-qualified person I know of who
is likely to undertake such a situation.”
In connection with this the following
memorandum from Darwin’s pocket-book
of 1831 is of interest:—-“Returned to
Shrewsbury at end of August. Refused
offer of voyage.”
This refusal was given at the instance
of his father, who objected to the scheme
as “ wild and unsettling, and as disreput
able to his character as a clergyman ” ;
but he soon yielded on the advice of his
brother-in-law, Josiah Wedgwood, and on
Darwin’s plea that he “ should be deuced
clever to spend more than his allowance
whilst on board the Beagle! On this
his father answered with a smile, “ Bpt
�6o
PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION
they tell me you are very clever.” It is
amusing to find that Darwin narrowly
escaped being rejected by Fitz-Roy, who,
as a disciple of Lavater, doubted
whether a man with such a nose as
Darwin’s “ could possess sufficient energy
and determination for the voyage.”
The details of that voyage, the first of
the two memorable events in Darwin’s
otherwise unadventurous life, are set
down in delightful narrative in his
Naturalist's Voyage Round the World,
and it will suffice to quote a passage
from the autobiography bearing on the
significance of the materials collected
during his five years’ absence
During the voyage of the Beagle I had been
deeply impressed by discovering in the Pampean
formation great fossil animals covered with
armour like that on the existing armadillos;
secondly, by the manner in which closely allied
animals replace one another in proceeding
southwards over the continent; and. thirdly, by
the South American character of most of the
productions of the Galapagos Archipelago, and
more especially by the manner in which they
differ slightly on each island of the group, none
of the islands appearing to be very ancient in a
geological sense. It was evident that such
facts as these, as well as many others, could
only be explained on the supposition that species
gradually became modified; and the subject
haunted me. But it was equally evident that
“none of the evolutionary theories then current
in the scientific world ” could account for the
innumerable cases in which organisms of every
kind are beautifully adapted to their habits
of life...... I had always been much struck by
such adaptations, and until these could be
explained it seemed to me almost useless to
endeavour to prove by indirect evidence that
species have been modified...... In October,
1838—that is, fifteen months after I had begun
my systematic inquiry—I happened to read for
amusement Malthus on Population, and, being
well prepared to appreciate the struggle for
existence which everywhere goes on, from longcontinued observations of the habits of plants
and animals, it at once struck me that under
these circumstances favourable variations would
tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones
destroyed. The result of this would be the
formation of new species.
Shortly after his return he settled in
London, prepared his journal and manu
scripts of observations for publication,
and opened, he says, under date of July,
1837, “my first note-book for facts in
relation to the origin of species, about
which I had long reflected, and never
ceased working for the next twenty
years.” He acted for two years as one
of the honorary secretaries of the Geo
logical Society, which brought him into
close relations with Lyell; and, as his
health then allowed him to go into
society, he saw a good deal of prominent
literary and scientific contemporaries.
In the autumn of 1842, two years and
eight months after his marriage with his
first cousin, Emma Wedgwood, who died
in October, 1896, Darwin removed from
London, the air and social demands
of which were alike unsuited to his
health, and finally fixed upon a house in
the secluded village of Down, near
Beckenham, where he spent the rest of
his days. Henceforth the life of Darwin
is merged in the books in which, from
time to time, he gave the result of his
long years of patient observation and
inquiry, from the epoch-making Origin
to the monograph on earthworms. With
bad health, apparently due to gouty
tendencies aggravated by chronic sea
sickness during his voyage ; with nights
that never gave unbroken sleep, and
days that were never passed without
prostrating pain; he might well have felt
justified in doing nothing whatever. But
he was saved from the accursed monotony
of a wealthy invalid’s life by his insatiate
delight in searching for that solution of
the problem of the mutability of species
which time would not fail to bring. In
this, he tells us, he forgot his “ daily
discomfort,” and thus was delivered from
morbid introspection.
Darwin worked at his rough- notes on
the variation of animals and plants under
domestication, adding facts collected by
“ printed inquiries, by conversations with
skilful breeders and gardeners, and by
extensive reading,” gleams of light coming
till he says that he is “ almost convinced
that species are not (it is like confessing
a murder) immutable.” But he was still
groping in the dark as to the application
of selection to wild plants and animals,
until, as remarked above, the chance
�MODERN EVOLUTION
reading of Malthus suggested a working
theory. A brief sketch of this theory,
written out in pencil in 1842, was
elaborated in 1844 into an essay of two
hundred and thirty pages. The im
portance attached to this was shown in a
letter which Darwin then addressed to
his wife, charging her, in the event of
his death, to apply ^400 to the expense
of publication. He also named certain
competent men from whom an editor
might be chosen, preference being given
to Sir Charles (then Mr.) Lyell, at
whose advice Darwin began to write out
his views on a scale three or four times
as extensive as that in which they
appeared in the Origin of Species. Their
publication in an abstract form was
hastened by the receipt, in June, 1858,
of a paper, containing “ exactly the same
theory,” from Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace
at Ternate in the Moluccas. This refer
ence to that distinguished explorer will,
before the story of the coincident dis
covery is further told, fitly introduce a
sketch of his career.
Alfred Russel Wallace was born
at Usk, in Monmouthshire, on the 8th
January, 1823. He was educated at
Hereford Grammar School, and in his
fourteenth year began the study of land
surveying and architecture under an
elder brother. Quick-witted and obser
ving, he studied a great deal more on
his own account in his journeyings over
England and Wales, the results of which
abide in the wide range of subjects—
Scientific, political, and social—engaging
his active pen from early manhood to
the present day.
About 1844 he exchanged the theo
dolite for the ferule, and became Eng
lish master in the Collegiate School at
Leicester, in which town he found a
congenial friend in the person of his
future fellow-traveller, Henry Walter
Bates. Bates was then employed in his
father’s hosiery warehouse, from which
he escaped, as often as the long working
hours then prevailing allowed, into the
fields with his collecting-box. Both
Schoolmaster and shopman were ardent
61
naturalists, Mr. Wallace, as he tells us,
being at that time “chiefly interested in
botany,” but he afterwards took up his
friend’s favourite pursuit of entomology.
The writer, when preparing his memoir
of Bates (which prefaces a reprint of the
first edition of the delightful Naturalist
on the Amazons'), learned from Mr.
Wallace that in early life he did not
keep letters from Bates and other corre
spondents.
But, fortunately, among
Bates’s papers there was a bundle of in
teresting letters from Wallace written
between June, 1845, and October, 1847,
from Neath, in South Wales, to which
town he had removed. In one of
these, dated the 9th November, 1845,
Wallace asks Bates if he had read the
Vestiges of the Natural History of Crea
tion, and a subsequent letter indicates
that Bates had not formed a favourable
opinion of the book. A later letter is
interesting as conveying an estimate of
Darwin. “ I first,” Wallace says, “ read
Darwin’s Journal three or four years
back, and have lately re-read it. As the
journal of a scientific traveller, it is
second only to Humboldt’s Personal
Narrative ; as a work of general interest,
perhaps superior to it. He is an ardent
admirer and most able supporter of
Mr. Lyell’s views. Elis style of writing
I very much admire, so free from all
labour, affectation, or egotism, yet so full
of interest and original thought.”
But of still greater moment is a letter
in which Wallace tells Bates that he
begins “ to feel dissatisfied with a mere
local collection. I should like to take
some one family to study thoroughly,
principally with a view to the theory of
the origin of species.” The two friends
had often discussed schemes for going
abroad to explore some virgin region,
nor could their scanty means prevent the
fulfilment of a scheme which has en
riched both science and the literature of
travel. The choice of country to explore
was settled by Wallace’s perusal of a
little book entitled A Voyage up the
River Amazons, including a Residence in
Pard, by W. H. Edwards, an American
�Ó2
PIONEERS OE EVOLUTION
tourist, published in Murray’s “ Family
Library” in 1847. In the autumn of
that year Wallace proposed a joint expe
dition to the River Amazons for the
purpose of exploring the Natural History
of its banks ; the plan being to make a
collection of objects, dispose of the
duplicates in London to pay expenses,
and gather facts, as Mr. Wallace ex
pressed it in one of his letters, “ towards
solving the problem of the origin of
species.”
The choice was a happy one, for,
except by the German zoologist von
Spix, and the botanist von Martius in
1817-20, and subsequently by Count de
Castelnau, no exploration of a region so
rich and interesting to the biologist had
been attempted. Early in 1848 Bates
and Wallace met in London to study
South American animals and plants in
the principal collections, and afterwards
went to Chatsworth to gain information
about orchids, which they proposed to
collect in the moist tropical forests and
send home.
On 26th April, 1848, they embarked
at Liverpool in a bargue of only 192 tons
burthen, one of the few ships then
trading to Para, to which seaport of the
Amazons region a swift passage, “ straight
as an arrow,” brought them on 28th
May.
The travellers soon settled in a rocinha,
or country-house, a mile and a-half from
Para, and close to the forest, which came
down to their doors. Like other towns
along the Amazons, Para stands on
ground cleared from the forest that
stretches, a well-nigh pathless jungle of
luxuriant primeval vegetation, two thou
sand miles inland. In that paradise of
the naturalist the collectors gathered
consignments which met with ready sale
in London, and thus spent a couple of
years in pursuits moderately remunerative
and wholly pleasurable, till, on reaching
Barra, at the mouth of the Rio Négro, one
thousand miles from Para, in March,
1850, Bates and Wallace, who was
accompanied by his younger brother,
parted company, “finding it more con
venient to explore separate districts and
collect independently.” Wallace took the
northern parts and tributaries of the
Amazons, and Bates kept to the main
stream, which, from the direction it
seems to take at the fork of the Rio
Negro, is called the Upper Amazons or
the Solimoens. Different in character
and climatic conditions from the Lower
Amazons, it flows through a “ vast plain
about a thousand miles in length, and
five hundred or six hundred miles in
breadth, covered with one uniform, lofty,
impervious, and humid forest.” Bates
stayed in the country till June, 1859, but
Wallace left in 1852, and in the following
year published an account of his journey
under the title of Travels on the Amazon
and Rio Negro. That book was written
under the serious disadvantage of the
destruction of the greater part of the
notes and specimens by the burning of
the ship in which Mr. Wallace took pas
sage on his homeward voyage. That it
remains one of the select company of
works of travel for which demand is con
tinuous is evidenced in a reprint which
appeared in 1891. If it affords few hints
of the author’s bent of mind towards the
question of the origin of species, it shows
what interest was being aroused within
him over the allied subject of the geo
graphical distribution of plants and
animals which Mr. Wallace was to make
so markedly his own.
In 1854 he sailed for the Malay Archi
pelago, where nearly eight years were
spent in exploring the region from
Sumatra to New Guinea. The large and
varied outcome of that labour was
embodied in numerous papers com
municated to learned societies and
scientific journals, and in a series of
delightful books from The Malay Archi
pelago> first published in 1869, to Island
Life, published in 1880. Among the
minor results of his extensive travels—for all else that Wallace did pales before
the great discovery which links his name
with Darwin’s—was the establishment of
a line, known as “ Wallace’s,” which
divides the Malay Archipelago into two
�MODERN E VOL UTION
63
main groups, “ Indo-Malaysia and Austro- to Mr. Darwin,” asking him, if he thought
Malaysia, marked by distinct species and well of the essay, to send it to Lyell.
groups of animals.” That line runs This Darwin did with the following
through a deep channel separating the remarks : “ Your words have come true
islands of Bali and Lombok; the plants with a vengeance—that I should be fore
and animals on which, although but stalled........ I never saw a more striking
fifteen miles of water separate them, coincidence; if Wallace had my MS.
differ from each other even more than do sketch written out in 1742, he could not
the islands of Great Britain and Japan. have made a better short abstract!
f‘A similar line, but somewhat farther Even his terms now stand as heads of
east, divides on the whole the Malay my chapters. Please return me the MS.,
which he does not say he wishes me to
from the Papuan races of man.”
Among the more fugitive contributions publish; but I shall, of course, at once
which mark Mr. Wallace’s approach to write and offer to send to any journal.
a solution of the problem in quest of So all my originality, whatever it may
which he and Bates went to the Amazons amount to, will be smashed, though my
is a paper, On the Law which has Regu book, if it will ever have any value, will
lated the Introduction of New Species, not be deteriorated, as all the labour
published in the Annals and Magazine consists in the application of the theory.”
of Natural History, 1855. In this he j Darwin came out well in this business.
shows that some form of evolution of For to have hit upon a theory which
one species from another is needed to interprets so large a question as the
explain the geological and geographical origin and causes of modification of life
forms; to keep on turning it over and
facts of which examples are given.
In the interesting preface to the reprint over again in the mind for twenty long
of the famous paper On the Tendencies years ; to spend the working hours of
of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from every day in collection and verification
the Original Type, Mr. Wallace recites of facts for and against it; and then to
the several researches which he made in have another man launching a “ bolt
quest of that “ form ” till, when lying ill from the blue ” in the shape of a paper
with fever at Ternate, in February, 1858, with exactly the same theory, might well
Something led him to think of the disturb even a philosopher of Darwin’s
“ positive checks ” described by Malthus serenity.
However, both Hooker and Lyell had
in his Essay on Population, a book
which he had read some years before. read his sketch a dozen years before, and
Oddly enough, therefore, the honours lie it was arranged by them, not as con
with the maligned Haileybury Reverend sidering claims of priority, which have
Professor of Political Economy in fur too often been occasion of unworthy
nishing both Darwin and Wallace with wrangling, but in the “ interests of science
the clue. The “ positive checks ”—war, generally,” that an abstract of Darwin’s
disease, famine—Wallace felt must act manuscript should be read with Wallace’s
even more effectively on the lower paper at a meeting of the Linnean
animals than on man, because of their Society on the 1st July, 1858. The full
more rapid rate of multiplication. And title of the joint communication was,
he tells us, in the prefatory note to a On the Tendencies of Species to Form
Varieties, and on the Perpetuation of
reprint of his paper, “there suddenly
Varieties and Species by Natural Selec
flashed on me the idea of the survival of
the fittest, and in the two hours that tion. Sir Joseph Hooker, describing the
elapsed before my ague fit was over I gathering, says that “ the interest excited
had thought out the whole of the theory, was intense, but the subject was too
and in the two succeeding evenings wrote novel and too ominous for the old school
it out in full and sent it by the next post to enter the lists before armouring.”
�64
PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION
After the meeting it was talked over with
bated breath. Lyell’s approval, and,
perhaps, in a small way mine, as his
lieutenant in the affair, rather overawed
the Fellows, who would otherwise have
flown out against the doctrine. We had,
too, the vantage ground of being familiar
with the authors and their theme.”
Nothing can deprive Mr. Wallace of the
honour due to him as the co-originator of
the theory, which, regarded in its appli
cation to the origin, history, and destiny
of man, involves the most momentous
changes in belief, and there may be fitly
quoted here his own modest, and doubt
less correct, assessment of limitations
which in no wise invalidate his high
claims. In the Preface to his Contribu
tions to the Theory of Natural Selection
(1870) Mr. Wallace says the book will
prove that he both saw at the time the
value and scope of the law which he had
discovered, and has since been able to
apply to some purpose in a few original
lines of investigation. “ But,” he adds,
“ here my claims cease. I have felt all
my life, and I still feel, the most sincere
satisfaction that Mr. Darwin had been at
work long before me, and that it was not
left for me to attempt to write the Origin
of Species. I have long since measured
my own strength, and know full well
that it would be quite unequal to that
task. Far abler men than myself may
confess that they have not that untiring
patience in accumulating, and that won
derful skill in using, large masses of
facts of the most varied kind—that wide
and accurate physiological knowledge—
that acuteness in devising and skill in
carrying out experiments, and that ad
mirable style of composition at once
clear, persuasive, and judicial—qualities
which, in their harmonious combination,
mark out Mr. Darwin as the man, per
haps of all men now living, best fitted
for the great work he has undertaken and
accomplished.”
In a letter to Wallace dated 20th
April, 1870, Darwin says: “There has
never been passed on me, or, indeed, on
any one, a higher eulogium than yours.
I wish that I fully deserved it. Your
modesty and candour are very far from
new to me. I hope it is a satisfaction to
you to reflect—and very few things in
my life have been more satisfactory to
me—that we have never felt any jealousy
towards each other, though in one sense
rivals. I believe I can say this of my
self with truth, and I am absolutely sure
it is true of you.”
But on one question, and that round
which discussion still rages, the friends
were poles asunder. There had been
correspondence between them as to the
bearing of the theory of natural selection
on man, and in April, 1869, Darwin
wrote: “As you expected, I differ
grievously from you, and I am very
sorry for it. I can see no necessity for
calling in an additional and proximate
cause in regard to man.” In the fifteenth
chapter of his comprehensive book on
Darwinism, Wallace admits the action
of natural selection in man’s physical
structure. This structure classes him
among the vertebrates; the mode of
human suckling classes him among the
mammals; his blood, his muscles, and
his nerves, the structure of his heart with
its veins and arteries, his lungs and his
whole respiratory and circulatory systems,
all closely correspond to those of other
mammals, and are often almost identical
with them. He possesses the samenumber
of limbs, terminating in the same
number of digits, as belong funda
mentally to the mammals. His senses
are identical with theirs, and his organs
of sense are the same in number and
occupy the same relative position. Every
detail of structure which is common to
the Mammalia as a class is found also in
man, while he differs from them only in
such ways and degrees as the various
species or groups of mammals differ from
each other. He is, like them, begotten
by sexual conjugation; like them, de
veloped from a fertilised egg, and in
his embryonic condition passes through
stages recapitulating the variety of enor
mously remote ancestors of whom he is
�MODERN EVOLUTION
the perfected descendant. Full-grown,
he appears as most nearly allied to the
anthropoid or man-like apes; so much
does his skeleton resemble theirs that,
comparing him with the chimpanzee, we
find, with very few exceptions, bone for
bone, differing only in size, arrangement,
and proportion.
Mr. Wallace, therefore, rejected the
idea of man’s special creation “ as being
entirely unsupported by facts, as well as
in the highest degree improbable.” But
he would not allow that natural selection
explains the origin of man's spiritual and
intellectual nature. These, he argues,
“ must have had another origin, and for
this origin we can only find an adequate
cause in the unseen universe of Spirit.”
More detailed treatment of this argu
ment will be given further on; here
reference is made to it as furnishing the
explanation why Mr. Wallace kept not
his “ first estate,” and dropped out of
the ranks of Pioneers of Evolution.
Many subjects, as hinted above, have
occupied his facile pen—land nationali
sation, causes of depression in trade,
labourers’ allotments, vaccination, et hoc
genus omne; showing, at least, the pro
minence which all social matters occupy
in the minds of the leading exponents of
the theory of Evolution. For of this, as
will be seen, both Herbert Spencer and
Huxley supply cogent examples in their
application of that theory to human
interests. But it is as a defender,
although on lines of his own not wholly
orthodox, of supernaturalism, with atten
dant beliefs in miracles and the grosser
forms of spiritualism, that Mr. Wallace
appears in the character of opponent to
the inclusion of man’s physical nature as
a product of Evolution.
The arresting influence of these views,
when backed by honest, sincere, and
eminent men of the type of Mr. Wallace,
and when also supported by several
prominent men of science, renders it
desirable to show that modern psychism
is but savage animism “ writ large,” and
wholly explicable on the theory of con
tinuity. In his book on Miracles and
65
Modern Spiritualism, of which a revised
edition, with chapters on Apparitions and
Phantasms, was issued in 1895, Mr.
Wallace contends that “ Spiritualism, if
true, furnishes such proofs of the exist
ence of ethereal beings, and of their
power to act upon matter, as must revo
lutionise philosophy. It demonstrates
the actuality of forms of matter and
modes of being before inconceivable;
it demonstrates mind without brain, and
intelligence disconnected from what we
know as the material body; and it thus
cuts away all presumption against our
continued existence after the physical
body is disorganised and dissolved. Yet
more, it demonstrates, as completely as
the fact can be demonstrated, that the
so-called dead are still alive; that our
friends are still with us, though unseen,
and guide and strengthen us when, owing
to absence of proper conditions, they
cannot make their presence known. It
thus furnishes a proof of a future life,
which so many crave, and for want of
which so many live and die in anxious
doubt, so many in positive disbelief. It
substitutes a definite, real, and practical
conviction for a vague, theoretical, and
unsatisfying faith. It furnishes actual
knowledge on a matter of vital importance
to all men, and as to which the wisest
men and most advanced thinkers have
held, and still hold, that no knowledge
was attainable.”
This claim, this tremendous claim,
on behalf of the phenomena of spirit
ualism to supply an answer to “ the
question of questions : the ascertainment
of man’s relation to the universe of
things; whence our race has come; to
what goal we are tending,” rests on the
assumption with which Mr. Wallace
starts—“Spiritualism, if true."
The essay from which the above pas
sages are quoted is preceded by re
ferences in detail to a considerable
number of cases of “ the appearance of
preterhuman or spiritual beings,” the
evidence of which “ is as good and
definite as it is possible for any evidence
of any fact to be.” These ghost stories
�66
PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION
contrasted with the full-flavoured eerie
tales of old, are feebly monotonous. The
apparatus of the medium is limited ; the
phenomena are largely of the “ horse
play ” order. Through the whole series
we vainly seek for some ennobling and
exalting conception of a life beyond,
some glimpses “behind the veil,” only
to find that the shades are but diluted
or vulgarised parodies of ourselves; or
that “ the filthy are filthy still,” like the
departed bargee whose “ communicating
intelligence” (we quote from a recent
book on spiritualism entitled The Great
Secret} was as coarse-mouthed as when
in the flesh. In considering, if it be
deemed worth while, the evidence of
genuineness of the occurrences, we are
thrown, not on the honesty, but on the
competency, of the witnesses. The most
eminent among these show themselves
persons of undisciplined emotions. The
distinguished physicist, Professor Oliver
Lodge, who has been described to the
writer by an intimate friend of the Pro
fessor as “ longing to believe some
thing,” argues that in dealing with
psychical phenomena a hazy, muzzy
state of mind is better than a mind
“ keenly awake ” and “ on the spot ” (see
“ Address ” to the Society for Psy
chical Research, Proceedings, part xxvi.,
pp. 14, 15). With this may be com
pared a Mohammedan receipt for sum
moning spirits given in Klunzinger’s
Upper Egypt (p. 386) : “ Fast seven days
in a lonely place, and take incense with
you. Read a chapter 1,001 times from
the Koran. That is the secret, and you
will see indescribable wonders; drums
will be beaten beside you, and flags
hoisted over your head, and you will see
spirits.” Thus have the dreamy Oriental
Moslem and the self-hypnotised Western
professor met together to elicit truth
from trance.
Concerning the competence of Mr.
Wallace himself to weigh, unbiassed, the
evidence which comes before him, it
suffices to cite the case of Eusapia
Paladino, a Neapolitan “ medium,” who,
in the words of one of her most ardent
dupes, became the “ unexpected instru
ment of driving conviction as to the
reality of psychical manifestations by
the invisible into the minds of many
scientists.” A number of distinguished
savants testified to the genuineness of
the woman’s performances in Professor
Richet’s cottage on the He Roubant in
the autumn of 1893. It was the serious
and complete conviction of all of them
(Lodge, Richet, Ochorowicz, and others)
that “ on no single occasion during the
occurrence of an event recorded by them
was a hand of Eusapia’s free to execute
any trick whatever.” Mr. Maskelyne,
such testimony notwithstanding, declared
that the whole business was “ the sorriest
of trickeries,” and, to the credit of the
Society for Psychical Research, it under
took the expense of bringing Eusapia to
England for the purpose of testing the
genuineness of her doings. She was
taken to a house in Cambridge, and
detected as a vulgar impostor. Yet Mr.
Wallace, in the new edition of his
Miracles and Modern Spiritualism, des
cribes all the phenomena occurring at
Professor Richet’s house as “ not ex
plicable as the result of any known
physical causes,” and, in a subsequent
explanatory letter to the Daily Chronicle
of 24th January, 1896, expresses the
opinion that “the Cambridge experi
ments, so far as they are recorded, only
prove that Eusapia might have deceived,
not that she actually and consciously did
so.” The integrity of Mr. Wallace is
not to be doubted, but what becomes of
his competence to judge when prejudice
blinds itself to facts? Spiritualism, if
true, demonstrates this and that about
the unseen; but spiritualism, proved to
be untrue, lacks half the dexterity of an
astute conjurer, and the whole of his
honesty. Every scientific man recognises
the doctrine of the Conservation of
Energy as a fundamental canon. But
with those who regard the phenomena
of spiritualism as “ not explicable ”
except by supernatural causes, it would
seem that that doctrine, as also the
not unimportant conditions.of Time and
�MODERN EVOLUTION
Space, count for nothing. When we
read their reports of the behaviour of
mediums who project (of course, in the
dark) “abnormal temporary prolonga
tions ” like pseudopodia, we should feel
alike depressed and confounded were there
not abundant proofs what wholly un
trustworthy observers scientific specialists
can be outside their own domain. As
the writer has remarked elsewhere, minds
of this type must be built in watertight
compartments. They show how, even
in the higher culture, the force of a
dominant idea may suspend or narcotise
the reason and judgment, and con
tribute to the rise and spread of another
of the epidemic delusions of which
history supplies warning examples.
They also show that man’s senses
have been his arch-deceivers, and his
preconceptions their abettors, through
out human history; that advance has
been possible only as he has escaped
through the discipline of the intellect
from the illusive impressions about phe
nomena which the senses convey. Upon
this matter the words of the late Dr.
Carpenter may be quoted, words the
more weighty because they are the
utterance of a man whose philosophy
was influenced by deep religious con
victions : “ With every disposition to
accept facts when I could once clearly
satisfy myself that they were facts, I
have had to come to the conclusion that,
whenever I have been permitted to
employ such tests as I should employ in
any scientific investigation, there was
either intentional deception on the part
of interested persons, or else self-decep
tion on the part of persons who were
Very sober-minded and rational upon all
ordinary affairs of life.”
He adds
further : “It has been my business lately
to inquire into the mental condition of
some of the individuals who have re
ported the most remarkable occurrences.
I cannot—-it would not be fair—say all I
Could with regard to that mental con
dition ; but I can only say this, that.it
all fits in perfectly well with the result of
my previous studies upon the subject—
67
viz., that there is nothing too strange to
be believed by those who have once
surrendered their judgment to the extent
of accepting as credible things which
common sense tells us are entirely in
credible.”
The fact abides that the great mass of
supernatural beliefs which have persisted
from the lower culture till now, and
which are still held by an overwhelming
majority of civilised mankind, are re
ferable to causes concomitant with man’s
mental development; causes operative
throughout his history. The low intel
lectual environment of his barbaric past
was constant for thousands of years, and
his adaptation thereto was complete.
The intrusion of the scientific method
in its application to man disturbed that
equilibrium. But this, as yet, only super
ficially. Like the foraminifera that per
sist in the ocean depths, the great
majority of mankind have remained but
slightly, if at all, modified; thus illus
trating the truth of the doctrine of evo
lution in their psychical history. (For
that doctrine does not imply all-round,
continuous advance. “ Let us never for
get,” Mr. Spencer says in Social Statics*
“ that the law is—adaptation to circum
stances, be they what they may.”) There
fore the superstitions that still dominate
the life of man, even in so-called civi
lised centres, are no stumbling-blocks to
us. They are supports along the path
of inquiry, because we account for their
persistence. Thought and feeling have
a common base, because man is a unit,
not a duality. But the exercise of the
one has been active from the beginnings
of his history—indeed we know not at
what point backwards we can classify it
as human or quasi-human—while the
other, speaking comparatively, has but
recently been called into play. So far as
its influence on the modern world goes,
may we not say that it began at least in
the domain of scientific naturalism with
the Ionian philosophers ? Emotionally,
we are hundreds of thousands of years
old ; rationally, we are embryos.
In other words, man wondered count
�68
PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION
less ages before he reasoned ; because ledge, sufficing causes of abnormal
feeling travels along the line of least re mental phenomena are found in abnor
sistance, while thought, or the challenge mal working of the mental apparatus.
by inquiry—-therefore- the assumption
The investigation of hallucinations (Lat.
that there may be two sides to a question alucinor, to wander in mind) leaves no
—must pursue a path obstructed by the
doubt that they are the effect of a morbid
dominance of custom, the force of imita condition of that intricate, delicately
tion, and the strength of prejudice and poised structure, the nervous system,
fear. It is here that anthropology, nota under which objects are seen and sensa
bly that psychical branch of it compre tions felt when no corresponding im
hended under folk-lore, takes up the cue pression has been made through the
from the momentous doctrine of here medium of the senses. When the
dity ; explains the persistence of the nervous system is out of gear, voices,
primitive ; and the causes of man’s tardy whether divine or of the dead, may be
escape from the illusions of the senses, heard ; and actual figures may be seen.
and the general conservatism of human A mental image becomes a visual image;
nature.
“ Born into life ! in vain, an imagined pain a real pain, as the
Opinions, those or these, unalter’d to great physiologist, John Hunter, testified
retain the obstinate mind decrees,” as in when he said : “I am confident that I
the striking illustration cited in Heine’s can fix my attention to .any part until I
Travel-Pictures. “ A few years ago have a sensation in that part.” Shake
Bullock dug up an ancient stone idol in speare portrays the like condition when
Mexico, and the next day he found that Macbeth attempts to clutch the dagger
it had been crowned during the night wherewith to stab Duncan :
with flowers. And yet the Spaniard had
“ There’s no such thing ;
exterminated the old Mexican religion
It is the bloody business which informs
with fire and sword, and for three
Thus to mine eyes.”
centuries had been engaged in ploughing
This abnormal state, which sees things
and harrowing their minds and im
planting the seed of Christianity.” The having no existence outside the “ mind’s
causes of error and delusion, and of the eye,” is no respecter of persons; the
spiritual nightmares of olden time, being savage and the civilised are alike its
made clear, there is begotten a generous victims. It may be organic or functional.
sympathy with that which empirical Organic, when disease is present; func
notions of human nature attributed to tional, through excessive fatigue, lack of
wilfulness or to man’s fall from a high food or sleep, or derangement of the
estate. Superstitions which are the out - digestive system, causing the patient, as
Hood says, “ to think he’s pious when
come of ignorance can only awaken pity.
Where the corrective of knowledge is he’s only bilious.” Under such con
absent, we see that it could not be ditions, hallucinations of all sorts
otherwise. Where that corrective is possess the mind; hallucinations from
present, but either perverted or not which the true peptic, who, as Carlyle
exercised, pity is supplanted by blame. says, “ has no system,” is delivered.
In either case, we learn that the art of Only the mentally anaemic, the emo
life largely consists in that control of the tionally overwrought, the unbalanced,
emotions and that diversion of them and the epileptic are the victims,
into wholesome channels which the in whether of the lofty illusions of august
tellect, braced with the latest know visions such as carried Saint Paul,
Saint Theresa, and Joan of Arc into the
ledge, can alone effect.
Therefore, discarding theories of reve presence of the holiest; or hallucina
lation, spiritual illumination, and other tion of drowned cat, thin and “ dripping
assumed supramundane sources of know with water,” born of the disordered
�MODËRN EVOLUTION
69
nerves of Mrs. Gordon Jones.
To ! is the initiative and incentive of inquiry,
quote iron
Dr. Gower’s Bowman of enterprise, and of noble ideals; un
Lecture {Nature, 4th July, 1895) on restricted, leads the dreamer and the
“ Subjective Visual Sensations,” such as enthusiast into engulfing quicksands of
Hence the
accompany fits, when, e.g, sensations of illusions and delusions.
sight occur without the retina being necessity of curbing a faculty so that, in
unison with reason, it works towards
stimulated :—definite ends within the domain, marking
- The spectra perceived before epileptic fits vary
man’s limits of service. As Dr. Maudsley
widely. They may be stars or sparks, spherical
luminous bodies or mere flashes of light, white
reminds us in his sane and sober book
or coloured, still or in movement. Often they
on Natural Causes and Supernatural
are more elaborate, distinct visions of faces,
Seeming, “ not by standing out of nature
persons, objects, places. They may be com
in the ecstasy of a rapt and over-strained
bined with sensations from the other special
senses, as with hearing and smell. In one case
idealism of any sort, but by large and close
a warning, constant for years, began with thump
and faithful converse with nature and
ing in the chest ascending to the head, where it
human nature in all their moods, aspects,
became a beating sound. Then two lights
and relations, is the solid basis of fruitful
appeared, advancing nearer with a pulsating
motion. Suddenly these disappeared and were
ideals and the soundest mental develop
replaced by the figure of an old woman in a red
ment laid. The endeavour to stimulate
cloak, always the same, who offered the patient
and strain any mental function to an
something that had the smell of Tonquin beans,
activity beyond the reach and need of a
and then he lost consciousness. Such warnings
may be called psychovisual sensations. The
physical correlate in external nature, and
psychical element may be very strong, as in one
to give it an independent value, is cer
woman whose fits were preceded by a sudden
tainly an endeavour to go directly con
distinct vision of London in ruins, the river
trary to the sober and salutary method
Thames emptied to receive the rubbish, and she
the only survivor of the inhabitants.
by which solid human development has
Had a man of lesser renown and taken place in the past, and is taking
mental calibre than Mr. Wallace thrown place in the present.”
the weight of his testimony into the
The story of Darwin’s work must now
scales in favour of spiritualism, there
would have been neither necessity nor be resumed. Shortly after the Linnean
excuse for this digression. But both meeting he prepared a series of chapters
these pleas prevail when we find the co- which, always regarded by him as an
formulator of the Darwinian theory “ Abstract,” ultimately took book form,
among mediums and their dupes. The and was published, under the title of
The Origin of Species, on the 24th Novem
respectful attention which his words
command ; the tremendous claims which ber, 1859.
The story of the reception of the work
he makes on behalf of the phenomena
at séances as proving the existence of is admirably told by Huxley in the
soul apart from body after death, and as chapter which he contributed to Darwin’s
revealing the conditions under which it Life and Letters, and it may be com
lives, have made incumbent the fore mended as useful reading to a generation
going attempt to indicate what other which, drinking-in Darwinism from its
birth, will not readily understand how
explanation is given of those phenomena,
showing how these fall in with all we such storm and outcry as rent the air,
know of man’s tendencies to imperfect both in scientific as well as clerical
observation and self-deception, and with quarters, could have been raised. “ In
all that history tells of the persistence of fact,” says Huxley, “the contrast between
the present condition of public opinion
animistic ideas.
A salutary lesson on the use and mis upon the Darwinian question; between
the estimation in which Darwin’s views
use of the imagination is thus taught.
That which, under wholesome restraint, are now held in the scientific world;
�7o
PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION
between the acquiescence, or at least
quiescence, of the theologian of the selfrespecting order at the present day, and
the outburst of antagonism on all sides
in 1858-59, when the new theory re
specting the origin of species first became
known to the older generation to which
I belong, is so startling that, except for
documentary evidence, I should be some
times inclined to think my memories
dreams.” The like reflection arises when
we consider the indifference with which
books of the most daring and revolu
tionary character, both in theology and
morals, are treated nowadays, in contrast
to the uproar which greeted such a bruturn
fulmen as Essays and Reviews. As for
Colenso’s Pentateuch, and books of its
type, orthodoxy has long taken them to
its bosom.
So far as the larger number of natural
ists, and of the intelligent public who
followed their lead, were concerned,
there was an absolutely open mind on
the question of the mutation of species.
There had been, as the foregoing sections
of this book have shown, a long time
of preparation and speculation. We
certainly find the keynote of Evolution in
Heraclitus, and more than two thousand
years after his time Herbert Spencer,
above all men, had removed it from the
empirical stage, and placed it on a base
broad as the facts which supported it.
But it needed the leaven of the human
and personal to stir it into life, and touch
man in his various interests; and not all
that Mr. Spencer had done in application
of the theory of development to social
questions and institutions could avail
much till Darwin’s theory gave it practical
shape. Dissertations on the passage of
the “homogeneous to the heterogeneous”;
explanations of the theory of the evolu
tion of complex sidereal systems out of
diffused vapours of seemingly simple
texture, interested people only in a vague
and wondering fashion.
But when
Darwin illustrated the theory of the
modification of life-forms by familiar
examples gathered from his own experi
ments and observations, and from inter
course with breeders of pigeons, horses,
and dogs, this went to men’s “ business
and bosoms,” and if the vulgar interpreted
Darwinism, as some, who should know
better, interpret it even now, as explaining
man’s descent from a monkey, or how a
bear became a whale by taking to swim
ming, the thoughtful accepted it as a
master-key unlocking not the mystery of
origins or of causes of variations, but the
mystery of the ceaselessly-acting agent
which, operating on favourable variations,
has brought about myriads of species
from simple forms.
As Huxley reminds us in the passage
quoted above, the attitude of the clergy
towards the theory of Evolution has
undergone an astounding change. Dr.
Whewell remarked that every great dis
covery in science has had to pass through
three stages. First, people said, “It is
absurd”; then they said, “It is contrary
to the Bible”; finally, they said, “We
always knew that it was so.” Thus it
has been with Evolution. It is calmly
discussed; even claimed as a “ defender
of the faith,” at Church Congresses now
adays. It was not so in the sixties. Here
and there a single voice was raised in
qualified sympathy—Canon Tristram and
Charles Kingsley showed more than this
—but both in the Old and the New World
the “ drum ecclesiastic ” was beaten. Car
dinal Manning declared Darwinism to be
a “ brutal philosophy—to wit, there is no.
God, and the ape is our Adam.” Pro
testant and Catholic agreed in condemn
ing it as “ an attempt to dethrone God ”;
as “a huge imposture,” as “tending to
produce disbelief of the Bible,” and “ to
do away with all idea of God,” as “turn
ing the Creator out of doors.” Such
are fair samples to be culled from the
anthology of invective which was the
staple content of nearly every “criticism.”
Occasionally some parody of reasoning
appears when the “argument” is advanced
that there is “a simpler explanation of
the presence of these strange forms
among the works of God in the fall of
Adam”; but even this pseudo-concession
to logic is rare, and one divine bad no
�MODERN EVOLUTION
hesitation in predicting the fate of
Darwin and his followers in the world
to come. “ If,” said a Dr. Duffield in
the Princeton Review, 11 the develop
ment theory of the origin of man shall,
in a little while, take the place—as
doubtless it will—with other exploded
scientific speculations, then they who
accept it with its proper logical conse
quences will, in the life to come, have
their portion with those who in this life
‘ know not God and obey not the Gospel
of His Son.’” But the most notable
attack came from Samuel Wilberforce,
then Bishop of Oxford, in the Quarterly
Review of July, i860. “It is,” said
Huxley, in his review of Haeckel’s
Evolution of Man, “ a production which
should be bound in good stout calf, or
better, asses’ skin, by the curious book
collector, together with Brougham’s
attack on the undulatory theory of light
when it was first propounded by Young.”
The Bishop declared “the principle of
natural selection to be absolutely incom
patible with the word of God,” and as
“ contradicting the revealed relations of
creation to its Creator.” If by “ revealed
relations ” and the “ word of God ” the
Bible is intended, the evolutionist is in
agreement with the bishop. But at this
time of day it seems scarcely worth while
to shake the dust off articles which have
gone the way of all purely controversial
matter, and justification for reference to
them lies only in the fact that the contest
between the biologists and the bishops
is not yet ended.
In contrast to all this, and in evidence
of the compromise by which theology
is vainly striving to justify itself, are
these vague sentences from Archdeacon
Wilson’s address at the Church Congress
at Shrewsbury in the autumn of 1896 :
“ It is scarcely too much to say that the
Theistic Evolutionist cannot be other
wise than a practical Trinitarian, and
cannot find a difficulty in the Incarnation
or in the doctrine of the Holy Spirit.”
“Christian doctrine, apart from the state
ment of historical facts, is the attempt
to create out of Christ’s teaching a
71
philosophy of life which shall satisfy
these needs (?>., the needs of humanity),
and it will therefore remain the same in
substance. But the form in which that
doctrine will be presented must change
with man’s intellectual environment.
The bearing of Evolution on Christian
doctrine is, therefore, in a word, to
modify, not the doctrine, but the form
in which it is expressed.”
Postponing the story of the famous
debate between Wilberforce and Huxley,
the reception accorded to the Origin of
Species by Darwin’s scientific contempo
raries may be noted. Herbert Spencer’s
position, as will be shown later on, was
already distinctive: he was an Evolutionist
before Darwin. Hooker, Huxley—who
said that he was prepared to go to the
stake, if needs be, in support of some
parts of the book—Bates, and Lubbock
were immediate converts; so were Asa
Gray and Lyell, but with reservations,
for Lyell, whose creed was Unitarian,
never wholly accepted the inclusion of
man, “body, soul, and spirit,” as the
outcome of natural selection. Henslow
and Pictet went one mile, but refused to
go twain; Agassiz, Murray, and Harvey
would have none of the new heresy;
neither would Adam Sedgwick, who
wrote a long protest to Darwin, couched
in loving terms, and ending with the hope
that “ we shall meet in heaven.” The
attitude of Owen, if apparently neutral
or tentative in open conversation, was,
as an anonymous critic, deadly hostile.
Although it is not included in the list of
his writings given in the Life by his
grandson, he is known to have been the
author of the critique on the Origin of
Species in the Edinburgh Review of April,
i860, and to have inspired the article
contributed by Bishop Wilberforce to the
Quarterly Review.
At the outset of the Edinburgh article
he speaks of Darwin’s “seduction” of
“several, perhaps the majority of our
younger naturalists ” by the homoeopathic
form of the transmutation of species pre
sented to them under the phrase of natural
selection........ “Owen has long stated his
�72
PIONEERS OF E VOL UTION
belief that some pre-ordained law or
secondary cause is operative in bringing
about the change....... we therefore re
gard the painstaking and minute com
parison by Cuvier of the osteological and
every other character that could be tested
in the mummified ibis, cat, or crocodile
with those of species living in his time ;
and the equally philosophical investiga
tion of the polyps operating at an interval
of thirty thousand years in the buildingup of coral reefs by the profound
palaeontologist of Neuchâtel [Agassiz is
here referred to], as of far truer value in
reference to the inductive determination
of the question of the origin of species
than the speculations of Démailler,
Buffon, Lamarck, ‘ Vestiges,’ Baden
Powell, or Darwin ” (p. 532).
Entangled in the meshes of this theory
of a “ pre-ordained law,” which seems to
bear some, relation to Aristotle’s “ per
fecting principle,” and is in close alliance
with the teaching of the great Cuvier, at
whose feet Owen had sat, he remained to
the end of his life a type of arrested
development. While the Church cited
him as an authority against the Darwinian
theory, especially in its application to
man’s descent, there remained in the
memory of his brother savants his lack
of candour in never withdrawing the
statement made by him, and demon
strated by Huxley as untrue, that the
“hippocampus minor” in the human
brain is absent from the brain of the ape.
As for the reception of the book
abroad, the French savants were some
what coy, but the Germans, with Haeckel
at their head, were enthusiastic. Darwin
had, like all prophets, more honour in
other countries than in his own, Evolu
tion being rechristened Darwinismes.
Translation after translation of the Origin
followed apace, and the personal interest
that gathered round the central idea led
to the perusal of the book by people who
had never before opened a scientific
treatise. Punch seized on it as subject
of caricature ; and writers of light verse
found welcome material for “chaff” which
the winds of oblivion have blown away,
a stanza here and there surviving, as in
Mr. Courthope’s Aristophanic lines:—
Eggs weie laid as before, but each time more
and more varieties struggled and bred,
1 ill one end of the scale dropped its ancestor’s
tail, and the other got rid of his head.
r rom ]]]e bilfi in brief words, were developed
the Birds, unless our tame pigeons and ducks
he;
From the tail and hind legs, in the second-laid
eggs> the apes—and Professor Huxley !
Heeding neither squib, satire, nor
sermon, Darwin, in the quiet of his
Kentish home, went on rearranging old
materials, collecting new materials, and
verifying both, the outcome of this being
his works on the Fertilisation of Orchids
and the Variation of Plants and Animals
under Domestication, published in 1862
and 1867 respectively. Between these
dates Huxley’s Man's Place in Nature-—
logical supplement to the Origin of Species
—appeared. But of this more anon.
Meanwhile, as already named, Mr.
Patrick Matthew had in the Gardener's
Chronicle of 7th April, i860, drawn
attention to an appendix to his book on
Naval Timber and Arboriculture pub
lished in 1831, in which he anticipated
Darwin and Wallace’s theory as follows :
“ The self-regulating adaptive disposi
tion of organised life may, in part, be
traced to the extreme fecundity of
Nature,, who, as before stated, has in all
the varieties of her offspring a prolific
power much beyond (in many cases a
thousandfold) what is necessary to fill up
the vacancies caused by senile decay.
As the field of existence is limited and
pre-occupied, it is only the hardier, more
robust, better-suited-to-circumstance in
dividuals who are able to struggle for
ward. to maturity, these inhabiting only
the situations to which they have superior
adaptation and greater power of occu
pancy than any other kind; the weaker
and less circumstance-suited being prema
turely destroyed. This principle is in
constant action; it regulates the colour,
the figure, the capacities, and instincts;
those individuals in each species whose
colour and covering are best suited to
concealment or protection from enemies,
�MODERN EVOLUTION
n
or defence from inclemencies or vicissi the central idea of the Origin: “How
tudes of climate, whose figure is best ac extremely stupid not to have thought
commodated to health, strength, defence, of that!” Twelve years elapsed before
and support; whose capacities and in Darwin followed up his world-shaking
stincts can best regulate the physical book with the Descent of Man. But the
energies to self-advantage according to ground had been prepared for its recep
circumstances—in such immense waste tion in the decade between i860 and
1870.
Quoting Grant Allen’s able
of primary and youthful life those only
come to maturity from the strict ordeal summary of the advance of the theory
by which Nature tests their adaptation to of Evolution in his Charles Darwin:
her standard of perfection and fitness to “ One by one the few scientific men who
continue their kind by reproduction ” still held out were overborne by the
weight of evidence.
Geology kept
(PP- 384, 385)While speaking of difficulty in under supplying fresh instances of transitional
standing some passages in Mr. Matthew’s forms; the progress of research in un
appendix, Darwin says that “the full explored countries kept adding to our
force of the principle of natural selec knowledge of existing intermediate species
tion ” is there, and, in referring to it in a and varieties. During those ten years
letter to Lyell, he adds that “ one may be Herbert Spencer published his First
excused in not having discovered the Principles, his Biology, and the remodelled
fact in a work on Naval Timber !”
form of his Psychology; Huxley brought
Five years after this another pre out Maps Place in Nature, the Lectures
Darwinian was unearthed, and, like on Comparative Anatomy, and the Intro
Patrick Matthew, in unsuspected com duction to the Classification of Animals;
pany. Dr. W. C. Wells read a paper Wallace produced his Malay Archipelago
before the Royal Society in 1813 on A and his Contributions to the Theory op
White Female, Part of whose Skin re Natural Selection [Bates, we may here
sembles that of a Negro ; but this was not add to Mr. Allen’s list, published his
published till 1818, when it formed part paper on Mimicry in 1861, and his
of a volume including the author’s Naturalist on the Amazons in 1863] ;
famous Two Essays upon Dew and Single and Galton wrote his admirable work on
Vision. In his “ Historical Sketch ” Hereditary Genius, of which his own
Darwin says that Wells “ distinctly recog family is so remarkable an instance.
nises the principle of natural selection, Tyndall and Lewes had long since signi
and this is the first recognition which has fied their warm adhesion. At Oxford,
been indicated; but he applies it only to Rolles ton was bringing up a fresh genera
the races of man, and to certain characters tion of young biologists in the new faith;
alone........ Of the accidental varieties of at Cambridge, Darwin’s old university,
man, which would occur among the first a whole school of brilliant and accurate
few and scattered inhabitants of the physiologists was beginning to make
middle regions of Africa, some one would itself both felt and heard. In the
be better fitted than the others to bear domain of anthropology Tylor was wel
the diseases of the country. This race coming the assistance of the new ideas,
would consequently multiply, while the while Lubbock was engaged on his
others would decrease; not only from kindred investigations into the Origin oj
their inability to sustain the attacks of Civilisation and the Primitive Condition
disease, but from their incapacity of of Man. All these diverse lines of
contending with their more vigorous thought both showed the widespread
neighbours.”
influence of Darwin’s first great work,
When the simplicity of the long-hidden and led up to the preparation of his
solution is brought home, we can under second, in which he dealt with the
stand Huxley’s reflection on mastering history and development of the human
�74
PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION
race. And what was thus true of Eng
land was equally true of the civilised
world, regarded as a whole: everywhere
the great evolutionary movement was
well in progress, everywhere the impulse
sent forth from the quiet Kentish home
was permeating and quickening the
entire pulse of intelligent humanity.”
The Origin of Species, as we have
seen, was intended as a rough draft or
preliminary outline of the theory of
natural selection. The materials which
Darwin had collected in support of that
theory being enormous, the several books
which followed between 1859 and 1881,
the year before his death, were expansions
of hints and parts of the pioneer book.
The last to appear was that treating of
The Formation of Vegetable Mould through
the Action of Worms. It embodied the
results of experiments which had been
carried on for more than forty years,
since as far back as 1837 Darwin read
a paper on the subject before the Geo
logical Society. Reference to it recalls
a story, characteristic of Darwin’s innate
modesty, told to the writer by the present
John Murray. Darwin called on the
elder Murray (presumably some time in
1880), and, after fumbling in his coat-tail
pocket, drew out a packet, which he
handed to Murray with the timidity of
an unfledged author submitting his first
manuscript. “ I have brought you,” he
said, “a little thing of mine on the action
of. worms on soil,” and then paused as
if in doubt whether Murray would care
to run the risk of bringing out the book !
One story leads to another, and our
second relates to the burial of Darwin in
Westminster Abbey. Among the signa
tures of members of Parliament, request
ing Dean Bradley’s consent to Darwin’s
interment there, was that of Mr. Richard
B. Martin, partner in the well-known
bank of that name, trading under the
sign of the “ Grasshopper.” In his
history of this old institution Mr. John B.
Martin prints the following letter, which
was received on the 27th April, 1882,
the day after Darwin’s funeral:—
----- & Co.
The accordance of a resting-place to
Darwin’s remains among England’s illus
trious dead in that Valhalla was an
irenicon from Theology to one whose
theories, pushed to their logical issues,
have done more than any other to under
mine the supernatural assumptions on
which it is built. Not that Darwin was
a man of aggressive type. If he speaks
on the high matters round which, like
planet tethered to sun, the spirit of man
revolves by irresistible attraction, it is with
hesitating voice and with no deep emotion.
A man of placid temper, in whom the
observing faculties were stronger than
the reflective, he was content to collect
and co-ordinate facts, leaving to others
the work of pointing out their significance,
and adjusting them, as best they could,
to this or that theory. It would be
unjust to say of him what John Morley
says of Voltaire, that “he had no ear for
the finer vibrations of the spiritual voice”;
but we know from his own confessions
what limitations hemmed-in his emotional
nature. The Life and Letters tell us
that he was glad, after the more serious
work and correspondence of the day
were over, to listen to novels, for which
he had a great love so long as they ended
happily, and contained “ some person
whom one can thoroughly love—if a pretty
woman, so much the better.” But,
strangely enough, he lost all pleasure in
music, art, and poetry after thirty. When
at school he enjoyed Thomson, Byron,
and Scott; Shelley gave him intense
delight, and he was fond of Shakespeare,
especially the historical plays; but in
his old age he found him “so intolerably
dull that it nauseated me.”
Sirs—We have this day drawn a check for
This curious and lamentable loss of the higher
the sum of ^280, which closes our account with
your firm. Our reasons for thus closing an
account opened so very many years ago are of so
exceptional a kind that we are quite prepared to
find that they are deemed wholly inadequate to
the result........ They are entirely the presence of
Mr. R. B. Martin at Westminster Abbey, not
merely as giving sanction to the same as an
individual, but appearing as one of the deputation
from a Society which has especially become the
endorser and sustainer of Mr. Darwin’s theories.
�MODERN EVOLUTION
eesthetic tastes is all the odder, as books on
history, biographies, and travels (independently
of any scientific facts which they may contain),
and essays on all sorts of subjects, interest me
as much as ever they did. My mind seems to
have become a kind of machine. for grinding
general laws out of large collections of facts; but
why this should have caused the atrophy of that
part of the brain alone on which the higher tastes
depend I cannot conceive. A man with a mind
more highly organised or better constituted than
mine would not, I suppose, have thus suffered ;
and, if I had to live my life again, I would have
made a rule to read some poetry and listen to
some music at least once every week, for perhaps
the parts of my brain now atrophied would thus
have been kept active through use. The loss of
these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may
possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more
probably to the moral character, by enfeebling
the emotional part of our nature.
It is often said that a man’s religion
concerns himself only. So far as the
value of the majority of people’s opinions
on such high matters goes, this is true;
but it is a shallow saying when applied
to men whose words carry weight, or
whose discoveries cause us to ask what
is their bearing on the larger questions
of human relations and destinies to which
past ages have given answers that no
longer satisfy us, or that are not compat
ible with the facts discovered. Whatever
silence Darwin maintained in his books
as to his religious opinions, intelligent
readers would see that, unaggressive as
was the mode of presentment of his
theory, it undermined current beliefs in
special providence, with its special
creations and contrivances, and therefore
in the intermittent interference of a deity;
thus excluding that supernatural action
of which miracles are the decaying stock
evidence.
Nor could they fail to ask whether the
theory of natural selection by “ descent
with modification ” was to apply to the
human species. And when Darwin,
already anticipated in this application by
his more daring disciples, Professors
Huxley and Haeckel, published his
Descent of Man, with its outspoken
chapter on the origin of conscience and
the development of belief in spiritual
beings, a belief subject to periodical
revision as knowledge increased, it was
75
obvious that the bottom was knocked
out of all traditional dogmas of man’s
fall and redemption, of human sin and
divine forgiveness.
Therefore, what
Darwin himself believed was a matter
of moment. His answers to inquiries
which were made public during his life
time told us that, while the varying
circumstances and modes of life caused
his judgment to often fluctuate, and that
while he had never been an atheist in
the sense of denying the existence of a
God, “ I think,” he says, “ that generally
(and more and more as I grow older),
but not always, an agnostic would be
the most correct description of my state
of mind.” The chapter on “ Religion,”
although a part of the autobiography, is
printed separately in the Life and Letters;
as the following quotation shows, it is
interesting as detailing a few of the steps
by which Darwin reached that suspensive
stage :—Whilst on board the Beagle I was quite ortho
dox, and I remember being heartily laughed at
by several of the officers (though themselves
orthodox) for quoting the Bible as an unanswer
able authority on some point of morality. I
suppose it was the novelty of the argument that
amused them. But I had gradually come by
this time—i.e., 1836 to 1839—to see that the
Old Testament was no more to be trusted than
the sacred books of the Hindoos. The question,
then, continually rose before my mind, and would
not be banished : Is it credible that, if God were
now to make a revelation to the Hindoos, he
would permit it to be connected with the belief
in Vishnu, Siva, etc., as Christianity is connected
with the Old Testament ? This appeared to me
utterly incredible.
By further reflecting that the clearest evidence
would be requisite to make any sane man believe
in the miracles by which Christianity is supported
—and that the more we know of the fixed laws
of nature the more incredible do miracles become
—that the men at that time were ignorant and
credulous to a degree almost incomprehensible
by us, that the Gospels cannot be proved to have
been written simultaneously with the events,
that they differ in many important details, far
too important, as it seemed to me, to be admitted
as the usual inaccuracies of eye-witnesses; by
such reflections as these, which I give not as
having the least novelty or value, but as they
influenced me, I gradually came to disbelieve in
Christianity as a divine revelation. The fact
that many false religions have spread over large
portions of the earth like wildfire had some
I weight with me.
�PIONEERS OE EVOLUTION
But I was very unwilling to give up my belief;
I feel sure of this, for I can well remember often
and often inventing day-dreams of old letters
between distinguished Romans, and manuscripts
being discovered at Pompeii or elsewhere, which
confirmed in the most striking manner all that
was written in the Gospels. But I found it more
and more difficult, with free scope given to my
imagination, to invent evidence which would
suffice to convince me. Thus disbelief crept
over me at a very slow rate, but was at last
complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no
distress.
Although I did not think much about the
existence of a personal God until a considerably
later period of my life, I will here give the vague
conclusions to which I have been driven. The
old argument from design in Nature, as given by
Paley, which formerly seemed to me so conclusive,
fails, now that the law of natural selection has
been discovered. We can no longer argue that,
for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve
shell must have been made by an intelligent
being, like the hinge of a door by a man. There
seems to be no more design in the variability of
organic beings, and in the action of natural
selection, than in the course which the wind
blows. But I have discussed this subject at the
end of my book on the Variation of Domesticated
Animals and Plants, and the argument there
given has never, as far as I can see, been
answered.
Without doubt, the influence of the
conclusions deducible from the theory
of Evolution is fatal to belief in the
supernatural. When we say the super
natural, we mean that great body of
assumptions out of which are constructed
all theologies, the essential element in
these being the intimate relation between
spiritual beings, of wrhom certain qualities
are predicated, and man. These beings
have no longer any place in the effective
belief of intelligent and unprejudiced
men, because they are found to have no
correspondence with the ascertained
operations of nature.
2. Herbert Spencer.
Contact with many “sorts and con
ditions of men ” brings home the need
of ceaselessly dinning into their ears the
fact that Darwin's theory deals only with
the evolution of plants and animals from
a common ancestry. It is not concerned
with the origin of life itself nor with
those conditions preceding life which are
coveredby the general term, Inorganic
Evolution. Therefore, it forms but a
very small part of the general theory of
the origin of the earth and other bodies,
“ as the sand by the seashore innumer
able,” that fill the infinite spaces.
We have seen that speculation about
the universe had its rise in Ionia. After
centuries of discouragement, prohibition,
and, sometimes, actual persecution, it
was revived, to advance, without further
serious arrest, some three hundred years
ago. A survey of the history of philoso
phies . of the origin of the cosmos from
the time of the renascence of inquiry
shows that the great Immanuel Kant
has not had his due. As remarked
already, he appears to have been the first
to put into shape what is known as the
nebular theory. In his General Natural
History and Theory of the Celestial
Bodies; or, An Attempt to Account for
the Constitution and the Mechanical
Origin of the Universe upon Newtonian
Principles, published in 1775, he “pic
tures to himself the universe as once
an infinite expansion of formless and
diffused matter. At one point of this
he supposes a single centre of attraction
set up, and shows how this must result
in the development of a prodigious cen
tral body, surrounded by systems of
solar and planetary worlds in all stages
of development. In vivid language he
depicts the great world-maelstrom, widen
ing the margins of its prodigious eddy in
the slow progress of millions of ages,
gradually reclaiming more and more of
the molecular waste, and converting
chaos into cosmos. But what is gained
at the. margin is lost in the centre; the
attractions of the central systems bring
their constituents together, which then,
by the heat evolved, are converted once
more into molecular chaos. Thus the
worlds that are lie between the ruins of
the worlds that have been and the chaotic
materials of the worlds that shall be;
and, in spite of all waste and destruction,
Cosmos is extending his borders at the
expense of Chaos.”
Kant’s speculations were confirmed
�MODERN E VOL UTION
by the celebrated mathematician, La
place. He showed that the “ rings ”
rotate in the same direction as the cen
tral body from which they were cast off ;
sun, planets, and moons (those of Uranus
excepted) moving in a common direction,
and almost in the same plane. The
probability that these harmonious move
ments are the effects of like causes he
calculated as 200,000 billions to one.
The observations of the famous astro
nomer, Sir William Herschel, which
-resulted in the discovery of binary or
double stars, of star-clusters, and cloud
like nebulse (as that term implies) were
further confirmations of Kant’s theory.
And such modifications in this as have
been made by subsequent advance in
knowledge, notably by the doctrine of
the Conservation of Energy (the hypo
thesis of Kant and Laplace being based
on gravitation alone), affect not the
general theory of the origin of the
heavenly bodies from seemingly formless,
unstable, and highly diffused matter.
The assumption of primitive unstable
ness and unlikeness squares with the
unequal distribution of matter ; with the
movements of its masses in different
directions, and at different rates ; and
with the ceaseless redistribution of
matter and motion. For all changes of
states are due to the rearrangement of
the atoms of which matter is made up,
resulting in the evolution of the seeming
like into the actual unlike; of the simple
into the more and more complex, till—
speaking of the only planet of whose
life-history we can have knowledge—with
the cooling of the earth to a temperature
permitting of the evolution of living
matter, the highest complexity is reached
in the infinitely diverse forms of plants
and animals. Therefore, as our know
ledge of matter is limited to the changes
of which we assume it to be the vehicle,
it would seem that science reduces the
universe to the intelligible concept of
Motion.
Since the great discovery by Kirchoff,
in 1859, of the meaning of the dark lines
that cross the refracted sun-rays, the
T7
spectroscope has come as powerful evi
dence in support of the nebular theory,
while the photographic plate is a scarcely
less important witness. The one has
demonstrated that many nebulae, once
thought to be star-clusters, are masses of
glowing hydrogen and nitrogen gases ;
that, to quote the striking communica
tion made by the highest authority on
the subject, Dr. Huggins, in his Presi
dential Address to the British Associa
tion, 1891, “in the part of the heavens
within our ken, the stars still in the
early and middle stages of evolution
exceed greatly in number those which
appear to be in an advanced condition
of condensation.” The other, recording
infallible vibrations on a sensitive plate,
and securing accurate registration of the
impressions, reveals, as in Dr. Roberts’s
grand photograph of the nebula in
Andromeda, a central mass round which
are distinct rings of luminous matter, these
being separated from the main body by
dark rifts or spaces. To quote Dr.
Huggins once more, “ We seem to have presented to us some stage of cosmical
Evolution on a gigantic scale.”
The great fact that lies at the back of '
all these confirmations of the nebular
theory is the fundamental identity of the
stuff of which the universe is made;
a fact which entered into the prevision
of the Ionian cosmologists. Dr. Huggins
says that, “ if the whole earth were
heated to the temperature of the sun, its
spectrum would resemble very Closely
the solar spectrum.”
In referring to this there may be
carrying of “ owls to Athens,” but that
re-statements may sometimes be needful
has illustration in Lord Salisbury’s Presi
dential Address to the British Associa
tion, 1894, wherein the assumed absence
of oxygen and nitrogen in the sun’s
spectrum is adduced as an argument
against the theory of the common origin
of the bodies of the solar system.
Speaking of the predominant proportion
of oxygen in the solid and liquid sub
stances of the earth, and of the predomi
nance of nitrogen in our atmosphere, his
�78
PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION
Lordship asked: “If the earth be a
may in some sort conceive how, by
detached bit whisked off the mass of the greater skill, a complete man might be
sun, as cosmogonists love to tell us, how artificially produced; but he is unable
comes it that, in leaving the sun, we to conceive how such a complex
cleaned him out so completely of his
organism gradually arises out of a minute
nitrogen and oxygen that not a trace of structureless germ. That our harmonious
these gases remains behind to be dis universe once existed potentially as
covered even by the searching vision of formless diffuse matter, and has slowly
the spectroscope?” If Lord Salisbury had grown into its present organised state, is
consulted Dr. Huggins, or some foreign a far more astonishing fact than would
astronomer of equal rank, as Duner or have been its formation after the artificial
Scheiner, he would not have put a method vulgarly supposed. Those who
question exposing his ignorance and
hold it legitimate to argue from phe
unmasking his prejudice. These autho nomena to noumena may rightly con
rities would have told him that when a tend that the Nebular Hypothesis implies
mixture of the incandescent vapours of a First Cause as much transcending ‘ the
the metals and metalloids (or non- mechanical God of Paley ’ as does the
metallic elementary substances, to which fetish of the savage.”
class both oxygen and nitrogen belong),
This quotation is from an essay on
or their compounds, is examined with the “ Nebular Hypothesis,” which ap
the spectroscope, the spectra of the peared in the Westminster Review of
metalloids always yield before that of July, 1858, and which must, therefore,
the metals. Hence the absence of the have been written before the eventful
lines of oxygen and other metalloids,
date of the reading of Darwin and
carbon and silicon excepted, among the Wallace’s memorable paper before the
vast crowd of lines in the solar spectrum.
Linnsean Society. The author of that
Then, too, in extreme states of rare essay is Mr. Herbert Spencer, and the
faction of the sun’s absorbing layer, the foregoing extract from it may fitly pre
absorption of the oxygen is too small face a brief account of his life-work in
to be sensible to us.
co-ordinating the manifold branches of
“ While the genesis of the Solar knowledge into a synthetic whole. In
System, and of countless other systems erecting a complete theory of Evolution
like it, is thus rendered comprehensible, on a purely scientific basis “his pro
the ultimate mystery continues as great found and vigorous writings,” to quote
as ever. The problem of existence is Huxley, “embody the spirit of Des
not solved; it is simply removed further cartes in the knowledge of our own day.”
back. The Nebular Hypothesis throws Laying the foundation of his massive
no light on the origin of diffused matter; structure in early manhood, Mr. Spencer
and diffused matter as much needs has had the rare satisfaction of placing
accounting for as concrete matter. The the topmost stone on the building which
genesis of an atom is not easier to his brain devised and his hand upreared. •
conceive than the genesis of a planet. While the sheets of this little book are
Nay, indeed, so far from making the being passed for press there arrives the
universe a less mystery than before, it third volume of the Principles of Socio
makes it a greater mystery. Creation logy, which completes Mr. Spencer’s
by manufacture is a much lower thing “ Synthetic Philosophy.” In the preface
than creation by Evolution. A man to this the venerable author says :—
can put together a machine; but he
“ On looking back over the six-andcannot make a machine develop itself.
thirty years which I have passed since
The ingenious artisan, able as some the 1 Synthetic Philosophy ’ was com
have been so far to imitate vitality as to
menced, I am surprised at my audacity
produce a mechanical pianoforte player,
in undertaking it, and still more sur-
�MODERN EVOLUTION
79
prised by its completion. In 1860 my small youth collected plants and insects knows
resources had been nearly all frittered not half the halo of interest which lanes
away in writing and publishing books and hedgerows can assume.” He was
which did not repay their expenses ; and articled in his seventeenth year to a
I was suffering under a chronic disorder, railway engineer, and followed that pro
caused by overtax of brain, in 1855, fession until he was twenty-five. During
which, wholly disabling me for eighteen this period he wrote various papers for
months, thereafter limited my work to the Civil Engineers’ and Architects’
three hours a day, and usually to less. Journal and, what is of importance to
How insane my project must have note, a series of letters to the Noncon
seemed to onlookers may be judged formist in 1842 on “ The Proper Sphere
from the fact that before the first of Government” (republished as a pamph
chapter of the first volume was finished let in 1844), in which “the only point of
one of my nervous breakdowns obliged community with the general doctrine of
Evolution is a belief in the modifiability
me to desist.”
“ But imprudent courses do not always of human nature through adaptation to
fail. Sometimes a forlorn hope is justified conditions, and a consequent belief in
by the event. Though, along with other human progression.” After giving up
deterrents, many relapses, now lasting engineering, Mr. Spencer joined the
for weeks, now for months, and once for staff of the Economist, and while thus
years, often made me despair of reaching employed published, in 1850, his first
the end, yet at length the end is reached. important book, Social Statics, or the
Doubtless in earl er years some exulta Conditions essential to Human Happiness
tion would have resulted; but as age Specified, and the first of them Developed.
creeps on. feelings weaken, and now my In a footnote to the later editions of
this work Mr. Spencer points out a
chief pleasure is in my emancipation.
Still there is satisfaction in the conscious brace of paragraphs in the chapter on
ness that losses, discouragements, and “ General Considerations ” in which
shattered health have not prevented me “ may be seen the first step toward the
general doctrine of Evolution.” After
from fulfilling the purpose of my life.”
These words recall a parallel invited referring to the analogy between the sub
by Gibbon’s record of his feelings on the division of labour, which goes on in
completion of his immortal work, when, human society as it advances, and the
z walking under the acacias of his garden gradual diminution in the number of like
at Lausanne, he pondered on the parts and the multiplication of unlike
“ recovery of his freedom, and perhaps parts which are observable in the higher
the establishment of his fame,” but with animals, Mr. Spencer says :—
“ Now, just the same coalescence of
a “sober melancholy” at the thought
that “he had taken an everlasting leave like parts and separation of unlike ones
—-just the same increasing subdivision
of an old and agreeable companion.”
Herbert Spencer, spiritual descen of function—takes place in the develop
dant—longo intervallo—of Heraclitus ment of society. The earliest social
and Lucretius, was born at Derby on organisms consist almost wholly of repe
the 27th April, 1820. His father was a titions of one element. Every man is a
warrior, hunter, fisherman, builder, agri
schoolmaster, a man of scientific tastes,
and, it is interesting to note, secretary of culturist, toolmaker. Each portion of
the Derby Philosophical Association the community performs the same duties
with every other portion ; much as each
founded by Erasmus Darwin. In Mr.
slice of the polyp’s body is alike stomach,
Spencer’s book on Education there are
muscle, skin, and lungs.
Even the
hints of his inheritance of the father’s
chiefs, in whom a tendency towards
bent as an observer and lover of nature
separateness of function first appears,
in the remark that “ whoever has not in
�8o
PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION
still retain their similarity to the rest in thought of human interests everywhere
economic respects. The next stage is pervades them; social and ethical
distinguished by a segregation of these . questions are kept in the van through
social units into a few distinct classes— out. Philosophy is brought from her
warriors, priests, and slaves. A further high seat to mix in the sweet amenities
advance is seen in the sundering of the of home, in the discipline of camp, in
labourers into different castes, having the rivalry of market; and linked to
special occupations, as among the Hin conduct. Conduct is defined as “ acts
doos. And, without further illustration, adjusted to ends,” the perfecting of the
the reader will at once perceive that adjustment being the highest aim, so
from these inferior types of society, up to that “ the greatest totality of life in self,
our own complicated and more perfect in offspring, and in fellow-men ” is
one, the progress has ever been of the secured, the limit of evolution of conduct
same nature. While he will also per not being reached “ until, beyond avoid
ceive that this coalescence of like parts, ance of direct and indirect injuries to
as seen in the concentration of particu others, there are spontaneous efforts to
lar manufactures in particular districts, further the welfare of others.” Emerson
and this separation of agents having puts this ideal into crisp form wrhen he
separate functions, as seen in the more speaks of the time in which a man shall
and more minute division of labour, are care more that he wrongs not his neigh
still going on.
bour than that his neighbour wrongs
“ Thus do we find, not only that the him ; then will his “ market-cart become
analogy between a society and a living a chariot of the sun.”
creature is borne out to a degree quite
That humanity is the pivot round
unsuspected by those who commonly which Mr. Spencer’s philosophic system
draw it, but also that the same definition revolves is seen in the earliest Essays,
of life applies to both. This union of and notably in his making mental evo
many men into one community—this lution the subject of the first instalment
increasing mutual dependence of units of his Synthetic Philosophy. For, inwhich were originally independent—this the Principles of Psychology, published
formation of a whole consisting of unlike in 1855, he limits feeling or conscious
parts—this growth of an organism, of ness to animals possessing a nervous
which one portion cannot be injured system, and traces its beginnings in the
without the rest feeling it—may all be “ blurred, undetermined feeling answer
generalised under the law of individua ing to a single pulsation or shock ” (as,
tion. The development of society, as for example, to go no lower down the
well as the development of man and the life-scale, in the medusa or jelly-fish), to
development of life generally, may be its highest form as self-consciousness, or
described as a tendency to individuate—- knowing that we know, in man. This
to become a thing. And, rightly inter dominant element in Mr. Spencer’s
preted, the manifold forms of progress philosophy secures it a life and per
going on around us are uniformly signifi manence which, had it been restricted
cant of this tendency.”
to explaining the mechanics of the
Homo sum: humani nihil a me alienum inorganic universe, it could never have
puto : “ I am a man, and nothing human possessed. It has been observed how
is foreign to me.” This oft-quoted the Darwinian theory aroused attention
saying of the old farmer in the Self in all quarters because it touched human
Tormentor of Terence might be affixed interests on every side. And, although
as motto to Herbert Spencer’s writings less obvious to the multitude, the Syn
from the tractate on the Proper Sphere thetic Philosophy, dealing with all cos
of Government to the concluding volume mic processes as purely mechanical
of the Principles of Sociology. For problems, interprets “ the phenomena of
�W01)Jí/W"E VOLUTTV&
life (excluding the question of its origin),
mind, and society, in terms of matter
and motion.” Anticipating the levelling
of epithets against such apparent mate
rialising of mental phenomena involved
in that method, Spencer remarks on the
dismay with which men, who have not
risen above the vulgar conception which
unites with matter the contemptuous
epithets “gross” and “brute,” regard
the proposal to reduce the phenomena
of Life, of Mind, and of Society, to a
level which they think so degraded.
“ Whoever remembers that the forms of
existence which the uncultivated speak
of with so much scorn are shown by
the man of science to be the more
marvellous in their attributes the more
they are investigated, and are also proved
to be in their ultimate natures absolutely
incomprehensible—as absolutely incom
prehensible as sensation, or the con
scious something which perceives it—
whoever clearly recognises this truth will
see that the course proposed does not
imply a degradation of the so-called
higher, but an elevation of the so-called
lower. Perceiving, as he will, that the
Materialist and Spiritualist controversy
is a mere war of words—in which
the disputants are equally absurd, each
thinking that he understands that which
it is impossible for any man to under
stand—he will perceive how utterly
groundless is the fear referred to. Being
fully convinced that, no matter what
nomenclature is used, the ultimate
mystery must remain the same, he will
be as ready to formulate all phenomena
in terms of Matter, Motion, and Force,
as in any other terms; and will rather
indeed anticipate that only in a doctrine
Which recognises the Unknown Cause
as co-extensive with all orders of pheno
mena can there be a consistent reli
gion or a consistent philosophy.”
This is clear enough; yet such is the
crass density of some objectors that
eighteen years after the above was
written Mr. Spencer, in answering criti
cisms on First Principles, had to rebut
the charge that he believed matter to
81
consist of “space-occupying units,having
shape and measurement.”
The Principles of Psychology was
both preceded and followed by a series
of essays in which the process of change
from the “homogeneous to the hetero
geneous ”—i.e., from the seeming like to
the actual unlike—was expounded. Mr.
Spencer tells us that in 1852 he first
became acquainted with von Baer’s Law
of Development, or the changes under
gone in each living thing, from the
general to the special, during its advance
from the embryonic to the fully-formed
state. That law confirmed the prevision
indicated in the passages quoted above
from Social Statics, and impressed him
as one of the three doctrines which are
indispensable elements of the general
theory of Evolution. The other two are
the Correlation of the Physical Forces, or
the transformation of different modes of
motion into other modes of motion, as
of heat or light into electricity, and so
forth, in Proteus-like fashion; and the
Conservation of Energy, or the indes
tructibility of matter and motion, what
ever changes or transformations these
may undergo.
In permitting the quotation of the
useful abstract of the Synthetic Philo
sophy which, originally drawn up for the
late Professor Youmans, was embodied
in a letter to the Athenaeum of July 22nd,
1882, Mr. Spencer was good enough to
volunteer the following details to the
writer :—
“You are probably aware that the
conception set forth in that abstract was
reached by slow steps during many years.
These steps occurred as follows :—
1850. Social Statics: especially chap
ter ‘General Considerations.’
(Higher human Evolution.)
1852. March. ‘Development Hypo
thesis,’ in the Leader. (Evo
lution of Species), vid. ante,
p. hi.
1852. April. ‘Theory of Population,’
etc., in Westminster Review.
(Higher human Evolution. )
G
�82
PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION
1854. July. ‘ The Genesis of Science’ I (Essays, vol. i., 1883 edition ; “ Manners
in British Quarterly Review. and Fashion,” p. 65).
“Scientific advance is as much from
(Intellectual Evolution.)
1855. July. Principles of Psychology. the special to the general as from the
(Mental Evolution in general.) general to the special. Quite in harmony
1857. April. ‘Progress: its Law and with this wTe find to be the admissions
Cause
Westminster Review. that the sciences are as branches of one
trunk, and that they were at first culti
(Evolution at large.)
1857. April. ‘ Ultimate Laws of Phy vated simultaneously ; and this becomes
siology.’ National Review. the more marked on finding, as wre have
(Another factor of Evolution done, not only that the sciences have a
common root, but that science in general
at large.)
has a common root with language, classi
“ From these last two Essays came the fication, reasoning, art; that throughout
inception of the Synthetic Philosophy. civilisation these have advanced together,
The first programme of it was drawn up acting and reacting on each other just
in January, 1858.”.......
as the separate sciences have done ; and
When seeing Mr. Spencer on the that thus the development of intelligence
subject of this letter, he took the further in all its divisions and subdivisions has
trouble to point out certain passages in conformed to this same law to which we
the essays originally comprised in the have shown the sciences conform ” (/A,
one-volume edition of 1858 which “The Genesis of Science,”pp. 191, 192).
(In correspondence with this, recog
contain germinal ideas of his synthesis.
nising that the same method has to be
That they are his selection will add to
the interest and value of their quotation, adopted in all inquiry, whether we deal
revealing, as perchance they may, a with the body or the mind, the
fragment of the autobiography which following may be quoted from Hume’s
it is an open secret Mr. Spencer has Treatise on Human Nature: “:Tis
evident that all the sciences have
written:—
a relation, greater or less, to human
“ That Law, Religion, and Manners nature ; and that, however wide any of
are thus related—that their respective them may seem to run from it, they
kinds of operation come under one still return back by one passage or
generalisation—that they have in certain another. Even Mathematics, Natural
contrasted characteristics of men a com Philosophy, and Natural Religion are in
mon support and a common danger— some measure dependent on the science
will, however, be most clearly seen on of Man, since they lie under the cogni
discovering that they have a common sance of men, and are judged of by their
origin. Little as from present appear powers and qualities.”)
“The analogy between individual
ances wre should suppose it, we shall yet
find that, at first, the control of religion, organisms and the social organisms is
the control of laws, and the control of one that has in all ages forced itself on
manners, were all one control. However the attention of the observant........ While
incredible it may now seem, we believe it is becoming clear that there are no
it to be demonstrable that the rules of such special parallelisms between the
etiquette, the provisions of the statute- constituent parts of a man and those of
book, and the commands of the deca a nation, as have been thought to exist,
logue, have grown from the same root. it is also becoming clear that the general
If we go far back enough into the ages principles of development and structure
of primeeval fetishism, it becomes mani displayed in all organised bodies are
displayed in societies also. The funda
fest that originally Deity, Chief, and
Master of the Ceremonies were identical” mental characteristic both of societies
�MODERN EVOLUTION
and of living creatures is, that they con
sist of mutually dependent parts ; and it
would seem that this involves a com
munity of various other characteristics.
....... Meanwhile, if any such correspond
ence exists, it is clear that Biology and
Sociology will more or less interpret each
other.
“ One of the positions we have endea
voured to establish is, that in animals
the process of development is carried on,
not by differentiations only, but by
subordinate integrations. Now in the
social organism we may see the same
duality of process ; and, further, it is to
be observed that the integrations are of
the same three kinds. Thus we have
integrations that arise from the simple
growth of adjacent parts that perform
like functions ; as, for instance, the
coalescence of Manchester with its
calico-weaving suburbs. We have other
integrations that arise when, out of
several places producing a particular
commodity, one monopolises more and
more of the business, and leaves the rest
to dwindle ; as witness the growth of
the Yorkshire cloth districts at the ex
pense of those in the west of England.
....... And we have yet those other inte
grations that result from the actual
approximation of the similarly-occupied
parts, whence result such facts as the
concentration of publishers in Paternoster
Row, of lawyers in the Temple and
neighbourhood, of corn merchants about
Mark Lane, of civil engineers in Great
George Street, of bankers in the centre
of the city” (Essays, vol. iii., 1878
edition; “Transcendental Physiology,”
pp. 414-416).
But, divested of technicalities, and
summarised in words to be “ understanded of the people,” the following
quotation from the Essay on “ Progress :
its Law and Cause,” gives the gist of the
Synthetic Philosophy :—
“We believe we have shown beyond
question that that which the, German
physiologists (von Baer, Wolff, and
others) have found to be the law of
«3
organic development (as of seed into a
tree, and of an egg into an animal) is
the law of all development. The advance
from the simple to the complex, through
a process of successive differentiations
(/.<?., the appearance of differences in the
parts of a seemingly like substance), is
seen alike in the earliest changes of the
universe to which we can reason our way
back, and in the earlier changes which
we can inductively establish ; it is seen
in the geologic and climatic evolution
of the earth, and of every single organism
on its surface ; it is seen in the evolution
of Humanity, whether contemplated in
the civilised individual or in the aggre
gation of races; it is seen in the evolu
tion of society in respect alike of its
political, its religious, and its econo
mical organisation; and it is seen in the
evolution of all those endless concrete
and abstract products of human activity
which constitute the environment of our
daily life. From the remotest past which
Science can fathom, up to the novelties
of yesterday, that in which progress
essentially consists is the transformation
of the homogeneous into the hetero
geneous ” (Essays, vol. i.; 1883 ; p. 30).
To this may fitly follow the “ succinct
statement of the cardinal principles
developed in the successive works ”
which Mr. Spencer, as named above,
prepared for Professor Youmans :—
1. Throughout the universe in general,
and in detail, there is an unceasing re
distribution of matter and motion.
2. This redistribution constitutes evolu
tion when there is a predominant integra
tion of matter and dissipation of motion,
and constitutes dissolution when there is
a predominant absorption of motion and
disintegration of matter.
3. Evolution is simple when the pro
cess of integration, or the formation of
a coherent aggregate, proceeds uncom
plicated by other processes.
4. Evolution is compound when, along
with this primary change from an inco
herent to a coherent state, there go on
secondary changes due to differences in
�PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION
the circumstances of the different parts
of the aggregate.
5. These secondary changes constitute
a transformation of the homogeneous into
the heterogeneous—a transformation
which, like the first, is exhibited in the
universe as a whole, and in all (or
nearly all) its details ; in the aggregate
of stars and nebulae ; in the planetary
system; in the earth as an inorganic
mass; in each organism, vegetal or
animal (von Baer’s law otherwise ex
pressed) ; in the aggregate of organisms
throughout geologic time; in the mind ;
in society; in all products of social
activity.
6. The process of integration, acting
locally as well as generally, combines
with the process of differentiation to
render this change not simply from
homogeneity to heterogeneity, but from
an indefinite homogeneity to a definite
heterogeneity; and this trait of increas
ing definiteness, which accompanies the
trait of increasing heterogeneity, is, like
it, exhibited in the totality of things, and
in all its divisions and subdivisions down
to the minutest.
7. Along with this redistribution of
the matter composing any evolving aggre
gate there goes on a redistribution of
the retained motion of its components
in relation to one another; this also
becomes, step by step, more definitely
heterogeneous.
8. In the absence of a homogeneity
that is infinite and absolute, that redis
tribution, of which evolution is one
phase, is inevitable. The causes which
necessitate it are these
9. The instability of the homogeneous,
which is consequent upon the different
exposures of the different parts of any
limited aggregate to incident forces.
The transformations hence resulting
are :—10. The multiplication of effects.
Every mass and part of a mass on
which a force falls subdivides and
differentiates that force, which there
upon proceeds to work a variety of
changes; and each of these becomes
the parent of similarly - multiplying
changes; the multiplication of them
becoming greater in proportion as the
aggregate becomes more heterogeneous.
And these two causes of increasing
differentiations are furthered by
11. Segregation, which is a process
tending ever to separate unlike units
and to bring together like units; so
serving continually to sharpen, or make
definite, differentiations otherwise caused.
12. Equilibration is the final result of
these transformations which an evolving
aggregate undergoes. The changes go
on until there is reached an equilibrium
between the forces which all parts of
the aggregate are exposed to and the
forces these parts oppose to them.
Equilibration may pass through a
transition stage of balanced motions (as
in a planetary system) or of balanced
functions (as in a living body) on the
way to ultimate equilibrium; but the
state of rest in inorganic bodies, or
death in organic bodies, is the necessary
limit of the changes constituting evo
lution.
13. Dissolution is the counter-change
which sooner or later every evolved
aggregate undergoes. Remaining exposed
to surrounding forces that are unequili
brated, each aggregate is ever liable to
be dissipated by the increase, gradual or
sudden, of its contained motion; and
its dissipation, quickly undergone by
bodies lately animate, and slowly under
gone by inanimate masses, remains to
be undergone at an indefinitely remote
period by each planetary and stellar
mass, which since an indefinitely distant
period in the past has been slowly
evolving; the cycle of its transforma
tions being thus completed.
14. This rhythm of evolution and
dissolution, completing itself during
short periods in small aggregates, and
in the vast aggregates distributed through
space completing itself in periods im
measurable by human thought, is, so
far as we can see, universal and eternal
—each alternating phase of the process
predominating now in this region of
�MODERN EVOLUTION
Space and now in that, as local con
ditions determine.
15. All these phenomena, from their
great features down to their minutest
details, are necessary results of the per
sistence of force under its forms of
matter and motion. Given these as
distributed through space, and their
quantities being unchangeable, either by
increase or decrease, there inevitably
result the continuous redistributions
distinguishable as evolution and dis
solution, as well as all these special
traits above enumerated.
16. That which persists unchanging
in quantity, but ever changing in form,
under these sensible appearances which
the universe presents to us, transcends
human knowledge and conception—is
an unknown and unknowable power,
which we are obliged to recognise as
without limit in space and without
beginning or end in time.
All that is comprised in the dozen
volumes which, exclusive of the minor
works and the Sociological Tables,form the
great body of the Synthetic Philosophy,
is the expansion of this abstract. The
general lines laid down in that Philo
sophy have become a permanent way
along which investigation will continue
to travel. The revisions which may be
called for will not affect it fundamentally,
being limited to details, more especially
in the settlement of the relative functions
of individuals and communities, and
cognate questions.
Into these we
cannot enter here. Suffice it that to
those who have the rare possession of
sound mental peptics, no more nutritive
diet can be recommended than is
supplied by First Principles and the
works in which its theses are developed.
For those who, blessed with good diges
tion, lack leisure, there is provided in a
convenient volume the excellent epitome
which Mr. Howard Collins has pre
pared.
The prospectus of the then proposed
issue of the series of works which, begin
ning with First Principles, ends with the
Principles of Sociology (1862-1896), was
35
issued by Mr. Spencer in March, i860.
Through his courtesy the writer has seen
the documents which prove that the first
draft of that prospectus was written out
on the 6th January, 1858, and that it
was the occasion of an interesting corre
spondence between Mr. Spencer and his
father—-mainly in the form of questions
from the latter—during that month.
The record of these facts is of some
moment as evidencing that the scheme
of the Synthetic Philosophy took definite
shape in 1857. Therefore, the Theory
of Evolution, dealing with the universe
as a whole, was formulated some months
before the publication of the DarwinWallace paper, in which only organic
evolution was discussed. The Origin of
Species, as the outcome of that paper,
showed that the action of natural selec
tion is a sufficing cause for the production
of new life-forms, and thus knocked the
bottom out of the old belief in special
creation.
The general doctrine of Evolution,
however, is not so vitally related to that
of natural selection that the two stand
or fall together. The evidence as to
the connection between the succession
of past life-forms which, regard being
had to the well-nigh obliterated record,
has been supplied by the fossil-yielding
rocks ; and the evidence as to the un
broken development of the highest
plants and animals from the lowest,
which more and more confirms the
theory of von Baer ; alike furnish a
body of testimony placing the doctrine
of Organic Evolution on a foundation
that can never be shaken. And, firm
as that, stands the doctrine of Inorganic
Evolution upon the support given by
modern science to the speculations of
Immanuel Kant.
There is the more need for laying
stress on this because recent discussions,
revealing divided opinions among biolo
gists as to the sufficiency of natural
selection as a cause of all modifications
in the structure of living things, lead
timid or half-informed minds to hope
that the doctrine of Evolution may yet
�86
PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION
turn out not to be true. It is in such
stratum of intelligence that there lurks
the feeling, whenever some old inscrip
tion or monument verifying statements
in the Bible is discovered, that the
infallibility of that book has further
proof. For example, until the present
year, not a single confirmatory piece of
evidence as to the story of the Exodus
was forthcoming from Egypt itself. Even
the inscription which has come to light
does not, in the judgment of such an
expert as Dr. Flinders Petrie, supply the
exact confirmation desired. But let that
irrefragable witness appear, and while
the historian will welcome it as evidence
of the sojourn of the Israelites in Egypt—
thus throwing light on the movements of
races, and adding to the historical value
of the Pentateuch—the average orthodox
believer will feel a vague sort of satis
faction that the foundations of his belief
in the Trinity and the Incarnation are
somehow strengthened.
3. Thomas Henry Huxley.
Thomas Henry Huxley was born at
Ealing on May 4th, 1825. Montaigne
tells us that he was “borne between
eleven of the clock and noone,” and,
with like quaint precision, Huxley gives
the hour of his birth as “ about eight
o’clock in the morning.” Speaking of
his first Christian name, he humorously
said that, by curious chance, his parents
chose that of the particular apostle with
whom, as the doubting member of the
twelve, he had always felt most sym
pathy.
Concerning his father, who was “ one
of the masters in a large semi-public
school ” (the father of Herbert Spencer,
it will be remembered, was also a school
master), Huxley has little to say in
the slight autobiographical sketch
reprinted as an introduction to the first
volume of the Collected Essays. On
that side, he tells us, he could find
hardly any trace in himself, except a
certain faculty for drawing, and a certain
hotness of temper. “ Physically and
mentally,” he was the son of his mother,
“a slender brunette, of an emotional
and energetic temperament.” His school
training was brief and profitless; his
tastes were mechanical, and, but for lack
of means, he would have started life in
the same profession which Herbert
Spencer followed till he forsook Messrs.
Fox’s office for journalism. So, with a
certain shrinking from anatomical work,
Huxley studied medicine for a time
under a relative, and in his seventeenth
year entered the Charing Cross Hospital
School as a student. In those days
there was no instruction in physics, and
only in such branch of chemistry as
dealt with the nature of drugs. Non
multa> sed multum^ and what was lacking
in breadth was, perhaps, gained in
thoroughness. Huxley had as excellent
a teacher in Wharton Jones as the latter
had a promising pupil in Huxley, and
in working with the microscope, the
evidence of that came in his discovery
of a certain root-sheath in the hair,
which has since then been known as
“ Huxley’s layer.”
Up to the time of his studentship he
had been left, intellectually, altogether
to his own devices. He tells us that he
was a voracious and omnivorous reader,
“ a dreamer and speculator of the first
water, well endowed with that splendid
courage in attacking any and every sub
ject which is the blessed compensation
of youth and inexperience.” Among
the books and essays that impressed him
were Guizot’s History of Civilisation
and Sir William Hamilton’s essay, “ On
the Philosophy of the Unconditioned,”
which he accidentally came upon in an
odd volume of the Edinburgh Review.
This, he adds, was “ devoured with
avidity,” and it stamped upon his mind
the strong conviction “ that on even
the most solemn and important of ques
tions men are apt to take cunning
phrases for answers, and that the limita
tion of our faculties, in a great number
of cases, renders real answers to such
questions not merely actually impossible,
but theoretically inconceivable.” Thus,
�MODERN EVOLUTION
87
before he was out of his teens, the packet of separate copies ” awaited him.
philosophy that ruled his life-teaching It dealt with the anatomy and affinities
of the Medusse, and the original research
was taking definite shape.
In 1845 he won his M.B. London which it evidenced justified his election
with honours in anatomy and physiology, in 1851 to the fellowship of the society
and after a few months’ practice at the whose presidential chair he was in after
East-end applied, at the instance of his years to adorn. He would seem to
senior fellow-student, Mr. (afterwards have won the blue ribbon of science
Sir) Joseph Fayrer, for an appointment per saltum. Probably, so far as their
in the medical service of the Navy. At biological value is concerned, nothing
the end of two months he was fortunate that he did subsequently has surpassed
enough to be entered on the books of his contributions to scientific literature
Nelson’s old ship, the Victory, for duty at that period; but if his services to
at Haslar Hospital. His official chief knowledge had been limited to the class
was the famous Arctic explorer, Sir of work which they represent, he would
John Richardson, through whose recom have remained only a distinguished
mendation he was appointed, seven specialist. Further recognition of his
months later, assistant surgeon of the well-won position came in the award of
Rattlesnake. That ship, commanded by the society’s royal medal. But fellow
Captain Owen Stanley, was commissioned ships and medals keep no wolf from the
to survey the intricate passage within door, and Huxley was a poor man.
the Barrier Reef skirting the eastern After vain attempts to obtain, first, a
shores of Australia, and to explore the professorship of physiology in England,
sea lying between the northern end of and then a chair of natural history at
that reef and New Guinea. It was the Toronto (Tyndall was at the same time
best apprenticeship to what was even an unsuccessful candidate for the chair
tually the work of Huxley’s life—the of physics in the same university), a
solution of biological problems and the settled position was secured by Sir
indication of their far-reaching signifi Henry de la B eche’s offer of the pro
cance. Darwin and Hooker had passed fessorship of palaeontology, and of the
through a like marine curriculum. The lectureship on natural history in the
former served as naturalist on board the Royal School of Mines, vacated by
Beagle when she sailed on her voyage Edward Forbes. That was in 1854.
Between that date and the time of his
round the world in 1831; the latter as
assistant-surgeon on board the Erebus return Huxley had contributed a number
of valuable papers on the structure of
on her Antarctic Expedition in 1839.
Fortune was to bring the three shoulder the invertebrates, and on histology, or
to shoulder when the battle against the the science of tissues. But these, while
theory of the immutability of species was adding to his established qualifications
for a scientific appointment, demand no
fought.
detailed reference here. With both
During his four years’ absence Huxley,
in whom the biologist dominated the chairs there was united the curatorship
doctor, made observations on the various of the fossil collections in the Museum
marine animals collected. These he of Practical Geology, and these, with
sent home to the Linnean Society in the inspectorship of salmon fisheries,
the vain hope of acceptance. A more which office he accepted in 1881, com
elaborate paper to the Royal Society, plete the list of Huxley’s more important
communicated through the Bishop of public appointments. He surrendered
Norwich (author of a book on birds, them all in 1885, having reached the
and father of Dean Stanley), secured age at which, as he jocosely remarked to
the coveted honour of publication, and the writer, “every scientific man ought
on Huxley’s return in 1850 a “huge to be poleaxed.” Perhaps he dreaded
�PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION
the conservatism of attitude, the non
receptivity to new ideas, which often
accompany old age. But for himself
such fears were needless. He was never
of robust constitution; in addition to
the lasting effects of an illness in boy
hood, Carlyle’s “accursed Hag,” dys
pepsia, which troubled both Darwin
and Bates for the rest of their lives after
their return from abroad, troubled him.
Therefore considerations of health
mainly prompted the surrender of his
varied official responsibilities, the loyal
discharge of which met with becoming
recognition in the grant of a pension.
This secured a modest competence in
the evening of life to one who had never
been wealthy, and who had never coveted
wealth. To Huxley may fitly be applied
what Faraday said of himself, that he
had “no time to make money.” And
yet, to his abiding discredit, the present
editor of Punch allowed his theological
animus, which had already been shown
in abortive attempts in the pages of that
facetious ” journal to appraise a Roman
Catholic biologist at the expense of
Huxley, to further degrade itself by
affixing the letters “L.S.D.” to his name
in a character-sketch.
His public life may be said to date
from 1854. The duties which he then
undertook included the delivery of a
course of lectures to working men every
alternate year. Some of these—models
of their kind—have been reissued in the
Collected Essays. Among the most
notable are those on “ Our Knowledge
of the Causes of the Phenomena of
Organic Nature.” At the outset of his
public career lecturing was as distasteful
to him as in earlier years the trouble of
writing was detestable. But mother wit
and “needs must” trained him in a
short time to win the ear of an audience.
One evening in 1852 he made his debut
at the Royal Institution, and the next
day he received a letter charging him
with every possible fault that a lecturer
could commit—ungraceful stoop, awk
wardness in use of hands, mumbling of
words, or dropping them down the shirt
front. The lesson was timely, and its
effect salutary. Huxley was fond of
telling this story, and it is worth recording
—if but as encouragement to stammerers
who have something to say—at what
price he “ bought this freedom ” which
held an audience spellbound. How he
thus held it in later years they will
remember who, in the packed theatre
of the Royal Institution, listened, on
the evening of Friday, April 9th, 1880,
to his lecture, “ On the Coming of Age
of the Origin of Species.”
In 1856 Huxley visited the glaciers
of the Alps with Tyndall, the result
appearing in their joint authorship of a
paper on “ Glacial Phenomena ” in the
Philosophical Transactions of the follow
ing year. But this was a rare interlude.
What time could be wrested from daily
routine was given to the study of in
vertebrate and vertebrate morphology,
palaeontology, and ethnology, familiarity
with which was no mean equipment for
the conflict soon to rage round these
seemingly pacific materials when their
deep import was declared. The out
come of such varied industry is apparent
to the student of scientific memoirs.
But a recital of the titles of papers con
tributed to these, as, e.g., “On Ceratodus,” “ Hyperodapedon Gordoni,”
“ Hypsilophodon,” “ Telerpeton,” and so
forth, will not here tend to edification.
The original and elaborate investigations
which they embody have had recognition
in the degrees and medals which
decorated the illustrious author. But
it is not by these that Huxley’s renown
as one of the most richly-endowed
and widely - cultured personalities of
the Victorian era will endure. They
might sink into oblivion which buries
most purely technical work without in
any way affecting that foremost place
which he fills in the ranks of philo
sophical biologists both as clear-headed
thinker and luminous interpreter.
In this high function the publication
of the Origin of Species gave him his
opportunity. That was in 1859. As
with Hooker and Bates, his experiences
�MODERN EVOLUTION
aS a traveller, and, more than this, his
penetrating inquiry into significances
and relations, prepared his mind for
acceptance of the theory of descent
with modification of living forms from
one stock. Hence the mutability, as
against the old theory of the fixity, of
species.
In the chapter, “On the Reception
of the Origin of Species,” which Huxley
contributed to Darwin’s Life and Letters,
he gives an interesting account of his
attitude towards that burning question.
He says :—
“ I think that I must have read the
Vestiges (see p. 109) before I left
England in 1846, but if I did the book
made very little impression upon me,
and I was not brought into serious
contact with the ‘ species ’ question
until after 1850. At that time I had
long done with the Pentateuchal cos
mogony which had been impressed upon
my childish understanding as Divine
truth with all the authority of parents
and instructors, and from which it had
cost me many a struggle to get free.
But my mind was unbiassed in respect
of any doctrine which presented itself
if it professed to be based on purely
philosophical and scientific reasoning.
....... I had not then, and I have not now,
the smallest a priori objection to raise
to the account of the creation of animals
and plants given in Paradise Lost, in which
Milton so vividly embodies the natural
sense of Genesis. Far be it from me
to say that it is untrue because it is im
possible. I confine myself to what
must be regarded as a modest and
reasonable request for some particle of
evidence that the existing species of
animals and plants did originate in that
way as a condition of my belief in a
statement which appears to me to be
highly improbable.......
“ And, by way of being perfectly fair,
I had exactly the same answer to give to
the evolutionists of 1851-58. Within
the ranks of the biologists of that time I
met with nobody, except Dr. Grant, of
89
University College, who had a word to
say for Evolution, and his advocacy was !
not calculated to advance the cause.
Outside these ranks the only person
known to me whose knowledge and
capacity compelled respect, and who was
at the same time a thoroughgoing evo
lutionist, was Mr. Herbert Spencer,
whose acquaintance I made, I think, in
1852, and then entered into the bonds 3
of a friendship which I am happy to 1
think has known no interruption. Many 1
and prolonged were the battles we fought 1
on this topic. But even my friend’s ]
rare dialectic skill and copiousness of '
apt illustration could not drive me from
my agnostic position. I took my stand j
upon two grounds : firstly, that up to I
that time the evidence in favour of I
transmutation was wholly insufficient;
and, secondly, that no suggestion respect
ing the causes of the transmutation
assumed which had been made was in
any way adequate to explain .the pheno
mena. Looking back at the state of ]
knowledge at that time, I really do not 1
see that any other conclusion was justi
fiable.
“ As I have already said, I imagine that
most of those of my contemporaries who :
thought seriously about the matter were j
very much in my own state of mind —-1
inclined to say to both Mosaists and 1
Evolutionists, ‘A plague on both your
houses !’ and disposed to turn aside from
an interminable and apparently fruitless
discussion to labour in the fertile fields 1
of ascertainable facts. And I may there
fore further suppose that the publication
of the Darwin and Wallace papers ini
1858, and still more that of the Origin
in 1859, had the effect upon them of the
flash of light, which to a man who has!
lost himself in a dark night suddenly!
reveals a road which, whether it takes
him straight home or not, certainly goes!
his way. That which we were looking]
for and could not find was a hypothesis!
respecting the origin of known organic!
forms which assumed the operation of
no causes but such as could be proved)
to be actually at work. We wanted, not
�90
PI0NEERS OF E VOL UTION
to pin . our faith to that or any other
speculation, but to get hold of clear and
definite conceptions which could be
brought face to face with facts, and have
their validity tested. The Origin pro
vided us with the working hypothesis we
sought. Moreover, it did the immense
service of freeing us for ever from the
dilemma—Refuse to accept the creation
hypothesis, and what have you to propose
that can be accepted by any cautious
reasoner ? In 1857 I had no answer
ready, and I do not think that any one
else had. A year later we reproached
ourselves with dulness for being per
plexed by such an inquiry. My reflec
tion, when I first made myself master of
the central idea of the Origin, was: ‘ How
extremely stupid not to have thought of
that !’ I suppose that Columbus’s com
panions said much the same when he
made the egg stand on end. The facts
of variability, of the struggle for exist
ence, of adaptation to conditions, were
notorious enough, but none of us had
suspected that the road to the heart of
the species problem lay through them,
until Darwin and Wallace dispelled the
darkness, and the beacon-fire of the
Origin guided the benighted.”
But the disciple soon outstripped the
master. As was said of Luther in relation
to Erasmus, Huxley hatched the egg
that Darwin laid. For in the Origin of
Species the theory was not pushed to
its obvious conclusion: Darwin only
hinted that it “ would throw much light
on the origin of man and his history.”
His silence, as he candidly tells us in
the Introduction to the Descent of Man,
was due to a desire “ not to add to the
prejudices against his views.” No such
hesitancy kept Huxley silent. In the
spirit of Plato’s Laws, he followed the
argument whithersoever it led. In i860
he delivered a course of lectures to
working men “On the Relations of Man
to the Lower Animals,” and in 1862 a
couple of lectures on the same subject at
the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution.
The important and significant feature
of these discourses was the demonstration
that no cerebral barrier divides man
from apes; that the attempt to draw a
psychical distinction between him and
the lower animals is futile; and that
“even the highest faculties of feeling
and of intellect begin to germinate in
lower forms of life.” The lectures were
published in 1863 in a volume entitled
Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature;
and it was with pride warranted by the
results of subsequent researches that
Huxley, in a letter to the writer, thus
refers to the book when arranging for
its reissue among the Collected Essays
I was looking through Man's Place in Nature
the other day. I do not think there is a word
I need delete, nor anything I need add, except
in confirmation and extension of the doctrine
there laid down. That is great good fortune for
a book thirty years old, and one that a very
shrewd friend of mine implored me not to
publish, as it 'would certainly ruin all my
prospects.
The sparse annotations to the whole
series of reprinted matter show that the
like permanence attends all his writings.
And yet, true workman, with ideal ever
lying ahead, as he was, he remarked to
the writer that never did a book come
hot from the press but he wished that
he could suppress it and rewrite it.
But before dealingwith the momentous
issues raised in Man's Place in Nature
we must return to i860. For that was
the “ Sturm und Drang ” period. Then,
at Oxford, “ home of lost causes,” as
Matthew Arnold apostrophises her in
the Preface to his Essays in Criticism,
was fought, on Saturday, 30th June, a
memorable duel between biologist and
bishop; perhaps in its issues more
memorable than the historic discussion
on the traditional doctrine of special
creation between Cuvier and Geoffroy
Saint-Hilaire in the French Academy in
1830.
Both Huxley and Wilberforce were
doughty champions. The scene of com
bat, the Museum Library, was crammed
to suffocation. Fainting women were
carried out. There had been “words”
between Owen and Huxley on the
previous Thursday. Owen contended
�MODERN EVOLUTION
that there were certain fundamental
differences between the brains of man
and apes. Huxley met this with “direct
and unqualified contradiction,” and
pledged himself to “justify that unusual
•procedure elsewhere.” No wonder that
the atmosphere was electric. The bishop
was up to time. Declamation usurped
the vacant place of argument in his
speech, and the declamation became
acrid. He finished his harangue by
asking Huxley whether he was related by
his grandfather’s or grandmother’s side
to an ape. “The Lord hath delivered
him into my hands,” whispered Huxley
to a friend at his side, as he rose to
reply. After setting his opponent an
example in demonstrating his case by
evidence which, although refuting Owen,
evoked no admission of error from him
then or ever after, Huxley referred to
the personal remark of Wilberforce.
And this is what he said:—
I asserted, and I repeat, that a man has no
reason to be ashamed of having an ape for his
grandfather.' If there were an ancestor whom I
should feel shame in recalling, it would be a
man—a man of restless and versatile intellect,
who, not content with success in his own
sphere of activity, plunges into scientific ques
tions with which he has no real acquaintance,
only to obscure them by an aimless rhetoric, and
distract the attention of his hearers from the
real point at issue by eloquent digressions and
skilled appeals to religious prejudice.
Perhaps the best comment on a piece
of what is now ancient history is to quote
the admissions made by Lord Salisbury
—a rigid High Churchman—in his
Presidential Address to the British Asso
ciation in this same city of Oxford in
1894:—
Few now are found to doubt that animals
Separated by differences far exceeding those that
distinguish what we know as species have yet
descended from common ancestors........ Darwin
has, as a matter of fact, disposed of the doctrine
of the immutability of species.
Few, also, are now found to doubt
not only that doctrine, but also the
doctrine that all life-forms have a
common origin; plants and animals
being alike built-up of matter which is
identical in character. This doctrine,
to-day a commonplace of biology, was,
thirty years ago, rank heresy, since it
seemed to reduce the soul of man to the
level of his biliary duct. Hence the
Oxford storm was but a capful of wind
compared with that which raged round
Huxley’s lecture on The Physical Basis
of Life, delivered, thus aggravating the
offence, on a “ Sabbath ” evening in
Edinburgh in 1868. People had settled
down, with more or less vague under
standing of the matter, into quiescent
acceptance of Darwinism. And now
their somnolence was rudely shaken by
this Southron troubler of Israel, with
his production of a bottle of solution of
smelling salts, and a pinch or two of
other ingredients, which represented the
elementary substances entering into the
composition of every living thing from
a jelly-speck to man. Well might the
removal of the stopper to that bottle
take their breath away ! Microscopists,
philosophers “so-called,” and clerics
alike raised the cry of “gross material»
ism,” never pausing to read Huxley’s
anticipatory answer to the baseless
charge, an answer repeated again and
again in his writings, as in the essay on
Descartes’s Discourse Touching the Method
of Using One's Reason Rightly, and in his
Hume. In season and out of season he
never wearies in insisting that there is
nothing in the doctrine inconsistent with
the purest idealism. “All the pheno
mena of nature are, in their ultimate
analysis, known to us only as facts of
consciousness.” The cyclone thus raised
travelled westward on the heels of Tyn
dall, when in 1874 he asserted the
fundamental identity of the organic and
inorganic; dashing, as his Celtic blood
stirred him, the statements with a touch
of poetry in the famous phrase that “ the
genius of Newton was potential in the
fires of the sun.”
The ancient belief in “spontaneous,
generation,” which Redi’s experiments
upset, was the subject of Huxley’s
Presidential Address to the British Asso
ciation in 1870. But while he showed
�PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION
how subsequent investigation confirmed omitted to lay stress on the obscurity
the doctrine of Abiogenesis, or the non which still hides the causes of variation
production of living from dead matter,
which, it must be kept in mind, natural
he made this statement in support of selection cannot bring about, and on
Tyndall’s creed as to the fundamental which it can only act. He insists on
unity of the vital and the non-vital
the non-implication of the larger theory
“ Looking back through the prodigious with its subordinate parts, or with the
vista of the past, I find no record of the fate of them. The “ doctrine of Evolu
commencement of life, and therefore I
tion is a generalisation of certain facts
am devoid of any means of forming a which may be observed by any one who
definite conclusion as to the conditions
will take the necessary trouble.” The
of its appearance. Belief, in the scientific
facts are those which biologists class
sense of the word, is a serious matter,
under the heads of Embryology and
and needs strong foundations. To say,
Palaeontology, to the conclusions from
therefore, in the admitted absence of which J‘all future philosophical and
evidence, that I have any belief as to theological speculations will have to
the mode in which the existing forms of accommodate themselves.”
life have originated would be using
That is the direction of the revolution
words in a wrong sense. But expecta to which the publication of Maris Place
tion is. permissible where belief is not; in Nature gave impetus ; and it is in
and if it were given to me to look beyond the all-round application of the theory
the abyss of geologically recorded time of man’s descent that Huxley stands
to the still more remote period when foremost, both as leader and lawgiver.
the earth was passing through physical Mr. Spencer has never shrunk from con
and chemical conditions which it can troversy, but he has not forsaken the
no more see again than a man can study for the arena, and hence his
recall his infancy, I should expect to be I influence, great and abiding as it is, has
a witness of the evolution of living been less direct and personal than that
protoplasm from non-living matter. I
of his comrade, “ever a fighter,” who,
should expect to see it appear under in Browning’s words, “marched breast
forms of great simplicity, endowed, like forward.” Maris Place in Nature was
existing fungi, with the power of deter the first of a series of deliverances upon
mining the formation of new protoplasm
the most serious questions that can
from such matters as ammonium carbo occupy the mind ; and its successors,
nates, oxalates, and tartrates, alkaline and the brilliant monograph on Hume, pub
earthy phosphates, and water, without lished in 1879, and the Romanes
the aid of light. That is the expectation Lecture on Evolution and Ethics, de
to which analogical reasoning leads me; livered at Oxford 18th May, 1893, are
but I beg you once more to recollect but expansions of the thesis laid down
that I have no right to call my opinion in that wonderful little volume; won
anything but an act of philosophical derful in the prevision which fills it,
faith.”
and . in the justification which it has
Huxley was the Apostle Paul of the received fro'm all subsequent research,
Darwinian movement, and one main notably in psychology.
result of his active propagandism was
If the propositions therein maintained
to so effectively prepare the way for the are unshaken, then there is no possible
reception of the profounder issues in reconciliation between Evolution and
volved in the theory of the origin of Theology, and all the smooth sayings
species that the publication of Darwin’s
in attempted harmonies between the
Descent of Man in 1871 created mild two, of which Professor Drummond’s
excitement. And the weight of his
Ascent of Man is a type, and in
support is the greater because he never speeches at Church Congresses of which
�93
that delivered by Archdeacon Wilson
(seep. 71) is a type, do but hypnotise
the “ light half-believers of our casual
creeds.” To some there are “signs of
the times ” which point to approaching
acquiescence in the sentiment of Ovid,
paralleled by a famous passage in
Gibbon, that “ the existence of the
gods is a matter of public policy, and
we must believe it accordingly.” It
looks like the prelude to surrender of
what is the cardinal dogma of Chris
tianity when we read in the Arch
deacon’s address that “ the theory of
Evolution is indeed fatal to certain
yz/«57-rnythological doctrines of the
Atonement which once prevailed, but it
is in harmony with its spirit.” For
those doctrines, as the venerable apolo
gist may learn from the evidence in
Frazer’s Golden Bough (chap. iii. passim),
are wholly mythological, because bar
baric. But, in truth, there is not a
dogma of Christendom, not a founda
tion on which the dogma rests, that
Evolution does not traverse.
The
Church of England' adopts, “ as tho
roughly to be received and believed,”
the three ancient creeds, known as the
Apostles’, the Athanasian, and the
Nicene. There is not a sentence in any
One of these which finds confirmation;
and only a sentence or two that find
neither confirmation nor contradiction,
in Evolution.
The question, on which reams of
paper have been wasted, lies in a nut
shell. The statements in the Creeds
profess to have warrant in the direct
words of the Bible; or in inferences
drawn from those words, as defined by
the Councils of the Church. The
decisions of these Councils represent
the opinion of the majority of fallible
men composing those assemblies, and
no number of fallible parts can make
an infallible whole. As Selden quaintly
puts it {Table Talk, xxx. “Councils”),
“ they talk (but blasphemously enough)
that the Holy Ghost is president of
their General Councils, when the truth
is the odd man is still the Holy Ghost.”
With this same “odd man” rested the
decision as to what books should be in
cluded or excluded from the collection
on which the Church bases its authority
and formulates its creeds. So, in the
last result, both sets of questions are
settled by a human tribunal employing
a circular argument. But, dismissing
this for the moment, let us see to what
issues the controversy is narrowred, to
quote Huxley’s words (written in 1871),
by “ the spontaneous retreat of the
enemy from nine-tenths of the territory
which he occupied ten years ago.”
The battle has no longer to be fought
over the question of the fundamental
identity of the physical structure of man
and of the anthropoid apes. The most
enlightened Protestant divines accept
this as proven, and not a few Catholic
divines are adopting an attitude towards
it which is only the prelude to surrender.
Matters must have moved apace in the
Church which Huxley, backed by history,
describes as “ that vigorous and con
sistent enemy of the highest intellectual,
moral, and social life of mankind,” to
permit the Roman Catholic Professor of
Physics in the University of Notre Dame,
America, to parley as follows :—
“Granting that future researches in
palaeontology, anthropology, and biology,
shall demonstrate beyond doubt thaw
man is genetically related to the inferior]
animals, and we have seen how far scien-|
tists are from such a demonstration (?),
there will not be, even in such an im
probable event, the slightest ground for
imagining that then, at last, the conclu-J
sions of science are hopelessly at variance]
with the declarations of the sacred text,
or the authorised teachings of the Church
of Christ. All that would logically!
follow from the demonstration of thei
animal origin of man would be a modi1!
fication of the traditional view regarding!
the origin of the body of our first
ancestor. We should be obliged to
revise the interpretation that has usually
been given to the words of Scripturd
which refer to the formation of Adam’s
�94
PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION
body, and read these words in the sense
which Evolution demands, a sense which,
as we have seen, may be attributed to
the words of the inspired record, without
either distorting the meaning of terms,
or in any way doing violence to the text ”
{Evolution and Dogma, by the Reverend
J. A. Zahm, Ph.D., C.S.C., pp. 364, 365).
Upon this suggested revision of writ
ings which are claimed as forming part
of a divine revelation, one of the highest
authorities, Francisco Suarez, thus refers,
in his Tractatus de Opere sex Dierum, to
the elastic interpretation given in his
time to the “ days ” in the first chapter
of Genesis. “It is not probable that
God, in inspiring Moses to write a
history of the Creation, which was to be
believed by ordinary people, would have
made him use language the true meaning
of which it was hard to discover, and
still harder to believe.” Three centuries
have passed since these wise words were
penned, and the reproof which they
convey is as much needed now as then.
In near connection with the question
of man’s origin is that of his antiquity.
The existence of his remains, rare as they
are everywhere in deposits older than the
Pleistocene or Quaternary epoch, is not
proven. This applies to the remarkable
fragments found by Dr. Dubois in Java,
the chaiacter of which, in the judgment
of several palaeontologists, indicates the
nearest approach between man and ape
hitherto discovered. But the evidence
of the physical relation of these two
being conclusive, the exact place of man
in the. earth’s time-record is rendered of
subordinate importance.
The theologians have come to their
last ditch in contesting that the mental
differences between man and the lower
animals are fundamental, being differences
of kind, and therefore that no gradual
process from the mental faculties of the
one to those of the other has taken place.
This struggle against the application of
the theory of Evolution to man’s intel
lectual and spiritual nature will be long
and stubborn. It is a matter of life and
death to the theologian to show that he
has in revelation, and in the world-wide
belief of mankind in spiritual existences
without, and in a spirit or soul within,
evidence of the supernatural.
The
evolutionist has no such corresponding
deep concern. When the argument
against him is adduced from the Bible,
he . can only challenge the grounds on
which that book is cited as divine
authority, or as an authority at all.
Granting, for the sake of argument, that
a revelation has been made, the writings
purporting to contain it must comply
with the twofold condition attaching to
it—namely, that it makes known matters
which the human mind could not,
unaided, have found out; and that it
embodies those matters in language as
to the meaning of which there can be
no doubt whatever. If there be any
sacred books which comply with these
conditions, they have yet to be dis
covered.
When the argument against the evolu
tionist is drawn from human testimony,
he does not dispute the existence of the
belief in a soul and in all the accompany
ing apparatus of the supernatural; but
he calls in the anthropologist to explain
how these arose in the barbaric mind.
Meanwhile, let us summarise the
evidence which points to the psychical
unity between man and the lower life
forms. As stated on p. 80, Mr. Herbert
Spencer traces the gradual evolution of
consciousness from “the blurred, inde
terminate feeling which responds to a
single nerve pulsation or shock.” There
is no trace of a nervous system in the
simplest organisms, but this counts for
little, because there are also no traces of
a mouth, or a stomach, or limbs. In
these seemingly structureless creatures
every part does everything. The amoeba
eats and drinks, digests and excretes,
manifests “irritability”—that is, responds
to the various stimuli of its surroundings,
and multiplies, without possessing special
organs for these various functions. Divi
sion of labour arises at a slightly higher
stage, when rudimentary organs appear?
�MODERN EVOLUTION
the development of function and organ
going on simultaneously.
Speaking broadly, the functions of
living things are threefold: they feed;
they reproduce; they respond to their
“environment,” and it is this last-named
function—communication with surround
ings—which is the special work of the
nervous system. It was an old Greek
maxim that “a man may once say a
thing as he would have said it: he can
not say it twice.” This is the warrant
for transferring a few sentences on the
origin of the nerves from my Story of
Creation. They are but a meagre abstract
of Mr. Spencer’s long but luminous
exposition of the subject
“As every part of an organism is made
up of cells, and as the functions govern
the form of the cells, the origin of nerves
must be due to a modification in cell
shape and arrangement, whereby certain
tracts or fibres of communication between
the body and its surroundings are estab
lished.”
“ But what excited that modification ?
The all-surrounding medium, without
which no life had been, which deter
mined its limits, and touches it at every
point with its throbs and vibrations. In
the beginnings of a primitive layer or
skin manifested by creatures a stage
above the lowest, unlikenesses would
arise, and certain parts, by reason of
their finer structure, would be the more
readily stimulated by, and the more
quickly responsive to, the ceaseless
action of the surroundings, the result
being that an extra sensitiveness along
the lines of least resistance would be
set up in those more delicate parts.
These, developing, like all things else,
by use, would become more and more
the selected paths of the impulses, lead
ing, as the molecular waves thrilled them,
to structural changes or modification
into nerve-cells, and nerve-fibres, of
increasing complexity as we ascend the
scale of life. The entire nervous system,
with its connections; the brain and all the
subtle mechanism with which it controls
95
the body ; the organs of the senses ; alike
begin as sacs formed by infoldings of
the primitive outer skin.”
Biologists are agreed that a certain
stage in the organisation of the nervous
system—the germs of which, we saw, are
visible in the quivering of an amoeba,
and probably in plants as well as animals
—must be reached before consciousness
is manifest. Obscurity still hangs round
the stage at which mere irritability
passes into sensibility, but so long as
the continuity of development is clear,
the gradations are of lesser importance.
And, for the present purpose, there is
no need to descend far in the life-scale;
if the psychical connection between man
and the mammals immediately beneath
him is proven, the connection of the
mammals with the lowest invertebrate
may be assumed as also established.
Speaking only of vertebrates, the brain
being, whether in fish or man, the organ
of mental phenomena, how far does its
structure support or destroy the theory
of mental continuity ? In Maris Plate
in Nature, and its invaluable supplement,
the second part of the monograph on
Hume, this subject is expounded by
Huxley with his usual clearness. In the
older book he traces the gradual modifi»
cation of brain in the series of backboned
animals. He points out that the brain
of a fish is very small compared with the
spinal cord into which it is continued,
that in reptiles the mass of brain, rela
tively to the spinal cord, is larger, and
still larger in birds, until among the
lowest mammals, as the opossums and
kangaroos, the brain is so increased in
proportion as to be extremely different
from that of fish, bird, or reptile.
Between these marsupials and the high
est or placental mammals there occurs
“the greatest leap anywhere made by
Nature in her brain work.”
Then
follows this important statement in
favour of continuity :—
“As if to demonstrate, by a striking
example, the impossibility of erecting
any cerebral barrier between man and
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PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION
the apes, Nature has provided us, in the
latter animals, with an almost complete
series of gradations from brains little
higher than that of a rodent to brains
little lower than that of man.”
After giving technical descriptions in
proof of this, and laying special stress on
the presence of the structure known as the
“ hippocampus minor ” in the brain of
man as well as of the ape—in the denial
of which Owen cut such a sorry figure—
Huxley adds :—
“ So far as cerebral structure goes,
therefore, it is clear that man differs less
from the chimpanzee or the orang than
these do even from the monkeys, and
that the difference between the brains of
the chimpanzee and of man is almost
insignificant when compared with that
between the chimpanzee brain and that
of a lemur........ Thus, whatever system
of organs be studied, the comparison of
their modifications in the ape series
leads to one and the same result—that
the structural differences which separate
man from the gorilla and the chim
panzee are not so great as those which
separate the gorilla from the lower apes.
But in enunciating this important truth
I must guard myself against a form of
misunderstanding which is very preva
lent....... that the structural differences
between man and even the highest apes
are small and insignificant. Let me then
distinctly assert, on the contrary, that
they are great and significant; that every
bone of a gorilla bears marks by which
it might be distinguished from the corre
sponding bone of a man; and that in
the present creation, at any rate, no
intermediate link bridges over the gap
between Homo and Troglodytes. It
would be no less wrong than absurd to
deny the existence of this chasm; but it
is at least equally wrong and absurd to
exaggerate its magnitude, and, resting on
the admitted fact of its existence, to
refuse to inquire whether it is wide or
narrow. Remember, if you will, that
there is no existing link between mar. (
and the gorilla, but do not forget that !
there is a no less sharp line of demarca
tion, a no less complete absence of any
traditional form, between the gorilla
and the orang, or the orang and the
gibbon.”
The brains of man and ape being
fundamentally the same in structure, it
follows that the functions which they
perform are fundamentally the same.
The large array of facts mustered by a
series of careful observers proves how
futile is the argument which, in his pride
of birth, man advances against psychical
continuity. Vain is the search after
boundary lines between reflex action
and instinct, and between instinct and
reason. Barriers there are between man
and brute, for articulate speech and the
consequent power to transmit experiences
has set up these, and they remain im
passable. “The potentialities of lan
guage, as the vocal symbol of thought,
lay in the faculty of modulating and
articulating the voice. The potentialities
of writing, as the visual symbol of
thought, lay in the hand that could
draw, and in the mimetic tendency
which we know was gratified by drawing
as far back as the days of Quaternary
man ” (Huxley’s Essays on Controverted
Questions, p. 47). But these specially
human characteristics are no sufficing
warrant for denying that the sensations,
emotions, thoughts, and volitions of
man vary in kind from those of the
lower creation. “ The essential resem
blances in all points of structure and
function, so far as they can be studied,
between the nervous system of man and
that of the dog, leave no reasonable
doubt that the processes which go on in
the one are just like those which take
place in the other. In the dog there
can be no doubt that the nervous
matter which lies between the retina
and the muscles undergoes a series of
changes, precisely analogous to those
which, in the man, give rise to sensa
tion, a train of thought, and volition.”
This passage occurs in Huxley’s “ Reply
to Mr. Darwin’s Critics,” which appeared
in the Contemporary Review, 1871, and
�MODERN EVOLUTION
it may be supplemented by a quotation
from the chapter on “ The Mental
Phenomena of Animals” in his Hume:
“ It seems hard to assign any good
reason for denying to the higher animals
any mental state or process in which the
employment of the vocal or visual
Symbols of which language is com
posed is not involved; and comparative
psychology confirms the position in
relation to the rest of the animal world
assigned to man by comparative anatomy.
As comparative anatomy is easily able
to show that, physically, man is but the
last term of a long series of forms,
which lead, by slow gradations, from
the highest mammal to the almost
formless speck of living protoplasm,
which lies on the shadowy boundary
between animal and vegetable life; so,
Comparative psychology, though but a
young science, and far short of her
elder sister’s growth, points to the same
conclusion.”
Within recent years the psychologists
are doing remarkable work in attacking
the problem of the mechanics of mental
operations, and already in Europe and
America some thirty laboratories have
been started for experimental work.
¡The subject is somewhat abstruse for
detailed reference here, and it must
suffice to say that the psychologist,
beginning with observations upon him
self—measuring, for example, “ the
degree of sensibility of his own eye to
luminous irritations, or of his own skin
to pricking—passes on to like inquiry
into the numerical relations between the
‘energy of the stimuli of light, sound,
and so forth, and the energy of the sen
sations which they arouse in the nerve
channels.” An excellent summary, with
references to the newest authorities on
the subject, is given by Prince Kropotkin
in the Nineteenth Century of August,
1896.
All this, to the superficial onlooker,
seems rank materialism. But we cannot
think without a brain, any more than we
can see without eyes ; and any inquiry
into the operations of the organ of
thought must run on the same lines as
inquiry into the operations of any other '
organ of the body. And the inquiry
leaves us at the point whence we began
in so far as any light is thrown on the
connection between the molecular vibra
tions in nerve-tissue and the mental
processes of which they are the indis
pensable accompaniment. Changes take
place in some of the thousands of
millions of brain-cells in every thought
that we think, and in every emotion
that we feel; but the nexus remains an
impenetrable mystery. Nevertheless, if
we may not say that the brain secretes
thought as we say that the liver
secretes bile, we may also not say that
the mind is detachable from the nervous
system, and that it is an entity inde
pendent of it. Were it this, not only
would it stand outside the ordinary con
ditions of development, but it would
also maintain the equilibrium which a
dose of narcotics or of alcohol, or which
starvation and gorging, alike rapidly
upset.
In his posthumous essay On the
Immortality of the Soul, Hume says :
“ Matter and spirit are at bottom equally
unknown, and we cannot determine what
qualities inhere in the one or in the
other.” That is the conclusion to-which
the wisest come. And in the ultimate
correlation of the physical and psychical
lies the hope of arrival at that terminus
of unity which was the dream of the
ancient Greeks, and to which all inquiry
makes approach. How, in these matters,
philosophy is at one is again seen in
Huxley’s admission that “ in respect of
the great problems of philosophy the
post-Darwinian generation is, in one
sense, exactly where the pre-Darwinian
generations were. They remain insoluble.
But the present generation has the
advantage of being better provided with
the means of freeing itself from the
tyranny of certain sham solutions.”
Science explains, and, in exp aining,
dissipates, the pseudo-mysteries by which
man, in his myth-making stage, when
conception of the order of the universe
H
�98
PIONEERS OE EVOLUTION
was yet unborn, accounted for every
thing. But she may borrow the Apostle’s
words, “ Behold ! .1 show you a mystery,”
and give to them a profounder meaning
as she confesses that the origin and
ultimate destiny of matter and motion,
the causes which determine the be
haviour of atoms—whether they are
arranged in the lovely and varying forms
which mark their crystals, or whether
they are quivering with the life which is
common to the amoeba and the man—
the conversion of the inorganic into the
organic by the green plant, and the rela
tion between nerve-changes and con
sciousness, are all impenetrable mysteries.
In his speech on the commemoration
of the jubilee of his Professorship in
the University of Glasgow in 1895
Lord Kelvin said : “ I know no more
of electric and magnetic force, or of the
relation between ether, electricity, and
ponderable matter, or of chemical affinity,
than I knew and tried to teach my
students of natural philosophy fifty years
ago, in my first session as professor.”
This recognition of limitations will
content those who seek not “after a
sign.” For others, that search will con
tinue to have encouragement, not only
from the theologian, but from the
pseudo-scientific who have travelled
some distance with the Pioneers of
Evolution, but who refuse to follow
them further. In each of these there
is present the “ theological bias ” whose
varied forms are skilfully analysed by
Mr. Spencer in his chapter under that
heading in the Study of Sociology. This
explains the attitude of various groups
which are severally represented by the late
Mr. St. George Mivart and the late Dr.
W. B. Carpenter; by Professor Sir
George G. Stokes and Mr. Alfred Russel
Wallace. The first-named is a Roman
Catholic; the second was a Unitarian;
the third is an orthodox Churchman;
and the fourth, as already seen, is a
Spiritualist. In his Genesis of Species
Mr. Mivart contended that “ man’s body
was evolved from pre-existing material
(symbolised by the term ‘dust of the
earth’), and was therefore only deriva
tively created-—?>., by the operation of
secondary laws,” but that “ his soul,
on the other hand, was created in
quite a different way....... by the direct
action of the Almighty (symbolised
by the term ‘breathing’)” (p. 325).
In his Mental Physiology Dr. Car
penter postulates an Ego or Will, which
presides over, without sharing in, the
causally determined action of the
other mental functions and their corre
lated bodily processes; “an entity which
does not depend for its existence on any
play of physical or vital forces, but which
makes these forces subservient to its
determinations” (p. 27).
Professor
Mivart actually cites St. Augustine and
Cardinal Newman as authorities in
support of his theory of the special
creation of the soul. He might with
equal effect have subpoenaed Dr. Joseph
Parker or General Booth as authorities.
Dr. Carpenter argued as became a good
Unitarian. In his Gifford Lectures on
Natural Theology, Professor Stokes
asserts, drawing “ on sources of informa
tion which lie beyond man’s natural
powers
in other words, appealing to
the Bible—that God made man immortal
and upright, and endowed him with
freedom of the will. As, without the
exercise of this, man would have been
as a mere automaton, he was exposed
to the temptation of the devil, and fell.
Thereby he became “ subject to death
like the lower animals,” and by the
“natural effect of heredity” transmitted
the taint of sin to his offspring. The
eternal life thus forfeited was restored by
the voluntary sacrifice of Christ, but can
be secured only to those who have faith
in him. This doctrine, which is no
novel one, is known as “conditional
immortality.” Professor Stokes attaches
“no value to the belief in a-future life
by metaphysical arguments founded on
the supposed nature of the soul itself,”
and he admits that “ the purely psychic
theory which would discard the body
altogether in regard to the process of
thought is beset by very great difficulties.”
�MODERN EVOLUTION
So he once more has recourse to “sources
of information which lie beyond man’s
natural powers.” Following up certain
distinctions between “soul’’and “spirit”
drawn by the Apostle Paul in his tripar
tite division of man, Professor Stokes,
somewhat in keeping with Dr. Carpenter,
assumes an “ ego, which, on the one
hand, is not to be identified with thought,
which may exist while thought is in
abeyance, and which may, with the
future body of which the Christian
religion speaks, be the medium of
continuity of thought........ What the
nature of this body might be we do not
know; but we are pretty distinctly
informed that it would be something
Very different from that of our present
body, very different in its properties and
functions, and yet no less our qwn than
our present body.” “Words, words,
words,” as Hamlet says.
Reference has been made in some
fulness to Mr. Wallace’s limitations of
the theory of natural selection in the
case of man’s mental faculties. We
must now pursue this somewhat in
detail, reminding the reader of Mr.
Wallace’s admission that, “provisionally,
the laws of variation and natural selection
....... may have brought about, first, that
perfection of bodily structure in which
man is so far above all other animals,
and, in co-ordination with it, the larger
and more developed brain by means of
which he has been able to subject the
whole animal and vegetable kingdoms
to his service.” But, although Mr.
Wallace rejects the theory of man’s
Special creation as “being entirely un
supported by facts, as well as in the
highest degree improbable,” he contends
that it does not necessarily follow that
his mental nature, even though deve
loped pari passu with his physical
Structure, ’has been developed by the
same agencies.” Then, by the introduc
tion of a physical analogy which is no
analogy at all, he suggests that the agent
by which man was upraised into a king
dom apart bears like relation to natural
selection as the glacial epoch bears to
99
the ordinary agents of denudation and
other changes in producing new effects
which, though continuous with preceding
effects, were not due to the same causes.
Applying this “argument” (drawn
from natural causes), as Mr. Wallace
names it, “ to the case of man’s intellec
tual and moral nature,” he contends that
such special faculties as the mathemati
cal, musical, and artistic (is this faculty
to be denied the nest-decorating bower
bird?), and the high moral qualities
which have given the martyr his con
stancy, the patriot his devotion, and the
philanthropist his unselfishness, are due
to a “ spiritual essence or nature, super
added to the animal nature of man.”
We are not told at what stage in man’s
development this was inserted; whether,
once and for all, in “primitive” man,
with potentiality of transmission through
paleeolithic folk to all succeeding genera
tions ; or whether there is special infu
sion of a “ spiritual essence ” into every
human being at birth.
Any perplexity that might arise at the
line thus taken by Mr. Wallace vanishes
before the fact, already enlarged upon,
that the author of the Malay Archipelago
and Island Life has written a book on
Miracles and Modern Spiritualism in
defence of both. The explanation lies
in that duality of mind which, in one
compartment, ranks Mr. Wallace fore
most among naturalists, and, in the other
compartment, places him among the
most credulous of Spiritualists.
Despite this, Mr. Wallace has claims
to a respectful hearing and to serious
reply. Fortunately, he would appear to
furnish the refutation to his own argu
ment in the following paragraph from his
delightful Contributions to the Theory of
Natural Selection
“ From the time when the social and
sympathetic feelings came into operation
and the intellectual and moral faculties
became fairly developed, man would
cease to be influenced by natural selec
tion in his physical form and structure.
As an animal he would remain almost
�loo
PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION
stationary, the changes in the surround
ing universe ceasing to produce in him
that powerful modifying effect which
they exercise on other parts of the
organic world. But, from the moment
that the form of his body became
stationary, his mind would beome sub
ject to those very influences from which
his body had escaped; every slight
variation in his mental and moral nature
which should enable him better to guard
against adverse circumstances and com
bine for mutual comfort and protection
would be preserved and accumulated ;
the better and higher specimens of our
race would therefore increase and spread,
the lower and more brutal would give
way and successively die out, and that
rapid advancement of mental organisa
tion would occur which has raised the
very lowest races of man so far above
the brutes (although differing so little
from some of them in physical structure),
and, in conjunction with scarcely per
ceptible modifications of form, has
developed the wonderful intellect of the
European races” (pp. 316, 317, second
edition, 1871).
This argument has suggestive illustra
tion in the fifth chapter of the Origin of
Species. Mr. Darwin there refers to a
remark to the following effect made by
Mr. Waterhouse: “ A part developed in
any species in an extraordinary degree or
manner in comparison with the same part
in allied species tends to be highly variables
This applies only where there is unusual
development. “ Thus, the wing of a bat
is a most abnormal structure in the class
of mammals; but the rule would not
apply here, because the whole group of
bats possesses wings; it would apply
only if some one species had wings
developed in a remarkable manner in
comparison with the other species of the
same genus.” And when this exceptional
development of any part or organ occurs,
we may conclude that the modification
has arisen since the period when the
several species branched off from the
common progenitor of the genus; and
this period will seldom be very remote,
as species rarely endure for more than
one geological period.
How completely this applies to man,
the latest product of organic evolution.
The brain is that part or organ in him
which has been developed “ in an extra
ordinary degree, in comparison with the
same part ” in other primates, and which
has become highly variable. Whatever
may have been the favouring causes
w’hich secured his immediate progenitors
such modification of brain as advanced
him in intelligence over “allied species,”
the fact abides that in this lies the
explanation of their after-history; the
arrest of the one, the unlimited progress
of the other. Increasing intelligence
at work through vast periods of time
originated and developed those social
conditions which alone made possible
that progress which, in its most advanced
degree, but a small proportion of the
race has reached. For in this question
of mental differences the contrast is not
between man and ape, but between man
savage and civilised; between the
incapacity of the one to count beyond
his fingers, and the capacity of the other
to calculate an eclipse of the sun or a
transit of Venus. It would therefore
seem that Mr. Wallace should introduce
his “ spiritual essence or nature ” in the
intermediate, and not in the initial, stage.
As answer to Mr. Wallace’s argument,
that in their large and well-developed
brains savages “possess an organ quite
disproportioned to their requirements,”
Huxley cites Wallace’s own remarks in
his paper on Instinct in Man and Animals
as to the considerable demands made
by the needs of the lower races on their
observing faculties which call into play
no mean exercise of brain function.
“Add to this,” Huxley says, “ the
knowledge which a savage is obliged to
gain of the properties of plants, of the
characters and habits of animals, and of
the minute indications by which their
course is discoverable; consider that
even an Australian can make excellent
baskets and nets, and neatly fitted and
�TOW E VOL UTLON
beautifully balanced spears; that he
learns to use these so as to be able to
transfix a quartern loaf at sixty yards ;
and that very often, as in the case of the
American Indians, the language of a
savage exhibits complexities which a
well-trained European finds it difficult
to master; consider that every time a
savage tracks his game he employs a
minuteness of observation and an
accuracy of inductive and deductive
reasoning which, applied to other matters,
would assure some reputation, and I
think one need ask no further why he
possesses such a fair supply of brains.”
....... But Mr. Wallace’s objection “applies
quite as strongly to the lower animals.
Surely a wolf must have too much brain,
Or else how is it that a dog, with only
the same quantity and form of brain, is
able to develop such singular intelli
gence ? The wolf stands to the dog in
the same relation as the savage to the
man; and therefore, if Mr. Wallace’s
doctrine holds good, a higher power
must have superintended the breeding
up of wolves from some inferior stock,
in order to prepare them to become
dogs” {Critiques and Addresses, p. 293).
After all is said, perhaps the effective
refutation of the belief in a spiritual
entity superadded in man is found in the
explanation of the origin of that belief
which anthropology supplies.
The theory of the origin and growth
of the belief in souls and spiritual beings
generally, and in a future life, which has
been put into coherent form by Spencer
and Tylor, is based upon an enormous
mass of evidence gathered by travellers
among existing barbaric peoples—evi
dence agreeing in character with that
which results from investigations into
beliefs of past races in varying stages of
culture. Only brief reference to it here
is necessary, but the merest outline suf
fices to show from what obvious pheno
mena the conception of a soul was
derived—a conception of which all
subsequent forms are but elaborated
copies. As in other matters, crude
analogies have guided the barbaric mind
roí
in its ideas about spirits and their
behaviour. A man falls asleep and
dreams certain things; on waking, he
believes that these things actually hap
pened ; and he therefore concludes thatj
the dead who came to him or to whomi
he went in his dreams are alive; that 1
the friend or foe whom he knows to be
far away, but with whom he feasted or
fought in dreamland, came to him. He
sees another man fall into a swoon or
trance that may lay him seemingly life
less for hours, or even days ; he himself
may be attacked by deranging fevers and
see visions stranger than those which a '
healthy person sees ; shadows of himself
and of objects, both living and not
living, follow or precede him, and
lengthen or shorten in the withdrawing]
or advancing light; the still water throws
back images of himself; the hillsides
resound with mocking echoes of his
words and of sounds around him; and
it is these and allied phenomena which
have given rise to the notion of “another
self,” to use Mr. Spencer’s convenient
term, or of a number of selves that are
sometimes outside the man and some
times inside him, as to which the batH
baric mind is never sure. Outside him,
however, when the man is sleeping, so
that he must not be awakened, lest the,
“ other self” be hindered from returning;
or when he is sick, or in the toils of the
medicine-man, who may hold the “ other
self ” in his power, as in the curious soul
trap of the Polynesians—a series of
cocoa-nut rings—in which the sorcerer,
makes believe to catch and detain the
soul of an offender or sick person.«
When Dr. Catat and his companions^
MM. Maistre and Foucart, were explor
ing the “Bara” country on the west
coast of Madagascar, the people sud
denly became hostile. On the previous
day the travellers, not without difficulty,
had photographed the royal family, and
now found themselves accused of taking
the souls of the natives with the object
of selling them when they returned to
France. Denial was of no avail ;
following the custom of the Malagasays,
�102
PIONEERS OF E VOL UTION
they were compelled to catch the souls,
which were then put into a basket, and
ordered by Dr. Catat to return to their
respective owners (Times, 24th March,
1891).
Although the difference presented by
such phenomena and by death is that it
is abiding, while they are temporary, to
the barbaric mind the difference is in
degree, and not in kind. True, the
“other self” has left the body, and will
never return to it; but it exists, for it
appears in dreams and hallucinations,
and therefore is believed to revisit its
ancient haunts, as well as to tarry often
near the exposed or buried body. The
nebulous theories which identified the
soul with breath, and shadow, and reflec
tion, slowly condensed into theories of
semi-substantiality still charged with
ethereal conceptions, resulting in the
curious amalgam which, in the minds of
cultivated persons, whenever they strive
to envisage the idea, represents the dis
embodied soul.
Therefore, in vain may we seek for
points of difference in our comparison
of primitive ideas of the origin and
nature of the soul with the later ideas.
The copious literature to which these
have given birth is represented in the
bibliography appended to Mr. Alger’s
work on Theories of a Future Life, by
4,977 books, exclusive of many pub
lished since his list was compiled. Save
in refinement of detail such as a higher
culture secures, what is there to choose
between the four souls of the Hidatsa
Indians, the two souls of the Gold Coast
natives, and the tripartite division of
man by Rabbis, Platonists, and Paulinists, which are but the savage other-self
“ writ large ” ? Their common source is
in man’s general animistic interpretation
of nature, which is a ‘vera causa, super
seding the need for the assumptions of
which Mr. Wallace’s is a type. As an
excellent illustration of what is meant
by animism, we may cite what Mr.
Everard im Thurn has to say about the
Indians of Guiana, who are, presum
ably, a good many steps removed from
so-called “ primitive ” man.
“ The
Indian does not see any sharp line
of distinction such as we see between
man and other animals, between one
kind of animal and another, or between
animals—man included—and inanimate
objects. On the contrary, to the Indian
all objects, animate and inanimate, seem
exactly of the same nature, except that
they differ in the accident of bodily
form. Every object in the whole world
is . a being, consisting of a body and
spirit, and differs from every other object
in no respect except that of bodily form,
and in the greater or lesser degree of
brute power and brute cunning conse
quent on the difference of bodily form
and bodily habits.
Our next step,
therefore, is to note that animals, other
than men, and even inanimate objects,
have spirits which differ not at all in
kind from those of men.”
The importance of the evidence
gathered by anthropology in support
of man’s inclusion in the general theory
of evolution is ever becoming more
manifest. For it has brought witness to
continuity in organic development at the
point where a break has been assumed,
and driven home the fact that, if Evolu
tion operates anywhere, it operates every
where. And operates, too, in such a
way that every part co-operates in the
discharge of a universal process. Hence
it meets the divisions which mark oppo
sition to it by the transcendent power of
unity.
Until the past half-century man
excepted himself, save in crude and
superficial fashion, from that investiga
tion which, for long periods, he has
made into the earth beneath 'him and
the heavens above him. This tardy
inquiry into the history of his own kind,
and its place in the order and succession
of life, as well as its relation to the lower
animals, between whom and itself, as
has been shown, the barbaric mind sees
much in common, is due, so far as
Christendom is concerned (and the like
cause applies, mutatis mutandis, in non
Christian civilised communities), to the
�MODERN EVOLUTION
subjection of the intellect to preconceived
theories based on the authority accorded
to ancient legends about man. These
legends, invested with the sanctity with
which time endows the past, finally
became integral parts of sacred litera
tures, to question which was as super
fluous as it was impious. Thus it has
come to pass that the only being compe
tent to inquire into his own antecedents
has looked at his history through the dis
torting prism of a mythopceic past!
Perhaps, in the long run, the gain has
exceeded the loss. For, in the prece
dence of study of other sciences more
remote from man’s “ business and
bosom,” there has been rendered possible
a more dispassionate treatment of matters
charged with profounder issues. Since
the Church, however she may conveni
ently ignore the fact as concession after
Concession is wrung from her, has never
slackened in jealousy of the advance of
secular knowledge, it was well for human
progress that those subjects of inquiry
which affected orthodox views only
indirectly were first prosecuted. The
brilliant discoveries in astronomy, to
which the Copernican theory gave
impetus, although they displaced the
earth from its assumed supremacy among
the bodies in space, did not apparently
affect the doctrine of the supremacy of
man as the creature of Divine intervention,
as the centre for whom the scheme of
redemption had been formulated “ in
the counsels of the Trinity,” and the
tragedy of the self-sacrifice of God the
Son enacted on earth. The surrender
Or negation of any fundamental dogma
of Christian theology was not involved
in the abandonment of the statement in
the Bible as to the dominant position
of the earth in relation to the sun and
Other self-luminous stars. To our own
tíme the increase of knowledge concern
ing the myriads of sidereal systems which
revolve through space is not held to be
destructive of those dogmas, but held,
rather, to supply material for speculation
as to the probable extension of Divine
paternal government throughout the
103
universe. And, although, as coming
nearer home, with consequent greater
chance of intrusion of elements of
friction, the like applies to the discoveries
of geology. Apart from intellectual
apathy, which explains much, the impact
of these discoveries on traditional
beliefs was softened by the buffers
which a moderating spirit of criticism
interposed in the shape of superficial
“ reconciliations ” emptying the old cos
mogony of all its poetry, and therefore
of its value as a key to primitive ideas,
and converting it into bastard science.
Thus a temporary, because artificial,
unity was set up. But with the evidence
supplied by study of the ancient life
whose remains are imbedded in the
fossil-yielding strata, that unity is shivered.
In a scripture that “ cannot be brokenn
there was read the story of conflict and
death aeons before man appeared.
Between this record and that which
spoke of pain and death as the conse
quences of man’s disobedience to the
frivolous prohibition of an anthropo
morphic God there is no possible recon
ciliation.
To the evidence from fossiliferous
beds was added evidence from old river
gravels and limestone caverns. The
relics extracted from the stalagmitic
deposits in Kent’s Hole, near Torquay,
had lain unheeded for some years save
as “curios,” when M. Boucher de
Perthes saw in the worked flints of &
somewhat rougher type, which he found
mingled with the bones of rhinoceroses,
cave-bears, mammoths, or woolly-haired
elephants, and other mammals, in the |
“ drift ” or gravel-pits of Abbeville, in I
Picardy, the proofs of man’s primitive I
savagery, so far as Western Europe was 1
concerned. The presence of these '
rudely-chipped flints had been noticed
by M. de Perthes in 1839, but he could i
not persuade savants to admit that
human hands had shaped them, until 1
these doubting Thomases saw for them
selves like implements in situ at a depth
of seventeen feet from the original surface
of the ground. That was in 1858, a
�io4
PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION
year before the publication of the Origin
mode of progress no civilised people has
of Species. Similar materials have been been the exception, as, notably in the case
unearthed from every part of the globe of the Hebrews, was once thought—“ the
habitable once or inhabitable now. They correspondence between the old Israelitic
confirm the speculations of Lucretius as and other archaic forms of theology
to a universal makeshift with stone, bone,
extending to details.”
horn, and suchlike accessible or pliable
While, therefore, the discoveries of
substances during the ages that preceded astronomers and geologists have been
the discovery of metals. Therefore the disintegrating agencies upon old beliefs,
existence of a Stone Age at one period the discoveries classed under the general
or another, where now an Age of Iron term Anthropological are acting as more
(following an Age of Bronze) prevails,
powerful solvents on every opinion of
is an established canon of archaeological the past. Showing on what mythical
science. From this follows the inference foundation the story of the fall of man
that man’s primitive condition was that rests, Anthropology has utterly demo
which corresponds to the lowest type lished the raison d’etre of the doctrine
extant, the Australian and Papuan ; that of his redemption—-the keystone of the
the farther back inquiry is pushed such fabric. It has penetrated the mists of
culture as exists is found to have been antiquity, and traced the myth of a for
preceded by barbarism; and that the feited Paradise, of the Creation, the
savage races of to-day represent, not a Deluge, and other legends, to their
degradation to which man, as the result birthplaces in thé valley of the Euphrates
of a fall from primeval purity and Eden- or the uplands of Persia; legends whose
like ease has sunk, but a condition out earliest inscribed records are on Accadian
of which all races above the savage have tablets, or in the scriptures of Zarathustra.
emerged.
It has, in the spirit of the commended
While Prehistoric Archaeology, with Bereans, “ searched ” those and other
its enormous mass of material remains scriptures, finding therein legends of
gathered from “ dens and caves of the founders of ancient faiths cognate to
earth,” from primitive workshops, from those which in the course of the
rude tombs and temples, thus adds its centuries gathered round Jesus of Naza
testimony to the “great cloud of wit reth ; it has collated the rites and cere
nesses,” immaterial remains, potent as monies of many a barbaric theology
embodying the thought of man, are with those of old-world religions—Brahbrought by the twin sciences of Com manic, Buddhistic, Christian—and found
parative Mythology and Folk-lore, and only such differences between them as
Comparative Theology—-remains of para are referable to the higher or the lower
mount value, because existing to this culture. For the'history of superstitions
day in hitherto unsuspected form, as is included in the history of beliefs ; the
survivals in beliefs and rites and customs. superstitions being the germ-plasm of
Readers of Tylor’s Primitive Culture, which all beliefs above the lowest are
with its wealth of facts and their signi the modified products. Belief incarnates
ficance, and of Lyall’s Asiatic Studies,
in word or act. In the one we have the
wherein is described the making of charm, the invocation, and the dogma;
myths to this day in the heart of India,
in the other the ritual and ceremony.
need not be told how the slow zigzag
“A ritual system,” Professor Robertson
advance of man in material things has
Smith remarks, “must always, remain
its parallel in the stages of his intellectual
materialistic, even if its materialism is
and spiritual advance all the world over ;
disguised under the cloak of mysticism.”
from the lower animism to the higher And it is with the incarnated ideas, un
conception of deity; from bewildering influenced by the particular creed in
guesses to assuring certainties. To this connection with which it finds them,
�MODERN E VOLUTION
that Anthropology deals. Its method is
that of biology. Without bias, without
assumptions of relative truth or falsity,
the Anthropologist searches into origins,
traces variations, compares and classities,
and relates the several families to one
ordinal group. He must be what was
said of Dante, “a theologian to whom
no dogma is foreign.” Unfortunately,
this method, whose application to the
physical sciences is unchallenged, is,
when applied to beliefs, regarded as one
of attack, instead of being one of expla
nation. But this should not deter; and
if in analysing a belief we kill a supersti
tion, this does but show what mortality
lay at its core. For error cannot survive
dissection. Moreover, as John Morley
puts it, “to tamper with veracity is to
tamper with the vital force of human'
progress.”
Therefore, delivering im
partial judgment, the verdict of Anthro
pology upon the whole matter is that the
claims of Christian theologians to a
special and divine origin of their religion
are refuted by the accordant evidence
of the latest utterances of a science
whose main concern is with the origin,
nature, and destiny of man.
The extension of the comparative
method to the various products of man’s
intellectual and spiritual nature is the
logical sequence to the adoption of that
method throughout every department of
the universe. Of course it starts with
the assumption of differences in things,
else it would be superfluous. But it
equally starts with the assumption of
resemblances, and in every case it has
brought out the fact that the differences
are superficial, and that the resemblances
are fundamental.
All this bears closely on Huxley’s
work. The impulse thereto has come
largely from the evidence focussed in
Marls Place in Nature, evidence of
which the material of the writings of
his later years is the expansion. The
cultivation of intellect and character had
always been a favourite theme with him,
and the interest was widened when the
passing of Mr. Forster’s Elementary
105
Education Act in 1870 brought the
problem of popular culture to the front.
The wave of enthusiasm carried a group
of distinguished liberal candidates to
the polls, and Huxley was elected a
member of the School Board for London.
Then, although in not so acute a form
as now, the religious difficulty was the
sole cause of any serious division, and
Huxley’s attitude therein puzzled a good
many people because he advocated the
retention of the Bible in the schools.
Those who should have known him
better thought that he was (to quote
from one of his letters to the writer)
“a hypocrite, or simply a fool.” “But,”
he adds, “ my meaning was that the
mass of the people should not be
deprived of the one great literature
which is open to them, nor shut out
from the perception of its place in the
whole past history of civilised mankind.”
He lamented, as every thoughtful person
must lament, the decay of Bible reading
in this generation, while, at the same
time, he advocated the more strenuously
its detachment from the glosses and
theological inferences which do irrepar
able injury to a literature whose value
cannot be overrated.
For Huxley was well read in history,
and, therefore, he would not trust the
clergy as interpreters of the Bible. After
repeating in the Prologue to his Essays
on Controverted Questions what he had
said about the book in his article on the
School Boards in Critiques and Addresses*
he adds : “ I laid stress on the the neces
sity of placing such instruction in lay
hands ; in the hope and belief that it
would thus gradually accommodate itself
to the coming changes of opinion; that
the theology and the legend would drop
more and more out of sight, while the
perennially interesting, historical, literary,
and ethical contents would come more
and more into view.”
Subsequent events have justified
neither the hope nor the belief. Had
Huxley lived to see that all the sectaries,
while quarrelling as to the particular
dogmas which may be deduced from
�io6
PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION
the Bible, agree in refusing to use it the writer, wherein Huxley refers to his
other than as an instrument for the retirement from official life, he says :—
teaching of dogma, he would probably
I
so ill that I thought with Hamlet, the
have come to see that the only solu rest wassilence.” But my wiry constitution“ has
is
tion in the interests of the young is its unexpectedly weathered the storm, and I have
exclusion from the schools. Never has every reason to believe that with renunciation of
any collection of writings, whose mis the devil and all his works (z>., public speaking,
dining, and being
etc. my
cellaneous, unequal, and often discon be unimpaired for a dined,spell )yet. faculties may
good
And whether
nected character is obscured by the my lease is long or short, I mean to devote
common title “ Bible ” which covers them to the work I began in the paper on the
them, had such need for deliverance “ Evolution of Theology.”
from the so-called “ believers ” in it. Its
That essay was first published in two
value is only to be realised in the degree sections in the Nineteenth Century, 1886,
that theories of its inspiration are aban and was the sequel to the eighth chapter
doned. Then only is it possible to treat of his Hume. The Romanes Lecture
it like any other literature of the kind; supplemented the last chapter of that
to discriminate between the coarse and book. All these are accessible enough
barbaric features which evidence the to render superfluous any abstract of
humanness of its origin, and the loftier their contents. But the tribute due to
features of its later portions which also David Hume, who may well-nigh claim
evidence how it falls into line with other place among the few but fit company of
witnesses of man’s gradual ethical and pioneers, warrants reference to his anti
spiritual development.
cipation of accepted theories of the
Huxley’s breadth of view, his sym origin of belief in spiritual beings in
pathy with every branch of culture, his his Natural History of Religion, pub
advocacy of literary in unison with lished in 1757. He says: “There is
scientific training, fitted him supremely an universal tendency among mankind
for the work of the School Board; but to conceive all beings like themselves,
its demands were too severe on a man and to transfer to every object those
never physically strong, and he was qualities with which they are familiarly
forced to resign. However, he was acquainted, and of which they are inti
thereby set free for other work, which mately conscious....... The unknown causes
could be only effectively done by which continually employ their thought,
exchanging the arena for the study. appearing always in the same aspect, are
The earliest important outcome of that all apprehended to be of the same kind
relief was the monograph on Hume,
or species. Nor is it long before we
published in 1879, and the latest was ascribe to them thought and reason and
the Romanes lecture on Evolution and passion, and sometimes even the limbs
Ethics, which was delivered in the Shel- and figures of men, in order to bring
donian Theatre at Oxford on the 18th them nearer to a resemblance with our
May, 1893. Between the two lie a selves.” In his address to the Sorbonne
valuable series of papers dealing with on The Successive Advances of the Human
the Evolution of Theology and cognate Mind, delivered in 1750, Turgot expresses
subjects.
In all these we have the the same idea, touching, as John Morley
application of the theory of Evolution says in his essay on that statesman, “ the
to the explanation of the origin of beliefs root of most of the wrong thinking that
and of the basis of morals. To quote has been as a manacle to science.”
The foregoing, and passages of a like
the saying attributed to Liebnitz, both
Spencer and Huxley, and all who follow order, are made by Huxley the text of
them, care for “ science only because it his elaborations of the several stages of
enables them to speak with authority in theological evolution, the one note of all
philosophy and religion.” In a letter to of which is the continuity of belief in
�MODERN E VOLUTION
1
;
.
■
’
supernatural intervention. But more
important than the decay of that
belief, which is the prelude to decay of
belief in deity itself as commonly defined,
is the resulting transfer of the foundation
of morals-—in other words, of motives
to conduct, from a theological to a social
basis. Theology is not morality; indeed,
it is, too often, immorality. It is con
cerned with man’s relations to the gods
in whom he believes ; while morals are
concerned with man’s relations to his
fellows. The one looks heavenward,
wondering what dues shall be paid the
gods to win their smiles or ward off
their frowns. In old Rome sanctitas
or holiness was, according to Cicero,
“ the knowledge of the rites which had
40 be performed.” These done, the
gods were expected to do their part.
So in new Rome, when the Catholic
has attended mass, his share in the
contract is ended. Worship and sacri
fice, as mere acts towards supernatural
beings, may be consonant with any
number of lapses in conduct. Morality,
on the other hand, looks earthward, and
is prompted to action solely by what is
due from a man to his fellow-men, or
from his fellow-men to him. Its founda
tion, therefore, is not in supernatural
beliefs, but in social instincts. All sin
is thus resolved into an anti-social act :
a wrong done by man to man.
This is not merely readjustment ; it is
revolution. For it is the rejection of
theology with its appeals to human obli
gation to deity, and to man’s hopes of
future reward or fears of future punish
ment ; and it is the acceptance of wholly
secular motives as incentives to right
action. Those motives, having their
foundation in the physical, mental,
and moral results of our deeds, rest on
a Stable basis. No longer interlaced
with the unstable theological, they
neither abide nor perish with it. And
one redeeming feature of our time is
that the Churches are beginning to see
this, and to be affected by it. John
Morley caustically remarks that “ the
efforts of the heterodox have taught
107
them to be better Christians than they
were a hundred years ago.” Certain
extremists excepted, they are keeping
dogma in the background, and are laying
stress on the socialism which it is con
tended was at the heart of the teaching
of Jesus. Wisely, if not very consistently,
they are seeking alliance with the liberal
movements whose aim is the “abolition
of privilege.” The liberal theologians,
in the face of the varying ethical
standards which mark the Old Testa
ment and the New, no longer insist on
the absoluteness of moral codes, and so
fall into line with the evolutionist in his
theory of their relativeness. For society,
in its advance from lower to higher con
ceptions of duty, completely reverses its
ethics, looking back with horror on that
which was once permitted and unques
tioned.
It is with this checking of “ the ape
and tiger,” and this fostering of the
“ angel ” in man, that Huxley dealt in
his Romanes Lecture. There was much
unintelligent, and some wilful, misunder
standing of his argument, else a pro
minent Catholic biologist would hardly
have welcomed it as a possible prelude
to Huxley’s submission to the Church.
Yet the reasoning was clear enough, and
in nowise contravened the application of
Evolution to morals. Huxley showed
that Evolution is both cosmical and
ethical. Cosmic Evolution has resulted
in the universe with its non-living and
living contents, and since, dealing with
the conditions which obtain on our
planet, there is not sufficient elbow-room
or food for all the offspring of living
things, the result is a furious struggle in
which the strong win and transmit their
advantages to their descendants. Nature
is wholly selfish ; the race is to the swift,
and the battle to the strong.
But there are limits set to that struggle
by man in the substitution, also within
limits, of social progress for cosmic
progress.
In this Ethical Evolution
selfishness is so far checked as to permit
groups of human beings to live together
in amity, recognising certain common
�108
PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION
rights, which restrain the self-regarding the fate of man. Which things are fact
impulses. For, in the words of Marcus as well as allegory; and time is on
Aurelius, “that which is not good for the side of the bacteria. For as
the swarm is not good for the bee ” our life is but a temporary arrest of
{Med., vi. 54). Huxley aptly likens this the universal movement towards disso
counter-process to the action of a lution, so naught in our actions can
gardener in dealing with a piece of arrest the destiny of our kind. Huxley
waste ground. He stamps out the thus puts it in the concluding sentences
weeds, and plants fragrant flowers and of his Preface—written in July, 1894,
useful fruits. But he must not relax one year before his death—to the re
his efforts, otherwise the weeds will issue of Evolution and Ethics:—
return, and the untended plants will be
“ That man, as a ‘ political animal,’ is
choked and perish.
So in conduct. susceptible of a vast amount of improve
For the common weal, in which the ment, by education, by instruction, and
unit shares, thus blending the selfish and by the application of his intelligence to
the unselfish motives, men check their the adaptation of the conditions of life
natural impulses. The emotions and to his higher needs, I entertain not the
affections which they share with the slightest doubt. But, so long as he
lower social animals, only in higher remains liable to error, intellectual or
degree, are co-operative, and largely help moral; so long as he is compelled to be
the development of family, tribal, and perpetually on guard ¿gainst the cosmic
national life. But once let these be forces, whose ends are not his ends,
weakened, and society becomes a bear without and within himself; • so long
garden. Force being the dominant as he is haunted by inexpugnable
factor in life, the struggle for existence memories and hopeless aspirations; so
revives in all its primitive violence, and long as the recognition of his intellectual
atavism asserts its power. Therefore, limitations forces him to acknowledge
although he do the best that in him lies,
his incapacity to penetrate the mystery
man can only set limits to that struggle,
of existence; the prospect of attaining
for the ethical process is an integral part untroubled happiness, or of a state
of the cosmic powers, “just as the which can, even remotely, deserve the
1 governor ’ in a steam-engine is part of title of perfection, appears to me to be
the mechanism of the engine.” As with as misleading an -illusion as ever was
society, so with its units : there is no dangled before the eyes of poor humanity.
truce in the contest. Dr. Plimmer, an And there have been many of them.
eminent bacteriologist, describes to the That which lies before the human race
writer the action of a kind of yeast is a constant struggle to maintain and
upon a species of Daphnia, or water improve, in opposition to the State of
flea. Metschnikoff observed that these Nature, the State of Art of an organised
yeast-cells, which enter with the animal’s polity; in which, and by which, man
food, penetrate the intestines, and get may develop a worthy civilisation,
into the tissues. They are there seized capable of maintaining and constantly
upon by the leukocytes, which gather improving itself, until the evolution of
round the invaders in laager fashion, as our globe shall have entered so far upon
if seemingly endowed with conscious its downward course that the cosmic
ness, so marvellous is the strategy. If process resumes its sway; and, once
they win, the Daphnia recovers; if they more, the State of Nature prevails over
lose, it dies. “ In a similar manner in the surface of our planet.”
ourselves certain leukocytes (phagocytes)
But only those of low ideals would
accumulate at any point of invasion, and
pick up the living bacteria,” and in the seek in this impermanence of things
success or failure of their attack lies excuse for inaction; or, worse, for self-
�MODERN E VOLUTION
indulgence. The world will last a very
long time yet, and afford scope for battle
against the wrongs done by man to man.
Even were it and ourselves to perish to
morrow, our duty is clear while the
chance of doing it may be ours. Clifford
—-dead before his prime, before the rich
promise of his genius had its full fruitage
—speaking of the inevitable end of the
earth “ and all the consciousness of
men,” reminds us, in his essay on
The First and Last Catastrophe, that we
are helped in facing the fact “by the
words of Spinoza : ‘ The free man thinks
of nothing so little as of death, and his
wisdom is a meditation, not of death,
but of life.’ ” “ Our interest,” Clifford
adds, “ lies with so much of the past as
may serve to guide our actions in the
present, and to intensify our pious
allegiance to the fathers who have gone
before us and the brethren who are with
us ; and our interest lies with so much
of the future as we may hope will be
appreciably affected by our good actions
now. Do I seem to say, ‘ Let us eat
and drink, for to-morrow we die ’ ? Far
from it; on the contrary, I say, ‘ Let us
take hands and help, for this day we are
alive together.’ ”
Evolution and Ethics was Huxley’s
last important deliverance, since the
completion of his reply to Mr. Balfour’s
“ quaintly entitled ” Foundations of
Belief was arrested by his death on the
30th June, 1895.
In looking through the Collected
Essays, which represent his non-technical contributions to knowledge, there
may be regret that throughout his life
Circumstances were against his doing any
piece of long-sustained work, such as
that which, for example, the affluence
and patience of Darwin permitted him
to do. But until Huxley’s later years,
and, indeed, through broken health to
the end, his work outside official demands
had to be done fitfully and piecemeal, or
not at all. Notwithstanding this, it has
the unity which is inspired by a central
idea. The application of the theory of
evolution all round imparts a quality of
109
relation to subjects seemingly diverseAnd this comes out clearly and strongly
in the more orderly arrangement of the
material in the new issue of Collected
Essays.
These. show what an omnivorous
reader he was; how well equipped in
classics, theology, and general literature,
in addition to subjects distinctly his own.
He sympathised with every branch of
culture. As contrasted with physical
science, he said, “ Nothing would grieve
me more than to see literary training
other than a very prominent branch of
education.” One corner of his library
was filled with a strange company of
antiquated books of orthodox type;
this he called “ the condemned cell.”
When looking at the “ strange bed
fellows ” that slept on the shelves, the
writer asked Huxley what author had
most influenced a style whose clearness
and vigour, nevertheless, seem un
borrowed ; and he at once named the
masculine and pellucid Leviathan of
Hobbes. He had the happy faculty of
rapidly assimilating what he read; of
clearly grasping an opponent’s standpoint;
and what is a man’s salvation nowadays,
freedom from that curse of specialism
which kills all sense of proportion
and reduces its slave to the level of the
machine-hand that spends his life in
making the heads of screws. He believed
in “ scepticism as the highest duty, and
in blind faith as the one unpardonable
sin.” “ And,” he says, “ it cannot be
otherwise, for every great advance in
natural knowledge has involved the
absolute rejection of authority, the
cherishing of the keenest scepticism,
the annihilation of the spirit of blind
faith; and the most ardent votary’ of
science holds his firmest convictions,
not because the men he most venerates
holds them, not because their verity is
testified by portents and wonders, but
because his experience teaches him
that whenever he chooses to bring
these convictions into contact with their
primary source, Nature—whenever he
thinks fit to test them by appealing to
�no
PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION
experiment and to observation—Nature |
Thus have the Pioneers of Evolution,
will confirm them. The man of science
clear-sighted and sure-footed, led us by
has learned to believe in justification,
ways undreamed-of at the start to a goal
not by faith, but by verification.” There undreamed-of by the earliest among
fore he nursed no illusions; would not them. To have halted on the route
say that he knew when he did not or when the graver difficulties of the road
could not know, and, bidding us follow began would have made the journey
the evidence whithersoever it leads us,
futile, and have left their followers in the
remains the surest-footed guide of our wilds. Evolution, applied to everything
time. Such leadership is his, since he up to man, but stopping at the stage
has gone on “ from strength to strength.” when he appears, would have remained
The changes in the attitude of man a fascinating study, but would not have
towards momentous questions which new become a guiding philosophy of life. It
evidence and the Zeitgeist have effected,
is in the extension of its processes as
have been approaches to the position explanation of all that appertains to
taken by Huxley since he first caught mankind that its abiding value consists.
the public ear. His deep religious That extension was inevitable. The old
feeling kept him in sympathetic touch theologies of civilised races, useful in
with his fellows. Ever present to him their day, because answering, however
was “that consciousness of the limita imperfectly, to permanent needs of
tion of man, that sense of an open human nature, no longer suffice. Their
secret which he cannot penetrate, in dogmas are traced as the lineal descen
which lies the essence of all religion.” dants of barbaric conceptions; their
In one of his replies to a prominent ritual . is becoming an archaeological
exponent of the Comtian philosophy,
curiosity. They have no answer to the
that “ incongruous mixture of bad science questions propounded by the growing
with eviscerated papistry,” as he calls it, intelligence of our time; neither can
Huxley protests against the idea that the they satisfy the emotions which they but
teaching of science is wholly negath e.
feebly discipline. Their place is being
slowly, but surely, and more effectively,
I venture, he says, to count it an improbable
filled by a theory which, interpreting
suggestion that anyone who has graduated in all
the “ mighty sum of things,” substitutes
the faculties of human relationships; who has
taken his share in all the deep joys and deeper
clear conceptions of unbroken order and
anxieties which cling about them ; who has felt
relation between phenomena, in place of
the burden of young lives entrusted to his care ;
hazy conceptions of intermittent inter
and has stood alone with his dead before the
ferences ; a theory which gives more
abyss of the Eternal—has never had a thought
beyond negative criticism.
than it Tkes away. For if men are
deprived of belief in the pseudo-mysteries
That is the Agnostic position as he coined in a pre-scientific age, their won
defined it: an attitude, not a creed j and der is fed, and their inquiry is stimu
if he refused to affirm, he equally refused lated, by the consciousness of. the
to deny.
impenetrable mysteries of the Universe.
�INDEX
Abdera, 14
Abiogenesis, 92
Abraham, 29
Adam, fall of, 49 ; stature of, 50
Advent, the Second, 28, 35
Ægean, the, 10
Agassiz, 71
Air as primary substance, 13
Alexander the Great, 15
Alexandria, the conquest of, 38 ; philoso
phical schools of, 38
Allegorical method, 37
Allen, Grant, 9, 52, 73
Amazons, river, 61
America, discovery of, 41
Amoeba, the, 94
Anatomy, comparative, 96
----- human, 43
Anaxagoras, 14
Anaximander, 11, 16
Ancestor-worship, 35
Angels, belief in, 35
Animism, 36, 46, 102, 106
Anthropology and belief in the soul, 101
----- and dogmas of the Fall and the Ré
demption, 103, 104
—— and man’s place in Evolution, 102
Antioch, 27
Ape and man, brain of, 96
—— general relation of, 96
Aquinas, Thomas, 16, 37
Arab conquest, 38
•----- philosophy, 39
Arch-fiend, 29
Aristotle, 15, 16, 20, 21, 22, 37, 39, 4°, 42>
72
Arnold, Matthew, 13, 90
Ascent of Man, Drummond’s, 92
Asklepios, 19
Astruc, Dr., 48
Athens, 22, intellectual decay in, 38
------ persecution in, 14
religious revival in, 12, 14
Atomic theory, 14
Atonement, doctrine of the, and Anthro
pology, 104
Augurs, 20
Augustine, St., 16, 30, 37
Augustus, Cæsar, 25, 27
Aurelius, Marcus, 28, 108
Averroes, 39
Avicenna, 48
Bacon, Lord, 44, 50
Bacon, Roger, 40
Bacteria and leukocytes, 108
Bagehot, Mr., 9
Baghdad, 39
Balfour, A. J., 109
Baptism, origin of rite of, 34
Bates, H. W., 61, 62, 71, 73, 88
Beagle, voyage of the, 59, 60
Benn, A. W., 12, 16
Bible, Dictionary of the, 50
Biology, advance in study of, 50
Black magic, 40
Body and mind, mystery of connection
between, 97
Bone, resurrection, 43
Bonnet, Charles, 19
Breathing, symbolism of, 35
Bruno, Giordano, 43
Buddha, 33
Buffon, place of, in theory of Evolution, 51
----- submission to the Sorbonne, 49
Burnet, Prof., 10, II, 14
Burton’s Anatomy, 31
Butcher, Prof., 10
C2ESALPINO, 43
Canon of the Bible, 31, 42
Carpenter, Dr., 67, 98
Carthage, 38
----- Council of, 31
Casalis, Mr., 9
Celtic religion, 36
Chaldoea, 10
Chambers, Robert, 54
Chosroes, 38, 39
Christianity and Anthropology, 105
----- anti-social nature of, 28
----- causes of success of, 27, 30
----- opposition to inquiry, 24
----- origin of, 23
----- pagan elements in, 31-36
■----- philosophic elements in, 30, 31
----- polytheism of, 35
- ---- varying fortunes of, 23
Christians, persecution of, 27
Church Congress and Evolution, 70, 92
Circumnavigation of the globe, 41
Clifford, Prof., 109
Collins, 24
Colophon, 12
Columbus, Christopher, 41
Communion at Hawarden Church, 35
Comtism, no
Conduct, bases of, 80, 106
�ÎI2
INDEX
Consciousness, evolution of, 80, 95
----- self-, 80
Conservation of energy, 21, 55, 66, 77
Copernicus, 16, 42, 43
Correlation of forces, 81
Cosmic Evolution, 107
Councils, general, 93
Creation, days of, 48, 49
Credulity of the learned, 66
Creeds, 28, 93
Criticism of religions, features of modern, 24
Cronus, myth of, 11
Cross, relics of the, 36
Crown of thorns, 36
Cuvier, 53, 54, 72
----- and Geoffrey St. Hilaire, 90
Cybele, 19
Dalton, John, 14, 57
Daphnia, Dr. Plimmer on, 108
Darwin, Charles, 58-61, 69-76
----- Life and Letters of 58, 69
----- religious belief of, 75
----- Erasmus, 16, 51
Days of creation, 48, 49
De Gama, Vasco, 41
Deluge, 49, 50, 104
Demeter, 19, 34
Democritus, 14, 17, 21
Demons, 29, 30, 37, 42
De Perthes, Boucher, 55, 103
De Rerum Natura, 17
Descartes, 43, 44, 91
Descent into Hell, 42
Descent of Man, 73, 75, 92
Development, law of, 81
Devil, 29, 40, 41
De Vinci, Leonardo, 48
Diagoras, 32, 33
Dictionary of the Bible, 50
Dionysus, 34
Dispersion of the Jews, 30, 38
Dogma and Evolution, 92
Driver, Rev. Canon, 29, 50
Dubois, Dr., 94
Duner, Professor, 78
Earth as “ element,” 13
•Earth, Greek notions about the, 11, 12
Education and dogma, 105
Egypt, 10, 11, 38
Eleatic school, 12
Elviri, Synod of, 32
Embryology, 54, 92
Empedocles, 13, 17, 19
Ephesus, 12
Epictetus, 28
Epicurus, 17, 19
Epigenesis, 16
Ethical evolution, 108
Etruscan haruspices, 20
Eve, stature of, 50
Evil eye, 35
Evolution and dogma, 92
•----- cosmic, 107
----- ethical, 107
■----- inclusion of man in, 102
----- inorganic, 76
----- organic, 85
Evolution and Ethics, Huxley on, 92, 106
Fall, doctrine of the, and anthropology,
103
Fire as primary substance, 13
First Principles, 73, 81
Fiske, Professor, 11
Flint implements, 103
Folk-lore, value of study of, 104
Fontenelle, 9
Fossils, theories about, 49
Galen, 43
Galileo, discoveries and persecution of, 43,
44
Geology, effect of study of, 47
.----- Principles of, 54
Gesner, 43
Gibbon, 30, 31, 36, 93
Gladstone, Mr., 35
Gnosticism, 27
Gods in Rome, 19, 20
G-olden Bough, The, 34,
Gospels, origin of, 26
Gosse, P. H., 49
Gower, Dr., 69
Granada, 39
Greece, 10
•----- conquest and intellectual decline of, 17
Greek philosophers, Table of, 22
Greeks, early conception of earth by, II, 12
----- search of, for the primary substance, 11
Grote, 14
Haeckel, 53, 75
Hallucinations, 67, 68
Hartley, 57
Haruspices, 20
Harvey, William, 16, 44
Heine’s Travel-Pictures, 68
Hellenic Jews, 30, 38
Helmholtz, 57
Henrion, 50
Heraclitus, 12, 13
Herakles, 19
Herodotus, 32
Herschel, Sir William, 45, 77
Hesiod, 12
“ Hippocampus minor,” 96
Hobbes’ Leviathan, 31, 32, 109
Holy Communion, barbaric origin of rite of,
34, 35
Homer, 12, 13, 37
Hooker, Sir Joseph, 63, 71
----- Sir William, 54
Horace, 33, 37
Huggins, Dr. Wm., 77
Humanity and Evolution, 83
Humboldt, 55, 61
Hume, 46, 82, 106
Hutton, 54
�INDEX
Huxley, 44, 69, 71, 86-110
Indigitamenta, 20
Inductive Philosophy, the, 44
Inquisition, the, 43, 44
Instinct, 96
Jonia, 10, 11, 29
Ionian school, 11, 12
Isis, 19, 33
Jerome, St., 17, 49
Jerusalem, early disciples of Jesus at, 26
— fall of, 38
■ ■ . ... Jesus at, 25
J^us, summary of life of, 25, 26
—■— superstition shared by, 29, 30
Jews, Hellenic, or of the Dispersion, 30, 38
Kant, 45, 76, 85
Kelvin, Lord, 98
Kent’s Hole, 103
Khalifs, 38
Kirchoff, 77
Kropotkin, Prince, 97
Lamarck, 52
Language, 96
La Peyrere, 48
Laplace, 45, 77
Leibnitz, 57, 106
Leo III., 39
L'Etui de Nacre, 26
Leucippus, 14, 17, 21
Leukocytes, 108
Life and Letters, Darwin’s, 38, 69, 7 5
Lightfoot, Dr., 48, 55
Linnaeus, 50
Linnean Society, famous meeting at, 63, 78
Living 'and non-living matter, connection
between, 21, 92
Locke, 45
Lodge, Prof. Oliver, 66
Love as an “element,” 14
Lubbock, Sir John, 73
Lucretius, 15, 17-20, 25, 104
Luther, 42
Lyall, Sir Alfred, 20, 23, 104
Lyell, Sir Charles, 54, 60, 71
Madonna, 32
Maine, Sir Henry, 10
Malpighi, 16
Malthus on Population, 52, 60, 63
Man and Evolution, 46, 64, 92, 96, 99
----- and ape, brain of, 96
----- and ape, general structure of, 64
----- antiquity of, 94
«—— inclusion of, in Evolution, 98
-—lower animals and, 92, 96
----- primitive state of, 104
suckling, period of, 11
Manning, Cardinal, 70
Maris Place in Nature, 72, 73, 90, 92, 105
Marcus Aurelius, 28, 108
Martel, Charles, 38
II3
Martin, R. B., 74
Martyr, Peter, 42
Maskelyne, Mr., 66
Matter, indestructibility of, 21
• ------ living and non-living, 21, 92
----- - mystery of, 78, 81, 91, 97
Matthew, Patrick, 54, 72
Maudsley, Dr., 69
Messiah, Jewish belief in, 25, 26
Metals, age of, 19, 21, 104
Middleton, Conyers, 31-34
Miletus, 11
Miracles and Modern Spiritualism-, 65, 99
Mithra worship, 25, 28, 36
Mivart, Prof. St. George, 98
Mohammed, 38
Montaigne, 23, 32
Morality, essential nature of, 107
Morals and Evolution, 106
----- scientific base of, 107
Morley, John, 23, 74, 105, 107
Motion, concept of, 77
----- -indestructibility of, 21
----- mystery of, 78, 81, 91, 97
Mysteries, Greek, 27
Mystery of matter, 78, 81, 91, 97
----- motion, 78, 81, 91, 97
Myth, primitive, features of, 9
Nebula in Andromeda, 77
Nebular theory, 45, 78
Nervous system, disorders of the, 68
----- - origin of the, 95
New Testament, canon of, 31, 42
----- origin of, 28
Nicene Creed, 28, 93
Notts of Anaxagoras, 14
Numbers in primitive thought, 12
----- Pythagorean theory of, 12, 22
Organic Evolution, 85
Origin of Species, 64, 71, 90
• ------ publication of, 69
----- reception of, 69, 71
Osborn, Professor, 48, 54
Ovid, 93 .
.
Owen, Sir Richard, attitude of, towards
Darwin’s theory, 71, 90
----- review of the Origin oj Spe .les,
Paladino, Eusapia, 66
Palaeontology, 92
Pantheon, Roman, 19, 20
Papacy, origin of the, 31
Paul, St., 27
Pausanias, 13
Pentateuch, 29, 48
Pericles, 14
Persia, intellectual activity in, 39
Petrie, Prof. Flinders, 86
Philo, 31
Philosophy, Synthetic, 78, 83-85
Photography in Science, 77
Physical Basis of Life, Huxley on, 91
Pineal gland, theory of soul in, 43
�114
INDEX
Plato, 10, 29, 90
Polytheism, feature of, 27
------ in Christianity, 35
Pontius Pilate, 26, 27
Preformation theory, 16
Primary substance, 21
----- search after, 11
Protoplasm, 54
Psychical Research, Society for, 66
Psychology, experimental, 97
----- Principles of, 80, 81
Ptolemaic System, 16, 42
Pythagoras, 12
Pythagorean theory of numbers, 12, 22
Red 1, experiments of, 91
Reformation non-intellectual, 42
-—-— character of the, 41
Relics, worship of, 35
Rhys, Professor, 33
Rodd, Rennell, 19
Roman doctrine of transubstantiation, 34
Rome, bishop of, 31
----- gods in, 19, 20
----- polytheism of, 27
Royal Society, 47
Sacraments, barbaric origin of, 34, 35
|
\
\
I
)
Saints, fictitious, 33
Salisbury, Lord, Presidential Address of,
77, 9i
Samos, 17, 22
Saracens, 38
Savages, brain of, 100
Schemer, Professor, 78
School Boards, 105
Schwann, Theodor, 57
Science, Leading men of, 56, 57
Sedgwick; 71
Selden, 26, 93
Serapis, 36
Sin, essence of, 107
Sizzi, 44
Smith, Professor Robertson, 104
------ William (geologist) 54
Social Statics, 79
Society, evolution of, 79, 82
----- modification of struggle in, 108
Sociology, Principles of, 80, 85
----- Study of, 98
Socrates, 14
Solar spectrum, lines in, 77
Sorbcnne, the, 49, 106
Soul, origin of belief in, 101, 102
------ location of, 43
------ Lucretius on location of, 18
Spain, intellectual advance in, 39
Spectroscope, the, 77
Spencer, Herbert, 20, 54, 55, 71, 76-86, 98,
101, 106
Spinoza, 44
Spiritualism, 65-69
Spontaneous generation, 16, 37
Sprengel, 54, 57
St. Hilaire, 50, 53
Stokes, Sir G. G., 98
Stone, ages of, 19, 21, 103
| Strabo, 48
Strife as an “ element,” 14
Struggle for life, 60, 63, 107
Suarez, Francisco, 94
Synthetic Philosophy, 78
----- abstract of the, 83-85
----- first draft of, 85
Table of Greek Philosophers, 22
Tacitus, 27
Thales, 11, 12, 15
Theology and Evolution, final issue between, "
94
Theophrastus, 11, 14
Theosophy, 12
Transubstantiation, origin of belief in, 34
Turgot, 24, 106
Tylor, Dr., 73, 101, 104
Tyndall, Professor, 87, 88, 91
Usher, Archbishop, 48
Van Helmont, 16
Vatican Council on Creation, 21
Vesalius, 43
Vestiges of Creation, 54, 61, 89
Virgin Mary, 32
Virgins, Black, 33
Visual sensations, subjective, 68
Von Baer, 54, 57, 81, 83, 85
Von Mohl, 54, 57
Votive offerings, 32
Wallace, Alfred Russel, 61-69
—— as biologist, 64
----- as spiritualist, 65-69
----- theory of origin of species identical
with Darwin’s, 63
“Wallace’s Line,” 62
Water as primary substance, 11
Water-worship, 32, 33
Weismann, 54
Wells, Dr. W. C., 73
Wesley, John, 30, 49
Whewell, Dr., 70
White, Dr., 48
Wilberforce, Bishop, and the Origin of
Species, 71
----- and Huxley, 90
Wilson, Archdeacon, 71, 93
Winifred’s Well, St., 33
Witchcraft, belief in, 30
----- causes of decay of belief in, 40
Worms, Darwin on the Action of, 74
Xenophanes, 12, 16
Zahm, Professor, 94
Zeller, 12
Zeno, 12
�
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Victorian Blogging
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Pioneers of evolution from Thales to Huxley : with an intermediate chapter on the causes of arrest of the movement
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Clodd, Edward [1840-1930]
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 128 p. ; 22 cm.
Notes: Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Published for the Rationalist Press Association Ltd., by arrangement with Mr Grant Richards. RPA information and publications catalogue on pp. [115]-128. Printed in double columns. Signature on half title page: 'R. Edmiston'.
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EVOLUTION AND SPECIAL
CREATION.
Taking a retrospective view of the dark and unenlightened
past, when the mighty forces of nature were almost entirely
hidden from the human gaze ; contemplating the sad spec
tacle of our forefathers being sunken in gross superstition,
ere the light of to-day had arisen above the horizon of
mental ignorance, and contrasting the then limitation of
knowledge with the extensive educational acquirements now
existing, what a pleasing contrast the intellectual advance
ment presents to the modern observer! Recognising the
glories of nature, and finding ourselves possessed of an
amazing amount of information respecting the laws of
nature and the phenomena with which these laws are con
nected—such information being for ages unknown to the
great masses of the people—we are prompted to inquire
what has produced this marvellous transformation, and to
what agency we are indebted for this grand and stupendous
revolution of the nineteenth century. Whatever may be
the reply of the theologian, whose intellect is too often
clouded with dreamy imaginations, the answer of the patient
and unfettered student of nature will be that it is to science
we owe the magic power which has substituted for the
dense darkness of the past the brilliant light of the present.
The marvels of astronomy, the revelations of geology, the
splendours of botany, the varieties of zoology, the wonders
of anatomy, the useful discoveries of physiology, and the
rapid strides which have been made in the development of
the mental sciences, all combine to unravel the once myste
rious operations of mind and matter. While each of the
modern sciences has corrected long-cherished errors and
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EVOLUTION AND SPECIAL CREATION.
opened new paths of investigation, one or two of them have
especially tended to unfold to our view the nature, affinity,
and development of man, and the wonderful universe to
which he belongs. For instance, without the science of
geology we should, in all probability, forever have remained
in ignorance of the various changes which had taken place
on the earth previous to the appearance of man, and the
different forms of animal and vegetable life that were then
distributed over its surface. We now examine the various
strata of the earth, and there discover the fossil remains of
animals and plants which existed in the ages that rolled by
when no historian lived to pen the mighty transactions of
nature and hand them down to future generations. The
science of electricity, too, still only in its infancy, pro
mises to confer an amount of benefit upon mankind too
vast to be conceived. We hear the thunder roar, and behold
the vivid flash of lightning darting before our eyes like an
arrow from the bow of the archer ; but while we regard this
phenomenon we have learned not to look upon it with dread
as the vengeance of an angry God, but as a natural result
of the operation of known forces. It was for Dr. Watts to
sing:—
“ There all his stores of lightning lie
Till vengeance darts them down.”
But it remained for a Franklin and a Priestley to inform
us that tempests were not to be beheld as indicating the
wrath of an offended God, but as the effect of an unequal
diffusion of the electric fluid. Thus science has been, and
is, our benefactor, our enlightener, our improver, and our
redeemer. Without its aid we should still have been in a
state of mental darkness and physical degradation. Deprived
of its discoveries, we should still have been bound down
with the ties of superstition, ignorance, and fanaticism. As
Pope observes :—
“ Lo ! the poor Indian, whose untutored mind
Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind;
His soul proud Science never taught to stray
Far as the solar walk or milky way.”
Perhaps there is no domain of human thought where the
advantages of scientific investigation are more clear and
pronounced than in connection with what is termed “ Evo
lution ”—a word which, within the last few years, has
�EVOLUTION AND SPECIAL CREATION.
3
become very popular as representing a theory of man and
the universe opposed to the old orthodox notion of special
creation and supernatural government. There are, of course,
some professedly religious people who avow their belief in
Evolution, and who maintain that it is what they call God’s
mode of working; and there are those who even go so far
as to say that the power and wisdom of God are seen more
thoroughly displayed in the process of Evolution than in
the method, so long believed in, of special and supernatural
creation. But the number of these is comparatively small,
and, consequently, the great mass of those who accept the
word in its legitimate signification may be looked upon as
of a sceptical turn of mind.
It will not be difficult to
demonstrate that the popular theological idea of creation
finds no support in the theory of Evolution, which, if not a
demonstrated thesis, has, at least, in its favour the “ science
of probabilities ”—an advantage that cannot fairly be claimed
for the Biblical account of the origin of phenomena.
The term “evolution” may be defined as an unfolding,
opening out, or unwinding; a disclosure of something which
was not previously known, but which existed before in a
more condensed or hidden form. There is no new exist
ence called into being, but a making conspicuous to our
eyes that which was previously concealed. “ Evolution
teaches that the universe and man did not always exist in
their present form ; neither are they the product of a sudden
creative act, but rather the result of innumerable changes
from the lower to the higher, each step in advance being an
evolution from a pre-existing condition.” On the other
hand, the special creation doctrine teaches that, during a
limited period, God created the universe and man, and
that the various phenomena are not the result simply of
natural law, but the outcome of supernatural design.
According to Mr. Herbert Spencer, the whole theory of
Evolution is based upon three principles—namely, that
matter is indestructible, motion continuous, and force per
sistent. Two contending processes will be seen everywhere
in operation in the physical universe, the one antagonistic
to the other, each one for a time triumphing over its oppo
site.
These are termed “evolution” and “dissolution.”
Spencer remarks that “ Evolution, under its simplest aspect,
is the integration of matter and the dissipation of motion,
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EVOLUTION AND SPECIAL CREATION.
while dissolution is the absorption of motion and the con
comitant disintegration of matter.” Thus it will be seen
that Herbert Spencer regards evolution as the concentration
or transition of matter from a diffused to a more condensed
and perceptible form. This change he traces in the systems
of the stars ; in the geological history of the earth; in the
growth and development of plants and animals; in the
history of language and the fine arts, and in the condition
of civilised states. Briefly, the theory is that the matter of
which the universe is composed has progressed from a
vague, incoherent, and, perhaps, all but homogeneous nebula
of tremendous extent, to complete systems of suns, worlds,
comets, sea, and land, and countless varieties of living
things, each composed of many very different parts, and of
complex organisations.
Coming to the organic bodies, there may be included
under the term “evolution” many different laws, some of
which we may not even know as yet, and a great number
of processes, acting sometimes in unison and often in an
tagonism, the one to the other. This, however, in no way
weakens the theory of evolution, which, beyond doubt, is
the process by which things have been brought to their
present condition. It will tend, perhaps, to elucidate this
truth the more readily and clearly if a brief exposition of
the theory be given under the chief divisions of this exten
sive subject.
The Formation of Worlds.—According to Evolution, the
present cosmos began its development at an immeasurably
remote date, and any attempt to comprehend the periods
that have rolled by since would paralyse our highest intel
lectual powers. When the matter which is now seen shaped
into suns and stars of vast magnitude, and of incompresible number, was diffused over the whole of the space in
which those bodies are now seen moving—of extreme
variety, and, perhaps, of nearly homogeneous character—
the human mind is unable to comprehend. This matter,
by virtue of the very laws now seen in operation in the
physical universe, would in time shape itself into bodies
with which the heavens are strewed, shining with a glory
that awes while it charms. What is called in these days
the nebular cosmogony may be said to have arisen with Sir
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5
William Herschel, who discovered with his telescope what
seemed to be worlds and systems in course of formation—
that is, they were in various states which appeared to mark
different degrees of condensation.
M. Laplace, without any knowledge of Herschel’s specu
lations, arrived at a similar idea upon a totally different
ground—namely, the uniformity of the heavenly bodies.
He showed that, if matter existed in such a different state
as the nebular theory assumed, and if nuclei existed in it,
they would become centres of aggregation in which a rotary
motion would increase as the agglomeration proceeded.
Further, Laplace urged that at certain intervals the centri
fugal force acting in the rotating mass would overcome
the force of agglomeration, and the result would be a series
of rings existing apart from the mass to which they originally
adhered, each of which would retain the motion which it
possessed at the moment of separation. These rings would
again break up into spherical bodies, and hence come what
are termed primary bodies and their satellites. This La
place showed to be at least possible, and the results, in the
case of our solar system, are just what would have been
expected from the operations of this Jaw. For example,
everyone knows that the rapidity of the motions in the
planets is in the ratio of their nearness to the sun.
Many facts seem to support this theory, such as the
existence of the hundred and more small bodies, called
asteroids, observed between Mars and Jupiter, which doubt
less indicate a zone of agglomeration at several points, and
the rings of Saturn give an example of zones still preserved
intact. This theory has been held by some of the most
eminent astronomers, and is most ably advocated by the
late Professor Nicol in his “Architecture of the Heavens.”
Some experiments have also been tried—as, for example,
that of Plateau on a rotating globe of oil—which showed
the operation of the law by which the suns, planets, and
their moons were formed. Such is the evolution of worlds,
and it is unnecessary to point out how diametrically it is
opposed to the special creation described in Genesis, where
the heavens and the earth are called suddenly into being by
the fiat of God, and the sun stated to be created four days
afterwards. Which theory should, in these days of thought,
commend itself to a rational mind ?
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EVOLUTION AND SPECIAL CREATION.
The Beginning of Life upon the Earth.—Evolution has
been subjected to many severe attacks at this point. Those
who contend for special creation have maintained, with a
dogmatism which but ill accords with the knowledge they
possess upon the subject, that nothing but the hypothesis
of the supernatural origin of things is sufficient to account
for the first appearance of life upon the earth, that evolution
completely breaks down here, and that all the experiments
which have been conducted with a view to lend it support
have turned out positive failures. Such is the allegation of
orthodox opponents. Let us see what grounds they have
for these reckless and dogmatic statements. The two views
of the origin of living beings have been called respectively
Biogenesis and Abiogenesis, the first meaning that life can
spring only from prior life, and the latter that life may
sometimes have its origin in dead matter. Dr. Charlton
Bastian, whose experiments will be hereafter referred to,
substitutes for Abiogenesis another word, Archebiosis.
Now, it is well known and admitted on all hands that
there was a time when no life existed on the earth. Not
the most minute animal, or the most insignificant plant,
found a place on the surface of what was probably at that
time a globe heated up to a temperature at which no living
thing could exist. The life, therefore, that did afterwards
appear could not have sprung from germs of prior living
bodies. True, the whimsical theory was put forward by an
eminent scientific man, some years ago, that the first germs
that found their way to the earth were probably thrown off
with meteoric matter from some other planet. But on the
face of it this is absurd, because such matter would be of
too high a temperature to admit of the existence upon it of
living bodies of any kind ; and, besides, were it otherwise,
it would explain nothing. It would only transfer the diffi
culty from this world to some other. For life must have
had a beginning somewhere, and the question is as to that
beginning somewhere. The supernaturalist seeks to get
out of the difficulty rather by cutting the Gordian knot than
by untying it, and falls back upon a special creation, thereby
avoiding any further trouble about the matter. But the
evolutionist thinks that he can see his way clearly in what
must necessarily be to some extent a labyrinth, because no
one lived at that time to observe and record what was taking
�EVOLUTION AND SPECIAL CREATION.
7
place. One thing is plain, which is, that living things were
made or came into existence—whatever the mode may have
been, or the power by which it occurred—out of non-living
matter. Even the believers in special creation will not
deny this. The only question is, therefore, whether the
process occurred in accordance with natural law, and whether
the forces by which it was brought about were those which
exist, or, at all events, which did exist, in material nature.
For it does not follow that, if such phenomena do not occur
to-day, they could never have taken place in the past. The
conditions of the earth were different then from what they are
now, and forces may have been in operation that are now
quiescent. Professor Huxley, who thinks that no instance
has occurred in modern times of the evolution of a living
organism from dead matter, and that the experiments which
have been conducted on the subject are inconclusive—who,
in fact, ranks himself on the side of the advocates of Bio
genesis—yet says that, if we could go back millions of years
to the dawn of life, we should, no doubt, behold living
bodies springing from non-living matter.
But, of course, it will be argued that, if it happened then,
it might take place now; and although, as I have said, this
is not conclusive, yet to some it has much weight. What
Nature has done once, it is insisted, she can do again.
Quite so ; but, then, all the conditions must be the same.
Dr. Bastian himself asks the question : “If such synthetic
processes took place then, why should they not take place
now? Why should the inherent molecular properties of
various kinds of matter have undergone so much altera
tion ?” (“ Beginnings of Life ”). And the question is likely
to be repeated, with, to say the least of it, some show of
reason.
It must never be forgotten, as Tyndall has very ably
pointed out, that the matter of which the organic body is
built up “ is that of inorganic nature. There is no substance
in the animal tissues that is not primarily derived from the
rocks, the water, and the air.” And the forces operating in
the one are those which we see working in the other, vitality
only excepted, which is probably but another manifestation
of the one great force of the universe. Indeed, Professor
Huxley does not make an exception even in the case of
vitality, which, he maintains, has no more actual existence
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EVOLUTION AND SPECIAL CREATION.
than the imaginary aqueosity of water. Mr. Herbert
Spencer thinks that life, under all its forms, has arisen by
an unbroken evolution, and through natural causes alone;
and this view accords with the highest reason and philo
sophy.
Nor have the experiments performed with a view to solve
the problem been so conclusive as would appear to some.
At all events, the question is an open one as to whether the
origin of living things in non-living matter has not been
experimentally demonstrated. The old doctrine of “ spon
taneous generation ” can, in its new form and under its
recent name of Abiogenesis, or Archebiosis, claim the sup
port of men of great eminence in the scientific world at the
present time. Pouchet, a very illustrious Frenchman, per
formed a large number of experiments, and in all or most of
them he succeeded, according to his own opinion, in pro
ducing living things. The objection that there were germs
in the air, or water, or the materials that he employed, he met
by manufacturing artificial water out of oxygen and hydrogen,
and submitting the whole of the material employed to a
temperature above boiling-water point, which would certainly
destroy any living germ, either of an animal or vegetable
character. Then, in England a series of experiments have
been performed by Dr. Bastian, one of the leading scientists
of our time; and the results have been given to the world
in some voluminous and masterly books. “ These volumes,”
says an opponent—Dr. Elam—“ are full of the records of
arduous, thoughtful, and conscientious work, and must ever
retain a conspicuous place in the literature of biological
science.” Dr. Bastian maintains that he has succeeded, in
innumerable instances, in producing living organisms from
non-living matter. Hence the doctrine of Evolution, which
is in accordance with true philosophy, finds its support in
that physical science where we should expect to meet with
it, and to which it really belongs.
The Origin of Man.—It has already been stated that
the remains of man are met with only in the most
recent geological deposits. On this point there will be
no dispute. No doubt human beings have been in
existence for a much longer period than is generally sup
posed ; the short term of six thousand years, which our
�EVOLUTION AND SPECIAL CREATION.
9
fathers considered to cover man’s entire history, pales into
insignificance before the vast periods which we know to
have rolled their course since human life began. But that
fact in no way affects the question before us. Man was
certainly the last animal that appeared, as he was the
highest. If it be asked, Why highest as well as last ? the
answer is, Because, by the process of evolution, the highest
must come last. This is the law that we have seen operating
all through the physical universe, so far as that universe
has disclosed to us its mighty secrets, hidden for ages, but
now revealed to scientific observation and experiment.
Man came, as other organic bodies came, by no special
creation, but by the great forces of nature, which move
always in the same direction, and work to the same end.
As far as the physical powers are concerned, it will not be
difficult to conceive the same laws operating in his pro
duction as originated the various other forms of organic
beings. His body is built up of the same materials, upon
precisely the same plan : during life he is subject to the
same growth and decay, the same building up and pulling
down of tissues; and it is but reasonable to suppose that
the same forces originated his beginning, as we know they
will some day terminate his existence.
Mr. Darwin made a bold stroke when he gave the world
his “Descent of Man.” In 1859 he had published the first
edition of his work on “ The Origin of Species,” which fell
like a thunderbolt into the religious camp. The commo
tion it caused was tremendous, and the effect can to-day
hardly be imagined; so tolerant have we grown of late, and
such a change has passed over the scene within the past
quarter of a century. The most violent opposition raged
against the new views ; ridicule, denunciation, and abuse
were hurled at the head of the man who had propounded
so preposterous a theory as that all organic things had
sprung from a few simple living forms very low down in
the scale of being. Then came a larger work, entitled
“ Animals and Plants under Domestication,” brimful of
facts of a most startling character, supporting the theory
advanced in the previous book, and challenging refutation
on all hands. In the face of these facts, the public mind
cooled down a little, opposition became milder, some adver
saries were converted, and others manifested indifference.
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EVOLUTION AND SPECIAL CREATION.
The major part of those who still adhered to the super
natural and special creations held that, even if the theory of
Evolution turned out to be true, it would not apply to man,
who was a being possessed of an immortal soul, and, there
fore, belonged to a different order of creatures from any
other animals, and that Mr. Darwin never intended to
include human beings in the organic structures thus origi
nated.
In this state the controversy remained until 1872, when
Mr. Darwin took the bull by the horns, and at one stroke
swept away the last stronghold of special creation by showing
that humanity was no exception to the great law of evolu
tion ; for man, like other animals, had originated in natural
selection. The facts given in the book on “The Descent
of Man ” are both powerful and pertinent. This, however,
is not the place to dwell upon natural selection, and it is
only referred to so far as it supports evolution. The diffi
culties that have been placed in the way of the application
of this principle to man have not had much reference to
his bodily organs, but mainly to his mental and moral
powers, his social faculties, and the emotional side of his
nature. True, a controversy raged for a short time between
Huxley and Owen as to whether there was a special
structure in the human brain not to be found in the next
animals lower in the scale of being ; but this contention
has long since died out, and to-day no anatomist of any
note will be found contending for the existence of any such
organ. That the human brain differs considerably from the
brain of any lower animal no one who is at all acquainted
with the subject will deny; but this is difference in degree,
and not arising from the presence of any special structure
in the one which is absent in the other. Man, therefore,
must look for his origin just where he seeks for that of the
inferior creatures.
The science of embryology, which is now much more
carefully studied, and, consequently, much better known
than at any period in the past, lends very powerful support
to evolution, though, perhaps, little to natural selection.
“ The primordial germs,” says Huxley, “ of a man, a dog, a
bird, a fish, a beetle, a snail, and a polyp are in no essential
structural respects distinguishable” (“Lay Sermons”). Each
organism, in fact, commences its individual career at the
�EVOLUTION AND SPECIAL CREATION.
11
same point—that is, in a single cell. These cells are of the
same chemical composition, approximately of the same size,
and appear to be in all respects identical. Yet the one
developes into a fish, another into a reptile, a third into a
bird, a fourth into a dog, and a fifth into a man. The pro
cess is the same in all up to a certain point. First, the cell
divides into two, then into four, eight, sixteen, and so on,
until a particular condition is reached, called by Haeckel
morula, when a totally different set of changes occur. In
the case of the higher animals the development of the
embryo exhibits, up to a very late period, a remarkable
resemblance to that of man.
The Diversity of Living Things.—A mere glance at the
geological records will show at once that the order in which
animals and plants have appeared on the earth is that which
accords with evolution. The lowest came first, the highest
last, and a regular gradation between the two extremes. In
the early rocks in which life appears we meet with polyps,
coral, sea-worms, etc., and no trace of land animals or plants.
Then, passing upwards, we come upon fishes, then reptiles,
afterwards birds, subsequently mammals, and, last of all,
man. These are undisputed facts, as the most elementary
works on geology, whether written by a professing Christian
or an unbeliever, will clearly show.
The only objection, perhaps, of any weight that can be
urged against the changes which evolution asserts to have
taken place, is the fact that we do not see them occur.
But this, in the first place, is hardly correct, since we see
the tadpole—which is a fish breathing through gills, and
living in the water—pass up into a reptile, the frog, which
is a land animal breathing through lungs, and inhaling its
oxygen from the atmosphere. Secondly, the fact that we
do not see a change actually occur, which took millions of
years to become effected, can surely amount to little.
An ephemeral insect, whose life only lasts for a day, might
object, if able to reason, that an a corn could not grow into
an oak tree, because it had not seen it occur. But the
evidence would be there still in the numerous gradations
that might be seen between the acorn and the sturdy old
tree that had weathered the storms of a century. And in
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EVOLUTION AND SPECIAL CREATION.
this case we see all the gradations between a monad and a
man in the rocks which furnish us with the history of the
past, although, as our lives are so short, we are not able to
see the whole change effected. Plants were not all suddenly
called into existence at one particular period, and then
animals at another and later time. This we know, because
the remains of plants and animals are found side by side
throughout all the rocks. If there be an exception, it is an
unfortunate one for the Christian supernaturalist, since it
shows that animals were first; for certain it is that animal
remains are met with in the oldest rocks.
The objection to evolution, that no transformation of one
species into another has been seen within recorded history,
is entirely groundless, and betrays utter carelessness
on the part of the objectors. The truth is, such trans
formations have taken place, as mentioned above in reference
to the tadpole. Professor Huxley and other scientists have
proved this to be the case. It should, however, be remem
bered that in most instances these great changes are the
work of time. As Dr. David Page observes : “ It is true
that, to whatever process we ascribe the introduction of new
species, its operation is so slow and gradual that centuries
may pass away before its results become discernible. But,
no matter how slow, time is without limit; and, if we can
trace a process of variation at work, it is sure to widen in
the long run into what are regarded as specific distinctions.
It is no invalidation of this argument that science cannot
point to the introduction of any new species within the
historic era; for till within a century or so science took no
notice of either the introduction or extinction of species, nor
was it sufficiently acquainted with the flora and fauna of
the globe to determine the amount of variation that was
taking place among their respective families. Indeed, in
fluenced by the belief that the life of the globe was the
result of one creative act, men were unwilling to look at the
long past which the infant science of palaeontology was be
ginning to reveal, and never deigned to doubt that the
future would be otherwise than the present. Even still
there are certain minds who ignore all that geology has
taught concerning the extinction of old races and the intro
duction of newer ones, and who, shutting their eyes to the
continuity of nature, cannot perceive that the same course
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IS
of extinction and creation must ever be in progress ” (“ Man :
Where, Whence, and Whither ?”).
Let us now apply a test to the creative theory with a similar
demand, and what will be the result ? An utter failure on the
part of the creationists to substantiate their dogmatic preten
sions. Suppose we exclaimed, “ Show us a single creative act
of bne species within recorded history.” It would be impos
sible for them to do so, for there is not a shadow of evidence
drawn from human experience in favour of what theologians
call creation. “ We perceive a certain order and certain
method in nature ; we see that under new conditions certain
variations do take place in vegetable and animal structures,
and by an irresistible law of our intellect we associate the
variations with the conditions in the way of cause and
effect. Of such a method we can form some notion, and
bring if within the realm of reason ; of any other plan, how
ever it may be received, we can form no rational conception.”
“ The whole analogy of natural operations,” says Professor
Huxley, “ furnishes so complete and crushing an argument
against the intervention of any but what are called secondary
causes in the production of all the phenomena of the universe
that, in view of the intimate relations between man and the
rest of the living world, and between the forces exerted by
the latter and all other forces, I can see no excuse for doubt
ing that all are co-ordinated terms of nature’s great progres
sion, from the formless to the formed, from the inorganic to
the organic, from blind force to conscious intellect and will.”
The most that can be said of the creative theory is that it
is a question of belief; but of knowledge never.
Dr. Page observes : “We may believe in a direct act of
creation; but we cannot make it a subject of research.
Faith may accept, but reason cannot grasp it. On the
other hand, a process of derivation by descent is a thing we
can trace as of a kind with other processes; and, though
unable to explain, we can follow it as an indication, at least,
of the method which Nature has adopted in conformity with
her ordinary and normal course of procedure. We can
admit possibilities, but must reason from probabilities, and
the probable can only be judged of from what is already
known. Than this there is clearly no other course for
philosophy.
Everywhere in nature it sees nothing but
processes, means, and results, causes and effects, and it
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EVOLUTION AND SPECIAL CREATION.
cannot conceive, even if it wished, of anything being brought
about unless through the instrumentality of means and pro
cesses.”
To me it has always been a difficulty to understand how
an infinite being could possibly have been the creator of all
things. For this reason : if he is infinite, he is everywhere ;
if everywhere, he is in the universe ; if in the universe now,
he was always there. If he were always in the universe,
there never was a time when the universe was not; there
fore, it could never have been created.
If it be said that this being was not always in the universe,
then there must have been a period when he occupied less
space than he did subsequently. But “ lesser ” and “ greater ”
cannot be applied to that which is eternally infinite. Further,
before we can recognise the soundness of the position taken
by the advocates of special creation, we have to think of a
time when there was no time—of a place where there was
no place. Is this possible ? If it were, it would be interest
ing to learn where an infinite God was at that particular
period, and how, in “no time,” he could perform his creative
act. Besides, if a being really exists who created all things,
the obvious question at once is, “ Where was this being
before anything else existed ?” “ Was there a time when
God over all was God over nothing ? Can we believe that
a God over nothing began to be out of nothing, and to
create all things when there was nothing ?” Moreover, if
the universe was created, from what did it emanate ? From
nothing? But “ from nothing, nothing can come.” Was
it created from something that already was ? If so, it was
no creation at all, but only a continuation of that which was
in existence. Further, “ creation needs action ; to act is to
use force; to use force implies the existence of something
upon which that force can be used. But if that ‘ something ’
were there before creation, the act of creating was simply
the re-forming of pre-existing materials.” Here three ques
tions may be put to the opponents of evolution who affirm
the idea of special creation :—(i) Is it logical to affirm the
existence of that of which nothing is known, either of itself
or by analogy ? Now, it cannot be alleged that anything is
known of the supposed supernatural power of creation. On
the other hand, sufficient is known of the facts of evolution
to prevent the careful student of Nature from attempting to
�EVOLUTION AND SPECIAL CREATION.
15
rob her of that force and life-giving principle which un
doubtedly belongs to her. (2) Is it logical to ascribe events
to causes the existence of which is unknown, and more
particularly when such events can be reasonably explained
upon natural principles with the aid of “ the science of
probabilities ” ? Dr. Page forcibly remarks : “ Man has his
natural history relations—of that there can be no gainsaying
—and we merely seek to apply to the determination of these
the same methods of research which by common consent
are applied to the determination of the relations of other
creatures............. Scientific research must abide by scientific
methods; scientific convictions must rest on scientific in
vestigations.” To assert that life is associated with some
thing that is immaterial and immortal, and that this force
could only have been brought into existence by a special
act of “the one great creator,” is to prostrate reason and ex
perience before the assumptions of an over-satisfied theology.
To once more use the words of Dr. Page : “ Science knows
nothing of life save through its manifestations. With the
growth of physical organisation it comes ; with the decay of
organisation it disappears. While life endures, mind is its
accompaniment; when life ceases, mental activity comes to
a close. Thus far we can trace; beyond this science is
utterly helpless. No observation from the external world ;
no analogy, however plausible ; no analysis, however minute,
can solve the problem of an immaterial and immortal exist
ence.” (3) Is it logical to urge the theory of special creation
when science proclaims the stability of natural law, and its
sufficiency for the production of all phenomena ? Professor
Tyndall, in his lecture on “ Sound,” remarks that, if there is
one thing that science has demonstrated more clearly than
another, it is the stability of the operations of the laws of
nature. We feel assured from experience that this is so,
and we act upon such assurance in our daily life. The
same errtinent scientist, in his Belfast address, says : “ 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 determination
to sweep from the field of theory this mob of gods and
demons, and to place natural phenomena on a basis more
congruent with themselves.”
Again: “ Is there not a
temptation to close to some extent with Lucretius when he
�i6
EVOLUTION AND SPECIAL CREATION.
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....... By an intellectual necessity I cross
the boundary of the experimental evidence, and discern in
that matter which we, in our ignorance of its latent powers,
and notwithstanding our professed reverence for its creator,
have hitherto covered with opprobrium, the promise and
potency of all terrestrial life.”
Psychical Powers.—This is the great stronghold of the
opponents of evolution. They maintain that, whatever may
have taken place with regard to physical powers and bodily
organs, it is clear that the higher intellectual faculties of
man could not so have originated ; that those, at least, must
be the result of a special creation, and must have been
called into existence by some supernatural power when human
beings first appeared upon the stage of life. Such persons
further urge that, even if it could be shown beyond doubt
that the marvellously constructed body of man, with its
beautifully adjusted parts of bone and muscle, nerve and
brain, skin and mucous membrane, had its origin in evolu
tion, yet no light whatever would be thrown upon the
source of the wondrous powers of judgment and memory,
understanding and will, perception and conception. This
argument, no doubt, to some at first appears specious; but
the question is, Is it sound ? The assumption seems to be
that we meet with these powers now for the first time, and
that, therefore, it is here that a special creation must be
called in to account for their origin, their character being
so different from anything that has previously crossed our
path in this investigation. But assuredly this is not correct.
Some of these powers are certainly to be met with in the
lower animals—a few of them low down in the scale—and
for the rest the difference will be one of degree more than
of quality.
It will not surely be maintained that perception is pecu
liar to man; it must exist wherever there are organs of
sense, and these extend in some form or other to the
lowest phase of animal life. Volition is also met with in all
�EVOLUTION AND SPECIAL CREATION.
17
the higher animals; and memory may be observed in the
dog, horse, elephant, cat, camel, and numerous other
mammals, with whose habits every-day life makes us familiar.
Even judgment in the form of comparison is often displayed
by the domestic animals, the dog in particular. Dr. H.
Bischoff, in his “Essay on the Difference between Man
and Brutes,” says : “ It is impossible to deny the animals,
qualitatively and quantitatively, as many mental faculties as
we find in man. They possess consciousness. They feel,
think, and judge; they possess a will which determines their
actions and motions. Animals possess attachment; they
are grateful, obedient, good-natured; and, again, false
treacherous, disobedient, revengeful, jealous, etc. Their
actions frequently evince deliberation and memory. It is
in vain to derive such actions from so-called instinct, which
unconsciously compels them so to act.” Max Muller also,
in his “ Science of Language,” admits that brutes have five
senses like ourselves ; that they have sensations of pain and
pleasure; that they have memory; that they are able to
compare and distinguish ; have a will of their own, show
signs of shame and pride, and are guided by intellect as
well as by instinct.
With such facts as these before us, what reason have we
for supposing that these psychical powers are not as likely to
have been evolved as the bodily organs ? There is no break
whatever to be seen in the chain at the point of their appear
ance in man. If the mental powers of the lower animals
have come by evolution, there is not a shadow of reason for
supposing that those of man arose in any other way, for
they are all of the same quality, differing only in degree.
No doubt, as Mr. Darwin says, “the difference between the
mind of man and that of the highest ape is immense.” And
yet, as he also remarks, “great as it is, it is certainly one of
degree, and not of kind.” The highest powers of which
man can boast—memory, judgment, love, attention, curiosity,
imitation, emotion—may all be met with in an incipient
form in lower animals. Let any man analyse his mental
faculties one by one—-not look at them in a state of com
bination, for that will be calculated to mislead—and then
say which of them is peculiar to man as man, and not to be
found in a smaller degree much lower in the scale of being.
Even the capacity for improvement—in other words, for pro
�EVOLUTION AND SPECIAL CREATION.
gress—is not peculiar to man, as Mr. Darwin has shown by
innumerable examples of great force and beauty.
The emotions have often been spoken of as being pecu
liar to man, but evidently with no regard to accuracy.
Terror exists in all the highest of the lower animals as surely
as it does in man, and shows itself in the same way. It
causes the heart to palpitate, a tremor to pass along the
muscles, and even the hair to undergo that change which is
called “ standing on end,” in the horse, the dog, and other
animals, as in the human species. “ Courage and timidity,”
observes Darwin, “are extremely variable qualities in the
individuals of the same species, as is plainly seen in our
dogs. Some dogs and horses are ill-tempered and easily
turn sulky; others are good-tempered; and these qualities
are certainly inherited. Everyone knows how liable animals
are to furious rage, and how plainly they show it.” The
love of the dog for his master is proverbial; indeed, this
noble animal has been known to lick the hand of the vivisector while undergoing at his hands the severest torture.
And revenge is often manifested by the lowest animals—not
simply the sudden impulse which revenges itself at the
moment for pain inflicted or wrongs done, but long,
brooding feeling, which may smoulder for months, waiting
for the opportunity for manifesting itself, and, when that
comes, bursting out into a flame violent and hateful. There
are thousands of cases on record in which this has happened,
especially in the case of monkeys which have been kept
tame. And, perhaps, the personal experience of most
persons can furnish an example of the truth of this allegation.
The social instincts are plainly seen in many of the lower
animals; not, of course, in that perfect form in which they
are met with in man ; but the difference here again is one of
degree only. Many animals experience pleasure in the
company of their fellows, and are unhappy at a separation
being effected. They will show sympathy one for another,
and even perform services for each other’s benefit. Some
animals lie together in large numbers, and never separate
except for a very short time, and then only for a purpose
which they clearly understand. This is the case with sheep,
rats, American monkeys, and also with rooks, jackdaws, and
starlings. Darwin observes : “ Everyone must have noticed
-how miserable horses, dogs, sheep, etc., are when separated
�EVOLUTION and special creation.
J9
from their companions, and what affection the two former
kind will show on their re-union. It is curious to speculate
upon the feelings of a dog who will rest peacefully for hours
in a room with his master or any of the family without the
least notice being taken of him, but who, if left for a short
time by himself, barks and howls dismally.” Here we find
the origin of the social faculty in man. It is very easy to
imagine the course of development which this must have
taken in order to have culminated in the highest form
as we see it in the human species. The psychical powers
appear first in an incipient form, and then gradually develop
through a long course of ages, until they attain their height
in humanity.
Other influences, such as the power of
language, further the development, these powers themselves
being the result of the process of evolution. The question
how far language is confined to man is one of great interest
to the student of evolution. In replying to the inquiry,
“ What is the difference between the brute and man ?” Max
Muller says : “ Man speaks, and no brute has ever uttered
a word. Language is our Rubicon, and no brute has ever
crossed it.” Referring to this statement, Dr. Page remarks :
“Are not these powers of abstraction and language a matter of
degree rather than of kind ? Do not the actions of many of
the lower animals sufficiently indicate that they reason from
the particular to the general ? And have they not the power
of communicating their thoughts to one another by vocal
sounds which cannot be otherwise regarded than as lan
guage? No one who has sufficiently studied the conduct
of our domestic animals but must be convinced of this
power of generalisation ; no one who has listened attentively
to the various calls of mammals and birds can doubt they
have the power of expressing their mental emotions in
language. Their powers of abstraction may be limited, and
the range of their language restricted; but what shall we
say of the mental capacity of the now extinct Tasmanian,
which could not carry him beyond individual conceptions,
or of the monosyllabic click-cluck of the Bushman, as
compared with the intellectual grasp and the inflectional
languages of modern Europe ? If it shall be said that these
are matters merely of degree, then are the mental processes
and languages of the lower animals, as compared with
those of man, also matters of degree—things that manifest
�20
EVOLUTION AND SPECIAL CREATION.
themselves in the same way and by the same organs, but
differing in power according to the perfection of the organs
through which they are manifested.”
The Doctor's view of this matter receives a striking corro
boration from the following excerpt from the introduction
to Agassiz’s “ Contributions to the Natural History of the
United States ” : “ The intelligibility of the voice of animals
to one another, and all their actions connected with such
calls, are also a strong argument of their perceptive power,
and of their ability to act spontaneously and with logical
sequence in accordance with these perceptions. There is a
vast field open for investigation in the relations between
the voice and the actions of animals, and a still more in
teresting subject of inquiry in the relationship between the
cycle of intonations which different species of animals of
the same family are capable of uttering, and which, so far as
I have yet been able to trace them, stand to one another in
the same relations as the different, so-called, families of
languages.”
The moral powers of man have been evolved in a manner
similar to that in which the other forces belonging to the
human race were evolved. All that we see in the evolution
of human conduct is the result of the great and potent law
of evolution. “ It is said,” writes M. J. Savage in his sug
gestive book, “ The Morals of Evolution,” “ that there can
be no permanent and eternal law of morality unless we
believe in a God and a future life. But I believe that this
moral law stands by virtue of its own right, and would
stand just the same without any regard to the question
of immortality or the discussion between Theism and
Atheism. If there be no God at all, am I not living ? Are
there not laws according to which my body is constructed—
laws of health, laws of life, laws that I must keep in order
to live and in order to be well ? If there be no God at all,
are you not existing ? Have I right to steal your property,
to injure you, to render you unhappy, because, forsooth, I
choose to doubt whether there is a God, or because you
choose to doubt whether there is a God ? Are not
the laws of society existing in themselves, and by their
own nature ? Suppose all the world should suddenly lose
its regard for truth and become false through and through,
so that no man could depend upon his brother, would
�EVOLUTION AND SPECIAL CREATION.
21
not society become disintegrated, disorganised? Would
not all commercial and social life suddenly become im
possible? Would not humanity become a chaos and a
wreck, and that without any sort of regard to the question
as to whether men believed in a God or did not believe in
one ? These laws are essential in the nature of things ; and
they stand, and you live by keeping them, and die by
breaking them, whether there is a God or not.
These are
the accurate and ennobling views of existence born of
minds which evolution has raised from the ignorant depths
of the past to the intellectual heights of the present.
On all sides the candid and impartial observer may be
hold undoubted evidence in favour of the doctrine of evolu
tion. We see it in the various changes of the solar system.
There are (i) fire mists; (2) globes of gas; (3) condensed
oceans; (4) crust formation; (5) mountains and rivers, and
(6) its present phenomena. What is this but evolution ?
Is it not a manifestation of changes from the lower to the
higher, from the simple to the complex, and from the
chaotic to the consolidated ? The same principle is illus
trated, as before indicated, by the science of embryology,
with its clearly-marked stages of development—the fish,
reptile, bird, quadruped, and, finally, the human form. The
relationship of the species gives its proof in favour of the
evolution theory. The different types of to-day had their
one starting point, the variations now seen having been pro
duced by altered conditions. Moreover, we find that in
the process of evolution some organs in animals become
useless, while others change their use, thus proving that the
animal kingdom possess structural affinities, and that the
subsequent differentiation depends upon the opportunity
afforded for evolution.
Then, again, man’s ability, to
divert animal instincts and intelligence from their original
sphere, as shown in the training of certain of the lower
animals; of improving the eye as an optical instrument;
of rendering less antagonistic the natures and instincts we
discover in different species constantly at war with each
other, all point to one process—that of evolution.
There is the old sentimental objection to this theory, that
it is humiliating to think that we have evolved from forms
lower down in the scale of animal life. But, as Dr. Page
points out, there is nothing in this view necessarily degrading
�22
EVOLUTION AND SPECIAL CREATION.
11 If, in virtue of some yet unexplained process, man has
derived his descent from any of the lower orders, he is
clearly not of them—his higher structural adaptations and
improvable reason defining at once the specialty of his place,
and the responsibility of his functions. It can be no
degradation to have descended from some antecedent form
of life, any more than it can be an exaltation to have been
fashioned directly from the dust of the earth. There can
be nothing degrading or disgusting in the connection which
nature has obviously established between all that lives, and
those who employ such phrases must have but a poor and
by no means very reverent conception of the scheme of
creation. The truth is, there is nothing degrading in nature
save that which, forgetful of its own functions, debases and
degrades itself. The jibing and jeering at the idea of an
‘ape-ancestry,’ so often resorted to by the ignorant, has in
reality no significance to the mind of the philosophic
naturalist. There is evidently one structural plan running
throughout the whole of vitality, after which its myriad
members have been ascensively developed, just as there is
one great material plan pervading the planetary system;
and science merely seeks to unfold that plan, and to deter
mine the principles upon which it is constructed. If there
be no generic connection between man and the order that
stands next beneath him, there is at all events a marvellous
similarity in structural organisation, and this similarity is
surely suggestive of something more intimate than mere
coincidence.” Evolution, therefore, although unable to
supply the solution to every problem presented to the
student of nature, is, so far as can be discovered at the
present day, the truest theory of man and the universe, and
is sufficient for all practical purposes. Further, it satisfies
the intellect as no other theory does, and is assuredly more
reasonable than that of special creation.
One question of great importance will probably suggest
itself to those who have given the theory of evolution much
consideration. It is this : What is to be the position of
things, and especially of man, in the future ? Will there be
evolved higher beings after him, as he is higher than those
who preceded him ? He stands now as the lord of crea
tion ; but so stood many mighty reptiles of the past in their
day and generation. Could they have reasoned, would they
�'7" '
EVOLUTION1 AND SPECIAL CREATION.
23
not have concluded that they were the final end of creation,
and that all that had gone before was simply to prepare for
their entrance into the world? In that they would have
erred ; and it may be asked, Shall we not equally err if we
hastily decide that no higher being than man can ever come
on earth—that he is, and will ever remain, the highest of
organic existences ? Now, the cases are not quite analogous,
as a little reflection will show. The earlier animals were
entirely the creatures of evolution j man is largely the director
of the process. He can, by his intellect, control the law
itself, just as he bends gravitation to his will, though, in a
sense, he is as much subject to its power as the earth on which
he treads. Before man arose, the animals and plants then
existing were moulded by the great power operating upon
them from within and without; hence the form they took
and the functions they performed. When they had to con
tend with an unfortunate environment they became modi
fied ; or, failing that, they disappeared. Now man, by his
mental resource, can supply natural deficiencies, and thus not
defeat evolution, but direct its current into a new channel.
He can bring his food from a distance, and thus avoid
scarcity in the country where he dwells ; he can successfully
contend against climate, disease, and a thousand other
destructive agencies which might otherwise sweep him away.
It is, therefore, no longer a contest between physical powers,
but between physical and mental. No higher physical
development is likely to occur, because it would not meet
the case, since, however perfect it might be, it could not
hold its own in the struggle for existence against man with
his intellect. The development in the future must be one
of mind, not of body. We do not, consequently, look for
ward to the time when organised beings, higher and more
perfect physically than man, shall take his place on the
earth; but we do believe that a period will arrive when the
intellectual powers shall be refined, expanded, and exalted
beyond anything of which at present we can form a con
ception. The future of man is a topic of all-absorbing
interest, and it needs no prophetic insight to enable us to
form some dim and vague idea of what it will be. Mind
will grapple with the great forces of nature, making them
subservient to man’s comfort and convenience. Virtue
shall array herself more resolutely than ever against vice,
�24
EVOLUTION AND SPECIAL CREATION.
and rid the world of its malignant power. Brother shall
cease slaying brother at the command of kingly despots, and
thus the world shall be crowned with the laurels of peace.
Priestcraft shall lose its power over humanity, and mental
liberty shall have a new birth. The barriers of social caste
shall be broken down, and the brotherhood of man thereby
consolidated. Woman shall no longer be a slave, but
free in her own right. Capital and labour shall cease
to be antagonistic, and shall be harmoniously employed
to enrich the comforts and to augment the happiness of the
race. Education shall supplant ignorance, and justice take
the place of oppression. Then the era shall have arrived
of which the philosopher has written and the poet has sung.
Freedom shall be the watchword of man, reason shall reign
supreme, and happiness prevail throughout the earth.
“ When from the lips of Truth one mighty breath
Shall, like a whirlwind, scatter in its breeze
The whole dark pile of human miseries,
Then shall the reign of mind commence on earth ;
And, starting forth as from a second birth,
Man, in the sunrise of the world’s new spring,
Shall walk transparent like some holy thing.”
�
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Evolution and special creation
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Watts, Charles [1836-1906]
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Place of publication: [London]
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Notes: Lacking a title page. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Date of publication from Cooke, Bill. The blasphemy depot.
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Evolution
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Charles Darwin
Creationism
Darwinism
Evolution
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Text
FROM THE
��A
MAN
FROM THE
MOON.
LONDON:
C. R. BROWN, ELDON STREET, CITY, E.C.
PRICE SIXPENCE.
�• Jjll'J
MOfli
�^4 Man from the Moon.
As I stood on the summit of Aconcagua, the loftiest peak of
the Chilian Andes, looking down on Anluco, Descabezado, and
Nevado de Chorolque, drinking in the beauties of the splendid
mountain scenery, I diverted my gaze from the space, and suddenly
became aware of the presence of an individual, apparently a human
being of the male sex; although very much resembling an
ordinary man, he differed entirely from any one I had ever seen;
his face was naturally hairless, and although he gave me the
impression of not being more than thirty years old, he looked as
though he bad attained that age many centuries ago.
Starting slightly, at what seemed almost like an apparition, I
said “ Good gracious I how long have you been here ? ”
In the coolest possible manner he replied, “ I’ve been on your
little planet just three days and a half according to your reckoning.”
Merely intending to ask him how long he had been on the
mountain beside me, I was surprised at his reply, and falteringly
enquired “Do I understand you to say that you are not an inhabitant
of this earth ? ”
“Exactly,” he replied, “when I’m at home I live on the moon.”
The moon ! ! I said in astonishment, as I looked searchingly at
at him; besides his old young look, I could deteft nothing ex
traordinary, except that he had none of the fresh color usual in a
�1
man of his apparent age, his entire face and neck being of a bronzy,
pink, blotting paper hue.
Smiling blandly at my look of surprise, he said, “Yes we don’t
often visit you, you’re so much behind us in everything.”
I felt that I could have kicked him for his cool impudence, but I
let it pass, merely remarking, “ I don’t quite see how you could
overcome the attraction of gravity.”
“ No, I dare say not,” he replied condescendingly, “we got over
that little difficulty a very long time ago.”
“ Do you mean to say that you can move off this earth, when
you like ? ”
“ Certainly, nothing is easier,” replied the lunar excursionist;
springing lightly into the air and ascending to the height of about
twelve feet, he stood there looking down benignly.
He descended at my request without the least shock; and I said,
“It must have taken you a long time to come all the way ? ”
Lunar Excursionist. No, only a fortnight.
Writer. But how about food ?
L. E. Well you see we’re not nearly so gross as you are 5 I
could carry almost enough for that short time; besides we have
certain methods of extracting a limited amount of sustenance from
the air.
W. Did any one see you arrive ?
L. E. No I always manage to alight during the night.
W. Why ?
L. E. Because you see one might be used as a target for rifle
practice.
W. Yes, that would be unpleasant, but did I understand you to
say that you lived on the air during your journey ?
L. E. Yes partially 5 not that I mean to say it’s good living, but
one can make shift with it for a short time; it’s not so difficult for
us, because we do’nt feed in the same heavy way that you do.
W. Indeed, how’s that ?
�3
L. E. Well, we don’t eat flesh, our animals are never slaughtered,
W. But don’t you ever require animal food ?
L. E. Yes, sometimes, and then we make it chemically.
W. That seems a great waste of time.
L. E. One must have some employment, but if we choose, we
can always find some of the less learned who don’t understand the
process, to do the mechanical work.
W. But have you no other employmentthan procuring your food ?
L. E. I never yet knew any one, either on your planet or ours,
to whom that was’nt the principal employment 5 you work in order
that you may earn money to buy food, we’ve long since progressed
beyond all that barbarism; we have no money.
W. No money, then how do you buy food and necessaries ?
L. E. We don’t buy them; there are various things which nature
sends ready made; anything else that we may require we make
chemically, this is very much better than your method 5 if you want
tea or coffee you first build a ship, then you pay sailors to navigate
her, after that you send out money to the grower, then you bring
it home and roast it, &c., &c., whereas we never take the trouble to
send a long way for anything, we have the elements always handy,
and we make all that we require.
W. But if you make no use of money, it seems to me that
you are not far removed from a savage state.
L. E. On the contrary, we have long since passed through the
money using stage of existence, when every one knew how to
make money as well as his neighbour, it became of no value;
people were tired of the unceasing round of work ■, life had become
so fast, that it was really too much trouble to live, and the weaker
individuals solved the difficulty by dying voluntary, “'committing
suicide ” as you roughly term it, but for a long time there had been
growing up a large body who pitied and despised the money
grubbers 5 this section of the people calling themselves “scientists”
promulgated the doctrine that the money grubbers mode of life
�4
was, in point of fact slow suicide ; by a long series of experiments,
extending over two or three hundred years, they proved that man
could live vastly longer and more comfortably, than he had been in
the habit of doing, if he would take the trouble to observe certain
rules of diet and exercise, and eschew the feverish excitement, of
money getting. Children were raised from birth on scientific
principles, and it was found that at the end of 200 years they had
more vitality than an ordinary man of forty.
W. Impossible ! !
L. E. Not at all, you must remember that these scientists were
better chemists than you will be for many centuries; they learnt, by
countless experiments, the exa^Rsort and amount of food which
best repaired the normal waste of material, and the quantity of
exercise necessary for tht* dispersion otlthat food 5 the brain was
just sufficiently exercised in a gentle pursuit after knowledge, to
keep it from stagnation,*0 that the only two constituents of
animal existence, brain and stomacn, act and re-act on each other
in a reciprocally health^manner.
W. Very good, all very well in it’s way, but these “ scientists ”
must be quite isolated from**fhe r'est of society.
L. E. Of course they were at first; but now everyone is, or as
pires to be a scientist; we have no society as you understand the
term; that mean desire to d®'ex1retly as your neighbours do, has
long since ceased among us ; we desire only our own approbation.
W. That’s all very fine, but tf^lly I don’t see how you can go
on, if you have no money you can have no House of Commons,
no judges, no police, no order.
L. E. We keep ourselves in order, there are no incentives to
disorder, money is your great cause of crime; we have abolished
money, therefore we require no police to protect property, no judges
to try criminals—there are none; there is only one description of
property on our planet, viz. :—public libraries, and everyone is
interested in preserving them and adding to them.
�5
W. But there’s another cause of crime, how do you manage
about love ?
L. E. Yes, we had some trouble with it at first;' priests having
been improved out of existence, no ceremony was performed at
marriage, and people sometimes left their husbands or wives, as
you can do here, if you choose to take the consequences; but this
sort of thing soon remedied itself, all ill-regulated passions being
deleterious to life, no one who desires to live indulges in them; if
a man deserts his wife, he is looked down upon in the same way
as a drunkard is with you; he has given way to an irregular and
debasing passion, he probably gives way to others, such as excessive
feeding or drinking, he rapidly deteriorates and dies, as you call it,
or as we say “he becomes inanimate matter;” the woman has
lost nothing, if she has continued to keep her passions under proper
control, she has become no older, and in course of time she finds
another husband.
W. But do the women keep their passions under the same
control as the men ?
L. E. Almost, they are still slightly inferior to men in all
respects, but vastly superior to your women, intellectually I mean.
W. You can’t argue with them, I suppose ?
L. E. Yes you’Can.
W. Nonsense, you’re joking ?
L. E. No I’m not, but then you see we have no subjects of any
importance left to argue with them.
W. They bear children, of course ?
L. E.. Only the comparatively ignorant.
W. But the population must decrease.
L. E. Exactly.
W. In time it must die out altogether.
L. E. Just so.
W. What a dreadful thing !
L. E. Why would it be more dreadful for man to die out than
for the megatherium to become extinct ?
�6
W. It’s a different thing altogether.
L. E. Yes, only the difference does’nt just now occur to you J
if women ever become sufficiently strong of intellect, they will
refuse to be at the inconvenience of peopling the earth. On our
planet they are becoming more and more unwilling to have children,
and in ten or twenty thousand years, perhaps, the moon will be
without human inhabitants.
W. What, in spite of your achievement of a sort of limited
immortality ?
L. E. I did’nt say it was limited, what I say is that we can
live just as long as we like ■, but after a time it becomes so trouble
some and monotonous to obey the necessary rules, that very few
care to live more than 500 years j we have a few who have reached
1500, but they are very tired of it, and continue to exist purely
on public grounds.
W. Just to show what they can do ?
L. E. Exactly.
W. But your 1500 year olders don’t beat Methusalah by much.
L. E. The inhabitants of this earth never lived longer than
they do now.
W. But the Bible says so.
L. E. It’s either a pure invention, or, perhaps, the word months
has been altered into years.
W. It’s quite impossible that the word of God should be
altered.
L. E. You Christians, with the finest code of morality, have
the most ridiculous religion on the earth ■, you call a history of the
Jews, written by themselves, the “Word of God; ” on to this you
tack a legend, with which the Jews will have nothing to do, and
this mixture you try to thrust down the throats of other people as
the “ only true religion /’if they laugh at it, you call them blas
phemers. I should like to know whether you would’nt laugh
if any one mixed up some negro religion with a fancy of their
�7
own, and called it the only true religion ? I’am riot suprised that
it should have happened when it did, but that it should be believed
up to the present time does’nt say much for—however I must’nt
be too hard, for we were a long time getting rid of our numerous
religions.
W. You’re very kind, but you speak of the Jews as if they
were an ordinary people.
L. E. I think them a very ordinary people, if any Eastern race
had adopted the same exclusive method for the same number of
years, they would present precisely similar features.
W. I suppose you allude to the nose ?
L. E. No no, I meant general features, but it certainly is to be
feared that the nose may develop into a small trunk, if they remain
a separate race for about ten thousand years longer however, there’s
no fear of that, another two or three centuries will amalgamate
them.
W. You may depend they will always be a “ peculiar people,”
and remain separate to the end of the world, when they will all be
converted to Christianity.
L. E. You forget that the period they have passed through has
been one of intense ignorance, and that every year it becomes more
difficult for them to indulge in their Oriental superstitions •, as for
their being converted to Christianity, when the world comes to an
end, I’ll back the world to last a great deal longer than Christianity.
W. But Christianity will never die out.
L. E. Exactly, every religion in it’s turn has been believed to be
everlasting; unluckily they can’t all be right.
WAh ! but ours is the only one with a truly divine origin.
L. E. I can point you out half a dozen whose origins are
equally divine.
W. They have no immaculate conception.
L. E. No, but they could have had, it’s not more difficult to
manage than any other miracle.
�8
W. Oblige me by dropping the subject, I can’t tolerate such
rank blasphemy.
,
L. E. Oh certainly, I had no wish to hurt your feelings; you
4 see we’ve got rid of all those old prejudices, so I hope you’ll excuse
me.
W. Well I ca’nt see that you gain much by your longevity, it
does’nt seem worth the trouble as you have to live after death.
L. E. Live after death ! ah I yejTS suppose it will take you a
good many centuries to reason out of that semi-barbarous notion.
W. Belief in a future life, a semi-barbarous notion !! good ! I - - L. E. Why yes, does’nt it carry absurdity on the face of it ? it’s
a mere fancy, you have never had a shadowlof proof.
W. But we’re told so.
L. E. Told so ! do you believe everything you’re told ?
W. No, but that’s a thing on which there’s never been the
slightest doubt.
L. E. Just so, it’s purely the result of self-conceit, you see dogs,
horses, and elephants die, without a thought about there future
state, but because you’re superior to them by a mere accident, you
say that you’re going to have another life, I should have thought
that common justice would make you consider that you already
have a sufficient advantage over them.
W. I do’nt think that has anything to do with it, but what’s
the mere accident you allude to ?
L. E. Speech; if any of the large apes acquired the power of
languages—as they probably will do sooner or later—they would
progress as far as you have done in the same time.
W. Then you say that man is no better than the other animals ?
L. E. On the contrary I say that he is far superior to all the
other animals, but still he is only an animal, and is not more likely to
have two lives than any other beast.
W. Then what becomes of man after death ?
L. E. I’ll answer your question by asking another, “ Whafl
becomes of other animals after death ? ”
�9
W. But we’ve always been taught that man is quite different
from the other animals.
L. E. Yes, but you’d have known better, by this time if you
had ever troubled to reason to a conclusion.
W. But it is a part of our religion.
L. E. Yes, that accounts for it, religion is answerable for a
great deal of ignorance, your Angljcan priest retards the advance
ment of thought less than the Roman Catholic priest, still, without
any special desire to do so, he does retard it; such is the natural
tendency of his business, for if every one made a proper use of his
reason the priestly office could not exist.
W. What, do you mean to say that we could do without priests
altogether ?
L. E. Certainly, I don’t mean that you could very well dispense
with them to-morrow, but in course of time you’ll do without
them, as we have done j they’ve held you in subjection for a very
long time, but their influence is becoming less every day, even poor
Roman Catholics are beginning to see through their priests.
W. Well, I agree with you so far, the influence of the clergy
has certainly decreased, even in my time ■, some people will always
believe in them, but the proportion of those who care nothing
about either the church or the priesthood is certainly larger.
L. E. Naturally, why even among the Jews the better educated
laugh at their religious observances, but they know that without
them their nationality mhst cease.
W. The Jewesses are very devout ?
L. E. Of course, women are always more so than men religious
fervour is generally in inverse proportion to intellect.
W. If I understand your system, the exercise of the intellect
is a universal panacea ?
L. E. Certainly, by that means we have gradually done away
with all you most complain of. If we suffer disease it is purely
our own fault, if we - - -
�IO
W. You have no wars, of course ?
L. E. Wars ! no, we’ve nothing to fight for, everyone is complete and self-supporting, ages ago we used to have wars just as you
do, but when one looks back at them they do seem so utterly
ludicrous and childish, that it’s difficult to imagine how they could
have taken place, progress is intensely slow, it’s taken you untold
ages even to see the absurdity of the duel between individuals r
having abolished that, it ought not to take you very long to do away
with duelling between nations.
W I suppose you did’nt manage these things in a day or two ?
L. E. Oh no, but it’^fuch a long time since we were like you,
that it seems quite funny it’s s&mlthing like you’re paying a visit
to some aboriginal tribe, only you’remnuch further behind us than
any of your aborigines are behind you.
W. You’re not bo^sdywithlj the working man” I suppose?
L. E. No, we’re alb working men, Everyone works for himself
the worst of your typiSlworking man, is that they all want to be
masters, not that anyonej|frzishe* to prevent them, but they seem
to fancy that their Esters shouldTvoluntarily change places with
them.
W. I expect they’d soon find their level again.
L. E. Of course thejJ would, thevj|®modified Communists,
their vice proceeds mainly from ignorance, and although with us
some are more ignoranty^an othe^jnone are dangerous. I think
you clearly understand that it’s imp®sible they should be so.
W. Yes, I think I do j if none of you have any property, there
can be no inducement for anyone to be dangerous; but stay, the
thought has just struck me, that the evil-disposed might make slaves
of the others.
,
L. E. No, everyone thoroughly understands that such a course
could not possibly result in any good; we have a few dangerous
animals, and - - W. Which you kill, of course ?
�11
L. E. Oh no, we simply avoid their haunts, there’s plenty of
room ; you use animals very badly, you ought to treat them quite
as well as you treat niggers, your daily slaughter of sheep and
bullocks, is as immoral as killing a similar number of men, in fact
as they are slightly your inferiors, you ought to be all the more
forbearing towards them.
W. But what are we to do for animal food ?
L. E. Why, do without it, there are plenty of substitutes, we
don’t kill animals, either for food or sport.
W. But I don’t believe we could exist without animal food.
L. E. Nonsense, it might not suit so well for a generation or
two ; but use is everything ; even tigers could be taught to live
without flesh diet.
W. Perhaps, but I don’t quite see how all the animals would be
disposed ©f; if we did’nt kill them, they would become too numerous.
L. E. You might as well say that man would become too numer
ous, because he is not eaten as food; there are plenty of animals
that you don’t kill to any appreciable extent, and yet they don’t
cause any inconvenience.
W. But we’ve always been taught that animals were specially
created for man’s use.
L. E. Ah, that’s to be accounted for by the barbarous origin of
your religion; to me it seems ridiculous, that a civilised people
should retain such a word as “create” in their language.
W. But the world was created ?
L. E. Such an idea might be excusable in Moses, but surely
you ought by this time, to have discarded that silly fable ; does’nt it
carry absurdity on the face of it, you see things develop and alter
year by year, and yet you say that they were “created” a few
thousand years ago only a little different from what you now see
them, and since that they have been allowed to take their chance,
or to be tampered with by man for profit or caprice.
W. I don’t quite understand you.
�12
L. E. Well I mean that by careful selection you can effect very
marked changes in any animal or plant, even in a few years.
W. Yes, I know it.
L. E. Does’nt that suggest to you that everything must have al
ways been in a state of development ?
W. Well, I suppose it does, but the missing link between man
and the monkey has never been discovered.
L. E. I could never see that any link was missing; you might
as well ask for the missing link between the big apes and the little
apes, you might as reasonably expect to find fossils extending over
millions of years, showing the origin of man when he was not only
lower in an organization than monkeys, but inferior to the jelly fish;
man is an ape, so I don’t know where the missing link is to come
from.
W. If man is only an ape why don’t the apes do as he does ?
L. E. They probably will in a reasonable tim,e after they have
acquired speech, not that I intend to prophecy anything; they may
never acquire speech—although never is a very long day—but look
at the most intelligent ape as he now is, and ask yourself whether,
if circumstances proved favourable, it would require many millions
of years to develop him into as good a man as the lowest form of
savage, especially when you remember that even now the skulls
of man and the more advanced apes, differ less than the highest
and lowest apes.
W. Yes but when you talk of millions of years - - L. E. Exactly, it’s an interval you can’t appreciate, simply
because you’ve got bogged in the notion that the universe has only
been “ created ” about ten thousand years.
W. But the oldest fossil men hardly differ from man of to-day.
L. E. Which convinces me that it must have occupied many
millions of years to develop him up to the position which he held
ten thousand years ago; if it convinces you that he was conjured
�T3
into existence at about that period, you’re quite welcome to your
opinion, I can’t disprove it, that is to say I’ve no eye witness to
produce.
W. Therefore I shall rest satisfied with what the Bible tells me.
L. E. A mournful example of the state of intellectual blindness
induced by any given religion. Why should you believe a man
who tells you that a short time ago, all the animals and things
you see were created almost in their present form ?
W. But everything is possibleHMth God.
L. E. That’s merely another w^Eof saying, everything is
possible to the imagination. You must admit that, if some Deity
created everything a few years ago, he’s been wonderfully inactive
ever since; you can’t point oitt.fl solitary instance of “creation,”
although everything keeps on developing.
W. But is’nt it all the same? God is the prime mover of
everything.
L. E. How can you say that, when you know that you can
alter trees and animals, and d®. almost what you like with them.
There are certain forces of nature which you do understand, and
others of which you know little or nothing, in time you may
understand them all, and be able to control them ; meanwhile it
would be much more reasonable to call every force in nature a
God, than to ascribe everything to one God.
W. Well it amounts to the same thing.
L. E. Excuse me if I say you’re very shallow, I was merely
making a reductio ad absurdum; to illustrate my meaning, take
steam, you evoke it, I might almost say, you create it, and you
have it under perfect control; if natural force is the same thing as
God, you ought to worship steam—a thing which you make your
slave.
W. But the very essence «of our religion is, that God created
everything.
�14
L. E. Exactly, you’re over-ridden by that silly eastern tale, about
the creation, if you could only manage to abolish Moses it----W. But Moses is the founder of our religion.
L. E. Never mind your religion, if it fetters your reason;
people tell you that there’s no such thing as development, because
your oldest fossil men, whose age is about ten thousand years, are
like man of the present day ■, they can’t see that this merely shows
how long a time must have been occupied in developing up to the
lowest form of man. I was asked, yesterday, how can you say man
has developed, when we find the figures on the Egyptian monuments
exactly the same as man of to-day; I replied, “ the figure on the
top of the Nelson Column is very much like the men of the present
day,” which is quite as strong an argument against the doctrine of
development; people look on two or three thousand years ago as such
a very long time. Then they go on to say, but where do you stop ?
Practically you don’t stop anywhere. People think it so conclusive
to say, “out of nothing, nothing comes,” but the establishment of
spontaneous generation almost upsets this sweeping aphorism,
because thdre is nothing left to account for except the air, which
would naturally produce everything you see, in course of time;
but not in a little flea-bite of time like 10,000 years, or even
jo,000,000. Why not rest satisfied with our theory, that every
thing has developed itself out of space ? Spontaneous generation
has been proved to a certainty, space must have always existed, in
this way you can account for the universe more rationally than by
your creation theory.
W. But that would do away with the necessity for belief in the
existence of a God.
L. E. Yes, the abolition of any old theory or practice must
cause pain or damage to some one; fancy the grief of the ancient
Roman mothers when they heard their sons ridicule the respectable
old system of Pantheism, which had been all sufficient for so many
years; or the horror of the stage coach proprietors, when they found
railways spreading all over the country.
�W. I can’t see how anyone can have any doubt as to the existance
of a God, how can you account for everything we see around us ?
L. E. I’ve just told you.
W. Oh ! I thought you merely put it as a theory.
L. E. It’s all theory of course, the only question is, which re
oommends itself most to the reason ?
W. Why, if your ideas were correct, thieves and murderers
would have no fear of future punishment.
L. E. Every whit as much as they have now, virtue is its own
and only reward, and vice is its own punishment, or receives present
punishment, anything else you must own to be at the best, a pure
speculation, let me ask you whether you yourself or any one you
know really has any fear of future punishment, in a vague sort of way
they fancy they have been brought upon the idea j but careful self
analysis will show that every action, whether good or bad, is done
solely with a view to the cousequences in this world 5 in fact I think
your are all beginning to understand that you will never see any
other.
W. Are we like the beasts that perish then ?
L. E. We are the beasts that perish.
W. Those holding such a creed must be of all things the most
miserable.
L. E. Implicit belief in the tenets of your religion must ne
cessarily make you much more miserable.
W. How so ?
L. E. Because no one can be certain whether he’s just good
enough to go to glory 5 there are no rules laid down by which a
man may know exactly how much or how little will obtain for him
the desired position after death.
W. No, he must have faith.
L. E. Which means that he must refrain from using his reason ;
I think I am justified in saying that a belief in death bringing a
total cessation of all joys and pleasures is more comfortable than
�16
the miserable uncertainty of your creed, but as no one seems to
have the least fear of punishment in another world, I am led to
conclude either that you are all very conceited or that you have no
real belief in your dogmas.
W. Well you certainly have some excuse for your view of the
matter;. but I firmly believe that the soul of man will live again.
L. E. You might as well talk of the soul of the rose in your
button-hole; not a particle of it will be lost or destroyed but it will
never exist again as a rose.
W. .You say nothing is lost or destroyed, where then does the
life of man go, if you object to call it the soul ?
*
L. E. You might as well ask me where the steam goes which
has dragged you from London to Brighton ; your life carries you
about for a number of years, and when, like the steam, it’s used up
you ask me where it goes to. I realy can’t tell you; be contented
to believe only in what you see; rest assured that there is nothing
supernatural and that nothing has more power over nature than man.
I turned round towards the speaker to protest against this
subversive doctrine, but he had left me, and I sat for some time
thinking of all he had said.
It seemed that he totally differed from the Communists and other
idiots who have endeavoured to suddenly force their schemes—good,
bad, or indifferent—down their neighbours’ throats, either at the
point of the bayonet, or by the expenditure of large sums; he had
merely given me the outline of the state of things on his own planet,
and he had specially pointed out that any radical change, can only
be very gradually produced.
His Theology—or rather the want of it—was certainly most
startling, but many of his ideas seemed to have the merit of common
sense.
According to established precedent, I ought to say, “ and I woke,
and found it was a dream;” but I had’nt been asleep.
�Dr. RIDGE’S
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Dublin Core
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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
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
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Title
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A man from the moon
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 16, [2] p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Advertisements for patent food and tonic wines on unnumbered pages at the end. Unidentified author. Tentative date of publication from British Library catalogue.
An account in which a mountain climber, resting at the summit of Mount Aconcagua in the Andes, encounters there a man from the Moon who tells him that humanity is part but not necessarily the peak of Evolution, and who decries the feeble arguments of human Religions against this fact. When the climber asks him "Are we like the beasts that perish then?" the "Lunar Excursionist" responds, "We are the beasts that perish".
Publisher
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C.R. Brown
Date
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[1870?]
Identifier
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G5229
Subject
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Secularism
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Conway Tracts
Evolution
Secularism
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■ \
NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE
�I k
1í
; .
�THE
RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE
AT THE CLOSE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
BY
ERNST HAECKEL
(Ph.D., M.D., LL.D., Sc.D., and Professor at the University of Jena).
TRANSLATED BY JOSEPH McCABE
[issued for the
rationalist press association, limited]
WATTS & CO.,
17, JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, LONDON, E.C.
1902
��CONTENTS
PAGE
X1
Preface
Author’s Preface
’
‘
xm
CHAPTER I.
The Nature of tiie Problem
"
‘
1
CHAPTER II.
8
Our Bodily Frame CHAPTER III.
Our Life
14
•
•
•
CHAPTER IV.
•
-
19
-
•
25
•
Our Embryonic Development
«
Si
CHAPTER V.
The History
of our
Species
CHAPTER VI.
The Nature of the Soul
CHAPTER VII.
38
Psychic Gradations
CHAPTER VIII.
The Embryology
of the
Soul
47
CHAPTER IX.
The Phylogeny
of the
Soul -
52
CHAPTER X.
60
Consciousness
CHAPTER XI.
• The Immortality
of the
Soul
67
�CONTENTS
X
PAGE
CHAPTER XII.
The Law
of
Substance
75
CHAPTER XIII.
The Evolution of the World
83
CHAPTER XIV.
The Unity of Nature
-
-
•
9°
CHAPTER XV.
God and the World
97
CHAPTER XVI.
Knowledge and Belief
-
•
104
CHAPTER XVII.
Science and Christianity
109
CHAPTER XVIII.
Our Monistic Religion
-
117
CHAPTER XIX.
Our Monistic Ethics
0
123
CHAPTER XX.
Solution of the World Problems
Index
129
�PREFACE
Few recent works of a serious nature have so happily rewarded the hopes of
their authors as has Professor Haeckel’s Welt-Rathsel. He tells us that he
issued the work in the apprehension that the nineteenth century, the century
of science and progress, was closing in a gloom of reactionary feeling and
thought. As one of the last survivors of the great struggle, he would sound
once more the clarion-note of his old phalanx, that it might catch the ear
of the new-born century, and rekindle the spirit of strenuous and accurate
thinking, when he and his last comrades-in-arms had passed into the void.
It seemed to him that an ominous confidence and a renewed activity were
noticeable in the ranks of the theologians. He would marshal the achieve
ments of science in one last array, and point the irresistible moral of their
cumulation.
A few decades earlier a brilliant theological writer, John Henry Newman,
had, in his Grammar of Assent, devised a theory of evidence which many
thought would divert the force of the scientific attack from traditional
religion. Outside of dialectical works, in real life, we do not seek
apodictical demonstration. We are satisfied, Newman argued, with
a cumulus of probabilities, .especially with a number of probable indi
cations converging towards one conclusion. That was in the middle
scientific period, when Paleyist and Leibnitzian demonstrations were
beginning to totter, yet might, after all, have “something in them.”
Professor Haeckel’s fine survey of the position at the close of the
century amounts to a terrible retorsion, as dialecticians say, of Newman’s
argument. Science has advanced along a hundred paths—in astronomy;
geology, biology, psychology, ethnography, history, ethics, and comparative
religion. Looking at the negative side of its constructive work, we see these
lines converging fatally and irresistibly on one conclusion—the utter exclusion
of theology from “ the domain of cosmological theory.” “ Science has,” as
Caro said, “ conducted God to its frontiers, thanking him for his provisional
services.” Simple-minded believers may long continue to fancy that emotion
—which they admit as a test of the truth of allegations in no other depart
ment of life—will serve as a legitimate base of the cosmic speculations they
entitle their “ religion.” Idealist philosophies—so really incompatible with
Biblical Christianity—may continue to supply an esoteric ground-work for the
faith of so many superior folk, who believe that other people cannot be got
to behave themselves without the threat of a Supreme Chastiser. But
this real world and this visible life of man no longer afford ground for
theological construction. The Riddle of the Universe is an admirable
summary, by “ one of the most eminent and most thoughtful men of science
in Europe” (as Mr. Mallock describes Professor Haeckel), of the positions
taken up by science and evacuated by theology.
The reception of the work has largely belied the apprehension, and so
�PREFACE
xii
more than justified the design, of its author. In Germany the work has run
rapidly through seven editions, and has given firmness and precision to
thousands of popular notions on the subject it deals with. In France,
England, and the United States the several translations have met with a
cordial reception and gone through several editions. This is the third large
edition which the Rationalist Press Association offers to British readers.
Nor is the popular welcome of the work more instructive than the silence or
the triviality of its opponents. No sooner had the first edition begun to make
an impression among us than a high representative of that diminishing band
of scientific men who still make and transfigure popular theologies held out,
by an advertisement in—appropriately enough—the “ agony column ” of the
Times, the promise of an antidote. The anxious souls who hang on his
words are still looking for his “reply to the asseverations of Professor
Haeckel.” The ecclesiastical press at large was content either to ignore the
book or to carp at one or two incidental statements on minor matters foreign
to Professor Haeckel’s peculiar authority. The great theme of the work,
evolution, and particularly the evolution of mind, they were compelled entirely
to avoid. Mr. Mallock has since written a series of essays in which he, as an
impartial onlooker, sums up the result of the conflict of science and religion.
As the representatives of religion he takes three distinguished Roman Catholic
writers ; as the representative of science he adduces throughout Professor
Haeckel, and chiefly in this Riddle of the Universe. And on each spécifie
point where his authorities come in conflict he awards the palm to the
eminent exponent of Monism.
The work is unanswered, because it is unanswerable. Nor can one
lightly set aside the work as an onslaught on a dead form of theistic
philosophy. One of the supreme questions that divided the opposing
forces in the later period of the nineteenth century was that of the evolution
of the human mind. The theory of the evolution of man’s bodily frame
has long been beyond controversy ; but it was maintained with some spirit,
and this not merely by Catholic scientists, that the development of the mind
from lower types of mentality was not yet established. Here were still gaps
in our knowledge on which the theologian loves to build. The chief merit
of the present work lies in its masterly treatment of -the question of the
evolution of mind. The data for the solution of this problem are necessarily
drawn from the science of which Professor Haeckel is the ablest living
representative, and they are marshalled in the Riddle of the Universe with con
summate skill and signal clearness. The case for the evolution of mind has
been placed on the same experimental base as the theory of the evolution of
the body. Distinction has no longer the semblance of reason. From the
lowest kingdom of the protists to the phenomena of the human intelligence
we pass with tolerable ease. The few lacunæ in our evidence are insignificant
beside the broad, overpowering tendency of their cumulative force. In this
respect Professor Haeckel may well claim that with this volume he A draws
the line under his life’s work.” That task is accomplished, and one of the
most important contributions to the science or philosophy of human life,
with its myriad problems, has been for ever established.
J. M.
November, igo2.
�AUTHOR’S PREFACE
The present study of the Monistic Philosophy is intended for thoughtful
readers of every condition who are united in an honest search for the
truth. An intensification of this effort of man to attain a knowledge of
the truth is one of the most salient features of the nineteenth century.
That is easily explained, in the first place, by the immense progress, of
science, especially in its most important branch, the history of humanity.
In the second place, we must trace it to the open contradiction that has
developed during the century between science and the traditional
“Revelation”; and, finally, to the inevitable extension and deepening
of the rational demand for an elucidation of the innumerable facts that
have been recently brought to light, and for a fuller knowledge of their
causes.
Unfortunately, this vast progress of empirical knowledge in our
“Century of Science” has not been accompanied by a corresponding
advancement of its theoretical interpretation—that higher knowledge of
the causal nexus of individual phenomena which we call philosophy.
We find, on the contrary, that the abstract and almost wholly metaphysical
science which has been taught in our universities for the last hundred
years under the name of “ philosophy ” is far from assimilating our hard-
earned treasures of experimental research. On the other hand, we have
to admit, with equal regret, that most of the representatives of what is
called “ exact science ” are content with the special care of their own
narrow branches of observation and experiment, and deem superfluous
the deeper study of the universal connection of the phenomena they
observe—that is, philosophy. While these pure empiricists “ do not see
the wood for the trees,” the metaphysicians, on the other hand, are
satisfied with the mere picture of the wood, and trouble not about its
individual trees.
The idea of a “philosophy of nature,” to which both
those methods of research, the empirical and the speculative, naturally
converge, is even yet contemptuously rejected by large numbers of
representatives of both tendencies.
This unnatural and fatal opposition between Science and Philosophy,
between the results of experience and of thought, is undoubtedly
�xiv
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
becoming more and more irksome and painful to thoughtful people.
That is easily proved by the increasing spread of the immense popular
literature of “ natural philosophy ” which has sprung up in the course
of the last half-century. It is seen, too, in the welcome fact that, in
spite of the mutual aversion of the scientific observer and the speculative
philosopher, nevertheless eminent thinkers from both camps league
themselves in a united effort to attain the solution of that highest object
of inquiry which we briefly denominate the “world-riddles.” The
studies of these “ world-riddles ” which I offer in the present work
cannot reasonably claim to give a perfect solution of them : they merely
offer to a wide circle of readers a critical inquiry into the problem, and
seek to answer the question as to how nearly we have approached that
solution at the present day. What stage in the attainment of truth have
we actually arrived at in this closing year of the nineteenth century ?
What progress have we really made during its course towards that
immeasurably distant goal ?
The answer which I give to these great questions must, naturally, be
merely subjective and only partly correct; for my knowledge of nature
and my ability to interpret its objective reality are limited, as are those of
every man. The one point that I can claim, and which, indeed, I must
ask of my strongest opponents, is that my Monistic Philosophy is sincere
from beginning to end—it is the complete expression of the conviction
that has come to me, after many years of ardent research into Nature
and unceasing reflection, as to the true basis of its phenomena. For
fully half a century has my mind’s work proceeded, and I now, in my
sixty-sixth year, may venture to claim that it is mature; I am fully
convinced that this “ ripe fruit ” of the tree of knowledge will receive no
important addition and suffer no substantial modification during the
brief spell of life that remains to me.
I presented all the essential and distinctive elements of my Monistic
and Genetic Philosophy thirty-three years ago, in my General Morphology
of Organisms, a large and laborious work, which has had but a limited
circulation.
It was the first attempt to apply in detail the newly-
established theory of evolution to the whole science of organic forms.
In order to secure the acceptance of at least one part of the new thought
which it contained, and to kindle a wider interest in the greatest
advancement of knowledge that our century has witnessed, I published
my Natural History of Creation two years afterwards.
As this less
complicated work, in spite of its great defects, ran into nine large
editions and twelve different translations, it has contributed not a little
�AUTHOR'S PREFACE
to the spread of monistic views.
xv
The same may be said of the less
known Anthropogeny12(1874)5 in which I set myself the difficult task of
3
rendering the most important facts of the theory of man’s descent
accessible and intelligible to the general reader; the fourth, enlarged,
edition of that work appeared in 1891.
In the paper which I read at
the fourth International Congress of Zoology at Cambridge, in 1898, on
“ Our Present Knowledge of the Descent of Man ”z (a seventh edition
of which appeared in 1899), I treated certain significant and particularly
valuable advances which this important branch of anthropology has
recently made.
Other isolated
questions of our modern natural
philosophy, which are peculiarly interesting, have been dealt with in my
Collected Popular Lectures on the Subject of Evolution (1878). Finally,
I have briefly presented the broad principles of my Monistic Philosophy
and its relation to the dominant faith in my Confession of Faith of a
Man of Science: Monism as a Connecting Link between Religion and
Science^ (1892 ; eighth edition, 1899).
The present work on The Riddle of the Universe is the continuation,
confirmation, and integration of the views which I have urged for a
generation in the aforesaid volumes. It marks the close of my studies
on the monistic conception of the universe.
The earlier plan, which I
projected many years ago, of constructing a complete “System of
Monistic Philosophy ” on the basis of evolution, will never be carried
into effect now. My strength is no longer equal to the task, and many
warnings of approaching age urge me to desist. Indeed, I am wholly
a child of the nineteenth century, and with its close I draw the line
under my life’s work.
The vast extension of human knowledge which has taken place
during the present century, owing to a happy division of labour, makes
it impossible to-day to range over all its branches with equal thorough
ness, and to show their essential unity and connection.
Even the
genius of the highest type, having an equal command of every branch
of science, and largely endowed with the artistic faculty of comprehensive
presentation, would be incapable of setting forth a complete view of the
cosmos in the space of a moderate volume. My own command of the
various branches of science is uneven and defective, so that I can
1 There are two English translations, The Evolution of Man (1879) and The
Pedigree of Man (1880).
2 The English translation, by Dr. Hans Gadow, bears the title of The Last Link.
3 English translation, by J. Gilchrist, with the title of Monism.
�xvi
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
attempt no more than to sketch the general plan of such a world-picture,
and point out the pervading unity of its parts, however imperfect be
the execution.
Thus it is that this work on the world-enigma has
something of the character of a sketch-book, in which studies of unequal
value are associated.
As the' material of the book was partly written
many years ago, and partly produced for the first time during the last
few years, the composition is, unfortunately, uneven at times; repetitions,
too, have proved unavoidable.
I trust those defects will be overlooked.
In taking leave of my readers, I venture the hope that, through my
sincere and conscientious work—-in spite of its faults, of which I am
not unconscious—I have contributed a little towards the solution of the
great enigma.
Amid the clash of theories, I trust that I have indicated
to many a reader who is absorbed in the zealous pursuit of purely rational
knowledge that path which, in my firm conviction, alone leads to truth—
k
the path of empirical investigation and of the Monistic Philosophy
which is based upon it.
Ernst Haeckel
Jena,) Germany, i8çç.
îf
�THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE
0F
CHAPTER I.
¡i
THE NATURE OF THE PROBLEM
sdf The condition of civilisation and of thought at
>di|............................
the close of the nineteenth century. Progress
lol of our knowledge of nature—of the organic and
mil inorganic sciences. The Law of Substance
and the Law of Evolution.
Progress of
technical science and of applied chemistry.
;18 ■ Stagnancy in other departments of life : legal
>rts« and political administration, education and the
s ■ -• • • ’
¡13« Church. Conflict of reason and dogma.
oAf Anthropism. Cosmological perspective. Cos
301 I mological theorems. Refutation of the delusion
lol of— ’s importance. . . Number of “ world“world
. man „ „ . . .
bill riddles.” Criticism of the “ seven ” enigmas.
flT»‘ The way to solve them. Function of the
iaal senses and of the brain. Induction and
deduction. Reason, sentiment, and revelation,
dll Philosophy and science.
Experience and
aqaIl speculation. Dualism and monism.
HHffiTHE close of the nineteenth century offers
amone of the most remarkable spectacles to
a¿|the thoughtful observer. All educated
qos$ people are agreed that it has in many
jqaa respects immeasurably outstripped its preí90áÍ| decessors, and has achieved tasks that were
noáí deemed impracticable at its commenceJnojfcment. An entirely new character has been
lovij given to the whole of our modern civilisatno|tion, not only by our astounding theoretical
igo’BÍ progress >n sound knowledge of nature, but
oalalso by the remarkably fertile practical
iiqqXapplication of that knowledge in technical
neil science, industry, commerce, and so forth,
[j nfOn the other hand, however, we have made
ofttl little or no progress in moral and social
.all life, in comparison with earlier centuries ;
it n at times there has been serious reaction,
bul And from this obvious conflict there have
agri arisen, not only an uneasy sense of dismaql memberment and falseness, but even the
gnn| danger of grave catastrophes in the poli tiifi Iqj cal and social world. It is, then, not merely
i acl the right, but the sacred duty, of every
ngl right-minded and humanitarian thinker to
1 devote himself conscientiously to the settle
ment of that conflict, and to warding off
the dangers that it brings in its train. In
our conviction this can only be done by a
courageous effort to attain the truth, and
by the formation of a clear view of the
world—a view that shall be based on truth
and conformity to reality.
If we recall to mind the imperfect con
dition of science at the beginning of the
century, and compare this with the magnifi
cent structure of its closing years, we are
compelled to admit that marvellous progress
has been made during its course. Every
single branch of science can boast that it
has, especially during the latter half of the
century, made numerous acquisitions of the
utmost value. Both in our microscopic
knowledge of the little and in our telescopic
investigation of the great, we have attained
an invaluable insight that seemed incon
ceivable a hundred years ago. Improved
methods of microscopic and biological
research have not only revealed to us an
invisible world of living things in the king
dom of the protists, full of an infinite wealth
of forms, but they have taught us to recog
nise in the tiny cell the all-pervading
“ elementary organism ” of whose social
communities—the tissues—the body of
every multicellular plant and animal, even
that of man, is composed. This anatomi
cal knowledge is of extreme importance ;
and it is supplemented by the embryological
discovery that each of the higher multi
cellular organisms is developed out of one
simple cell, the impregnated ovum. The
“ Cellular theory,” which has been founded
on that discovery, has given us the first
true interpretation of the physical, chemical,
and even the psychological, processes of
life—those mysterious phenomena for whose
explanation it had been customary to pos
tulate a supernatural “vital force” or “im
mortal soul.” Moreover, the true character
of disease has been made clear and intelli
gible to the physician for the first time by
the cognate science of Cellular Pathology.
. The discoveries of the nineteenth century
B
�2
THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE
in the inorganic world are no less important.
Physics has made astounding progress in
every section of its province—in optics and
acoustics, in magnetism and electricity, in
mechanics and thermo-dynamics; and,
what is still more important, it has proved
the unity of the forces of the entire universe.
The mechanical theory of heat has shown
how intimately they are connected, and how
each can, in certain conditions, transform
itself directly into another. Spectrum
analysis has taught us that the same matter
which enters into the composition of all
bodies on earth, including its living inhabi
tants, builds up the rest of the planets, the
sun, and the most distant stars. Astro
physics has considerably enlarged our cos
mic perspective in revealing to us, in the
immeasurable depths of space, millions of
circling spheres, larger than our earth, and,
like it, in endless transformation, in an
eternal rhythm of life and death. Chemis
try has introduced us to a multitude of new
substances, all of which arise from the
combination of a few (about seventy)
elements that are incapable of further
analysis ; some of them play a most im
portant part in every branch of life. It has
been shown that one of these elements—
carbon—is the remarkable substance that
effects the endless variety of organic
syntheses, and thus may be considered
“ the chemical basis of life.” However, all
the particular advances of physics and
chemistry yield in theoretical importance
to the discovery of the great law which
brings them to one common focus, the
“ Law of Substance.” As this fundamental
cosmic law establishes the eternal persist
ence of matter and force, their unvarying
constancy throughout the entire universe,
it has become the pole-star that guides our
Monistic Philosophy through the mighty
labyrinth to a solution of the world
problem.
Since we intend to make a general survey
of the actual condition of our knowledge of
nature and its progress during the present
century in the following chapters, we shall
delay no longer with the review of its par
ticular branches. We would only mention
one important advance, which was contem
porary with the discovery of the law of
substance, and which supplements it—the
establishment of the theory of evolution.
It is true that there were philosophers who
spoke of the evolution of things a thousand
years ago ; but the recognition that such a
law dominates the entire universe, and that
the world is nothing else than an eternal
“evolution of substance,” is a fruit of the
nineteenth century. It was not until the
second half of this century that it attained
to perfect clearness and a universal applica’
tion. The immortal merit of establishing
the doctrine on an empirical basis, and
pointing out its world-wide application,
belongs to the great scientist, Charles
Darwin ; he it was who, in 1859, supplied a
solid foundation for the theory of descent,
which the able French naturalist, Jean
Lamarck, had already sketched in its broad
outlines in 1809, and the fundamental idea
of which had been almost prophetically
enunciated in 1799 by Germany’s greatest
poet and thinker, Wolfgang Goethe. In
that theory we have the key to “ the ques
tion of all questions,” to the great enigma
of “ the place of man in nature,” and of his
natural development. If we are in a posi
tion to-day to recognise the sovereignty of
the law of evolution—and, indeed, of a
monistic evolution—in every province of
nature, and to use it, in conjunction with
the law of substance, for giving a simple
interpretation of all natural phenomena, we
owe this chiefly to those three distinguished
naturalists; they shine as three stars of the
first magnitude amid all the great men of
the century.
This marvellous progress in a theoretical
knowledge of nature has been followed by
a manifold practical application in every
branch of civilised life. If we are to-day
in the “ age of commerce,” if international
trade and communication have attained
dimensions beyond the conception of any
previous age, if we have transcended the
limits of space and time by our telegraph
and telephone, we owe it, in the first place,
to the technical advancement of physics,
especially in the application of steam and
electricity. If, in photography, we can,
with the utmost ease, compel the sunbeam
to create for us in a moment’s time a correct
picture of any object we like ; if we have
made enormous progress in agriculture, and
in a variety of other pursuits; if, in surgery,
we have brought an infinite relief to human
pain by our chloroform and morphia, our
antiseptics and serous therapeutics, we owe
it all to applied chemistry. But it is so well
known how much we have surpassed all
earlier centuries through these and other
scientific discoveries that we need linger
over the question no longer.
While we look back with a just pride on
the immense progress of the nineteenth
century in a knowledge of nature and in its
practical application, we find, unfortunately,
�THE NATURE OF THE PROBLEM
a Wry different and far from agreeable
picture when we turn to another and not
Jess important province of modern life. To
our great regret we must endorse the words
■of Alfred Wallace : “ Compared with our
astounding progress in physical science
and its practical application, our system of
government, of administrative justice, and
of national education, and our entire social
and moral organisation, remain in a state
of barbarism.” To convince ourselves of
the truth of this grave indictment we need
only cast an unprejudiced glance at our
public life, or look into the mirror that is
daily offered to us by the press, the organ
of public sentiment.
We begin our review with justice, the
fundamentum regnorum.
No one can
maintain that its condition to-day. is in
harmony with our advanced knowledge of
man and the world. Not a week passes in
which we do not read of judicial decisions
over which every thoughtful man shakes his
head in despair ; many of the decisions of
our higher and lower courts are simply un
intelligible. We are not referring in the
treatment of this particular “world-problem”
to the fact that many modern States, in
spite of their paper constitution, are really
governed with absolute despotism, and that
many who occupy the bench give judgment
less in accordance with their sincere convic
tion than with wishes expressed in higher
quarters.
We readily admit that the
majority of judges and counsel decide con
scientiously, and err simply from human
frailty. Most of their errors, indeed, are
due to defective preparation. It is popularly
supposed that these are just the men of
highest education, and that on that very
account they have the preference in nomi
nations to different offices. However, this
famed “ legal education ” is for the most
part rather of a formal and technical char
acter. They have but a superficial acquaint
ance with that chief and peculiar object of
their activity, the human organism, and its
most important function, the mind. That
is evident from the curious views as to the
liberty of the will, responsibility, etc., which
we encounter daily. I once told an eminent
jurist that the tiny spherical ovum from
which every man is developed is as truly
endowed with life as the embryo of two, or
seven, or even nine months. He laughed
incredulously. Most of our students of
jurisprudence have no acquaintance with
anthropology, psychology, and the doctrine
of evolution—the very first requisites for a
correct estimate of human nature. They
3
have “no time” for it; their time is already
too largely bespoken for lighter pur
suits and purposes. Their scanty hours
of study are required for the purpose of
learning some hundreds of paragraphs
of law books, a knowledge of which is
supposed to qualify the jurist for any posi
tion whatever in our modern civilised com
munity.
We shall touch but lightly on the unfor- ’
tunate province of politics, for the unsatis
factory condition of the modern political
world is only too familiar. In a great
measure its evils are due to the fact that
most of our officials are men without an
acquaintance with those social relations of
which we find the earlier types in compara
tive zoology and the theory of evolution, in
the cellular theory and study of the protistS. •
We can only arrive at a correct knowledge
of the structure and life of the social body,
the State, through a scientific knowledge of
the structure and life of the individuals who
compose it, and the cells of which they are
in turn composed. If our political rule« .
and our “representatives of the people*
possessed this invaluable biological and
anthropological knowledge, we should not
find our journals so full of the sociological
blunders and political nonsense which at
present disfigure our Parliamentary reports,
and even many of our official documenta*
Worst of all is it when the modern State
flings itself into the arms of the reactionary
Church, and when the narrow-minded selfinterest of parties and the infatuation of
short-sighted party-leaders lend their sup
port to the hierarchy. Then are witnessed
such sad scenes as the German Reichstag
puts before our eyes even at the close of the
nineteenth century. We have the spectacle
of the educated German people in the
power of the ultramontane Centre, under
the rule of the Roman papacy, which is its
bitterest and most dangerous enemy. Then
superstition and stupidity reign instead of
right and reason. Never will our Govern
ment improve until it casts off the fetters of
the Church and raises the views of the
citizens on man and the world to a higher
level by a general scientific education.
That does not raise the question of any
special form of constitution. Whether a
Monarchy or a Republic be preferable,
whether the constitution should be aristo
cratic or democratic, are subordinate ques
tions in comparison with the supreme
question : Shall the modern civilised State
be ecclesiastical or secular? Shall it be.
theocratic—ruled by the irrational formulae.
�4
THÈ RlbDLÈ OÈ THE UNIVÈRSE
of faith and by clerical despotism—or nomocratic—xxatex the sovereignty of rational
laws and civic right ? The first task is to
kindle a rational interest in our youth,
and to uplift our citizens and free them
from superstition. That can only be
achieved by a timely reform of our
schools.
Our education of the young is no more
in harmony with modern scientific progress
than our legal and political world. Physical
science, which is so much more important
than all other sciences, and which, properly
understood, really embraces the so-called
moral sciences, is still regarded as a mere
accessory in our schools, if not treated as
the Cinderella of the curriculum. Most of
our teachers still give the most prominent
place to that dead learning which has come
down from the cloistral schools of the
Middle Ages. In the front rank we have
grammatical gymnastics and an immense
waste of time over a “thorough knowledge”
of classics and of the history of foreign
nations. Ethics, the most important object
of practical philosophy, is entirely neglected,
and its place is usurped by the ecclesiastical
creed. Faith must take precedence over
knowledge—not the scientific faith which
leads to a monistic religion, but the irra
tional superstition that lays the foundation
of a perverted Christianity. The valuable
teaching of modern cosmology and anthro
pology, of biology and evolution, is most
inadequately imparted, if not entirely un
known, in our higher schools ; while the
memory is burdened with a mass of philo
logical and historical facts which are utterly
useless, either from the point of view of
theoretical education or for the practical
purposes of life. Moreover, the antiquated
arrangements and the distribution of facul
ties in the universities are just as little in
harmony with the point we have reached in
monistic science as the curriculum of the
primary and secondary schools.
The climax of the opposition to modern
education and its foundation, advanced
natural philosophy, is reached, of course, in
the Church. We are not speaking here of
Ultramontane Papistry, nor of the orthodox
sects which do not fall far short of it in
ignorance and in the crass superstition of
their dogmas. We are imagining ourselves
for the moment to be in the church of a
liberal Protestant minister, who has a good
average education, and who finds room for
“ the rights of reason ” by the side of his
faith.
There, besides excellent moral
teaching, which is in perfect harmony with
our own monistic ethics, and humanitarian
sentiments of which we cordially approve,
we hear ideas on the nature of God, of the
world, of man, and of life, which are directly
opposed to all scientific experience. It is
no wonder that physicists and chemists,
doctors and philosophers, who have made
a thorough study of nature, refuse a hearing
to such preachers. Our theologians and
our politicians are just as ignorant as our
philosophers and our jurists of that elemen
tary knowledge of nature which is based
on the monistic theory of evolution, and
which is already far transcended in the
triumph of our modern learning.
From this opposition, which we can only
briefly point out at present, there arise grave
conflicts in our modern life, which urgently
demand a settlement. Our modern educa
tion, the outcome of our great advance in
knowledge, has a claim upon every depart
ment of public and private life; it would see
humanity raised, by the instrumentality of
reason, to that higher grade of culture, and,
consequently, to that better path towards
happiness, which has been opened out to us
by the progress of modern science. That
aim, however, is vigorously opposed by the
influential parties who would detain the
mind in the exploded views of the Middle
Ages, with regard to the most important
problems of life ; they linger in the fold of
traditional dogma, and would have reason
prostrate itself before their “ higher revela
tion.” That is the condition of things, to a
very large extent, in theology and philo
sophy, in sociology and jurisprudence. It
is not that the motives of the latter are to
be attributed, as a rule, to pure self-interest;
they spring partly from ignorance of the
facts, and partly from an indolent acquies
cence in tradition. The most dangerous of
the three great enemies of reason and know
ledge is not malice, but ignorance, or,
perhaps, indolence. The gods themselves
still strive in vain against these two latter
influences when they have happily van
quished the first.
One of the main supports of that re
actionary system is still what we may call
“antropism.” I designate by this term
“that powerful and world-wide group of
erroneous opinions which opposes the human
organism to the whole of the rest of nature,
and represents it to be the preordained end
of the organic creation, an entity essentially
distinct from it, a god-like being.” Closer
examination of this group of ideas shows it
to be made up of three different dogmas,
which we may distinguish as the anthro
�THE NATURE OF THE PROBLEM
pocentric, the anthropomorphic, and the
anthropolatrous}
I. The anthropocentric dogma culminates
in the idea that man is the preordained
centre and aim of all terrestrial life—or, in
a wider sense, of the whole univerge. As
this error is extremely conducive to man’s
interest, and as it is intimately connected
with the creation-myth of the three great
•Mediterranean religions, and with the
dogmas of the Mosaic, Christian, and
Mohammedan theologies, it still dominates
the greater part of the civilised world.
II. The anthropomorphic dogma is like
wise connected with the creation-myth of
the three aforesaid religions, and of many
Others. It likens the creation and control
of the world by God to the artificial creation
of a skilful engineer or mechanic, and to the
administration of a wise ruler. God, as
Creator, sustainer, and ruler of the world, is
thus represented after a purely human
fashion in his thought and work. Hence it
follows, in turn, that man is god-like. “ God
made man to his own image and likeness.”
The older, naive mythology is pure “ homo
theism,” attributing human shape, flesh, and
blood to the gods. It is more intelligible
than the modern mystic theosophy that
adores a personal God as an invisible—
properly speaking, gaseous — being, yet
makes him think, speak, and act in human
fashion ; it gives us the paradoxical picture
of a w gaseous vertebrate.”
III. The anthropolatric dogma naturally
results from this comparison of the activity
of God and man ; it ends in the apotheosis
of the human organism. A further result is
the belief in the personal immortality of the
soul, and the dualistic dogma of the twofold
nature of man, whose “ immortal soul ” is
conceived as but the temporary inhabitant
of the mortal frame. Thus these three
anthropistic dogmas, variously adapted to
the respective professions of the different
religions, came at length to be vested with
an extraordinary importance, and proved
the source of the most dangerous errors.
The anthropistic view of the world which
springs from them is in irreconcilable
opposition to our monistic system ; indeed,
it is at once disproved by our new cosmo
logical perspective.
Not only the three anthropistic dogmas,
but many other notions of the dualistic
philosophy and orthodox religion, are found
to be untenable as soon as we regard them
5
critically from the cosmological perspective
of our monistic system. We understandby,
that the comprehensive view of the universe
which we obtain from the highest point of
our monistic interpretation of nature. From
that standpoint we see the truth of the
following “ cosmological theorems,” most of
which, in our opinion, have already been
amply demonstrated :—(i) The universe,or the cosmos, is eternal,
infinite, and illimitable. (2) Its substance,
with its two attributes (matter and energy),
fills infinite space, and is in eternal motion.
(3) This motion runs on through infinite
time as an unbroken development, with a
periodic change from life to death, from
evolution to devolution. (4) The innumer
able bodies which are scattered about the
space-filling ether all obey the same “ law
of substance ” ; while the rotating masses
slowly move towards their destruction and
dissolution in one part of space, others are
springing into new life and development in
other quarters of the universe. (5) Our sun
is one of these unnumbered perishable
bodies, and our earth is one of the countless
transitory planets that encircle them. (6)
Our earth has gone through a long process
of cooling before water, in liquid form (the
first condition of organic life), could settle
thereon. (7) The ensuing biogenetic pro
cess, the slow development and transforma
tion of countless organic forms, must have
taken many millions of years—considerably
over a hundred.1 (8) Among the different
kinds of animals which arose in the later
stages of the biogenetic process on earth
the vertebrates have far outstripped all other
competitors in the evolutionary race. (9)
The most important branch of the verte
brates, the mammals, were developed later
(during the triassic period) from the lower
amphibia and the reptilia. (10) The most
perfect and most highly-developed branch
of the class mammalia is the order of
primates, which first put in an appearance,
by development from the lowest prochoriata,
at the beginning of the Tertiary period—at
least three million years ago. (11) The
youngest and most perfect twig of the
branch primates is man, who sprang from a
series of man-like apes towards the end of
the Tertiary period. (12) Consequently,
the so-called “ history of the world ”—that
is, the brief period of a few thousand years,
which measures the duration of civilisation—
is an evanescently short episode in the long
1 Anthropolatry means: “A divine worship of
1 Cf. my Cambridge lecture, The Last Link,
human nature.”
I “ Geological Time and Evolution.”
�6
'HE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE ■
course of organic evolution, just as this, in
turn, is merely a small portion of the history
of our planetary system; and as our mother
earth is a mere speck in the sunbeam in the
illimitable universe, so man himself is but a
tiny grain of protoplasm in the perishable
framework of organic nature.
Nothing seems to me better adapted than
this magnificent cosmological perspective
to give us the proper standard and the
broad outlook which we need in the solution
of the vast enigmas that surround us. It
not only clearly indicates the true place of
man in nature, but it dissipates the preva
lent illusion of man’s supreme importance,
and the arrogance with which he sets him
self apart from the illimitable universe, and
exalts himself to the position of its most
valuable element. This boundless presump
tion of conceited man has misled him into
making himself “the image of God,”
claiming an “eternal life,” for his ephemeral
personality, and imagining that he possesses
unlimited “freedom of will.” The ridicu
lous _ imperial folly of Caligula is but a
special form of man’s arrogant assumption
of divinity. Only when we have abandoned
this untenable illusion, and taken up the
correct cosmological perspective, can we
hope to reach the solution of the “ riddles
of the universe.”
The uneducated member of a civilised
community is surrounded with countless
enigmas at every step, just as truly as the
savage. Their number, however, decreases
with every stride of civilisation and of
science ; and the monistic philosophy is
ultimately confronted with but one simple
and comprehensive enigma—the “ problem
of substance.” Still, we may find it useful
to include a certain number of problems
under that title. In the famous speech
which Emil du Bois-Reymond delivered in
1880, in the Leibnitz session of the Berlin
Academy of Sciences, he distinguished
seven world-enigmas, which he enumerated
as follows : (1) The nature of matter and
force. (2) The origin of motion. (3)
The origin of life.
(4) The (appa
rently preordained) orderly arrangement
of nature. (5) The origin of simple
sensation and consciousness. (6) Rational
thought, and the origin of the cognate
faculty, speech. _ (7) The question of the
freedom of the will. Three of these seven
enigmas are considered by the orator of the
Berlin Academy to be entirely transcen
dental and insoluble—-they are the first,
second, and fifth ; three others (the third,
fourth, and sixth) he considers to be capable
of solution, though extremely difficult;
as to the seventh and last “world-enigma,”
the freedom of the will, which is one of the
greatest practical importance, he remains
undecided.
As my monism differs materially from
that of the Berlin orator, and as his idea of
the “ seven great enigmas ” has been very
widely accepted, it may be useful to indi
cate their true position at once. In my
opinion the three transcendental problems
(1, 2, and 5) are settled by our conception
of substance {vide chap, xii.) ; the three
which he considers difficult, though soluble
(3, 4, and 6), are decisively answered by
our modern theory of evolution; the seventh
and last, the freedom of the will, is not an
object for critical, scientific inquiry at all,
for it is a pure dogma, based on an illusion,
and has no real existence.
The means and methods we have chosen
for attaining the solution of the great
enigma do not differ, on the whole, from
those of all purely scientific investigation—
firstly, experience ; secondly, inference.
Scientific experience comes to us by obser
vation and experiment, which involve the
activity of our sense-organs in the first
place, and, secondly, of the inner sense
centres in the cortex of the brain. The
microscopic elementary organs of the
former are the sense-cells ; of the latter,
groups of ganglionic cells. The experi
ences which we derive from the outer
world by these invaluable instruments of
our mental life are then moulded into ideas
by other parts of the brain, and these, in
their turn, are united in a chain of reason
ing by association. The construction of
this chain may take place in two different
ways, which are, in my opinion, equally
valuable and indispensable : induction and
deduction. The higher cerebral operations,
the construction of complicated chains of
reasoning, abstraction, the formation of
concepts, the completion of the perceptive
faculty by the plastic faculty of the imagina
tion—in a word, consciousness, thought,
and speculation—are functions of the gan
glionic cells of the cortex of the brain,just like the preceding simpler mental func
tions. We unite them all in the supreme
concept of reason!
By reason only can we attain to a correct
knowledge of the world and a solution of
its great problems. Reason is man’s highest
gift, the only prerogative that essentially
1 As to induction and deduction, vide The
Natural History of Creation.
�THE NATURE OF THE PROBLEM
7
distinguishes him from the lower animals.
association in the cortex of the brain,”
Nevertheless, it has only reached this high
which lie between the sense-centres. (Cf.
position by the progress of culture and
cc. vii. and x.) True knowledge is only
education, by the development of know acquired by combining the activity of the
ledge. The uneducated man and the
two. Nevertheless, there are still many
savage are just as little (or just as much) philosophers who would construct the world
“ rational ” as our nearest relatives among out of their own inner consciousness, and
the mammals (apes, dogs, elephants, etc.).
who reject our empirical science precisely
Yet the opinion still obtains in many quar because they have no knowledge of the
ters that, besides our god-like reason, we real world. On the other hand, there are
have two further (and even surer!) methods many scientists who still contend that the
of receiving knowledge — Emotion and sole object of science is “ the knowledge of
Revelation. We must at once dispose of facts, the objective investigation of isolated
this dangerous error. Emotion has nothing phenomena”; that “the age of philosophy”
whatever tc do with the attainment of truth. is past, and science has taken its place.1
That which we prize under the name of This one-sided over-estimation of experi
“ emotion” is an elaborate activity of the ence is as dangerous an error as the con
brain, which consists of feelings of like and verse exaggeration of the value of specu
dislike, motions of assent and dissent, im lation. Both channels of knowledge are
pulses of desire and aversion. It may be mutually indispensable.
The greatest
influenced by the most diverse activities of triumphs of modern science—the cellular
the organism, by the cravings of the senses theory, the dynamic theory of heat, the
and the muscles, the stomach, the sexual theory of evolution, and the law of sub
organs, etc. The interests of truth are far stance—are philosophic achievements ; they
from promoted by these conditions and are not, however, the fruit of pure specula
vacillations of emotion ; on the contrary, tion, but of an antecedent experience of
such circumstances often disturb that the widest and most searching character.
reason which alone is adapted to the pur
At the commencement of the nineteenth
suit of truth, and frequently mar its percep century the great idealistic poet, Schiller,
tive power. No cosmic problem is solved, gave this counsel to both groups of com
even advanced, by the cerebral function we batants, the philosophers and the scien
call emotion. And the same must be said tists :—of the so-called “revelation,” and of the “ Does strife divide your efforts—no union bless
“ truths of faith ” which it is supposed to
your toil ?
communicate ; they are based entirely on
Will truth e’er be delivered if ye your forces
rend?”
a deception, consciously or unconsciously,
as we shall see in the sixteenth chapter.
Since then the situation has, happily, been
We must welcome as one of the most profoundly modified ; whilq both schools, in
fortunate steps in the direction of a solution their different paths, have pressed onwards
of the great cosmic problems the fact that towards the same high goal, they have
of recent years there is a growing tendency recognised their common aspiration, and
to recognise the two paths which alone they draw nearer to a knowledge of the
lead thereto—experience and thought, or truth in mutual covenant. At the end of the
speculation—to be of equal value, and nineteenth century we have returned to that
mutually complementary.
Philosophers j monistic attitude which our greatest realistic
have come to see that pure speculation— j poet, Goethe, had recognised from its very
such, for instance, as Plato and Hegel em- j commencement to be alone correct and
ployed for the construction of their idealist fruitful.
systems — does not lead to knowledge
All the different philosophical tendencies
of reality. On the other hand, scientists may, from the point of view of modern
have been convinced that mere experience science, be ranged in two antagonistic
—such as Bacon and Mill, for example, groups ; they represent either a dualistic
made the basis of their realist systems—is or a monistic interpretation of the cosmos.
insufficient of itself for a complete philo The former is usually bound -up with
sophy. For these two great paths of know teleological and idealistic dogmas, the latter
ledge, sense - experience and rational
thought, are two distinct cerebral functions;
1 Rudolph Virchow, Die griindung der
the one is elaborated by the sense-organs Berliner Universität tmd der Übergang aus dem
and the inner sense-centres, the other by philosophischen in das naturwissenschaftliche
the thought-centres, the great “ centres of Zeitalter. (Berlin; 1893.)
�8
THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE
with mechanical and realistic theories.
Dualism, in the widest sense, breaks up the
universe into.two entirely distinct substances
—the material world and an immaterial
God, who is represented to be its creator,
sustainer, and ruler. Monism, on the con
trary (likewise taken in its widest sense),
recognises one sole substance in the uni
verse, which is. at once “God and Nature”;
body and spirit (or matter and energy) it
holds to be inseparable. The extra-mun
dane God of dualism leads necessarily to
Theism ; the intra-mundane God of the
monist leads to Pantheism.
The different ideas of monism and
materialism, and likewise the essentially
distinct tendencies of theoretical and prac
tical materialism., are still very frequently
confused.. As this and other similar cases
of confusion of ideas are very prejudicial,
and give rise to innumerable errors, we
shall make the following brief observations,
in order to prevent misunderstanding :—
I. Pure monism is identical neither with
the theoretical materialism that denies the
existence of spirit, and dissolves the world
into a heap of dead atoms, nor with the
theoretical spiritualism (lately entitled
“ energetic ” spiritualism by Ostwald) which
rejects the notion of matter, and considers
the world to be a specially-arranged
group of “ energies,” or immaterial natural
forces.
II. On the contrary, we hold, with Goethe,
that “ matter cannot exist and be operative
without spirit, nor spirit without matter.”
We adhere firmly to the pure, unequivocal
monism of Spinoza: Matter, or infinitelyextended substance, and Spirit (or Energy),
or sensitive and thinking substance, are the
two fundamental attributes, or principal
properties, of the all-embracing divine
essence of the world, the universal substance.
(Cf. chap, xii.)
CHAPTER II.
OUR BODILY FRAME
Fundamental importance of anatomy. ' Human
anatomy.
Hippocrates, Aristotle, Galen,
Vesalius. Comparative anatomy. Georges
Cuvier. Johannes Muller. Carl Gegenbauer.
Histology. The cellular theory. Schleiden
and Schwann. Kolliker. Virchow. Man a
vertebrate—a tetrapod—a mammal—a placen
tal—a primate. Prosimiae and simile, The
catarrhinse.
Papiomorphic and anthropo
morphic apes.
Essential likeness of man
and the ape in corporal structure.
All biological research, all investigation
into the forms and vital activities of organ
isms, must first deal with the visible body,
in which the morphological and physio
logical phenomena are observed. This
fundamental rule holds good for man just
as much as for all other living things.
Moreover, the inquiry must not confine
itself to mere observation of the outer form;
it must penetrate to the interior, and study
both, the general plan and the minute
details of the structure. The science
which pursues this fundamental investi
gation in the broadest sense is anatomy.
The first stimulus to an inquiry into the
human frame arose, naturally, in medicine.
As it was usually practised by the priests in
the older civilisations, we may assume that
these highest representatives of the educa
tion of the time had already acquired a
certain amount of anatomical knowledge
two thousand years before Christ, or even
earlier. We do not, however, find more
exact observations, founded on the dissec
tion of mammals, and applied, by analogy,
to the human frame, until we come to the
Greek scientists of the sixth and fifth cen
turies before Christ — Empedocles (of
Agrigentum) and Democritus (of Abdera),
and especially the most famous physician
of classic antiquity, Hippocrates (of Cos).
It was from these and other sources that
the great Aristotle, the renowned “ Father
of natural history,” equally comprehensive
as investigator and philosopher, derived
his first knowledge. After him only one
anatomist of any consequence is found in
antiquity, the Greek physician, Claudius
Galenus (of Pergamus), who developed a
wealthy practice in Rome in the second
century after Christ, under the Emperor
Marcus Aurelius. All these ancient anato
mists acquired their knowledge, as a rule,
not by the dissection of the human body
itself—which was then sternly forbidden—
but by a study of the bodies of the animals
which most closely resembled man, espe
cially the apes ; they were all, indeed, com
parative anatomists.
The triumph of Christianity and its mys
tic theories meant retrogression to anatomy,
as it did to all the other sciences. The
popes were resolved above all things to
detain humanity in ignorance ; they rightly
deemed a knowledge of the human organism
to be a dangerous source of enlightenment
�OUR BODILY FRAME
as to our true nature. During the long
period of thirteen centuries the writings of
Galen were almost the only source of human
anatomy, just as the works of Aristotle
were for the whole of natural history. It
was not until the sixteenth century, when
the spiritual tyranny of the Papacy was
broken by the Reformation, and the geo
centric theory, so intimately connected with
Papal doctrine, was destroyed by the new
cosmic system of Copernicus, that the
knowledge of the human frame entered
Upon a new period of progress. The great
anatomists, Vasalius (of Brussels), and
Kustachius and Fallopius (of Modena),
advanced the knowledge of our bodily
structure so much by their own thorough
investigations that little remained for their
numerous followers to do, with regard to
the more obvious phenomena, except the
substantiation of details. Andreas Vesalius,
a® courageous as he was talented and inde
fatigable, was the pioneer of the movement ;
he completed in his twenty-eighth year
(1543) that great and systematic work, De
hitmani corporis fabrica; he gave to the
whole of human anatomy a new and inde
pendent scope, and a more solid foundation.
On that account he was, at a later date, at
Madrid—where he was physician to Charles
V. and Philip II.—condemned to death by
the Inquisition as a magician. He only
escaped by undertaking a pilgrimage to
Jerusalem ; in returning he suffered ship
wreck on the Isle of Zante, and died there
in misery and destitution.
The great merit of the nineteenth cen
tury, as far as our knowledge of the human
frame is concerned, lies in the founding of
twp new lines of research of immense
importance — comparative anatomy and
histology, or microscopic anatomy. The
former was intimately associated with
human anatomy from the very beginning ;
indeed, it had to supply the place of the
latter so long because the dissection of
human corpses was a crime visited with
capital punishment—that was the case even
in the fifteenth century ! But the many
anatomists of the next three centuries
devoted themselves mainly to a more
accurate study of the human organism.
The elaborate science which we now call
comparative anatomy was born in the year
1803, when the great French zoologist,
Georges Cuvier (a native of Mompelgard, in
Alsace), published his profound Leçons sur
Panatomie comparée, and endeavoured to
formulate, for the first time, definite laws as
to the organism of man and the beasts.
9
While his predecessors—among whom was
Goethe in 1790-—had mainly contented
themselves with ^comparing the skeleton of
man with those of other animals, Cuvier’s
broader vision took in the whole of the
animal organisation. He distinguished
therein four great and mutually independent
types : Vertebrata, Articulata, Mollusca,
and Radiata. This advance was of extreme
consequence for our “ question of all ques
tions,” since it clearly brought out the fact
.that man belonged to the vertebral type,
and differed fundamentally from all the
other types. It is true that the keen-sighted
Linné had already, in his Systema Natures,
made a great step in advance by assigning
man a definite place in the class of mam
mals ; he had even drawn up the three
groups of half-apes, apes, and men (Lemur,
■yz7zzz«,and7z¿wzó>)intheorderof primates. But
his keen, systematic mind was not furnished
with that profound empirical foundation,
supplied by comparative anatomy, which
Cuvier was the first to attain. Further
developments were added by the great
comparative anatomists of our own century
—Friedrich Meckel (Halle), Johannes
Müljj^f (Berlin), Richard Owen, T. Huxley,
and Carl Gegenbaur (Jena, subsequently
Heidelberg). The last named, in applying
to comparative anatomy the evolutionary
theory which Darwin had just established,
raised his science to the front rank of bio
logical studies. The numerous comparativeanatomical works of Gegenbaur are, like
his well-known Manual of Human Ana
tomy, equally distinguished by a thorough
empirical acquaintance with their immense
multitudes of facts, and by a comprehensive
control of his material, and its philosophic
appreciation in the evolutionary sense. His
recent Comparative Anatomy of the Vertebrata establishes the solid foundation on
which our conviction of the vertebral
character of man in every aspect is chiefly
based.
Microscopic anatomy has been developed,
in the course of the present century, in a
different fashion from comparative anatomy.
At the beginning of the century (1802) a
French physician, Bichat, made an attempt
to dissect the organs of the human body
into their finer constituents by the aid of the
microscope, and to show the connection of
these various tissues (hista, or tela). This
first attempt led to little result, because the
scientist was ignorant of the one common
element of all the different tissues. This
was first discovered (1838) in the shape of
the cell, in the plant-world, by Matthias
�IO
THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE
Schleiden, and immediately afterwards
proved to be the same in the animal world
by Theodore Schwann, the pupil and assis
tant of Johannes Müller at Berlin. Two
other distinguished pupils of this great
master, who are still living, Albert Kdlliker
and Rudolph Virchow, took up the cellular
theory, and the theory of tissues which is
founded on it, in the ’sixties, and applied
them to the human organism in all its
details, both in health and disease ; they
proved that, in man and all other animals,
every tissue is made up of the same micro
scopic particles, the cells, and these
“elementary organisms” are the real, self
active citizens which, in combinations of
millions, constitute the “ cellular-state,” our
body. All these cells spring from one simple
cell the cytula, or impregnated ovum, by
continuous subdivisions. The general
structure and combination of the tissues
are the same in man as in the other verte
brates. Among these the mammals, the
youngest and most highly-developed class,
take precedence in virtue of certain special
features which were acquired late. Such
are, for instance, the microscopic texture
of the hair, of the glands of the skin, and
of the breasts, and the corpuscles of the
blood, which are quite peculiar to mammals,
and different from those of the other verte
brates ; man, even in these finest histo
logical respects, is a true mammal.
The microscopic researches of Albert
Kdlliker and Franz Leydig (at Würzburg)
not only enlarged our knowledge of the
finer structure of man and the beasts in
every direction, but they were especially
important in the light of their connection
with the evolution of the cell and the tissue ;
they confirmed the great theory of Carl
Theodor Siebold (1845) that the lowest
animals, the Infusoria and the Rhizopods,
are unicellular organisms.
Our whole frame, both in its general
plan and its detailed structure, presents the
characteristic type of the vertebrates. This
most important and most highly-developed
group in the animal world was first recog
nised in its natural unity in 1801 by the
great Lamarck ; he embraced under that
title the four higher animal groups of Linné
—mammals, birds, amphibia, and fishes.
To these he opposed the two lower classes,
insects and worms, as invertebrates. Cuvier
(1812) established the unity of the verte
brate type on a firmer basis by his com
parative anatomy. It is quite true that all
the vertebrates, from the fish up to man,
agree in every essential feature ; they all
have a firm internal skeleton, a framework
of cartilage and bone, consisting principally
of a vertebral column and a skull; the
advanced construction of the latter presents
many variations, but, on the whole,- all may
be reduced to the same fundamental type.
Further, in all vertebrates the “organ of
the mind,” the central nervous system, in
the shape of a spinal cord and a brain, lies
at the back of this axial skeleton. More
over, what we said of its bony environment,
the skull, is also true of the brain—the
instrument of consciousness and all the
higher functions of the mind ; its construc
tion and size present very many variations
in detail, but its general characteristic
structure remains always the same.
We meet the same phenomenon when
we compare the rest of our organs with
those of the other vertebrates; everywhere,
in virtue of heredity, the original plan and
the relative distribution of the organs
remain the same, although, through adapta
tion to different environments, the size and
the structure of particular sections offer
considerable variation. Thus we find that
in all cases the blood circulates in two
main blood-vessels, of which one—the
aorta—passes over the intestine, and the
other—the principal vein—passes under
neath, and that by the broadening out of
the latter in a very definite spot a heart
has arisen ; this “ ventral heart ” is just as
characteristic of all vertebrates as the
“ dorsal heart ” is of the articulata and
mollusca.
Equally characteristic of all
vertebrates is the early division of the
intestinal tube into a “ head-gut ” (or gill
gut), which serves in respiration, and a
“body-gut” (or liver-gut), which co-operates
with the liver in digestion; so are, likewise,
the ramification of the muscular system,
the peculiar structure of the urinary and
sexual organs, and so forth. In all these
anatomical relations man is a true verte
brate.
Aristotle gave the name of four-footed,
or tetrápoda, to all the higher warm-blooded
animals which are distinguished by the
possession of two pairs of legs. The cate
gory was enlarged subsequently, and its
title changed into the Latin “ quadrupeda,”
when Cuvier proved that even “two-legged”
birds and men are really “four-footed”: he
showed that the internal skeleton of the
four legs in all the higher land-vertebrates,
from the amphibia up to man, was origin
ally constructed after the same pattern out
of a definite number of members. The
“ arm ” of man and the “ wing ” of bats and
�OUR BODILY FRAME
birds have the same typical skeleton as the
foreleg of the animals which are conspicu
ously “ four-footed.”
The anatomical unity ofthe fully-developed
skeleton in the four limbs of all tetrapods
is very important. In order to appreciate
it fully one has only to compare carefully
the skeleton of a salamander or a frog with
that of a monkey or a man. One perceives
at once that the humeral zone in front and
the pelvic zone behind are made up of the
same principal parts as in the rest of the
quadrupeds. We find in all cases that the
first section of the leg proper consists of one
strong marrow-bone (the humerus, in the
forelimb ; the femur, behind); the second
part, on the contrary, originally always con
sists of two bones (the ulna and radius, in
front; the fibula and tibia, behind). When
we further compare the developed structure
of the foot proper we are surprised to find
that the small bones of which it is made
up are also similarly arranged and distri
buted in every case : in the front limb the
three groups of bones of the fore-foot (or
“ hand ”) correspond in all classes of the
tetrápoda: (i) the carpus, (2) the meta
carpus, (3) the five fingers (digiti anteriores}-,
in the rear limb, similarly, we have always
the same three osseous groups of the hind
foot : (1) the tarsus, (2) the metatarsus, and
(3) the five toes {digitiposteriores}. It was
a very difficult task to reduce all these little
bones to one primitive type, and to estab
lish the equivalence (or homology) of the
separate parts in all cases ; they present
extreme variations of form and construction
in detail, sometimes being partly fused
together and losing their individuality. This
-great task was first successfully achieved
by the most eminent comparative anatomist
of our time, Carl Gegenbaur. He pointed
out, in his Researches into the Comparative
Anatomy of the Vertebrata (1864), how this
characteristic “ five-toed leg ” of the land
tetrapods originally (not before the Car
boniferous period) arose out of the radiating
fin (the breast-fin, or the belly-fin) of the
ancient fishes. He had also, in his famous
Researches into the Skull of the Vertebrata
(1872), deduced the younger skull of the
tetrapods from the oldest cranial form
among the fishes, that of the shark.
It is especially remarkable that the
original number of the toes (five) on each
of the four feet, which first appeared in the
old amphibia of the Carboniferous period,
has, in virtue of a strict heredity, been pre
served even to the present day in man.
Also, naturally and harmoniously, the
ij
typical construction of the joints, ligaments,
muscles, and nerves of the two pairs of
legs has, in the main, remained the same
as in the rest of the “four-footed.” In all
these important relations man is a true
tetrapod.
The mammals are the youngest and
most advanced class of the vertebrates. It
is true they are derived from the older class
of amphibia, like birds and reptiles ; yet
they are distinguished from all the other
tetrapods by a number of very striking
anatomical features. Externally, there is
the clothing of the skin with hair, and the
possession of two kinds of skin-glands—■
the sweat glands and the sebaceous glands.
A local development of these glands on
the abdominal skin gave rise (probably
during the Triassic period) to the organ
which is especially characteristic of the
class, and from which it derives its name—
the mammarium. This important instru
ment of lactation is made up of milk-glands
(mamma) and the “ mammar-pouches ”
(folds of the abdominal skin); in its deve
lopment the teats appear, through which
the young mammal sucks its mother’s
milk. In internal structure the most
remarkable feature is the possession of a
complete diaphragm, a muscular wall
which, in all mammals—and only in
mammals—separates the thoracic from the
abdominal cavity ; in all other vertebrates
there is no such separation. The skull of
mammals is distinguished by a number of
remarkable formations, especially in the
maxillary apparatus (the upper and lowqr
jaws, and the temporal bones). Moreover,
the brain, the olfactory organ, the heart,
the lungs, the internal and external sexual
organs, the kidneys, and. other parts of the
body, present special peculiarities, both in
general and detailed structure, in the
mammals ; all these, taken collectively,
point unequivocally to an early derivation
of the mammals from the older groups of
the reptiles and amphibia, which must have
taken place, at the latest, in the Triassic
period—at least 12,000,000 years ago ! In
all these important characteristics than is
a true mammal.
The numerous orders (12-33) which
modern systematic zoology distinguishes
in the class of mammals had been arranged
in 1816 (by Blainville) in three natural
groups, which still hold good as sub-classes:
(1) the monotrema, (2) the marsupialia, and
(3) the placentalia. These three sub-classes
not only differ in the important respect of
bodily structure and development, but they
�12
THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE
correspond, also, to three different historical
stages in the formation of the class, as we
shall see later on. The monotremes of
the Triassic period were followed by the
marsupials of the Jurassic, and these by the
placentals of the Cretaceous. Man belongs
to this, the youngest, sub-class ; for he
presents in his organisation all the features
which distinguish the placentals from the
marsupials, and the still older monotremes.
First of all there is the peculiar organ which
gives a name to the placentals—theplacenta.
It serves the purpose of nourishing the
young mammal embryo for a long time
during its enclosure in the mother’s womb ;
it consists of blood-bearing tufts which
grow out of the chorion surrounding the
embryo, and penetrate corresponding
cavities in the mucous membrane of the
maternal uterus ; the delicate skin between
the two structures is so attenuated in this
spot that the nutriment in the mother’s
blood can pass directly into the blood of
the child. This excellent contrivance for
nourishing the embryo, which makes its
first appearance at a somewhat late date,
gives the fœtus the opportunity of a longer
maintenance and a higher development in
the protecting womb ; it is wanting in the
implacentalia, the two older sub-classes of
the marsupials and the monotremes. There
are, likewise, other anatomical features,
particularly the higher development of the
brain and the absence of the marsupial bone,
which raise the placentals above all their
implacental ancestors. In all these important
particulars man is a true placental.
The very varied sub-class of the placen
tals has been recently subdivided into a
great number of orders ; they are usually
put at from ten to sixteen, but when we
include the important extinct forms which
have been recently discovered the number
runs up to from twenty to twenty-six. In
order to facilitate the study of these numer
ous orders, and to obtain a deeper insight
into their kindred construction, it is very
useful to form them into great natural
groups, which I have called “ legions.” In
my latest attempt1 to arrange the advanced
system of placentals in phylogenetic order
I have substituted eight of these legions for
the twenty-six orders, and shown that these
may be . reduced to four main groups.
These, in turn, are traceable to one
common ancestral group of all the placen
tals, their fossil ancestors, the prochoriata
1 Systematische Phylogenie, 1896, part iii., pp.
490, 494, and 496.
of the Cretaceous period.
These are
directly connected with the marsupial
ancestors of the Jurassic period. We will
only specify here, as the most important
living representatives of these four main
groups, the rodentia, the ungulata, the
carnivora, and the primates.
To the
legion of the primates belong the prosimim
(half-apes), the simim (real apes), and man.
All the members of these three orders
agree in many important features, and are
at the same time distinguished by these
features from the other twenty-three orders
of placentals. They are especially con
spicuous for the length of their bones,
which were originally adapted to their
arboreal manner of life. Their hands and
feet are five-fingered, and the long fingers
are excellently suited for grasping and
embracing the branches of trees ; they are
provided, either partially or completely,
with nails, but have no claws. The den
tition is complete, containing all four classes
—incisors, canine, premolars, and molars.
Primates, are also distinguished from all the
other placentals by important features in
the special construction of the skull and
the brain ; and these are the more striking
in proportion to their development and the
lateness of their appearance in the history
of the earth. In all these important ana
tomical features our human organism
agrees with that of all the other primates :
man is a true primate.
An impartial and thorough comparison
of the bodily structure of the primates
forces us to distinguish two orders in this
most advanced legion of the mammalia—
half-apes (yprosimice or hemipitheci) and
apes (simice or pitheci). The former seem
in every respect to be the lower and older,
the latter to be the higher and younger
order. The womb of the half-ape is still
double or two-horned, as it is in all the
other mammals. In the true ape, on the
contrary, the right and left wombs have
completely amalgamated ; they blend into
a pear-shaped womb, which the human
mother possesses besides the ape. In the
skull of the apes, just as in that of man,
the orbits of the eyes are completely
separated from the temporal cavities by an
osseous partition ; in the prosimice this is
either entirely wanting or very imperfect.
Finally, the cerebrum of the prosimia is
either quite smooth or very slightly fur
rowed, and proportionately small ; that of
the true ape is much larger, and the grey
bed especially, the organ of higher psychic
activity, is much more developed ; the
�OUR BODILY FRAME
13
characteristic convolutions and furrows pomorphd). Thè latter are much nearer to
appear,on its surface exactly in proportion man than the former, not only in the
absence of a tail and in the general build
as the ape approaches to man. In these
and other important respects, particularly of the body (especially of the head), but
also on account of certain features which
in the construction of the face and the
hands, man presents all the anatomical are unimportant in themselves, but very
significant in their constancy. The sacrum
marks of a true ape.
of the anthropoid ape, like that of man, is
The extensive order of apes was divided
made up of the fusion of five vertebrae ;
by Geoffroi, in 1812, into two sub-orders,
which are still universally accepted in that of the cynopithecus consists of three
systematic zoology—New World and Old (more rarely four) sacral vertebrae. The
World monkeys, according to the hemi premolar teeth of the cynopitheci are
sphere they respectively inhabit.
The greater in length than breadth ; those of
American “New World” monkeys are the anthropomorpha are broader than they
called Platyrrhince (flat-nosed) ; their nose are long ; and the first molar has four pro
is flat, and the nostrils divergent, with a tuberances in the former, five in the latter.
broad partition. The “Old World” mon Furthermore, the outer incisor of the lower
keys, on the contrary, are called collec jaw is broader than the inner one in the man
tively Catarrhince (narrow-nosed) ; their like apes and man ; in the dog-like ape it
nostrils point downwards, like man’s, and is the smaller. Finally, there is a special
the dividing cartilage is narrow. A further significance in the fact, established by
difference between the two groups is that Selenka in 1890, that the anthropoid apes
the tympanum is superficial in the share with man the peculiar structure of
platyrrhince, but lies deeper, inside the the discoid placenta, the decidua reflexa,
petrous bone, in the catarrhina; in the and the pedicle of the allantois. In fact,
latter a long and narrow bony passage has even a superficial comparison of the bodily
been formed, while in the former it is still structure of the anthropomorpha which
still survive makes it clear that both the
short and wide, or even altogether wanting.
Finally, we have a much more important Asiatic (the orang-outang and the gibbous
and decisive difference between the two ape) and the African (the gorilla and
groups in the circumstance that all the Old chimpanzee) representatives of this group
World monkeys have the same teeth as are nearer to man in build than any of the
man—i.e., twenty deciduous and thirty-two cynopitheci. Under the latter group we
permanent teeth (two incisors, one canine, include the dog-faced papiomorpha, the
two premolars, and three molars in each baboon, and the long-tailed monkey, at a
half of the jaw). The New World monkeys, very low stage. The anatomical difference
on the ether hand, have an additional pre between these low papiomorpha and the
molar in each half-jaw, or thirty-six teeth most highly-developed anthropoid apes is
altogether. The fact that these anatomical greater in every respect, whatever organ
differences of the two simian groups are we take for comparison, than the difference
universal and conspicuous, and that they between the latter and man. This instruc
harmonise with their geographical distribu tive fact was established with great pene
tion in the two hemispheres, fully authorises tration by the anatomist, Robert Hartmann,
a sharp systematic division of the two, as in his work on The Anthropoid Apes f he
well as the phylogenetic conclusion that proposed to divide the order of Simice in
for a very long period (for more than a a new way—namely, into the two great
million years) the two sub-orders have groups ofprimaria (man and the anthropoid
been developing quite independently of ape) and the simice proper, or pithed (the
each other in the western and eastern hemi rest of the catarrh ime and all the platyrspheres. That is a most important point rhinae). In any case, we have a clear proof
in view of the genealogy of our race ; for of the close affinity of man and the anthropoid
man bears all the marks of a true ape.
Thus comparative anatomy proves to the
catarrhina; he has descended from some
extinct member of this sub-order in the satisfaction of every unprejudiced and
critical student the significant fact that the
Old World.
The numerous types of catarrhince which body of man and that of the anthropoid ape
still survive in Asia and Africa have been are not only peculiarly similar, but that
formed into two sections for some time—•
the tailed, dog-like apes (the cynopitheci)
1 Translated in the International Science
Series, 1872.
and the tailless man-like apes (the anthro-
�14
THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE
they are practically one and the same in
our knowledge of human life has attained
every important respect. The same 200 the dignity of a genuine, independent
bones, in the same order and structure,
science ; during the course of the century
make up our inner skeleton ; the same 300 it has developed into one of the highest,
muscles effect our movements ; the same most interesting, and most important
hair clothes our skin ; the same groups of branches of knowledge. This “ science of
ganglionic cells build up the marvellous the vital functions,” physiology, had, it is
structure of our brain; the same four true, been regarded at a much earlier date
chambered heart is the central pulsometer as a desirable, if not necessary, condition of
in our circulation; the same thirty-two success in medical treatment, and had been
teeth are set in the same order in our jaws;
constantly associated with anatomy, the
the same salivary, hepatic, and gastric science of the structure of the body. But
glands compass our digestive process ; the it was only much later, and much more
same reproductive organs ensure the main slowly, than the latter that it could be
tenance of our race.
thoroughly studied, as it had to contend
It is true that we find, on close examina with much more serious difficulties.
•
tion, certain minor differences in point of
The idea of life, as the opposite of death,
size and shape in most of the organs of naturally became the subject of speculation
man and the ape; but we discover the at a very early age. In the living man,
same, or similar, differences between the just as in other living animals, there were
higher and lower races of men, when we certain peculiar changes, especially move
make a careful comparison—even, in fact, ments, which were wanting in lifeless
in a minute comparison of the various nature : spontaneous locomotion, the beat
individuals of our own race. We find no of the heart, the drawing of the breath,
two persons who have exactly the same size speech, and so forth. But the discrimina
and form of nose, ears, eyes, and so forth.
tion of such “ organic movements ” from
One has only to compare attentively these
similar phenomena in inorganic bodies was
special features in many different persons by no means easy, and was frequently
in any large company to convince one’s
impossible ; the flowing stream, the flicker
self of the astonishing diversity of their ing flame, the rushing wind, the falling
construction and the infinite variability of rock, seemed to man to exhibit the same
specific forms. Not infrequently even two movements. It -was quite natural that
sisters are so much unlike as to make their primitive man should attribute an indepen
origin from the same parents almost dent life to these “dead” bodies. He
incredible. Yet all these individual varia knew no more of the real sources of
tions do not weaken the significance of the movement in the one case than in the
•
fundamental similarity of structure ; they other.
We find the earliest scientific observa
are traceable to certain minute differences
tions on the nature of man’s vital functions
in the growth of the individual features.
(as well as on his structure) in the Greek
natural philosophers and physicians in the
sixth and fifth centuries before Christ. The
best collection of the physiological facts
CHAPTER III.
which were known at that time is to be
found in the Natural History of Aristotle ;
OUR LIFE
a great number of his assertions were
probably taken from Democritus and
Development of physiology in antiquity and the
Hippocrates. The school of the latter had
Middle Ages. Galen. Experiment and vivi
already made attempts to explain the
section. Discovery of the circulation of the
mystery ; it postulated as the ultimate
blood by Harvey. Vitalism: Haller. Teleo
source of life in man and the beasts a
logical and vitalistic conception of life.
volatile “spirit of life” (Pneuma) ; and
Mechanical and monistic view of the physio
Erasistratus (280 B.c.) already drew a
logical processes. Comparative physiology in
distinction between the lower and the
the nineteenth century : Johannes Muller.
higher “ spirit of life,” the pneuma zoticon
Cellular physiology: MaxVerworn. Cellular
in the heart and the pneuma psychicon in
pathology: Virchow. Mammal-physiology.
Similarity of all vital energy in man and the
the brain.
ape.
The credit of gathering these scattered
truths into unity, and of making the first
It is only in the nineteenth century that attempt at a systematic physiology, belongs
�OUR LIFE
to the great Greek physician,. Galen ; we
have already recognised in him the first
great anatomist of antiquity (cf. p. 9). In
his researches into the organs of the body
he never lost sight of the question of their
vital activity, their functions ; and even in
this direction he proceeded by the same
comparative method, taking for his principal
study the animals which approach nearest
to man. Whatever he learned from these
he applied directly to man. He recognised
the value of physiological experiment ; in
his vivisection of apes, dogs, and swine he
made a number of interesting experiments.
Vivisection has been made the object of a
violent attack in recent years, not only by
the ignorant and narrow-minded, but by
theological enemies of knowledge and by
perfervid sentimentalists ; it is, however,
one of the indispensable methods of re
search into the nature of life, and has given
us invaluable information on the most
important questions. This was recognised
by Galen 1700 years ago.
Galen reduces all the different functions
of the body to three groups, which corre
spond to the three forms of the pneuma, or
vital spirit. The pneuma psychicon—the
soul—which resides in the brain and nerves,
is the cause of thought, sensation, and will
(voluntary movement) ; the pneuma zoticon
■—the heart—is responsible for the beat of
the heart, the pulse, and the temperature ;
the pneuma physicon, seated in the liver, is
the source of the so-called vegetative func
tions, digestion and assimilation, growth
and reproduction. He especially empha
sized the renewal of the blood in the lungs,
and expressed a hope that we should some
day succeed in isolating the permanent
element in the atmosphere—the pneuma,
as he calls it—which is taken into the blood
■ in respiration. More than fifteen centuries
elapsed before this pneuma—oxygen—was
discovered by Lavoisier.
In human physiology, as well as in
anatomy, the great system of Galen was for
thirteen centuries the Codex aureus, the
■inviolable source of all knowledge. The
influence of Christianity, so fatal to scien
tific culture, raised the same insuperable
obstacles in this as in every other branch
of secular knowledge. Not a single scientist
appeared from the third to the sixteenth
century who dared make independent
research into man’s vital activity, and tran
scend the limits of the Galenic system. It
was not until the sixteenth century that
experiments were made in that direction
by a number of distinguished physicians
and anatomists (Paracelsus, Servetus,
Vesalius, and others). In 1628 Harvey
published his great discovery of the circula
tion of the blood, and showed that the heart
is a pump, which drives the red stream un
ceasingly through the connected system of
arteries and veins by a rhythmic, uncon
scious contraction of its muscles. Not less
important were Harvey’s researches into the
procreation of animals, as a result of which
he formulated the well-known law: “Every
living thing comes from an egg” (omni
vivum ex ovo).
The powerful impetus which Harvey gave
to physiological observation and experiment
led to a great number of discoveries in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These
were co-ordinated for the first time by the
learned Albrecht Haller about the middle
of the last century; in his great work,
Elementa Physiologtce, he established the
inherent importance of the science, inde
pendently of its relation to practical
medicine.
In postulating, however, a
special “ sensitive force or sensibility ” for
neural action, and a special “ irritability ”
for muscular movement, Haller gave strong
support to the erroneous idea of a specific
“ vital force ” (vis vitalis).
For more than a century afterwards, from
the middle of the eighteenth until the
middle of the nineteenth century, medicine
and (especially) physiology were dominated
by the old idea that a certain number of the
vital processes may be traced to physical
and chemical causes, but that others are
the outcome of a special vital force which
is independent of physical agencies. How
ever much scientists differed in their con
ceptions of its nature and its relation to the
“ soul,” they were all agreed as to its inde
pendence of, and essential distinction from,
the chemico-physical forces of ordinary
“matter”; it was a self-contained force
(archceus\ unknown in inorganic nature,
which compelled ordinary forces into its
service. Not only the distinctly physical
activity, the sensibility of the nerves and
irritability of the muscles, but even the
phenomena of sense-activity, of reproduc
tion, and of development, seemed so
wonderful and so mysterious in their
sources that it was impossible to attribute
them to simple physical and chemical pro
cesses. As the free activity of the vital
force was purposive and conscious, it led,
in philosophy, to a complete teleology;
especially did this seem indisputable when
even the “ critical ” philosopher, Kant, had
acknowledged, in his famous critique of the
�i6
THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE
teleological position, that, though the
mind’s authority to give a mechanical
interpretation of all phenomena is theo
retically unlimited, yet its actual capacity
for such interpretation does not extend to
the phenomena of organic life; here we are
compelled to have recourse to a purposive
—therefore supernatural—principle. This
divergence of the vital phenomena from
the mechanical processes of life became,
naturally, more conspicuous as science
advanced in the chemical and physical
explanation of the latter. The circulation
of the blood and a number of other pheno
mena could be traced to mechanical
agencies ; respiration and digestion were
attributable to chemical processes like those
we find in inorganic nature. On the other
hand, it seemed impossible to do this with
the wonderful performances of the nerves
and muscles, and with the characteristic
life of the mind ; the co-ordination of all
the different forces in the life of the indi
vidual seemed also beyond such a mechani
cal interpretation. Hence there arose a
complete physiological dualism—an essen
tial distinction was drawn between inorganic
and organic nature, between mechanical
and vital processes, between material force
and life-force, between the body and the
soul. At the beginning of the nineteenth
century this vitalism was firmly established
in France by Louis Dumas, and in Ger
many by Reil. Alexander Humboldt had
already published a poetical presentation
of it in 1795, in his narrative of the Legend
of Rhodes; it is repeated, with critical notes,
in his Views of Nature.
In the first half of the seventeenth cen
tury the famous philosopher, Descartes,
starting from Harvey’s discovery of the
circulation of the blood, put forward the
idea that the body of man, like that of
other animals, is merely an intricate
machine, and that its movements take
place under the same mechanical laws as
the movements of an automaton of human
construction. It is true that Descartes, at
the same time, claimed for man the exclu
sive possession of a perfectly independent,
immaterial soul, and held that its subjective
experience, thought, was the only thing
in the world of which we have direct and
certain cognisance—(“ Cogito, ergo sum
Yet this dualism did not prevent him from
doing much to advance our knowledge of
the mechanical life-processes in detail.
Borelli followed (1660) with a reduction of
the movements of the animal body
to purely physical laws, and Sylvius
endeavoured, about the same time, to give a
purely chemical explanation of the pheno
mena of digestion and respiration ; the
former founded the iatromechanical, the
latter the iatrochemical, school of medicine.
However, these rational tendencies towards
a natural, mechanical explanation of the
phenomena of life did not attain to a
universal acceptance and application ; in
the course of the eighteenth century they
fell entirely away before the advance of
teleological vitalism. The final disproof of
the latter and a return to mechanism only
became possible with the happy growth of
the new science of comparative physiology
in the ’forties of the present century.
Our knowledge of the vital functions,
like our knowledge of the structure, of the
human body was originally obtained, for
the most part, not by direct observation of
the human organism itself, but by a study
of the more closely-related animals among
the vertebrates, especially the mammals.
In this sense the very earliest beginning of
human anatomy and physiology was “com
parative.” But the distinct science of
“ comparative physiology,” which embraces
the whole sphere of life-phenomena, from
the lowest animal up to man, is a triumph
of the nineteenth century. Its famous
creator was Johannes Müller, of Berlin
(born, the son of a shoemaker, at Co
tz,
in 1801). For fully twenty-five years—from
1833 to 1858—this most versatile and most
comprehensive biologist of our age evinced
an activity at the Berlin Universit’/, as
professor and investigator, which is only
comparable with the associated work of
Haller and Cuvier. Nearly ever'of
the great biologists who have tai •"
4
worked in Germany for the last swas, directly or indirectly, a p.
Johannes Muller.
Starting frc
anatomy and physiology of man, L
.a
gathered all the chief groups of the higher
and lower animals within his sphere of
comparison. As, moreover, he compared
the structure of extinct animals with the
living, and the healthy organism with the
diseased, aiming at a philosophic grouping
of all the phenomena of life, he attained a
biological knowledge far in advance of his
predecessors.
The most valuable fruit of these compre
hensive studies of Johannes Müller was his
Manual of Human Physiology.
This
classical work contains much more than
the title indicates ; it is the sketch of a
comprehensive “ comparative biology.” It
is still unsurpassed in respect of its contents
�OUR LIFE
and range of investigation. In particular,
v?e find the methods of observation and
- experiment applied in it as masterfully as
the philosophic processes of induction and
deduction. Müller was originally a vitalist,
like all the physiologists of his time.
Nevertheless, the current idea of a vital
force took a novel form in his speculations,
and gradually transformed itself into the
very opposite. For he attempted to explain
the phenomena of life mechanically in every
department of physiology. His “trans
figured ”. vital force was not above the
physical and chemical laws of the rest of
nature, but entirely bound up with them.
It was, in a word, nothing more than life
itself—that is, the sum of all the movements
which we perceive in the living organism.
He sought especially to give them the same
mechanical interpretation in the life of the
senses and of the mind as in the working
of the muscles; the same in the phenomena
of circulation, respiration, and digestion as
in generation and development. Muller’s
success was chiefly due to the fact that he
always began with the simplest life-pheno
mena of the lowest animals, and followed
them step by step in their gradual develop
ment up to the very highest, to man. In
this,;his method of critical comparison
proved its value both from the physiological
and ,
the. anatomical point of view.
Johannes Müller is, moreover, the only
great scientist who has equally cultivated
these two branches of research, and com
bined them with equal brilliancy. Imme
diately aner his. death his vast scientific
kingdom fell into four distinct provinces,
whici. ..re now nearly always represented
by ,ipifp0 more chairs—human and comparz.df\;viaatomy, pathological anatomy,
phynj^igy, and the history of evolution.
ThY?
,(sion of Mülleds immense realm of
leai( .¿in 1858 has been compared to the
rending of the empire which Alexander the
Great had consolidated and ruled.
Among the many, pupils of Johannes
Müller who, either during his lifetime or
after his death, laboured hard for the
advancement of the various branches of
biology, one of the most fortunate—if not
the most important — was Theodor
Schwann. When the able botanist Schlei
den, in 1838, indicated the cell as the
, common elementary organ of all plants,
B and proved that all the different tissues of
the plant are merely combinations of cells,
Johannes Müller recognised at once the
extraordinary possibilities of this important
discovery. He himself sought to point out
the same composition in the various tissues
of the animal body—for instance, in the
spinal cord of vertebrates—and thus led
his pupil, Schwann, to extend the discovery
to all the animal tissus. This difficult task
was accomplished by Schwann in his
Microscopic Researches into the Accordance
in the Structure and Growth of Plants and
Animals (1839). Thus was the foundation
laid of the “ cellular theory,” the profound
importance of which, both in physiology
and anatomy, has become clearer and more
widely recognised in each subsequent year.
Moreover, it was shown by two other
pupils of Johannes Müller—the able physio
logist, Ernst Brücke, of Vienna, and the
distinguished histologist, Albert Kölliker,
of Wurzburg — that the activity of all
organisms is, in the ultimate analysis, the
activity of the components of their tissues,
the microscopic cells. Brücke correctly
denominated the cells the “elementary
organisms,” and showed that, in the body
of man and of all other animals, they are
the only actual, independent factors of the
life-process. Kölliker earned special dis
tinction, not only in the construction of the
whole science of histology, but particularly
by showing that the animal ovum and its
products are simple cells.
Still, however widely the immense impor
tance of the cellular theory for all biological
research was acknowledged, the “cellular
physiology” which is based on it only began
an independent development very recently.
In this Max Verworn (of Jena) earned a two
fold distinction. In his Psycho-physiological
Studies of the Protistce (1889) he showed, as
a result of an ingenious series of experi
mental researches, that the “ theory of a
cell-soul ” which I put forward in 18661 is
completely established by an accurate study
of the unicellular protozoa, and that “ the
psychic phenomena of the protistae form the
bridge which unites the chemical processes
of inorganic nature with the mental life of
the highest animals.” Verworn has further
developed these views, and based them on
the modern theory of evolution, in his
General Physiology. This distinguished
work returns to the comprehensive point of
view of Johannes Miiller, in opposition to
the one-sided and narrow methods of those
modern physiologists who think to discover
the nature of the vital phenomena by the
exclusive aid of chemical and physical
experiments. Verworn showed that it is
1 Zell-seelen und Seelen-zellen. Ernst Haeckel.
Gesammelte populäre Vorträge. I. Heft. 1878.
C
�18
THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE
only by Muller’s comparative method and
by a profound study of the physiology of the
cell that we can reach the higher stand
point which will give us a comprehensive
survey of the wonderful realm of the pheno
mena of life. Only thus do we become con
vinced that the vital processes in man are
subject to the same physical and chemical
laws as those of all other animals.
The fundamental importance of the
cellular theory for all branches of biology
was made clear in the second half of the
nineteenth century, not only by the rapid
progress of morphology and physiology, but
also by the entire reform of that biological
science which has always been deemed most
important on account of its relation to
practical medicine — pathology, or the
science of disease. Many even of the older
physicians were convinced that human
diseases were natural phenomena like all
other manifestations of life, and should be
studied scientifically like other vital func
tions. Particular schools of medicine, the
Iatrophysical and the Iatrochemical, had
already in the seventeenth century at
tempted to trace the sources of disease
to certain physical and chemical changes.
However, the imperfect condition of science
at that period precluded any lasting result
of these efforts. Many of the older theories,
which sought the nature of disease in super
natural and mystical causes, were almost
universally accepted down to the middle
of the nineteenth century.
It was then that Rudolf Virchow, another
pupil of Müller, conceived the happy idea
of transferring the cellular theory from the
healthy to the diseased organism; he sought
in the more minute metamorphoses of the
diseased cells and the tissues they com
posed the true sources of those larger
changes which, in the form of disease,
threaten the living organism with peril and
death. Especially during the seven years
of his professorship at Wurzburg (1849-56)
Virchow pursued his great task with such
brilliant results that his Cellular Pathology
(published in 1858) turned, at one stroke,
the whole of pathology and the dependent
science of practical medicine into new and
eminently fruitful paths. This reform of
medicine is significant for our present
purpose in that it led to a monistic and
purely scientific conception of disease. In
sickness, no less than in health, man is
subject to the same “ eternal iron laws” of
physics and chemistry as all the rest of the
organic world.
Among the numerous classes of animals
which modern zoology distinguishes, the
mammals occupy a pre-eminent position,
not only on morphological grounds, but
also for physiological reasons. As man
belongs to the class of mammals (see p. 10)
by every portion of his frame, we must
expect him to share his characteristic
functions with the rest of the mammals.
Such we find to be the case. The circu
lation of the blood and respiration are
accomplished in man under precisely the
same laws and in the same manner as in
all the other mammals—and in these alone ;
they are determined by the peculiar struc
ture of their heart and lungs. In mammals
only is all the arterial blood conducted
from the left ventricle of the heart to the
body by one, the left, branch of the aorta,
while in birds it passes along the right
branch, and in reptiles along both branches.
The blood of the mammal is distinguished
from that of any other vertebrate by the
circumstances that its red cells have lost
their nucleus (by reversion). The respi
ratory movements are effected largely by
the diaphragm in this class of animals
alone, because only in them does it form a
complete partition between the pectoral
and abdominal cavities. Special impor
tance, however, in this highest class of
animals, attaches to the production of
milk in the breasts
and to the
peculiar method of the rearing of the young,
which entails the supplying of the offspring
with the mother’s milk. As this nutritive
process reacts most powerfully on the other
vital functions, and the maternal affection
of mammals must have arisen from this
intimate form of rearing, the name of the
class justly reminds us of its great impor
tance. In millions of pictures, most of
them produced by painters of the highest
rank, the “madonna with the child” is
revered as the purest and noblest type of
maternal love—the instinct which is found
in its extreme form in the exaggerated
tenderness of the mother-ape.
As the apes approach nearest to man of
all the mammals in point of structure, we
shall expect to hear the same of their vital
functions ; and that we find to be the case.
Everybody knows how closely the habits,
the movements, the sense-activity, the
mental life, and the parental customs of
apes resemble those of man. Scientific
physiology proves the same significant
resemblance in other less familiar processes,
particularly in the working of the heart,
the division of the breasts, and the sexual
life. In the latter connection it is especially
�OUR EMBRYONIC DEVELOPMENT
noteworthy that the mature females of
many kinds of apes suffer a periodical
discharge of blood from the womb, which
corresponds to the menstruation of the
human female. The secretion of the milk
in the glands and the suctorial process also
take place in the female ape in precisely
the same fashion as in women.
Finally, it is of especial interest that the
speech of apes seems on physiological
comparison to be a stage in the formation
of articulate human speech. Among living
apes there is an Indian species which is
musical; the hylobates syndactylus sings a
full octave in perfectly pure, harmonious
half-tones. Noimpartial philologist can hesi
tate any longer to admit that our elaborate
rational language has been slowly and
gradually developed out of the imperfect
speech of our Pliocene simian ancestors.
CHAPTER IV.
OUR EMBRYONIC DEVELOPMENT.
The older embryology. The theory of preforma
tion. _ The theory of scatulation. Haller and
Leibnitz. The theory of epigenesis. C. F.
Wolff. The theory of germinal layers. Carl
Ernest Baer. Discovery of the human ovum.
Remak, Kolliker. The egg-cell and the sperm
cell. The theory of the gastraea. Protozoa
and metazoa. The ova and the spermatozoa.
Oscar Hertwig. Conception. Embryonic
development in man. Uniformity of the verte
brate embryo. The germinal membranes in
man. The amnion, the serolemma, and the
allantois. The formation of the placenta and
the “after birth.” The decidua and the
funiculus umbilicalis. The discoid placenta
of man and the ape.
Comparative ontogeny, or the science of
the development of the individual animal,
is a child of the nineteenth century in even
a truer sense than comparative anatomy
and physiology. How is the child formed
in the mother’s womb? How do animals
evolve from ova? How does the plant
come forth from the seed ? These pregnant
questions have occupied the thoughtful mind
for thousands of years. Yet it is only
seventy years since the embryologist Baer
pointed out the correct means and methods
for penetrating into the mysteries of embry
onic life ; it is only forty years since Darwin,
by his reform of the theory of descent, gave
US the key which should open the long-
closed door, and lead to a knowledge of em
bryonic agencies. As I have endeavoured
to give a complete, popular presentation of
this very interesting but difficult study in the
first section of my Anthropogeny, I shall
confine myself here to a brief survey and
discussion of the most important pheno
mena. Let us first cast an historical glance
at the older ontogeny,1 and the theory of
preformation which is connected with it.
The classical works of Aristotle, the
many-sided “father of science,” are the
oldest known scientific sources of embry
ology, as we found them to be for compara
tive anatomy. Not only in his great natural
history, but also in a small special work,
Five Books on the Generation and Develop
ment of Animals, the great philosopher
gives us a host of interesting facts, adding
many observations on their significance ; it
was not until our own days that many of
them were fully appreciated, and, indeed?
we may say, discovered afresh. Naturally,
many fables and errors are mixed up with
them ; it was all that was known at that
time of the hidden growth of the human
germ. Yet during the long space of the
next two thousand years the slumbering
science made no further progress. It was
not until the commencement of the seven
teenth century that there was a renewal of
activity. In 1600 the Italian anatomist,
Fabricius ab Aquapendente, pibhshed at
Padua the first pictures and descriptions of
the embryos of man and some of the higher
animals; in 1687 the famous Marcello
Malpighi of Bologna, a distinguished
pioneer alike in zoology and botany, pub
lished the first consistent exposition of the
growth of the chick in the hatched egg.
All these older scientists were possessed
with the idea that the complete body, with
all its parts,was already contained in the
ovum of animals, only it was so minute
and transparent that it could not be
detected; that, therefore, the whole develop
ment was nothing more than a growth, or
an “unfolding” of the parts that were
already “in-folded” (involuted). This erro
neous notion, almost universally accepted
until the beginning of the present century?
is called the “ performation theory”; some
times it. is ’ called the “ evolution theory ”'
(in the literal sense of “unfolding”); but
the latter title is accepted by modern
. x. Ontogeny describes the formation of the
individual; phylogeny the genesis of a species or
larger group; biogeny the development of life in,
either sense.
�20
THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE.
scientists for the very different theory of
“ transformation.”
Closely connected with the preformation
theory, and, as a logical consequence of it,
there arose in the last century a further
theory which keenly interested all thought
ful biologists—the curious “theory of scatulation.”1 As it was thought that the outline
of the entire organism, with all its parts,
was present in the egg, the ovary of the
embryo had to be supposed to contain the
ova of the following generation; these,
again, the ova of the next, and so on in
infinitum ! On that basis the distinguished
physiologist Haller calculated that God had
created together, 6,000 years ago—on the
sixth day of his creatorial labours—the
germs of 200,000,000,000 men, and ingeni
ously packed them all in the ovary of our
venerable mother Eve. Even the gifted
philosopher Leibnitz fully accepted this con
clusion, and embodied it in his monadist
theory ; and as, on his theory, soul and
body are in eternal, inseparable companion
ship, the consequence had to be accepted
for the soul ; “ the souls of men have
existed in organised bodies in their ances
tors from Adam downwards—that is, from
the very beginning of things.”
In the month of November, 1759, a young
doctor of twenty-six years, Caspar Friedrich
Wblfif (son of a Berlin tailor), published his
dissertation for the degree at Halle, under
the title Theoria Generationis. Supported
by a series of most laborious and pains
taking observations, he proved the entire
falsity of the dominant theories of prefor
mation and scatulation. In the hatched
egg there is at first no trace of the coming
chick and its organs ; instead of it we find
on top of the yolk a small, circular, white
disk. This thin “germinal-disk” becomes
gradually round, and then breaks • up into
four folds, lying upon each other; these are
the rudiments of the four chief systems of
organs—the nervous system above, the
muscular system underneath, the vascular
system (with the heart), and, finally, the
alimentary canal. Thus, as Wolff justly
remarked, the embryonic development does
not consist in an unfolding of pre-formed
organs, but in a series of new constructions ;
it is a true epigenesis. One part arises after
another, and all make their appearance in
a simple form, which is very different from
the later structure. This only appears after
a series of most remarkable formations.
1 Literally “boxing-up” or “packing”; the
force of the term appears in the next sentence.
Although this great discovery—one of the
most important of the eighteenth century—
could be directly proved by a verification
of the facts Wolff had observed, and
although the “ theory of generation ” which
was founded on it was in reality not a
theory at all, but a simple fact, it met with
no sympathy whatever for half a century.
It was particularly retarded by the high
authority of Haller, who fought it strenu
ously with the dogmatic assertion that
“ there is no such thing as development:
no part of the animal body is formed before
another ; all were created together.” Wolff,
who had to go to St. Petersburg, was long
in his grave before the forgotten facts he
had observed were discovered afresh by
Oken at Jena in 1806.
After Wolffs “epigenesis theory” had
been established by Oken and Neckel
(whose important work on the development
of the alimentary canal was translated from
Latin into German), a number of young
German scientists devoted themselves
eagerly to more accurate and embryological
research. The most important and success
ful of these was Carl Ernst Baer. His
principal work appeared in 1828, with the
title, History of the Development of
Animals: Observations and Reflections.
Not only are the phenomena of the forma
tion of the germ clearly illustrated and
fully described in it, but it adds a number
of very pregnant speculations; In particu
lar, the form of the embryo of man and
the mammals is correctly presented, and
the vastly different development of the lower
invertebrate animals is also considered.
The two leaf-like layers which appear
in the round germ-disk of the higher
vertebrates first divide, according to Baer,
into two further layers, and these four
germinal layers are transformed into four
tubes, which represent the fundamental
organs—the skin-layer, the muscular-layer,
the vascular-layer, and the mucous-layer.
Then, by very complicated evolutionary
processes, the later organs arise in substan
tially the same manner in man and all the
other vertebrates. The three chief groups
of invertebrates, which, in their turn, differ
widely from each other, have a very different
development.
One of the most important of Baer’s
many discoveries was the finding of .the
human ovum. Up to that time the little
vesicles which are found in great numbers
in the human ovary and in that of all other
mammals had been taken for the ova. Baer
was the first to prove, in 1827, that the real
�OUR EMBRYONIC DEVELOPMENT
ova are enclosed in these vesicles—the
“ Graafian follicles ’’—and much smaller,
being tiny spheres one-i2oth inch in
diameter, visible to the naked eye as minute
specks under favourable conditions. He
discovered likewise that from this tiny
ovum of the mammal there developes first
a characteristic germ-globule, a hollow
sphere with liquid contents, the wall of
which forms the slender germinal mem
brane, or blastoderm.
Ten years after Baer had given a firm
foundation to embryological science by his
theory of germ-layers a new task confronted
it on the establishment of the cellular
theory in 1838. What is the relation of
the ovum and the. layers which arise from
it to the tissues and cells which compose
the fully-developed organism? The correct
answer to this difficult question was given
about the middle of this century by two
distinguished pupils of Johannes Millier—
Robert Remak, of Berlin, and Albert
Kolliker, of Wiirzburg. They showed that
the ovum is at first one simple cell, and
that the many germinal globules, or gra
nules, which arise from it by repeated
Segmentation are also simple cells. From
this mulberry-like group of cells are con
structed first the germinal layers, and
subsequently by differentiation, or division
of labour, all the different organs. Kolliker
has the further merit of showing that the
seminal fluid of male animals is also a mass
of microscopic cells. The active pin-shaped
M seed-animalcules,” or spermatozoa, in it are
merely ciliated cells, as I first proved in the
case of the seed-filaments of the sponge in
1866. Thus it was shown that both the
materials of generation, the male sperm
and the female ova, fell in with the cellular
theory. That was a discovery of which the
great philosophic significance was not
appreciated until a much later date, on a
close study of the phenomena of conception
in 1875.
All the older studies in embryonic
development concern man and the higher
vertebrates, especially the embryonic bird,
since hen’s eggs are the largest and most
convenient objects for investigation, and
are plentiful enough to facilitate experi
ment ; we can hatch them in the incubator,
as well as by the natural function of the
hen, and so observe from hour to hour,
during the space of three weeks, the whole
Series of formations, from the simple germ
cell to the complete organism. Even Baer
had only been able to gather from such
observations the fact that the different
21
classes of vertebrates agreed in the charac
teristic form of the germ-layers and the
growth of particular organs. In the innu
merable classes of invertebrates, on the
other hand—that is, in the great majority
of animals—the embryonic development
seemed to run quite a different course, and
most of them seemed to be altogether with
out true germinal layers. It was not until
about the middle of the century that such
layers were found in some of the inverte
brates. Huxley, for instance, found them
in the medusae in 1849, and Kolliker in the
cephalopods in 1844. Particularly impor
tant was the discovery by Kowalewsky
(1886) that the lowest vertebrate — the
lancelot, or amphioxus—is developed in
just the same manner (and a very original
fashion it is) as an invertebrate, apparently
quite remote, tunicate, the sea-squirt, or
ascidian. Even in some of the worms, the
radiator and the articulata, a similar forma
tion of the germinal layers was pointed out
by the same observer. I myself was then
(since 1886) occupied with the embryology
of the sponges, corals, medusæ, and siphonophora, and, as I found the same forma
tion of two primary germ-layers everywhere
in these lowest classes of multicellular
animals, I came to the conclusion that this
important embryonic feature is common to
the entire animal world. The circumstance
that in the sponges and the cnidaria
(polyps, medusæ, etc.) the body consists for
a long time, sometimes throughout life,
merely of two simple layers of cells, seemed
to me especially significant. Huxley had
already (1849) compared these, in the case
of the medusæ, with the two primary ger
minal layers of the vertebrates. On the
ground of these observations and compari
sons I then, in 1872, in my Philosophy o,
the Calcispongiæ, published the “theory of
the gastræa,” of which the following are
the essential points :—
I. —The whole animal world falls into
two essentially different groups, the uni
cellular primitive animals (Protozoa) and
the multicellular animals with complex
tissues (Metazoa). The entire organism
of the protozoon (the rhizopods or the
infusoria) remains throughout life a single
simple cell (or occasionally a loose colony
of cells without the formation of tissue, a
cœnobium'). The organism of the metazoon,
on the contrary, is only unicellular at the
commencement, and is subsequently built
up of a number of cells which form
tissues.
II. —Hence the method of reproduction
�22
THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE
and development is very different in each
of these great categories of animals. The
protozoa usually multiply by non-sexual
means, by fission, gemmation, or spores ;
they have no real ova and no sperm. The
metazoa, on the contrary, are divided into
male and female sexes, and generally pro
pagate sexually, by means of true ova, which
are fertilised by the male sperm.
Ill—Hence, further, true germinal layers,
and the tissues which are formed from
them, are found only in the metazoa ; they
are entirely wanting in the protozoa.
IV. —In all the metazoa only two primary
layers appear at first, and these have always
the same essential significance ; from the
outer layer the external skin and the nervous
system are developed ; from the inner layer
are formed the alimentary canal and all the
other organs.
V. —I called the germ, which always
arises first from the impregnated ovum,
and which consists of these two primary
layers, the “gut-larva” or the gastrula-,
its cup-shaped body with the two layers
encloses originally a simple digestive cavity,
the primitive gut (theprogaster or archenteron), and its simple opening is the primitive
mouth (the prostoma or blastoporus). These
are the earliest organs of the multicellular
body, and the two cell-layers of its enclosing
wall, which are simple epithelia, are its
earliest tissues ; all the other organs and
tissues are a later and secondary growth
from these.
VI. —From this similarity, or homology,
of the gastrula, in all classes of compound
animals I drew the conclusion, in virtue of
the biogentic law (p. 29), that all the metazoa
come originally from one simple ancestral
form, the gastrœa, and that this ancient
(Laurentian), long-extinct form had the
structure and composition of the actual
gastrula, in which it is preserved by
heredity.
VII. —This phylogenetic conclusion, based
on the comparison of ontogenetic facts, is
confirmed by the circumstance that there
are several of these gastræades still in
existence (gastræmaria, cyemaria, physemaria, etc.), and also some ancient, forms
of other animal groups whose organisation
is very little higher (the olynthus of the
sponges, the hydra, or common fresh-water
polyp, of the cnidaria, the convoluta and
other cryptocæla, or worms of the simplest
type, of the platodes).
VIII. —In the further development of
the various tissue-forming animals from .the
gastrula we have to distinguish two principal
groups. The earlier and lower types (the.
coelenteria or acoelomia) have no body cavity,
no vent, and no blood ; such is the case
with the gastrmdes, sponges, cnidaria, and
platodes. The later and higher types (the
calomaria or bilatend), on the other hand,
have a true body cavity, and generally
blood and a vent ; to these we must refer
the worms and the higher types of animals
which were evolved from these later on, the
echinodermata, mollusca, articulata, tunicata, and vertebrata.
Those are the main points of my “gastrma
theory”; I have since enlarged the first
sketch of it (given in .1872), and have
endeavoured to substantiate it in a series,
of “Studies of the gastrs&a theory” (18731884). Although it was almost universally
rejected at first, and fiercely combated for
ten years by many authorities, it is now
(and has been, for the last fifteen years)
accepted by nearly all my colleagues. Let
us now see what far-reaching consequences
follow from it, and from the evolution of
the germ, especially with regard to our
great question, “ the place of man in
nature.”
The human ovum, like that of all other
animals, is a single cell, and this tiny
globular egg-cell (about the 120th of an
inch in diameter) has just the same charac
teristic appearances as that of all other
viviparous organisms. The little ball of
protoplasm is surrounded by a thick, trans
parent, finely reticulated membrane, called
the zonapellucida; even the little, globular,
germinal vesicle (the cell-nucleus), which is
enclosed in the protoplasm (the cell-body),
is of the same size and the same qualities
as in the rest of the mammals. The same
applies to the active spermatozoa of the
male, the minute, thread-like, ciliated cells
of which millions are found in every drop
of the seminal fluid ; on account of. their
life-like movements they were previously
taken to be forms of life, as the name indi
cates (spermatozoa = sperm-animals). More
over, the origin of both these important
sexual cells in their respective organs is the
same in man as in the other mammals ,
both the ova in the ovary of the female and
the spermatozoa in the spermarium of the
male arise in the same fashion—they always
come from cells, which are originally derived
from the coelous epithelium, the layer of
cells which clothes the cavity of the body.
The most important moment in the life
of every man, as in that of all other complex
animals, is the moment in. which he begins
his individual existence ; it is the moment
�0 UR EMËR YONIC DE VELO PMENT
when the sexual cells of both parents meet
and coalesce for the formation of a single
simple cell. This new cell, the impregnated
egg-cell, is the individual stem-cell (the
cytula\ the continued segmentation of which
produces the cells of the germinal layers
and the gastrula. With the formation of
this cytula, hence in the process of concep
tion itself, the existence of the personality,
the ' independent individual, commences.
This ontogenetic fact is supremely impor
tant, for the most far-reaching conclusions
may be drawn from it. In the first place,
we have a clear perception that man, like
all the other complex animals, inherits all
his personal characteristics, bodily and
mental, from his parents ; and, further, we
come to the momentous conclusion that the
new personality which arises thus can lay
no claim to “ immortality.”
Hence the minute processes of concep
tion and sexual generation are of the first
importance. We are, however, only familiar
with their details since 1875, when Oscar
Hertwig, my pupil and fellow-traveller at
that time, began his researches into the
impregnation of the egg of the sea-urchin
at Ajaccio, in Corsica. The beautiful capital
of the island in which Napoleon I. was born
in 1768' was also the spot in which the
mysteries of animal conception were care
fully studied for the first time in their most
important aspects. Hertwig found that the
one essential element in conception is the
coalescence of the two sexual cells and their
nuclei. Only one out of the millions of
male ciliated cells which press round the
ovum penetrates to its nucleus. The nuclei
of both cells, of the spermatozoon and of
the ovum, drawn together by a mysterious
force, which we take to be a chemical
sense-activity, related to smell, approach
■each other and melt into one. Thus, by
the sensitive perception of the sexual nuclei,
following upon a kind of “erotic chemicotropism,” a new cell is formed, which unites
in itself the inherited qualities of both
parents ; the nucleus of the spermatozoon
conveys the paternal features, the nucleus
of the ovum those of the mother, to the
stem-cell, from which the child is to be
developed. That applies both to the bodily
and to the mental characteristics.
The formation of the germinal layers by
the repeated division of the stem-cell, the
growth of the gastrula and of the later germ
structures which succeed it, take place in
man in just the same manner as in the
other higher mammals, under the peculiar
conditions which differentiate this group
from the lower vertebrates. In the earlier
stages of development these special
characters of the placentalia are not to be
detected. The significant embryonic or
larvel form of the chordula, which succeeds
the gastrula, has substantially the same
structure in all vertebrates; a simple
straight rod, the dorsal cord, lies length
ways along the main axis of the shield
shaped body—the “embryonic shield”;
above the cord the spinal marrow developes
out of the outer germinal layer, while the
gut makes its appearance underneath.
Then, on both sides, to the right and left
of the axial rod, appear the segments of
the “ pro-vertebra; ” and the outlines of the
muscular plates, with which the formation
of the members of the vertebrate body
begins. The gill-clefts appear on either
side of the fore-gut; they are the openings
of the gullet, through which, in our primitive
fish-ancestors, the water which had entered
at the mouth for breathing purposes made
its exit at the sides of the head. By a
tenacious heredity these gill-clefts, .which
have no meaning except for our fish-like
aquatic ancestors, are still preserved in the
embryo of man and all the other vertebrates.
They disappear after a time. Even after
the five vesicles of the embryonic brain
appear in the head, and the rudiments of
the eyes and ears at the sides, and after
the legs sprout out at the base of the fish
like embryo, in the form of two roundish,
flat buds, the foetus is still so like that of
other vertebrates that it is indistinguishable
from them.
The substantial similarity in outer form
and inner structure which characterises the
embryo of man and other vertebrates in
this early stage of development is an
embryological fact of the first importance ;
from it, by the fundamental law of biogeny,
we may draw the most momentous con
clusions. There it but one explanation of
it—heredity from a common parent form.
When we see that, at a certain stage, the
embryos of man and the ape, the dog and
the rabbit, the pig and the sheep, although
recognisable as higher vertebrates, cannot
be distinguished from each other, the fact
can only be elucidated by assuming a
common parentage. And this explanation
is strengthened when we follow the sub
sequent divergence of these embryonic
forms. The nearer two animals are in
their bodily structure, and, therefore, in the
scheme of nature, so much the longer do
we find their embryos retain this resem
blance, and so much the nearer do they
�24
THE RIDDLE OE THE UNIVERSE
approach each other in the ancestral tree of
their respective group, so much the closer
is their genetic relationship. Hence it is
that the embryos of man and the anthropoid
ape retain the resemblance much later, at an
advanced stage of development, when their
distinction from the embryos of other
mammals can be seen at a glance. I have
illustrated this significant fact by a juxta
position of corresponding stages in the
development of a number of different
vertebrates in my Natural History of
Creation and in my Anthropogeny.
The great phylogenetic significance of
the resemblance we have described is seen,
not only in the comparison of the embryos
of vertebrates, but also in the comparison
of their protective membranes. All verte
brates of the three higher classes—reptiles,
birds, and mammals—are distinguished
from the lower classes by the possession
of certain special fœtal membranes, the
amnion and the serolemma. The embryo
is enclosed in these membranes, or bags,
which are full of water, and is thus pro
tected from pressure or shock. This provi
dent arrangement probably arose during
the Permian period, when the oldest reptiles,
the proreptilia, the common ancestors of all
the amniotes (animals with an amnion),
completely adapted themselves to a life on
land. Their direct ancestors, the amphibia,
and the fishes are devoid of these fœtal
membranes ; they would have been super
fluous to these inhabitants of the water.
With the inheritance of these protective
coverings are closely connected two other
changes in the amniotes : firstly, the entire
disappearance of the gills (while the gill
arches and clefts continue to be inherited
as “ rudimentary organs ”) ; secondly, the
construction of the allantois. This vesicular
bag, filled with water, grows out of the hind
gut in the embryo of all the amniotes, and
is nothing else than an enlargment of the
bladder of their amphibious ancestors.
From its innermost and inferior section is
formed subsequently the permanent bladder
of the amniotes, while the larger outer
part shrivels up. Usually this has an im
portant part to play for a long time as the
respiratory organ of the embryo, a number
of large blood vessels spreading out over
its inner surface. The formation of the
membranes, the amnion, and the sero
lemma, and of the allantois, is just the
same, and is affected by the same compli
cated process of growth, in man as in
all the other amniotes ; man is a true
amniote.
The nourishment of the fœtus in the
maternal womb is effected, as is well known,
by a peculiar organ, richly supplied with
blood at its surface, called the placenta.
This important nutritive organ is a spongy
round disc, from six to eight inches in
diameter, about an inch thick, and one or
two pounds in weight ; it is separated after
the birth of the child, and issues as the
“after-birth.” The placenta consists of
two very different parts, the fœtal and the
maternal part. The latter contains highlydeveloped sinuses, which retain the blood
conveyed to them by the arteries of the
mother. On the other hand, the fœtal
placenta is formed by innumerable branch
ing tufts or villi, which grow out of the
outer surface of the allantois, and derive
their blood from the umbilical vessels. The
hollow, blood - filled villi of the fœtal
placenta protrude into the sinuses of the
maternal placenta, and the slender mem
brane between the two is so attenuated
that it offers no impediment to the direct
interchange of material through the nutri
tive blood-stream (by osmosis).
In the older and lower groups of the
placentals the entire surface of the chorion
is covered with a number of short villi ;
these “ chorion-villi ” take the form of pit
like depressions of the mucous membrane
of the mother, and are easily detached at
birth. That happens in most of the ungulata (the sow, camel, mare, etc.), the cetacea,
and theprosimiæ ; these “malloplacentalia”
(animals with a diffuse placenta) have been
denominated the indeciduata. The same
formation is present in man and the other
placentals in the beginning. It is soon
modified, however, as the villi on one part
of the chorion are withdrawn ; while on
the other part they grow proportionately
stronger, and unite intimately with the
mucous membrane of the womb. It is in
consequence of this intimate blending that
a portion of the uterus is detached at birth,
and carried away with loss of blood. This
detachable membrane—the decidua—is a
characteristic of the higher placentalia,
which have, consequently, been grouped
under the title of deciduata; to that category
belong the carnassia, rodentia, simias, and
man. In the carnassia and some of the
ungulata (the elephant, for instance) the
placenta takes the form of a girdle, hence
they are known as the zonoplacentalia; in
the rodentia, the insectívora (the mole and
the hedge-hog), the apes, and man, it takes
the form of a disc.
Even ten years ago the majority of
�THE HISTORY OF OUR SPECIES
embryologists thought that man was dis
tinguished by certain peculiarities in the
form of the placenta—namely, by the
possession of what is called the decidua
reflexa, and by a special formation of the
umbilical cord which unites the decidua to
the foetus. It was supposed that the rest
of the placentals, including the apes, were
without these special embryonic structures.
The funiculus umbilicalis is a smooth,
cylindrical cord, from sixteen to twentythree inches long, and as thick as the little
finger. It forms the connecting link be
tween the fœtus and the maternal placenta,
since it conducts the nutritive vessels from
the body of the fœtus to the placenta ; it
comprises, besides, the pedicle of the allan
tois and the yelk-sac. The yelk-sac in the
human case forms the greater portion of
the germinal vesicle during the third week
of gestation ; but it shrivels up afterwards,
so that it was formerly entirely missed in
the mature fœtus. Yet it remains all the
time in a rudimentary condition, and may
be detected even after birth as the little
umbilical vesicle. Moreover, even the
vesicular structureof the allantois disappears
at an early stage in the human case ; with
a deflection of the amnion, it gives rise to
the pedicle. We cannot enter here into a
discussion of the complicated anatomical
and embryological relations of these struc
tures. I have described and illustrated
them in my Anthropogeny (twenty-third
chapter).
The opponents of evolution still appealed
to these “special features” of human embry
ology, which were supposed to distinguish
man from all the other mammals, even so
late as ten years ago. But in 1890 Emil
Selenka proved that the same features are
found in the anthropoid apes, especially in
the orang {satyrus\ while the lower apes
are without them. Thus Huxley’s pithecometra thesis was substantiated once more :
«The differences between man and the
great apes are not so great as are those
between the man-like apes and the lower
monkeys.”
The supposed “evidences
against the near blood-relationship of man
and the apes’’proved, on a closer examina
tion of the real circumstances, to be strong
reasons jn favour of it.
Every scientist who penetrates with open
eyes into this dark but profoundly interest
ing labyrinth of our embryonic develop
ment, and who is competent to compare
it critically with that of the rest of the
mammals, will find in it a most important
aid towards the elucidation of the descent
25
of our species. For the various stages of
our embryonic development, in the character
of palingenetid phenomena of heredity, cast
a brilliant light on the corresponding stages
of our ancestral tree, in accordance with
the great law of biogeny. But even the
cenogenetic phenomena of adaptation, the
formation of the temporary fœtal organs—
the characteristic fœtal membranes, and
especially the placenta—give us sufficiently
definite indications of our close genetic
relationship with the primates.
CHAPTER V.
THE HISTORY OF OUR SPECIES
Origin of man. Mythical history of creation.
Moses and Linné. The creation of permanent
species. The catastrophic theory : Cuvier.
Transformism: Goethe. Theory of descent:
Lamarck. Theory of selection : Darwin. Evo
lution (phylogeny). Ancestral trees. General
morphology.
Natural history of creation.
Systematic phylogeny. Fundamental law of
biogeny. Anthropogeny. Descent of rnatl
from the ape. Pithecoid theory. The fossil
pithecanthropus of Dubois.
The youngest of the great branches of the
living tree of biology is the science we call
biological evolution or phylogeny. It came
into existence much later, and under much
more difficult circumstances, than its
natural sister, embryonic evolution or
ontogeny. The object of the latter was to
attain a knowledge of the mysterious pro
cesses by which the individual organism,
plant or animal, developed from the egg.
Phylogeny has to answer the much more
obscure and difficult question : “ What is
the origin of the different organic species
of plants and animals?”
Ontogeny (embryology and metamor
phism) could follow the empirical method
of direct observation in the solution of its
not remote problem ; it needed but to
follow, day by day and hour by hour, the
visible changes which the fœtus experiences
during a brief period in the course of its
development from the ovum. Much more
difficult was the remote problem of phylo
geny ; for the slow processes of gradual
construction, which effect the rise of new
1 See p. 51.
�THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE
species of animals and plants, go on imper
ceptibly during thousands and even millions
of years. Their direct observation is pos
sible only within very narrow limits ; the
vast majority of these historical processes
can only be known by indirect inference—
by critical reflection, and by a comparative
use of empirical sciences which belong to
very different fields of thought, palaeon
tology, ontogeny, and morphology. To
this we must add the immense opposition
which was everywhere made to biological
evolution on account of the close connec
tion between questions of organic creation
and supernatural myths and religious
dogmas. For these reasons it can easily
be understood how it is that the scientific
existence of a true theory of origins was
only secured, amidst fierce controversy, in
the course of the last forty years.
Every serious attempt that was made,
before the beginning of the nineteenth cen
tury, to solve the problem of the origin of
species lost its way in the mythological
labyrinth of the supernatural stories of
creation. The efforts of a few distinguished
thinkers to emancipate themselves from
this tyranny and attain to a naturalistic
interpretation proved unavailing. A great
variety of creation-myths arose in connec
tion with their religion in all the ancient
civilised nations. During the Middle Ages
triumphant Christendom naturally arro
gated to itself the sole right of pronouncing
on the question ; and, the Bible being the
basis of the structure of the Christian
religion, the whole story of creation was
taken from the book of Genesis. Even
Carl Linné, the famous Swedish scientist,
started from that basis when, in 1735, in
his classical Systema Natures, he made the
first attempt at a systematic arrangement,
nomenclature, and classification of the
innumerable objects in nature. As the
best practical aid in that attempt, he intro
duced the well-known double or binary
nomenclature ; to each kind of animals
and plants he gave a particular specific
name, and added to it the wider-reaching
name of the genus. A genus served to
unite the nearest related species ; thus, for
instance, Linné grouped under the genus
“dog” (twzzk), as different species, the
house-dog {canis familiarisé, the jackal
{canis aureus}, the wolf {cams lupus}, the
fox {canis vulpes}, etc. This binary nomen
clature immediately proved of such great
practical assistance that it was universally
accepted, and is still always followed in
zoological and botanical classification.
But the theoretical dogma which Linné
himself connected with his practical idea of
species was fraught with the gravest peril
to science. The first question which forced
itself on the mind of the thoughtful scientist
was the question as to the nature of the
concept of species, its contents, and its
range. And the creator of the idea
answered this fundamental question by a
naïve appeal to the dominant Mosaic
legend of creation : “ Species tot sunt
diverses, quot diversas formas ab initio
creavit infinitum ens”—(There are just so
many distinct species as there were distinct
types created in the beginning by the
Infinite). This theosophic dogma cut
short all attempt at a natural explanation
of the origin of species. Linné was ac
quainted only with the plant and animal
worlds that exist to-day ; he had no sus
picion of the much more numerous extinct
species which had peopled the earth with
their varying forms in the earlier period of
its development.
It was not until the beginning of the
nineteenth century that we were introduced
to these fossil animals by Cuvier. In his
famous work on the fossil bones of the
four-footed vertebrates he gave (1812) the
first correct description and true interpre
tation of many of these fossil remains. He
showed, too, that a series of very different
animal populations have succeeded each
other in the various stages of the earth’s his
tory. Since Cuvier held firmly to Linné’s idea
of the absolute permanency of species, he
thought their origin could only be explained
by a supposition that a series of great cata
clysms and new creations had marked the.
history of the globe ; he imagined that all
living creatures were destroyed at the com
mencement of each of these terrestrial
revolutions, and an entirely new population
was created at its close. Although this
“catastrophic theory” of Cuvier’s led to
the most absurd consequences, and was
nothing more than a bald faith in miracles,
it obtained almost universal recognition,
and reigned triumphant until the coming of
Darwin.
It is easy to understand that these preva
lent ideas of the absolute unchangeability
and supernatural creation of organic species
could not satisfy the more penetrating
thinkers. We find several eminent minds
already, in the second half of the last
century, busy with the attempt to find a
natural explanation of the “ problem of
creation.” Pre-eminent among them was
the great German poet and philosopher,
�THE HISTORYOF OUR SPECIES
Wolfgang Goethe, who, by his long and
assiduous study of morphology, obtained,
more than a hundred years ago, a clear
insight into the intimate connection of all
organic forms, and a firm conviction of a
Common natural origin.
In his famed
Metamorphosis of Plants (1790) he derived
all the different species of plants from one
primitive type, and all their different organs
from one primitive organ—the leaf. In his
vertebral theory of the skull he endeavoured
to prove that the skulls of the vertebrates
•—including man—-were all alike made up
of certain groups of bones, arranged in a
definite structure, and that these bones are
nothing else than transformed vertebrae. It
was his penetrating study of comparative
osteology that led Goethe to a firm con
viction of the unity of the animal organisa
tion ; he had recognised that the human
skeleton is framed on the same fundamental
type as that of all other vertebrates—
“ built on a primitive plan that only deviates
more or less to one side or other in its very
constant features, and still developes and
refashions itself daily.” This remodelling,
or transformation, is brought about, accord
ing to Goethe, by the constant interaction of
two powerful constructive forces—-a centri
petal force within the organism, the “ ten
dency to specification,” and a centrifugal
force without, the tendency to variation, or
the “idea of metamorphosis”; the former
corresponds to what we now call heredity,
the latter to the modern idea of adaptation.
How deeply Goethe had penetrated into
their character by these philosophic studies
of the “ construction and reconstruction of
organic natures,” and how far, therefore, he
must be considered the most important
precursor of Darwin and Lamarck, may be
gathered from the interesting passages from
his works which I have collected in the
fourth chapter of my Natural History of
Creation. These evolutionary ideas of
Goethe, however, like analogous ideas of
Kant, Owen, Treviranus, and other
philosophers of the commencement of the
century (which are quoted in the above
work) did not amount to more than certain
general conclusions. They had not that
great lever which the “ natural history of
creation ” needed for its firm foundation on
a criticism of the dogma of fixed species ;
this lever was first supplied by Lamarck..
The first thorough attempt at a scientific
establishment of transformism was made at
the beginning of the nineteenth century by
the great French scientist, Jean Lamarck,
the chief opponent of his colleague, Cuvier,
2?
at Paris. He had already, in 1802, in his
Observations on Living Organisms,. ex
pressed the new ideas as to the mutability
and formation of species, which he
thoroughly established in 1809 in the two
volumes of his profound work, Philosophic
Zoologique. In this work he first gave
expression to the correct idea, in opposition
to the prevalent dogma of fixed species,
that the organic “ species ” is an artificial
abstraction, a concept of only relative value,
like the wider-ranging concepts of genius,
family, order, and class. He went on to
affirm that all species are changeable, and
have arisen from older species in the course
of very long periods of time. The common
parent forms from which they have
descended were originally very simple and
lowly organisms. The first and oldest of
them arose by abiogenesis.. While the
type is preserved by heredity in the succes
sion of generations, adaptation, on the other
hand, effects a constant modification of the
species by change of habits and the exercise
of the various organs. Even our human
organism has arisen in the same natural
manner, by gradual transformation, from a
group of pithecoid mammals. For all these
phenomena—indeed, for all phenomena
both in nature and in the mind—Lamarck
takes exclusively mechanical, physical, and
chemical activities to be the true efficient
causes. His magnificent Philosophie Zoo
logique contains all the elements of a purely
monistic system of nature on the basis of
evolution. I have fully treated these
achievements of Lamarck in the fourth
chapter of my Anthropogeny, and in the
fourth chapter of the Natural History of
Creation.
Science had now to wait until this great
effort to give a scientific foundation to the
theory of evolution should shatter the
dominant myth of a “ specific creation, and
open out the path of natural ” development.
In this respect Lamarck was not more
successful in resisting the conservative
authority of his great opponent, Cuvier,
than.was his colleague and sympathiser,
Geoffroy St. Hilaire, twenty years later.
The famous controversies which he had
with Cuvier in the Parisian Academy in
1830 ended with the complete triumph of
the latter. I have elsewhere fully described
these conflicts, in which Goethe took, so
lively an interest. The great expansion
which the study of biology experienced at
that time, the abundance of interesting dis
coveries in comparative anatomy and
physiology, the establishment of the cellular
�28
THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE
theory, and the progress of ontogeny, gave
zoologists and botanists so overwhelming a
flood of welcome material to deal with that
the difficult and obscure question of the
origin of species was easily forgotten for a
time. People rested content with the old
dogma of creation. Even when Charles
Lyell refuted Cuvier’s extraordinary “ catas
trophic theory ” in his Principles of Geology,
in 1830, and vindicated a natural, con
tinuous evolution for the inorganic structure
of our planet, his simple principle of con
tinuity found no one to apply it to the
organic world. The rudiments of a natural
phylogeny which were buried in Lamarck’s
works were as completely forgotten as the
germ of a natural ontogeny which Caspar
Friedrich Wolff had given fifty years earlier
in his Theory of Generation. In both cases
a full half-century elapsed before the great
idea of a natural development won a fitting
recognition. Only when Darwin (in 1859)
approached the solution of the problem
from a different side altogether, and made
a happy use of the rich treasures of empiri
cal knowledge which had accumulated in
the meantime, did men begin to think
once more of Lamarck as his great pre
cursor.
The unparalleled success of Charles Dar
win is well-known. It shows him to-day, at
the close of the century, to have been, if not
the greatest, at least the most effective, of its
distinguished scientists. No other of the
many great thinkers of our time has achieved
so magnificent, so thorough, and so farreaching a success with a single classical
work as Darwin did in 1859 with his famous
Origin of Species. It is true that the reform
of comparative anatomy and physiology by
Johannes Muller had inaugurated a new
and fertile epoch for the whole of biology ;
that the establishment of the cellular theory
by Schleiden and Schwann, the reform of
ontogeny by Baer, and the formulation of
the law of substance by Robert Mayer and
Helmholz, were scientific facts of the first
importance ; but no one of them has had
so profound an influence on the whole
structure of human knowledge as Darwin’s
theory of the natural origin of species.
For it at once gave us the solution of the
mystic “problem of creation,” the great
“ question of all questions ”—the problem
of the true character and origin of man
himself.
If we compare the two great founders of
transformism, we find in Lamarck a pre
ponderant inclination to deduction, and to
forming a complete monistic scheme of
nature ; in Darwin we have a predominant
application of induction, and a prudent
concern to establish the different parts of
the theory of selection as firmly as possible
on a basis of observation and experiment.
While the French scientist far outran the
then limits of empirical knowledge, and
rather sketched the programme of future
investigation, the English empiricist was
mainly preoccupied about securing a
unifying principle of interpretation for a
mass of empirical knowledge which had
hitherto accumulated without being under
stood. We can thus understand how it was
that the success of Darwin was just as
overwhelming as that of Lamarck was
evanescent. Darwin, however, had not
only the signal merit of bringing all the
results of the various biological sciences to
a common focus in the principle of descent,
and thus giving them a harmonious inter
pretation, but he also discovered, in the
principle of selection, that direct cause of
transformism which Lamarck had missed.
In applying, as a practical breeder, the
experience of artificial selection to organ
isms in a state of nature, and in recognising
in the “struggle for life” the selective prin
ciple of natural selection, Darwin created
his momentous “theory of selection,’’which
is what we properly call Darwinism.
One of the most pressing of the many
important tasks which Darwin proposed to
modern biology was the reform of the zoo
logical and botanical system. Since the
innumerable species of animals and plants
were not created by a supernatural miracle,
but evolved by natural processes, their
ancestral tree is their “natural system.”
The first attempt to frame a system in this
sense was made by myself in 1866, in my
General Morphology of Organisms. The
first volume of this work (“ General
Anatomy”) dealt with the “mechanical
science of the developed forms”; the second
volume (“General Evolution”) was occupied
with the science of the “developing forms.”
The systematic introduction to the latter
formed a “ genealogical survey of the
natural system of organisms.” Until that
time the term “ evolution ” had been taken
to mean exclusively, both in zoology and
botany, the development of individual
organisms—embryology, or metamorphic
science. I established the opposite view,
that this history of the embryo (ontogeny)
must be completed by a second, equally
valuable, and closely-connected branch of
thought—the history of the race (phylogeny).
Both these branches of evolutionary science
�THE HISTORY OF OUR SPECIES
are, in my opinion, in the closest causal
connection ; this arises from the reciprocal
action of the laws of heredity and adapta
tion i it has a precise and comprehensive
expression in my “ fundamental law of
biogeny.”
As the new views I had put forward in my
General Morphology met with very little
notice, and still less acceptance, from my
scientific colleagues, in spite of their
severely scientific setting, I thought I would
make the most important of them acces
sible to a wider circle of informed readers
by a smaller work, written in a more popular
style. This was done in 1868, in The
Natural History of Creation (a series of
popular scientific lectures on evolution in
general, and the systems of Darwin, Goethe,
and Lamarck in particular). If the success
of my General Morphology was far below
my reasonable anticipation, that of The
Natural History of Creation went far
beyond it. In a period of thirty years nine
editions and twelve different translations
of it have appeared. In spite of its great
defects, the book has contributed much to
the popularisation of the main ideas of
modern evolution. Still, I could only give
the barest outlines in it of my chief object,
the phylogenetic construction of a natural
system. I have, therefore, given the com
plete proof, which is wanting in the earlier
work, of the phylogenetic system in a sub
sequent larger work, my Systematic Phylo
geny (outlines of a natural system of
organisms «on the basis of their specific
development). The first volume of it deals
with the protists and plants (1894), and the
second with the invertebrate animals (1896),
the third with the vertebrates (1895). The
ancestral tree of both the smaller and the
larger groups is carried on in this work
as far as my knowledge of the three great
“ ancestral documents ” — palaeontology,
ontogeny, and morphology—qualified me to
extend it.
I had already, in my General Morphology
(at the end of the fifth book), described the
close causative connection which exists, in
my opinion, between the two branches of
Organic evolution as one of the most im
portant ideas of transformism, and I had
framed a precise formula for it in a number
of “ theses on the causal nexus of biontic and
phyletic development”: “ Ontogenesis is a
brief and rapid recapitulation of phylo
genesis^ determined by the physiological
functions of heredity (generation) and
adaptation (maintenance).” Darwin him
self had emphasised the great significance
29
of his theory for the elucidation of embry
ology in 1859, and Fritz Miiller had
endeavoured to prove it as regards the
Crustacea in the able little work, Facts and
Arguments for Darwin (1864). My own
task has been to prove the universal appli
cation and the fundamental importance of
the biogenetic law in a series of works,
especially in the Biology of the Calcispongice (1872), and in Studies of the
Gastrcea Theory (1873-1884). The theory
of the homology of the germinal layers and
of the relations of palingenesis to ceno
génesis which I have exposed in Dem
has been confirmed subsequently by a
number of works of other zoologists. That
theory makes it possible to follow nature’s
law of unity in the innumerable variations
of animal embryology ; it gives us for their
ancestral history a common derivation from
a simple primitive stem-firm.
The far-seeing founder of the theory of
descent, Lamarck, clearly recognised in
1809 that it was of universal application ;
that even man himself, the most highlydeveloped of the mammals, is derived
from the same stem as all the other mam
mals ; ánd that this in its turn belongs to
the same older branch of the ancestral tree
as the rest of the vertebrates. He had
even indicated the agencies by which it
might be possible to explain man’s descent
from the apes as the nearest related mam
mals. Darwin, who was, naturally, of the
same conviction, purposely avoided this
least acceptable consequence of his theory
in his chief work in 1859, and put it for
ward for the first time in his Descent of
Man in 1871. In the meantime (1863)
Huxley had very ably discussed this most
important consequence of evolution in his
famous Place of Man in Nature. With
the aid of comparative anatomy and onto
geny, and the support of the facts of palae
ontology, Huxley proved that the “descent
of man from the ape” is a necessary conse
quence of Darwinism, and that no other
scientific explanation of the origin of the
human race is possible. Of the same
opinion was Carl Gegenbaur, the most
distinguished representative of comparative
anatomy, who lifted his science to a higher
level by a consistent and ingenious applica
tion of the theory of descent.
As a further consequence of the “pithe
coid theory ” (the theory of the descent of
man from the age), there now arose the
difficult task of investigating, not only the
nearest related mammal ancestors of man
in the Tertiary epoch, but also the long
�3o
THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE
series of the older animal ancestors which
had lived in earlier periods of the earth’s
history and been developed in the course of
countless millions of years. I had made a
start with the hypothetical solution of this
great historic problem in my General
Morphology ; a further development of it
appeared in 1874 in my Anthropogeny
(first section, Origin of the Individual ;
second section, Origin of the Race). The
fourth, enlarged, edition of this work (1891)
contains that theory of the development of
man which approaches nearest, in my own
opinion, to the still remote truth, in the
light of our present knowledge of the
documentary evidence. I was especially
preoccupied in its composition to use the
three empirical “ documents ” — pateon
tology, ontogeny, and morphology (or com
parative anatomy)—as evenly and har
moniously as possible. It is true that my
hypotheses were in many cases supple
mented and corrected in detail by later
phylogenetic research ; yet I am convinced
that the ancestral tree of human origin
which I have sketched therein is sub
stantially correct. For the historical suc
cession of vertebrate fossils corresponds
completely with the morphological evolu
tionary scale which is revealed to us by
comparative anatomy and ontogeny. After
the Silurian fishes come the dipnoi of
the Devonian period—the Carboniferous
amphibia, the Permian reptilia, and the
Mesozoic mammals. Of these, again, the
lowest forms, the monotremes, appear first
in the Triassic period, the marsupials
m the Jurassic, and then the oldest
placentals in the Cretaceous, Of the
placentals, in turn, the first to appear in
the oldest Tertiary period (the Eocene)
are the lowest primates, the prosimte,
which are followed by the simte in the
Miocene. Of the catarrhinse, the cynopitheci precede the anthropomorpha ; from
one branch of the latter, during-- the
Pliocene period, arises the ape-man without
speech. (the pithecanthropus alalus); and
from him descends, finally, speaking man.
The chain of our earlier invertebrate
ancestors is much more difficult to investi
gate and much less safe than this tree of
our vertebrate predecessors; we have no
fossilised relics of their soft, boneless
structures, so pateontology can give us no
assistance in this case. The evidence of
comparative anatomy and ontogeny, there
fore, becomes all the more important.
Since the human embryo passes through the
same ¿/ziWzzZa-stage as the germs of all
other vertebrates, since it evolves, similarly,
out of two germinal layers of a gastrula,
we infer, m virtue of the biogenetic law,
the early existence of corresponding ances
tral forms—vermalia, gastrasada, etc. Most
important of all is the fact that the human
embryo, like that of all other animals,
arises originally from a single cell ; for
this stem-cell ” (cytula)—the impregnated
egg-cell—points indubitably to a corres
ponding unicellular ancestor, a primitive,
Lauren tian protozoon.
For the purpose of our monistic philo
sophy, however, it is a matter of compara
tive indifference how the succession of our
animal predecessors may be comfirmed
in detail. Sufficient for us, as an incon
testable historical fact, is the important
thesis that man descends immediately from
the ape, and secondarily from a long series
of lower vertebrates. I have laid stress
on the logical proof of this “ pithecometrathesis ” in the seventh book of the General
Morphology: “The thesis that man has
been evolved from lower vertebrates, and
immediately from the simice^ is a special
inference which results with absolute neces
sity from the general inductive law of the
theory of descent.”
For the definitive proof and establish
ment of thisfundamentalpithecometra-thesis
the palaeontological discoveries of the last
thirty years are of the greatest importance;
in particular, the astonishing discoveries
of a number of extinct mammals of the
Tertiary period have enabled u5 to draw
up clearly in its main outlines the evolu
tionary history of this most important class
of animals, from the lowest oviparous
monotremes up to man. The four chief
gioups of the placentals, the heterogeneous
legions of the carnassia, the rodentia, the
ungulata, and the primates, seem to be
separated' by profound gulfs, when we
confine our attention to their representatives
of to-day. But these gulfs are completely
bridged, and the sharp distinctions of the
four legions are entirely lost, when we
compare their extinct predecessors of the
Tertiary period, and when we go back into
the Eocene twilight of history in the oldest
part of the Tertiary period—at least
3,000,000 years ago. There we find the
great sub-class of the placentals, which
to-day comprises more than 2,500 species,
represented by only a small number of
little, insignificant “ pro-placentals ” ; and
in these prochoriata the characters of the
four divergent legions are so intermingled
and toned down that we cannot in reason
�ftfRE"OF THE SOUL
3i
to be wanting in the chain of primates,
which stretches unbroken from the lowest
cursors of those features. The oldest carcatarrhinae to the highest-developed man.
nassia (the ictopsales), the oldest rodentia
I have dealt exhaustively with the signifi
(the esthonychales), the oldest ungulata (the
cance of this discovery in the paper which
condylarthrales), and the oldest primates
I read on August 26th1898, at the Fourth
(the lemuravales\ all have the same funda
International Zoological Congress at Cam
mental skeletal structure, and the same
bridge.1 The palaeontologist, who knows
typical dentition of the primitive placentals-,
the conditions of the formation and preser
consisting of forty-four teeth (three incisors,
vation of fossils, will think the discovery of
one canines four premolars, and three
this pithecanthropus an unusually lucky
molars in each half of the jaw); all are
accident. The apes, being aboreal, seldom
characterised by the small si?e and the
came into the circumstances (unless they
imperfect structure of the brain (especially
happened to fall into the water) which
of its chief part, the cortex, which does not
would secure the preservation and petrifac
become a true “organ of thought” until
tion of their skeleton. Thus, by the dis*later on in the Miocene and Pliocene
covery of this fossil man-monkey of Java
representatives) ; they have all short legs
the descent of man from the ape has
and five-toed, flat-soled feet (plantigrada).
In many cases among these oldest pla become just as clear arid certain from the
palaeontological side as it was previously
centals of the Eocene period it was very
from the evidence of comparative anatomy
difficult to say at first whether they should
and ontogeny. We now have all the
be classed with the carnassia, rodentia,
principal documents which tell the history
ungulata, or primates; so very closely,
even to confusion, do these four groups of of our race;
the placentals, which diverge so widely
afterwards, approach each other at that
time. Their common origin from a single
ancestral group follows incontestably.
These prochoriata lived in the preceding
CHAPTER VI.
Cretaceous period (more than 3,000,000
years ago), and were probably developed in
the Jurassic period from a group of insec
THE NATURE OF THE SOUL
tivorous marsupials (amphitheria) by the
formation of a primitive placenta diffusa,
Fundamental importance of psychology. Its
a placenta of the simplest type.
definition and methods. Divergence of views
But the most important of all the recent
thereon. Dualistic and monistic psychology.
Relation to the law of substance. Con
palaeontological discoveries which have
fusion of ideas. Psychological metamor
served to elucidate the origin of the
phoses : Kant, Virchow, Dubois-Reymond.
placentals relate to our own stem, the
Methods of research of psychic science. Intro
legion of primates. Formerly fossil remains
spective method (self-observation).
Exact
of the primates were very scarce. Even
method (psycho - physics).
Comparative
Cuvier, the great founder of palmontology,
method (animal psychology). Psychological
maintained until his last day (1832) that
change of principles : Wundt. Folk-psycho
there were no fossilised primates ; he had
logy and ethnography : Bastian. Ontogenetic
himself, it is true, described the skull of an
psychology: Preyer. Phylogenetic psychology:
Eocene prosimia (adapts), but he had
Darwin, Romanes.
wrongly classed it with the ungulata.
However, during the last twenty years a
The phenomena which are comprised
fair number of well-preserved fossilised
under the title of the “ life of the soul,” or
skeletons of prosimiae and simiae have been
the psychic activity, are, on the one hand,
discovered ; in them we find all the chief the most important and interesting, on the
intermediate members, which complete the
other the most intricate and problematical,
connecting chain of ancestors from the
of all the phenomena we are acquainted
oldest prosimiae to man.
the knowledge of nature, the
The most famous and most interesting of with. As the present philosophic study, is
these discoveries is the fossil ape-man of objecta of
itself part of the life of the soul, and as
Java, the much-taked of pithecanthropus
erectus, found by a Dutch military doctor,
1 Tide the translation of Dr. Hans Gadow:
Eugen Dubois, in 1894. It is in truth
The Last Link. (A. and C. Black.)
the much-sought “ missing link,” supposed
do other than consider them as the pre
�32
THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE
anthropology, and even cosmology, pre
suppose a correct knowledge of the
“psyche,” we may regard psychology, the
scientific study of the soul, both as the
foundation and the postulate of all other
sciences. From another point of view it is
itself a part of philosophy, or of physiology,
or of anthropology.
The great difficulty of establishing it on
a naturalistic basis arises from the fact that
psychology, in turn, presupposes a correct
acquaintance with the human organism,
especially the brain, the chief organ of
psychic activity. The great majority of
“ psychologists ” have little or no acquain
tance with these anatomical foundations of
the soul, and thus it happens that in no
other science do we find such contradictions
and untenable notions as to its proper
meaning and its essential object as are
current in psychology. This confusion has
become more and more palpable during the
last thirty years, in proportion as the im
mense progress of anatomy and physiology
has increased our knowledge of the struc
ture and the functions of the chief psychic
organ.
What we call the soul is, in my opinion,
a natural phenomenon ; I therefore con
sider psychology to be a branch of natural
science—a section of physiology. Conse
quently, I must emphatically assert from
the commencement that we have no different
methods of research for that science than
for any of the others ; we have in the first
place observation and experiment, in the
second place the theory of evolution, and
in the third place metaphysical speculation,
which seek to penetrate as far as possible
into the cryptic nature of the phenomena
by inductive and deductive reasoning.
However, with a view to a thorough appre
ciation of the question, we must first of all
put . clearly before, the reader the anti
thesis. of the dualistic and the monistic
theories.
The prevailing conception of the psychic
activity, which we contest, considers soul
and body to be two distinct entities. These
two entities can exist independently of each
other ; there is no intrinsic necessity for
their union. The organised body is a mortal,
material nature, chemically composed of
living protoplasm and its compounds
(plasma-products). The soul, on the other
hand, is an immortal, immaterial being, a
spiritual agent, whose mysterious activity is
entirely incomprehensible to us. This
trivial conception is, by its very terms,
spiritualistic, and its contradictory is, in a
certain sense, materialistic. It is, at the
same time, supernatural and transcendental,
since it affirms the existence of forces which
can exist and operate without a material
basis ; it rests on the assumption that out
side of and beyond nature there is a
spiritual,” immaterial world, of which we
have no experience, and of which we can
learn nothing by. natural means.
This hypothetical “ spirit world,” which is
supposed to be entirely independent of the
material universe, and on the assumption
of which the whole artificial structure of the
dualistic system is based, is purely a pro
duct of poetic imagination ; the same must
be said of the parallel belief in the “immor
tality of the soul,” the scientific impossibility
of which we must prove more fully later on
(chap. xi.). If the beliefs which prevail in
these credulous circles had a sound founda
tion, the phenomena they relate to could
not be subject to the “ law of substance”;
moreover, this single exception to the
highest law of the cosmos must have
appeared very late in the history of the
organic world, since it only concerns the
“ soul ” of man and of the higher animals.
The dogma of “free will,” another essential
element of the dualistic psychology, is
similarly irreconcilable with the universal
law of substance.
Our own naturalistic conception of the
psychic activity sees in it a group of vital
phenomena, which are dependent on a
definite material substratum, like all other
phenomena. We shall give to this material
basis of all psychic activity, without which
it is inconceivable, the provisional name of
“psychoplasm”; and for this good reason—
that chemical analysis proves it to be a
body of the group we call protoplasmic
bodies, the albuminoid carbon-combina
tions which are at the root of all vital pro
cesses. In the higher animals, which have
a nervous system and sense-organs, “ neuro
plasm,” the nerve-material, has been differ
entiated out of psychoplasm. Our concep
tion is, in this sense, materialistic. It is at
the same time empirical and naturalistic, for
our scientific experience has never yet
taught us the existence of forces that can
dispense with a material substratum, or of
a spiritual world over and above the realm
of nature.
Like all other natural phenomena, the
psychic processes are subjecttothe supreme,
all-ruling law of substance ; not even in
this province is there a single exception to
this highest cosmological law (compare
chap. xii.). The phenomena of the lowly
�TUE NATURE OF TUE SOUL
33
severely critical Kant came to the con
psychic life of the unicellular protist and
clusion that the three great buttresses of
the plant, and of the lowest animal forms—
mysticism—“ God, freedom, and immor
their irritability, their reflex movements,
tality ”—were untenable in the light of
their sensitiveness and instinct of self
“pure reason”; the older, dogmatic Kant
preservation—are directly determined by
physiological action in the protoplasm of found that these three great hallucinations
were postulates of “ practical reason,” and
their cells—that is, by physical and chemi
were, as such, indispensable. The more
cal changes which are partly due to heredity
the distinguished modern school of “Neoand partly to adaptation. And we must
Kantians ” urges a “ return to Kant” as the
say just the same of the higher psychic
only possible salvation from the frightful
activity of the higher animals and man,
of the formation of ideas and concepts, of jumble of modern metaphysics, the more
clearly do we perceive the undeniable and
the marvellous phenomena of reason and
fatal contradiction between the fundamental
consciousness ; for the latter have been
opinions of the young and the older Kant.
phylogenetically evolved from the former,
and it is merely a higher degree of integra We shall return to this point later on.
Other interesting examples of this change
tion or centralisation, of association or com
of views are found in two of the most
bination of functions which were formerly
famous living scientists, R. Virchow and
isolated, that has elevated them in this
E. Du Bois-Reymond ; the metamorphoses
manner.
of their fundamental views on psychology
The first task of every science is the
cannot be overlooked, as both these Berlin
clear definition of the object it has to
biologists have played a most important
investigate. In no science, however, is
part at Germany’s greatest university for
this preliminary task so difficult as in
more than forty years, and have, therefore,
psychology ; and this circumstance is the
directly and indirectly, had a most profound
more remarkable since logic, the science
influence on the modern mind. Rudolph
of defining, is itself a part of psychology.
Virchow, the eminent founder of cellular
When we compare all that has been said
pathology, was a pure monist in the best
by the most distinguished philosophers and
scientists of all ages on the fundamental days of his scientific activity, about the
idea of psychology, we find ourselves in a middle of the century ; he passed at that
time as one of the most distinguished
perfect chaos of contradictory notions.
representatives of the newly-awakened
What, really, is the “soul”? What is
materialism, which appeared in 1855,
its relation to the “mind”? What is the
especially through two famous works,
inner meaning of “ consciousness ”? What
almost contemporaneous in appearance—
is the difference between “ sensation ” and
Ludwig Biichner’s Matter and Force and
“ sentiment ”i* What is “instinct”? What
Carl Vogt’s Superstition and Science.
is the meaning of “ free will ”? What is
Virchow published his general biological
“ presentation ”? What is the difference
between “intellect” and “reason”? What views on the vital processes in man—which
he took to be purely mechanical natural
is the true nature of “ emotion ”? What is
phenomena—in a series of distinguished
the relation between all these “psychic
papers in the first volumes of the Archiv
phenomena” and the “body”? The answers
to these and many other cognate questions fiir pathologische Anatomie, which he
founded. The most important ef these
are infinitely varied ; not only are the views
articles, and the one in which he most
of the most eminent thinkers on these
clearly expresses his monistic views of that
questions widely divergent, but even the
same scientific authority has often com period, is that on “The Tendencies Towards
pletely changed his views in the course of Unity in Scientific Medicine” (1849). It
was certainly not without careful thought,
his psychological development. Indeed,
and a conviction of its philosophic value,
this “psychological metamorphosis ” of so
that Virchow put this “ medical confession
many thinkers has contributed not a little
of faith ” at the head of his Collected Essays
to the colossal confusion of ideas which
on Scientific Medicine in 1856. He defended
prevails in psychology more than in any
in it, clearly and definitely, the funda
other branch of knowledge.
The most interesting example of such an mental principles of monism, which I am
entire change of objective and subjective presenting here with a view to the solution
psychological opinions is found in the case of the world-problem ; he vindicated the
exclusive value of empirical science, of
of the most influential leader of German
which the only reliable sources are sense
philosophy, Immanuel Kant. The young,
D
�34
THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE
and brain activity ; he vigorously attacked
anthropological dualism, the alleged “reve
lation,” and the transcendental philosophy,
with their two methods—“ faith and anthro
pomorphism.” Above all, he emphasised
the monistic character of anthropology, the
inseparable connection of spirit and body,
of force and matter. “ I am convinced,”
he exclaims, at the end of his preface,
“ that I shall never find myself compelled
to deny the thesis of the. unity of human
nature.” Unhappily, this “ conviction ”
proved to be a grave error Twenty-eight
years afterwards Virchow represented the
diametrically opposite view : it is to be
found in the famons speech on “The Liberty
of Science in Modern States,” which he
delivered at the Scientific Congress at
Munich in 1877, and which contains attacks
that I have repelled in my Free Science and
Free Teaching (.1878).
In Emil Du Bois-Reymond we find
similar contradictions with regard to the
most important and fundamental theses of
philosophy. The more completely the
distinguished orator of the Berlin Academy
had defended the main principles of the
monistic philosophy, the more he had con
tributed to the refutation of vitalism and
the transcendental view of life, so much the
louder was the triumphant cry of our
opponents when in 1872, in his famous
Ignorabimus-Speech,}\& spoke of conscious
ness as an insoluble problem, and opposed
it to the other functions of the brain as a
supernatural phenomenon. I return to the
point in the tenth chapter.
The peculiar character of many of the
psychic phenomena, especially of conscious
ness, necessitates certain modifications of
our ordinary scientific methods. We have,
for instance, to associate with the customary
objective, external observation, the intro
spective method, the subjective, internal
observation, which scrutinises our own
personality in the mirror of consciousness.
The majority of psychologists have started
from this “ certainty of the ego ” : “ Cogito,
ergo sum," as Descartes said—I think,
therefore I am, Let us first cast a glance
at this way of inquiry, and then deal with
the second, complementary method.
By far the greater part of the theories of
the soul which have been put forward during
the last 2,000 years or more are based on
introspective inquiry—that is, on “self
observation,” and on the conclusions which
we draw from the association and criticism
of these subjective experiences. Intro
spection is the only possible method of I
inquiry for an important section of
psychology, especially for the study of
consciousness. Hence this cerebral func
tion occupies a special position, and has
been a more prolific source of philosophic
error than any of the others (cf. chap. x.).
It is, however, most unsatisfactory, and it
leads to entirely false or incomplete notions,
to take this self-observation of the mind to
be the chief, or, especially, to be the only,
source of mental science, as has happened
in. the case of many and distinguished
philosophers. A great number of the
principal psychic phenomena, particularly
the activity of the senses and speech,
can only be studied in the same way
as every other vital function of the
organism—that is, firstly by a thorough
anatomical study of their organs, and
secondly by an exact physiological analysis
of the functions which depend on them.
In order, however, to complete this
external study of the mental life and to
supplement the results of internal obser
vation, one needs a thorough knowledge
of human anatomy, histology, ontogeny,
and physiology. Most of our so-called
“ psychologists ” have little or no knowledge
of these indispensable foundations of
anthropology; they are, therefore, incom
petent to pronounce on the character even
of their own “ soul.” It must be remem
bered, too, that the distinguished personality
of one of these psychologists usually offers
a specimen of an educated mind of one of
the highest civilised races ; it is the last
link of a long ancestral chain, and the
innumerable older and inferior links are
indispensable for its proper understanding.
Hence it is that most of the psychological
literature of the day is so much waste paper.
The introspective method is certainly
extremely valuable and indispensable; still
it needs the constant co-operation and
assistance of the other methods.
In proportion as the various branches of
the human tree of knowledge have developed
during the century and the methods of the
different sciences have been perfected, the
desire has grown to make them exact;
that is, to make the study of phenomena as
purely empirical as possible, and to formu
late the resultant laws as clearly as the cir
cumstances permit—if possible, mathema
tically. The latter is, however, only feasible
in a small province of human knowledge,
especially in those sciences in which there
is a question of measurable quantities ; in
mathematics, in the first place, and to a
greater or less extent in astronomy,
�THE NATURE OF THE SOUL
mechanics, and a great part of physics and
Chemistry. Hence these studies are called
“ exact sciences ” in the narrower sense.
It is, however, productive only of error to
call all the physical sciences exact, and
oppose them to the historical, mental, and
moral sciences. The greater part of physical
science can no more be treated as an exact
science than history can ; this is especially
true of biology and of its subsidiary branch,
psychology. As psychology is a part of
physiology, it must, as a general rule,
follow the chief methods of that science.
It must establish the facts of psychic activity
by empirical methods as much as possible,
by observation and experiment, and it must
then gather the laws of the mind by induc
tive and deductive inferences from its
observations, and formulate them with the
utmost distinctness. But, for obvious
reasons, it is rarely possible to formulate
them mathematically. Such a procedure
is only profitable in one section of the
physiology of the senses ; it is not practic
able in the greater part of cerebral
physiology.
One small section of physiology, which
seems amenable to the “ exact ” method of
investigation, has been carefully studied for
the . last twenty years and raised to the
position of a separate science under the
title of psycho-physics. Its founders, the
physiologists Theodor Fechner and Ernst
Heinrich Weber, first of all closely investi
gated the dependence of sensations on the
external stimuli that act on the organs of
sense, and particularly the quantitative rela
tion between the strength of the stimulus
and the intensity of the sensation. They
found that a certain minimum strength of
stimulus is requisite for the excitement of a
sensation, and that a given stimulus must
be varied to a definite amount before there
is any perceptible change in the sensation.
For the highest sensations (of sight, hear
ing, and pressure) the law holds good that
their variations are proportionate to the
changes in the strength of the stimulus.
From this empirical “law of Weber”
Fechner inferred, by mathematical opera
tions, his “fundamental law of psycho
physics,” according to which the intensity
of a sensation increases in arithmetical
progression, the strength of the stimulus
in geometrical progression. However,
Fechner’s law and other psycho-physical
laws are frequently contested, and their
“exactness” is called into question. In
any case modern psycho-physics has fallen
far short of the great hopes with which it
35
was greeted twenty years ago ; the field of
its applicability is extremely limited. One
important result of its work is that it has
proved the application of physical laws in
one, if only a small, branch of the life of
the “ soul ”—an application which was long
ago postulated on principle by the mate
rialist psychology for the whole province of
mental life. In this, as in many other
branches of physiology, the “ exact ”
method has proved inadequate and of little
service. It. is the ideal to aim at every
where ; but it is unattainable in most cases
Much more profitable are the comparative,
and genetic methods.
The striking resemblance of man’s
psychic activity to that of the higher
animals—especially our nearest relatives
among the mammals—is a familiar fact.
Most uncivilised races still make no material
distinction between the two sets of mental
processes, as is proved by the well-known
animal fables, the old legends, and the idea
of the transmigration of souls. Even most
of the philosophers of classical antiquity
shared the same conviction, and discovered
no essential qualitative difference, but
merely a quantitative one, between the soul
of man and that of the brute. Plato him
self, who was the first to draw a funda
mental distinction between soul and body,
made one and the same soul (or “ idea ”)
pass through a number of animal and
human bodies in his theory of metem
psychosis. It. was Christianity, intimately
connecting faith in immortality with faith
in God, that emphasised the essential
difference of the immortal soul of man from
the mortal soul of the brute.
In the
dualistic philosophy the idea prevailed
principally through the influence of Des
cartes (1643); he contended that man
alone had a true “ soul,” and, consequently,
sensation and free will, and that the
animals were mere automata, or machines,
without will or sensibility. Ever since the
majority of psychologists—including even
Kant—have entirely neglected the mental
life, of the brute, and restricted psycho
logical research to man : human psycho?
logy, mainly introspective, dispensed with
the fruitful comparative method, and so
remained at that lower point of view which
human morphology took before - Cuvier
raised it to the position of a “ philosophic
science ” by the foundation of comparative
anatomy.
Scientific interest in the psychic activity
of the brute was revived in the second half
of the last century, in connection with the
�36
THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE
advance of systematic zoology and physio
logy. A strong impulse was given to it by
the work of Reimarus : General Observa
tions on the Instincts of Animals (Ham
burg, 1760). At the same time a deeper
scientific investigation had been facilitated
by the thorough reform of physiology, by
Johannes Müller. This distinguished bio
logist, having a comprehensive knowledge
of the whole field of organic nature, of
morphology and of physiology, introduced
the “ exact methods ” of observation and
experiment into the whole province of
physiology, and, with consummate skill,
combined them with the comparative
methods. He applied them, not only to
mental life in the broader sense (to speech,
senses, and brain-action), but to all the
other phenomena of life. The sixth book
of his Manual of Human Physiology treats
especially of the life of the soul, and con
tains eighty pages of important psycho
logical observations.
During the last forty years a great
number of works on comparative animal
psychology have appeared, principally
occasioned by the great impulse which
Darwin gave in 1859 by his work on The
Origin of Species, and by the application of
the idea of evolution to the province of
psychology. The more important of these
works we owe to Romanes and Sir J.
Lubbock in England; to W. Wundt, L.
Büchner, G. Schneider, Fritz Schulze, and
Karl Groos in Germany; to Alfred Espinas
and E. Jourdan in France; and to Tito
Vignoli in Italy.
In Germany, Wilhelm Wundt of Leipzig
is considered to be the ablest living
psychologist ; he has the inestimable
advantage over most other philosophers
of a thorough zoological, anatomical, and
physiological education. Formerly assis
tant and pupil of Helmholtz, Wundt had
early accustomed himself to follow the
application of the laws of physics and
chemistry through the whole field of
physiology, and, consequently, in the sense
of Johannes Mfiller, in psychology, as a
sub-section of the latter. Starting from
this point of view, Wundt published his
valuable “ Lectures on human and animal
psychology” in 1863. He proved, as he
himself tells us in the preface, that the
theatre of the most important psychic
processes is in the “ unconscious soul,” and
he affords us “ a view of the mechanism
which, in the unconscious background of
the soul, manipulates the impressions which
arise from the external stimuli,” What
seems to me, however, of special import
ance and value in Wundt’s work is that he
“ extends the law of the persistence of force
for the first time to the psychic world, and
makes use of a series of facts of electro
physiology by way of demonstration.”
Thirty years afterwards (1892) Wundt
published a second, much abridged, and
entirely modified edition of his work. The
important principles of the first edition are
entirely abandoned in the second, and the
monistic is exchanged for a purely dualistic
standpoint. Wundt himself says in the
preface to the second edition that he has
emancipated himself from the fundamental
errors of the first, and that he “learned
many years ago to consider the work a sin
of his youth ”; it “ weighed on him as a
kind of crime, from which he longed to
free himself as soon as possible.” In fact,
the most important systems of psychology
are completely opposed to each other in
the two editions of Wundt’s famous Observa
tions. In the first edition he is purely
monistic and materiali tic, in the second
edition purely dualistic and spiritualistic.
In the one psychology is treated as a
physical science, on the same laws as the
whole of physiology, of which it is only a
part ; thirty years afterwards he finds
psychology to be a spiritual science, with
principles and objects entirely different
from those of physical science. This
conversion is most clearly expressed in his
principle of psycho-physical parallelism,
according to which “ every psychic event
has a corresponding physical change ”; but
the two are completely independent, and
are not in any natural causal connection.
This complete dualism of body and soul, of
nature and mind, naturally gave the liveliest
satisfaction to the prevailing school-philo
sophy, and was acclaimed by it as an
important advance, especially seeing that
it came from a distinguished scientist who
had previously adhered to the opposite
system of monism. As I myself continue,
after more than forty years’ study, in this
“ narrow” position, and have not been able
to free myself from it in spite of all my
efforts, I must naturally consider the “youth
ful sin” of the young physiologist Wundt
to be a correct knowledge of nature, and
energetically defend it against the anta
gonistic view of the old philosopher Wundt.
This entire change of philosophical
principles, which we find in Wundt, as
we found it in Kant, Virchow, Du BoisReymond, Carl Ernst Baer, and others,
is very interesting. In their youth these
�THE NATURE OF THE SOUL
able and talented scientists embrace the
whole field of biological research in a broad
gwvey, and make strenuous efforts to find
a unifying, natural basis for their know
ledge ; in their later years they have found
that this is not completely attainable, and
go they entirely abandon the idea. In
extenuation of these psychological metamor
phoses they can, naturally, plead that in
their youth they overlooked the difficulties
of the great task, and misconceived the true
goal; with the maturer judgment of age
and the accumulation of experience they
were convinced of their errors, and dis
covered the true path to the source of
truth. On the other hand, it is possible to
think that great scientists approach their
task with less prejudice and more energy
in their earlier years—that their vision is
Clearer and their judgment purer ; the
experiences of later years sometimes have
the effect, not of enriching, but of disturb
ing, the mind, and with old age there comes
a gradual decay of the brain, just as
happens in all other organs. In any case,
this change of views is in itself an instruc
tive psychological fact; because, like many
other forms of change of opinion, it shows
that the highest psychic functions are
subject to profound individual changes in
the course of life, like all the other vital
processes.
For the profitable construction of com
parative psychology it is extremely important
not to confine the critical comparison to
man and the brute in general, but to put
side by side the innumerable gradations of
their mental activity. Only thus can we
attain a clear knowledge of the long scale of
psychic development which runs unbroken
from the lowest, unicellular forms of life up
to the mammals, and to man at their head.
But even within the limits of our own race
such gradations are very noticeable, and
the ramifications of the “ psychic ancestral
tree ” are very numerous. The psychic
difference between the crudest savage of
the lowest grade and the most perfect
specimen of the highest civilisation is
colossal—much greater than is commonly
supposed. By the due appreciation of this
fact, especially in the latter half of the_
century, the “Anthropology of the uncivilised
races ” has received a strong support, and
comparative ethnography has come to
be considered extremely important for
psychological purposes. Unfortunately, the
enormous quantity of raw material of this
Science has not yet been treated in a satis
factory critical manner. What confused
37
and mystic ideas still prevail in this depart
ment may be seen, for instance, in the
Volkergedanke of the famous traveller,
Adolf Bastian, who, though a prolific writer,
merely turns out a hopeless mass of
uncritical compilation and confused specu
lation.
The most neglected of all psychological
methods, even up to the present day, is the
evolution of the soul ; yet this littlefrequented path is precisely the one that
leads us most quickly and securely through
the gloomy primeval forest of psychological
prejudices, dogmas, and errors, to a clear
insight into many of the chief psychic
problems. As I did in the other branch of
organic evolution, I again put before the
reader the two great branches of the science
which I differentiated in 1866—ontogeny
and phylogeny. The ontogeny, or embry
onic development, of the soul, individual or
biontic psychegeny, investigates the gradual
and hierarchic development of the soul in
the individual, and seeks to learn the laws
by which it is controlled. For a great part
of the life of the mind a good deal has been
done in this direction for centuries ; rational
pedagogy must have at an early date set
itself the task of the theoretical study of
gradual development and formative capacity
of the young mind that was committed to
it for education and formation. Most
pedagogues, however, were idealistic or
dualistic philosophers, and so they went to
work with all the prejudices of the spiri
tualistic psychology. It is only in the last
few decades that this dogmatic tendency
has been largely superseded even in the
school by scientific methods ; we now find
a greater concern to apply the chief laws
of evolution even in the discussion of the
soul of the child. The raw material of the
child’s soul is already qualitatively deter
mined by heredity from parents and ances
tors ; education has the noble task of
bringing it to a perfect maturity by intellec
tual instruction and moral training—that is,
by adaptation. Wilhelm Preyer was the
first to lay the foundation of our knowledge
of the early psychic development in his
interesting work on The Mind of the Child.
Much is still to be done in the study of the
later stages and metamorphoses of the
individual soul, and once more the correct,
critical application of the biogenetic law is
proving a guiding star to the scientific
mind.
A new and fertile epoch of higher develop
ment dawned for psychology and all
other biological sciences when Charles
�38
THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE
Darwin applied the principles of evolution
to them forty years ago. The seventh
chapter of his epoch-making work on The
Origin of Species is devoted to instinct.
It contains the valuable proof that the
instincts of animals are subject, like all
other vital processes, to the general laws of
historic development. The special instincts
of particular species were formed by adap
tation^ and the modifications thus, acquired
were handed on to posterity by heredity;
in their formation and preservation natural
selection plays the same part as in the
transformation of every other physiological
function. Darwin afterwards developed
this fundamental thought in a number of
works, showing that the same laws of
“ mental evolution ” hold good throughout
the entire organic world, not less in man
than in the brute, and even in the plant.
Hence the unity of the organic world,
which is revealed by the common origin of
its members, applies also to the entire
province of pyschic life, from the simplest
unicellular organism up to man.
To George Romanes we owe the further
development of Darwin’s psychology and
its special application to the different
sections of psychic activity. The two
volumes of his work on evolutionary psy
chology which were completed are among
the most valued productions of psycho
logical literature. For, conformably to the
principles of our modern monistic research,
his first care was to collect and arrange all
the important facts which have been
empirically established in the field of com
parative psychology in the course of
centuries ; in the second place, these facts
are tested with an objective criticism, and
systematically distributed; finally, such
rational conclusions are drawn from them
on the chief general questions of psychology
as are in harmony with the fundamental
principles of modern monism. The first
volume of Romanes’s work bears the title
of Menial Evolution in the Animal World;
it presents, in natural connection, the entire
length of the chain of psychic evolution in
the animal world, from the simplest sensa
tions and instincts of the lowest animals to
the elaborate phenomena of consciousness
and reason in the highest. It contains
also a number of extracts from a manuscript
which Darwin left “ on instinct,” and a
complete collection of all that he wrote in
the province of psychology.
The second and more important volume
of Romanes’s work treats of “ Mental evolu
tion in man and the origin of human
faculties.” The distinguished psychologist
gives a convincing proof in it “that the
psychological barrier between man and
the brute has been overcome.” Man’s
power of conceptual thought and of
abstraction has been gradually evolved
from the non-conceptual stages of thought
and ideation in the nearest related mammals.
Man’s highest mental powers -— reason,
speech, and conscience—have arisen from
the lower stages of the same faculties in
our primate ancestors (the simias and
prosimiae). Man has no single mental
faculty which is his exclusive prerogative.
His whole psychic life differs from that of
the nearest related mammals only in
degree, and not in kind; quantitatively,
not qualitatively.
I recommend those of my readers who are
interested in these momentous questions of
psychology to study the profound work of
Romanes. I am completely at one with
him and Darwin in almost all their views
and convictions. Wherever an apparent
discrepancy is found between these authors
and my earlier productions, it is either a
case of imperfect expression on my part or
an unimportant difference in application of
principle. For the rest, it is characteristic
of this “ science of ideas ” that the most
eminent philosophers hold entirely antago
nistic views on its fundamental notions.
CHAPTER VII.
PSYCHIC GRADATIONS
Psychological unity of organic nature. Material
basis of the soul.: psychoplasm. Scale of
sensation. Scale of movement. Scale of
reflex action. Simple and compound reflex
action. Reflex action and consciousness.
Scale of perception. Unconscious and con
scious perception. Scale of memory. Un
conscious and conscious memory. Association
of perceptions.
Instinct.
Primary and
secondary instincts. Scale of reason. Lan
guage. Emotion and passion. The will.
Freedom of the will.
The great progress which psychology has
made, with the assistance of evolution, in
the latter half of the century culminates in
the recognition of the psychological unity of
the organic world. Comparative psycho
logy, in co-operation with the ontogeny
�PSYCHIC GRADATIONS
and phylogeny of the psyche, has enforced
the conviction that organic life in all its
stages, from the simplest unicellular protozoon up to man, springs from the same
elementary forces of nature, from the
physiological functions of sensation and
movement. The future task of scientific
psychology, therefore, is not, as it once was,
the exclusively subjective and introspective
analysis of the highly-developed mind of a
philosopher, but the objective, comparative
study of the long gradation by which man
has slowly arisen through avast series of
lower animal conditions. This great task
of separating the different steps in the
psychological ladder, and proving their
unbroken phylogenetic connection, has
only been seriously attempted during the
last ten years, especially in the splendid
work of Romanes. We must confine
ourselves here to a brief discussion of a
few of the general questions which that
gradation has suggested.
All the phenomena of the psychic life are,
without exception, bound up with certain
material changes in the living substance of
the body, the protoplasm. We have given
to that part of the protoplasm which seems
to be the indispensable substratum of psychic
life the name of psychoplasm (the “ soul-substance,” in the monistic sense); in other
words, we do not attribute any peculiar
“ essence ” to it, but we consider the psyche
to be merely a collective idea ofall thepsychic
functions of protoplasm. In this sense the
“ soul ” is merely a physiological abstraction
like “assimilation” or “generation.” In
man and the higher animals, in accordance
with the division of labour of the organs
and tissues, the psychoplasm is a differen
tiated part of the nervous system, the
neuroplasm of the ganglionic cells and their
fibres. In the lower animals, however,
which have no special nerves and organs of
sense, and in the plants, the psychoplasm has
not yet reached an independent differentia
tion. Finally, in the unicellular protists, the
psychoplasm is identified either with the
whole of the living protoplasm of the simple
cell or with a portion of it. In all cases, in
the lowest as well as the highest stages of
the psychological hierarchy, a certain chemi
cal composition and a certain physical
activity of the psychoplasm are indispensable
before the “ soul ” can function or act. That
is equally true of the elementary psychic
function of the plasmatic sensation and
movement of the protozoa, and of the com
plex functions of the sense-organs and the
brain in the higher animals and man. The
$
activity of the psychoplasm, which we call
the “ soul,” is always connected with meta
bolism.
All living organisms, without exception,
are sensitive ; they are influenced by the
condition of their environment, and react
thereon by certain modifications in their
own structure. Light and heat, gravity and
electricity, mechanical processes and chemi
cal action in the environment, act as stimuli
on the sensitive psychoplasm, and effect
changes in its molecular composition. We
may distinguish the following five chief
stages of this sensibility :—
I. —At the lowest stage of organisation
the whole psychoplasm, as such, is sensitive,
and reacts on the stimuli from without;
that is the case with the lowest protists,
with many plants, and with some of the
most rudimentary animals.
II. —At the second stage very simple
and undiscriminating sense-organs begin
to appear on the surface of the organism,
in the form of protoplasmic filaments and
pigment spots, the forerunners of the nerves
of touch and the eyes ; these are found in
some of the higher protists, and in many
of the lower animals and plants.
III. —At the third stage specific organs of
sense, each with a peculiar adaptation, have
arisen by differentiation out of these rudi
mentary processes : there are the chemical
instruments of smell and taste, and the
physical organs of touch, temperature,
hearing, and sight. The “ specific energy ”
of these sense-organs is not an original
inherent property, but has been gained
by functional adaptation and progressive
heredity.
IV. —The fourth stage is characterised
by the centralisation or integration of the
nervous system, and, consequently, of sensa
tion ; by the association of the previously
isolated or localised sensations presentations
arise, though they still remain unconscious.
That is the condition of many both of the
lower and the higher animals.
V. —Finally, at the fifth stage, the highest
psychic function, conscious perception, is
developed by the mirroring of the sensations
in a central part of the nervous system, as
we find in man and the higher vertebrates,
and probably in some of the higher inver
tebrates, notably the articulata.
All living organisms without exception
have the faculty of spontaneous movement,
in contradistinction to the rigidity and
inertia of unorganised substances (e.g.,
crystals); in other words, certain changes
of place of the particles occur in the living
�40
THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE.
psychoplasm from internal causes, which
have their source in its own chemical com
position. These active vital movements are
partly discovered by direct observation and
partly only known indirectly, by inference
from their effects. We may distinguish
five stages of them.
I. —At the lowest stage of organic life, in
the chromacea, and many protophyta and
lower metaphyta, we perceive only those
movements of growth which are common
to all organisms. They are usually so slow
that they cannot be directly observed ; they
have to be inferred from their results—from
the change in size and form of the growing
organism.
II. —Many protists, particularly unicellu
lar algae of the groups of diatomacea and
desmidiacea, accomplish a kind of creeping
or swimming motion by excretion, or by
ejecting a slimy substance at one side.
III. —Other organisms which float in
water—for instance, many of the radiolaria,
siphonophora, ktenophora, and others—
ascend and descend by altering their specific
gravity, sometimes by osmosis, sometimes
by the separation or squeezing-out of air.
IV. —Many plants, especially the sensitive
plants (mimosa) and other papilionacea,
effect movements of their leaves or other
Organs by change of pressure—that is, they
alter the strain of the protoplasm, and,
consequently, its pressure on the enclosing
elastic walls of the cells.
V. —The most important of all organic
movements are the-phenomena ofcontraction
—i.e., changes of form at the surface of the
organism, which are dependent on a twofold
displacement of their elements ; they always
involve two different conditions or phases
of motion—contraction and expansion.
Four different forms of this plasmatic con
traction may be enumerated :—
(a) Amoeboid movement (in rhizopods,
blood-cells, pigment-cells, etc.).
(b) A similar flow of protoplasm within
enclosed cells.
(c) Vibratory motion (ciliary movements)
in infusoria, spermatozoa, ciliated epi
thelial cells.
(d) Muscular movement (in most ani
mals).
The elementary psychic activity that
arises from the combination of sensation
and movement is called reflex (in the widest
sense), reflective function, or reflex action.
The movement—-no matter what kind it is
—seems in this case to be the immediate
result of the stimulus which evoked the
sensation ; it has, on that account, been
called stimulated motion in its simplest
form (in the protists). All living proto
plasm has this feature of irritability. Any
physical or chemical change in the environ
ment may, in certain circumstances, act as
a stimulus on the psychoplasm, and elicit
or “release” a movement. We shall see
later on how this important physical concept
of “releasing ” directly connects the simplest
organic reflex actions with similar mechani
cal phenomena of movement in the inor
ganic world (for instance, in the explosion
of powder by a spark, or of dynamite by a
blow). We may distinguish the following
seven stages in the scale of reflex action :—■
I. —At the lowest stage of organisation,
in the lowest protists, the stimuli of the
outer world (heat, light, electricity, etc.)
cause in the indifferent protoplasm only
those indispensable movements of growth
and nutrition which are common to all
organisms, and are absolutely necessary for
their preservation. That is also the case
in most of the plants.
II. —In the case of many freely-moving
protists (especially the amoeba, the heliozoon, and the rhizopod) the stimuli from
without produce on every spot of the un
protected surface of the unicellular organism
external movements which take the form of
changes of shape, and sometimes changes
of place (amoeboid movement, pseudopod
formation, the extension and withdrawal of
what look like feet); these indefinite, varia
ble processes of the protoplasm are not yet
permanent organs. In the same way,
general organic irritability takes the form
of indeterminate reflex action in the sensi
tive plants and the lowest metazoa ; in many
multicellular organisms the stimuli may be
conducted from one cell to another, as all
the cells are connected by fine fibres.
III. —Many protists, especially the more
highly-developed protozoa, produce on their
unicellular body two little organs of the
simplest character—an organ of touch and
an organ of movement. Both these instru
ments are direct external projections of
protoplasm ; the stimulus, which alights on
the first, is immediately conducted to the
other by the psychoplasm of the unicellular
body, and causes it to contract. This
phenomenon is particularly easy to observe,
and even produce experimentally, in many
of the stationary infusoria (for instance, the
poteriodendron among the flagellata, and
the vorticella among the ciliata). The
faintest stimulus that touches the extremely
sensitive hairs, or cilia, at the free end of
the cells, immediately causes a contraction
�PSYCHIC GRADATIONS
of a thread-like stalk at the other, fixed end.
This phenomenon is known as a “simple
reflex arch.”
IV. —These phenomena of the unicellular
organism of the infusoria lead on to the
interesting mechanism of the neuro-muscular cells, which we find in the multicellular
body of many of thelower metazoa, especially
in the cnidaria (polyps and corals). Each
single neuro-muscular cell is a “ unicellular
reflex organ” ; it has on its surface a sensi
tive spot, and a motor muscular fibre inside
at the opposite end ; the latter contracts as
soon as the former is stimulated.
V. —In other cnidaria, notably in the
free swimming medusae—which are closely
related to the stationary polyps—the simple
neuro-muscular cell becomes two different
cells, connected by a filament: an external
tense-cell (in the outer skin) and an internal
muscular cell (under the skin). In this
bicellular reflex organ the one cell is the
rudimentary organ of sensation, the other
of movement; the connecting bridge of the
psychoplasmic filament conducts the stimu
lus from one to the other.
VI. —The most important step in the
gradual construction of thereflex mechanism
is the division into three cells ; in the place
of the simple connecting bridge we spoke
of there appears a third independent cell,
the soul-cell., or ganglionic cell; with it
appears also a new psychic function, uncon
scious presentation, which has its seat in
this cell. The stimulus is first conducted
from the sensitive cell to this intermediate
presentative or psychic cell, and then issued
from this to the motor muscular-cell as a
mandate of movement. These tricellular
reflex organs are preponderantly developed
in the great majority of the invertebrates.
VII. —Instead of this arrangement we
find in most of the vertebrates a quadricellular reflex organ, two distinct “soul-cells,”
instead of one, being inserted between the
sensitive cell and the motor cell. The
external stimulus, in this case, is first con
ducted centripetally to the sensitive cell (the
sensible psychic cell), from this to the 'will
cell (the motor psychic cell), and from this,
finally, to the contractile muscular cell.
When many such reflex organs combine
and new psychic cells are interposed we
have the intricate reflex mechanism of man
and the higher vertebrates.
The important distinction which we make,
in morphology and physiology, between uni
cellular and multicellular organisms holds
good for their elementary psychic activity,
reflex action. In the unicellular protists
4i
(both the plasmodomous primitive plants,
orprotophy ta, and the plasmophagous primi
tive animals, or protozoal) the whole physical
process of reflex action takes place in the
protoplasm of one single cell; their “ cell
soul ” seems to be a unifying function of the
psychoplasm of which the various phases
only begin to be seen separately when the
differentiation of special organs sets in.
The second stage of psychic activity,
compound reflex action, begins with the
cenoptic protists (eg., the volvox and the
carchesium). The innumerable social cells,
which make up this cell-community or ccenobium, are always more or less connected,
often directly connected by filamentous
bridges or protoplasm. A stimulus that
alights on one or more cells of the community
is communicated to the rest by means of
the connecting fibres, and may produce a
general contraction. This connection is
found, also, in the tissues of the multicellular
animals and plants. It was erroneously
believed at one time that the cells of vegetal
tissue were completely isolated from each
other, but we have now discovered fine
filaments of protoplasm throughout, which
penetrate the thick membranes of the cells,
and maintain a material and psychological
communication between their living plasmic
contents. That is the explanation of the
mimosa : when the tread of the passer-by
shakes the root of the plant, the stimulus is
immediately conveyed to all the cells, and
causes a general contraction of its tender
leaves and a drooping of the stems.
An important and universal feature of
all reflex phenomena is the absence of
consciousness.
For reasons which we
shall give in the tenth chapter we only
admit the presence of consciousness in
man and the higher animals, not in plants,
the lower animals, and the protists ; conse
quently all stimulated movements in the
latter must be regarded as reflex—that is,
all movements which are not spontaneous,
not the outcome of internal causes (impul
sive and automatic movements).1 It is
different with the higher animals which
have developed a centralised nervous
system and elaborate sense-organs.
In
these cases consciousness has been gradu
ally evolved from the psychic reflex activity,
and nowconscious, voluntary action appears,
in opposition to the still continuing reflex
action below. However, we must distinguish
two different processes, as we did in the
1 Cf. Max Verworn, Psychophysiologische
Prolisten-Sludien, pp. 135, 140.
�42
THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE
question of instinct—primary and secondary
reflex action. Primary reflex actions are
those which have never reached the stage
of consciousness in phyletic development,
and thus preserve the primitive character
(by heredity from lower animal forms).
Secondary reflex actions are those which
were conscious, voluntary actions in our
ancestors, but which afterwards became
unconscious from habit or the lapse of
consciousness. It is impossible to draw a
hard and fast line in such cases between
conscious and unconscious psychic function.
Older psychologists (Herbart, for instance)
considered “presentation” to be the funda
mental psychic phenomenon, from which
all the others are derived. Modern com
parative psychology endorses this view in
so far as it relates to the idea of unconscious
presentation; but it considers conscious
presentation to be a secondary phenomenon
of mental life, entirely wanting in plants
and the lower animals, and only developed
in the higher animals. Among the many
contradictory definitions which psychologists
have given of “ presentation,” we think the
best is that which makes it consist in an
internal picture of the external object which
is given us in sensation—an “ idea ” in the
broader sense. We may distinguish the
following four stages in the rising scale of
presentative function :—
I. Cellular presentation.—At the lowest
stages we find presentation to be a general
physiological property of psychoplasm;
even in the simplest unicellular protist
sensations may leave a permanent trace
in the psychoplasm, and these may be
reproduced by memory. In more than
four thousand kinds of radiolaria, which I
have described, every single species is
distinguished by a special, hereditary
skeletal structure. The construction of
this specific, and often highly elaborate,
skeleton by a cell of the simplest descrip
tion (generally globular) is only intelligible
when we attribute the faculty of presenta
tion, and, indeed, of a special reproduction
of the plastic “ feeling of distance,” to the
constructive protoplasm—as I have pointed
out in my Psychology of the Radiolaria.'
II. Histionic presentation.—I n th e coenobia or cell-colonies of the social protists,
and still better in the tissues [in the Greek,
technical term, hista ; hence the name
histionic} of plants and lower, nerveless
animals (sponges, polyps, etc.), we find the
1 E. Haeckel, “ General Natural History of
the Radiolaria”; 1887.
second stage of unconscious presentation,
which consists of the common psychic
activity of a number of closely connected
cells. If a single stimulus may, instead of
simply spending itself in the reflex move
ment of an organ (the leaf of a plant, for
instance, or the arm of a polyp), leave a
permanent impression, which can be
spontaneously reproduced later on, we are
bound to assume, in explaining the pheno
menon, a histionic presentation, dependent
on the psychoplasm of the associated tissue
cells.
III. Unconscious presentation in the
ganglionic cells.—This third and higher
stage of presentation is the commonest
form the function takes in the animal world;
it seems to be a localisation of presentation
in definite “ soul-cells.” In its simplest form
it appears at the sixth stage of reflex action,
when the tricellular reflex organ arises :
the seat of presentation is then the inter
mediate psychic cell, which is interposed
between the sensitive cell and the muscular
cell. With the increasing development of
the animal nervous system and its progres
sive differentiation and integration, this
unconscious presentation also rises to
higher stages.
IV. Conscious presentation in the cerebral
cells.—With the highest stage of develop
ment of the animal organisation conscious
ness arises, as a special function of a certain
central organ of the nervous system. As
the presentations are conscious, and as
special parts of the brain arise for the
association of these conscious presentations,
the organism is qualified for those highest
psychic functions which we call thought
and reflection, intellect and reason. Although
the tracing of the phyletic barrier between
the older, unconscious and the younger,
conscious presentation is extremely difficult,
we can affirm, with some degree of proba
bility, that the evolution of the latter from
the former was polyphyletic [that is to say,
took place along a number of independent
lines] ; because we find conscious and
rational thought, not only in the highest
forms of the vertebrate stem (man,
mammals, birds, and a part of the lower
vertebrates), but also in the most highly
developed representatives of other animal
groups (ants and other insects, spiders and
the higher crabs among the articulata,
cephalopods among the mollusca).
The evolutionary scale of memory is
closely connected with that of presentation;
this extremely important function of the
psychoplasm—the condition of all further
�PSYCHIC GRADATIONS
psychic development—consists essentially
in the reproduction of presentations. The
impressions in the bioplasm, which the
Stimulus produced as sensations, and which
became presentations in remaining, are
revived by memory ; they pass from poten
tiality to actuality. The latent potential
energy of the psychoplasm is transformed
into kinetic energy. We may distinguish
four stages in the upward development of
memory, corresponding to the four stages
of presentation.
I. Cellular Memory.—Thirty years ago
Ewald Hering, in a thoughtful work,
showed “ memory to be a general property
of organised matter,” and indicated the
great significance of this function, “ to
which we owe almost all that we are and
have.” Six years later, in my work on The
Perigenesis of the Plastidule, or the Undulatory Origin of the Parts of Life, I
developed these ideas, and endeavoured to
base them on the principles of evolution.
I have attempted to show in that work
that unconscious memory is a universal and
very important function of all plastidulesj
that is, of those hypothetical molecules, or
groups of molecules, which Naegeli has
called micella, others bioplasts, and so
forth. Only living plastidules, as indi
vidual molecules of the active protoplasm,
are reproductive, and so gifted with
memory; that is the chief difference
between the organic and inorganic worlds.
It might be stated thus : “ Heredity is the
memory of the plastidule, while variability
is its comprehension.” The elementary
memory of the unicellular protist is made
up of the molecular memory of. the
plastidules or micelles, of which its livmg
cell-body is constructed. As regards the
extraordinary performances of unconscious
memory in these unicellular protists,
nothing could be more instructive than the
infinitely varied and regular formation of
their defensive apparatus, their shells and
skeletons ; in particular, the diatomes and
cosmaria among the protophytes, and the
radiolaria and thalamorphora among the
protozoa, afford an abundance of most
interesting illustrations. In many thou
sand species of these protists the specific
form which is inherited is relatively con
stant, and proves the fidelity of their uncon
scious cellular memory.
II. Histionic memory.—Equally interest
ing examples of the second stage of
memory, the unconscious memory of
tissues, are found in the heredity of the
individual organs of plants and the lower.
43
nerveless animals (sponges, etc.). This
second stage seems to be a reproduction of
the histionic presentations, that association
of cellular presentations which sets in with
the formation of ccenobia in the social
protists.
III. —In the same way we must regard
the third stage, the unconscious memory of
those animals which have a nervous system,
as a reproduction of the corresponding “un
conscious presentations” which are stored
up in certain ganglionic cells. In most of
the lower animals all memory is uncon
scious. Moreover, even in man and the
higher animals, to whom we must ascribe
consciousness, the daily acts of unconscious
memory are much more numerous and
varied than those of the conscious faculty.;
we shall easily convince ourselves of that if
we make an impartial study of a thousand
unconscious acts we perform daily out of
habit, and without thinking of them, in
walking, speaking, writing, eating, and so
forth.
IV. —Conscious memory, which is the
work of certain brain-cells in man and the
higher animals, is an “ internal mirroring”
of very late development, the highest out
come of the same psychic reproduction of
presentations which were mere unconscious
processes in the ganglionic cells of our
lower animal ancestors.
The concatenation of presentations—
usually called the association of ideas—
also runs through a long scale, from the
lowest to the highest stages. This, too, is
originally and predominantly unconscious
(“ instinct ”) ; only in the higher classes of
animals does it gradually become conscious
(“ reason ”). The psychic results of this
“association of ideas” are extremely varied;
still, a very long, unbroken line of gradual
development connects the simplest uncon
scious association of the lowest protist with
the elaborate conscious chain of ideas of
the civilised man. The unity of conscious
ness in man is given as its highest outcome
(Hume, Condillac). All higher mental
activity becomes more perfect in proportion
as the normal association extends to more
numerous presentations, and in proportion
to the order which is imposed on them by
the “criticism of pure reason.” In dreams,
where this criticism is absent, the associa
tion of the reproduced impressions often
takes the wildest forms. Even in the work
of the poetic imagination, which constructs
new groups of images by varying the
association of the impressions received,
and in hallucinations, etc., they are after;
�44
THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE
most unnaturally arranged, anS seem to the portion as reason makes progress at their
expense.
prosaic observer to be perfectly irrational.
The two chief classes of instincts to be
This is especially true of supernatural
“ forms of belief,” the apparitions of differentiated are the primary and the
spiritism, and the fantastic notions of the secondary. Primary instincts are the
transcendental dualist philosophy ; though common lower impulses which are uncon
it is precisely these abnormal associations scious and inherent in the psychoplasm
of “faith” and of “revelation” that have from the commencement of organic life ;
often been deemed the greatest treasures of especially the impulses to self-preservation
(by defence and maintenance) and to the
the human mind (cf. chap. xvi.).
The antiquated psychology of the Middle preservation of the species (by generation
Ages (which, however, still numbers many and the care of the young). Both these
adherents) considered' the mental life of fundamental instincts of organic life, hunger
man and that of the brute to be two and love, sprang up originally in perfect
entirely different phenomena ; the one it unconsciousness, without any co-operation
attributed to “ reason,” the other to of the intellect or reason. It is otherwise
“ instinct.” In harmony with the tradi with the secondary instincts. These were
tional story of creation, it was assumed due originally to an intelligent adaptation,
that each animal species had received a to rational thought and resolution, and to
definite, unconscious psychic force from the purposive conscious action. Gradually,
however, they became so automatic that
Creator at its formation, and that this
this “ other nature ” acted unconsciously,
instinct of each species was just as
and, even through the action of heredity,
unchangeable as its bodily structure.
seemed to be “innate” in subsequent
Lamarck proved the untenableness of this
error in 1809 by establishing the theory of generations. The consciousness and deli
descent, and Darwin completely demolished beration which originally accompanied
it in 1859. With the aid of his theory of these particular instincts of the higher
selection he proved the following important animals and man have died away in the
course of the life of the plastidules (as in
theses
1. The instincts of species showindividual “abridged heredity”). The unconscious
differences, and are just as subject to modi purposive actions of the higher animals
fication under the law of adaptation as (for instance, their mechanical instincts)
the morphological features of their bodily thus come to appear in the light of innate
impulses. We have to explain in the same
structure.
2. These modifications (generally arising way the origin of the “ h priori ideas ” of
from a change of habits) are partly trans man ; they were originally formed empiri
cally by his predecessors.1
mitted to offspring by heredity, and thus
In the superficial psychological treatises
accumulate and are accentuated in the
which ignore the mental activity of animals
course of generations.
3. Selection, both artificial and natural, and attribute to man only a “ true soul,” we
singles out certain of these inherited modi find him credited also with the exclusive
fications of the psychic activity ; it preserves possession of reason and consciousness.
the most useful and rejects the least This is another trivial error (still to be found
in many a manual, nevertheless) which the
adaptive.
4. The divergence of psychic character comparative psychology of the last forty
which thus arises leads, in the course of years has entirely dissipated. The higher
generations, to the formation of new vertebrates (especially those mammals
instincts, just as the divergence of morpho which are most nearly related to man) have
logical character gives rise to new species. just as good a title to “reason” as man
Darwin’s theory of instinct is now himself, and within the limits of the animal
accepted by most biologists ; Romanes has world there is the same long chain of the
treated it so ably, and so greatly expanded gradual development of reason as in the
it in his distinguished work on Mental case of humanity. The difference between
the reason of a Goethe, a Kant, a Lamarck,
Evolution in the Animal World, that I
need merely refer to it here. I will only or a Darwin, and that of the lowest savage,
venture the brief statement that, in my a Veddah, an Akka, a native Australian, or
opinion, there are instincts in all organisms a Patagonian, is much greater than the
—-in all the protists and plants as well as in graduated difference between the reason of
all the animals and in man ; though in
1 Fzifc The Natural History of Creation.
the latter they tend to disappear in pro
�PSYCHIC GRADATIONS
the latter and that of the most “ rational ”
mammals, the anthropoid apes, or even the
papiomorpha, the dog, or the ■ elephant.
This important thesis has been convinc
ingly proved by the thoroughly critical
comparative work of Romanes and others.
We shall not, therefore, attempt to cover
that ground here, nor to enlarge on the
distinction between the reason and the
intellect; as to the meaning and limits of
these concepts philosophic experts give the
most contradictory definitions, as they do
on so many other fundamental questions of
psychology. In general it may be said that
the process of the formation of concepts,
which is common to both these cerebral
functions, is confined to the narrower circle
of concrete, proximate associations in the
intellect, but reaches out to the wider circle
of abstract and more comprehensive groups
of associations in the work of reason. In
the long gradation which connects the
reflex actions and the instincts of the lower
animals with the reason of the highest,
intellect precedes the latter. And there is
the fact, of great importance to our whole
psychological treatise, that even these
highest of our mental faculties are just as
much subject to the laws of heredity and
adaptation as are their respective organs ;
Flechsig pointed out in 1894 that the
organs of thought,” in man and the
higher mammals, are those parts of the
cortex of the brain which lie between the
four inner sense-centres (cf. chapters x.
and xi.).
The higher grade of development of
ideas, of intellect and reason, which raises
man so much above the brute, is intimately
connected with the rise of language. Still,
here also we have to recognise a long chain
of evolution which stretches unbroken from
the lowest to the highest stages. Speech
is no more an exclusive prerogative of man
than reason. In the wider sense, it is a
common feature of all the higher gregarious
animals, at least of all the articulata and
the vertebrates, which live in communities
or herds ; they need it for the purpose of
understanding each other and communi
cating their impressions. This is effected
either by touch, or by signs, or by sounds
having a definite meaning. The song of
the bird or of the anthropoid ape {hylobates},
the bark of the dog, the neigh of the horse,
the chirp of the cricket, the cry of the
cicada, are all specimens of animal speech.
Only in man, however, has that articulate
conceptual speech developed which has
enabled his reason to attain such high
45
achievements. Comparative philology, one
of the most interesting sciences that has
arisen during the century, has shown that
the numerous elaborate languages of the
different nations have been slowly and
gradually evolved from a few simple primi
tive tongues (Wilhelm Humboldt, Bopp,
Schleicher, Steinthal, and others). August
Schleicher of Jena, in particular, has
proved that the historical development of
language takes place under the same phylo
genetic laws as the evolution of other
physiological faculties and their organs.
Romanes (1893) has expanded this proof,
and amply demonstrated that human
speech, also, differs from that of the brute
only in degree of development, not in
essence and kind.
The important group of psychic activities
which we embrace under the name of
“ emotion ” plays a conspicuous part both
in theoretical and practical psychology.
From our point of view they have a peculiar
importance, from the fact that we clearly
see in them the direct connection of cerebral
functions with other physiological functions
(the beat of the heart, sense-action, muscular
movement, etc.); they, therefore, prove the
unnatural and untenable character of the
philosophy which would essentially dis
sociate psychology from physiology. All
the external expressions of emotional life
which we find in man are also present in
the higher animals (especially in the
anthropoid ape and the dog); however
varied their development may be, they are
all derived from the two elementary functions
of the psyche, sensation and motion, and
from their combination in reflex action and
presentation. To the province of sensation,
in a wide sense, we must attribute the
feeling of like and dislike which determines
the emotion; while the corresponding desire
and aversion (love and hatred), the effort
to attain what is liked and avoid what is
disliked, belong to the category of move
ment. “Attraction” and “ repulsion” seem
to be the sources of vjill, that momentous
element of the soul which determines the
character of the individual. The passions,
which play so important a part in the
psychic life of man, are but intensifications
of emotion. Romanes has recently shown
that these also are common to man and
the brute. Even at the lowest stage of
organic life we find in all the protists those
elementary feelings of like and dislike,
revealing themselves in what are called
their tropisms, in the striving after light or
darkness, heat or cold, and in their different
�46
THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE
relations to positive and negative electricity.
On the other hand, we find at the highest
stage of psychic life, in civilised man, those
finer shades of emotion, of delight and
disgust, of love and hatred, which are the
mainsprings of civilisation and the inex
haustible sources of poetry. Yet a con
necting chain of all conceivable gradations
unites the most primitive elements of
feeling in the psychoplasm of the unicellular
protist with the highest forms of passion
that rule in the ganglionic cells of the
cortex of the human brain. That the latter
are absolutely amenable to physical laws
was proved long ago by the great Spinoza
in his famous Statics of Emotion.
The notion of will has as many different
meanings and definitions as most other
psychological notions—presentation, soul,
mind, and so forth. Sometimes will is
taken in the widest sense as a cosmic
attribute, as in the “World as will and
presentation ” of Schopenhauer; sometimes
it is taken in its narrowest sense as an
anthropological attribute, the exclusive
prerogative of man—as Descartes taught,
for instance, who considered the brute to
be a mere machine, without will or sensa
tion. In the ordinary use of the term,
will is derived from the phenomena of
voluntary movement, and is thus regarded
as a psychic attribute of most animals.
But when we examine the will in the light
of comparative physiology and evolution,
we find—as we do in the case of sensation
—that it is a universal property of living
psychoplasm. The automatic and the
reflex movements which we observe every
where, even in the unicellular protists,
seem to be the outcome of inclinations
which are inseparably connected with the
very idea of life. Even in the plants and
lowest animals these inclinations, or
tropisms, seem to be the joint outcome of
the inclinations of all the combined indi
vidual cells.
But when the “ tricellular reflex organ ”
arises (page 41), and a third independent
cell—the “psychic,” or “ganglionic,” cell
—is interposed between the sense-cell and
the motor-cell, we have an independent
elementary organ of will. In the lower
animals, however, this will remains un
conscious. It is only when consciousness
arises in the higher animals, as the sub
jective mirror of the objective, though,
internal, processes in the neuroplasm of
the psychic cells, that the will reaches that
highest stage which likens it in character
to the human will, and which, in the cage
of man, assumes in common parlance the
predicate of “ liberty.” Its free dominion
and action become more and more decep
tive as the muscular system and the sense
organs develop with a free and rapid
locomotion, entailing a correlative evolution
of the brain and the organs of thought.
The question of the liberty of the will is
the one which has more than any other
cosmic problem occupied the time of
thoughtful humanity, the more so that in
this case the great philosophic interest of
the question was enhanced by the associa
tion of most momentous consequences for
practical philosophy—for ethics, education,
law, and so forth. Emil du Bois-Reymond,
who treats it as the seventh and last of his
“ seven cosmic problems,” rightly says of
the question : “Affecting everybody, appa
rently accessible to everybody, intimately
involved in the fundamental conditions of
human society, vitally connected with
religious belief, this question has been of
immeasurable importance in the history of
civilisation. There is- probably no other
object of thought on which the modern
library contains so many dusty folios that
will never again be opened.” The impor
tance of the question is also seen in the
fact that Kant put it in the same category
with the questions of the immortality of the
soul and belief in God. He called these
three great questions the indispensable
“postulates of practical reason,’ though he
had already clearly shown them to have
no reality whatever in the light of pure
reason.
The most remarkable fact in connection
with this fierce and confused struggle over
the freedom of the will is, perhaps, that it
has been theoretically rejected, not only by
the greatest critical philosophers, but even
by their extreme opponents, and yet it is
still affirmed to be self-evident by the
majority of people’. Some of the first
teachers of the Christian Churches—such
as St. Augustine and Calvin—rejected the
freedom of the will as decisively as the
famous leaders of pure materialism, Holbach
in the eighteenth and Büchner in the nine
teenth century. Christian theologians deny
it, because it is irreconcilable with their
belief in the omnipotence of God and in
predestination. God, omnipotent and
omniscient, saw and willed all things from
eternity—he must, consequently, have pre
determined the conduct of man. If man,
with his free will, were to act otherwise
than God had ordained, God would not be
all-mighty and all-knowing. In the same
�THE EMÎBRYOLOGŸ OF THE SOUL
sense Leibnitz, too, was an unconditional
determinist. The monistic scientists of the
last century, especially Laplace, defended
determinism as a consequence of their
mechanical view of life.
The great struggle between the deter
minist and the indeterminist, between the
opponent and the sustainer of the freedom
of the will, has ended to-day, after more
than 2,000 years, completely in favour of
the determinist. The human will has no
more freedom than that of the higher
animals, from which it differs only in
degree, not in kind. In the last century
the dogma of liberty was fought with
general philosophic and cosmological
arguments. The nineteenth century has
given us very different weapons for its
defini tive destruction—the powerful weapons
which we find in the arsenal of comparative
physiology and evolution. We now know
that each act of the will is as fatally deter
mined by the organisation of the individual
and as dependent on the momentary con
dition of his environment as every other
psychic activity. The character of the
inclination was determined long ago by
heredity from parents and ancestors ; the
determination to each particular act is an
instance of adaptation to the circumstances
of the moment wherein the strongest
motive prevails, according to the laws
which govern the statics of emotion.
Ontogeny teaches us to understand the
evolution of the will in the individual child.
Phylogeny reveals to us the historical
development of the will within the ranks of
our vertebrate ancestors.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE EMBRYOLOGY OF THE SOUL
Importance of ontogeny to psychology. Develop
ment of the child-soul. Commencement of
existence of the individual soul. The storing
of the soul. Mythology of the origin of the
soul. Physiology of the origin of the soul.
Elementary processes in conception. Coa
lescence of the ovum and the spermatozoon.
Cell-love. Heredity of the soul from parents
and ancestors. Its physiological nature as
the mechanics of the protoplasm. Blending
of souls (psychic amphigony). Reversion,
psychological atavism. The biogenetic law
in psychology. Palingenetic repetition and
471
cenogenetic modification.
Embryonic and
post-embryonic psychogenv.
The human soul—whatever we may hold
as to its nature—undergoes a continual
development throughout the life of the
individual. This ontogenetic fact is of
fundamental importance in our monistic
psychology, though the “ professional ’*
psychologists pay little or no attention to
it. Since the embryology of the individualis, on Baer’s principle—and in accordance
with the universal belief of modern biologists
—the “ true torch-bearer for all research
into the organic body,” it will afford us a
reliable light on the momentous problems
of the psychic activity.
Although, however, this “ embryology of
the soul ” is so important and interesting, it
has hitherto met with the consideration it
deserves only within a very narrow circle.
Until recently teachers were almost the
only ones to occupy themselves with a part
of the problem; since their avocation com
pelled them to assist and supervise the
formation of the psychic activity in the
child, they were bound to take a theoretical
interest, also, in the psychogenetic facts
that came under their notice. However,
these teachers, for the most part, both in
recent and in earlier times, were dominated!
by the current dualistic psychology—in so
far as they reflected at all; and they were
totally ignorant of the important facts of
comparative psychology, and unacquainted
with the structure and function of the brain
Moreover, their observations only extended
to children in their school-days, or in the
years immediately preceding. The remark
able phenomena which the individual
psychogeny of the child offers in its earliest
years, and which are the joy and admiration
of all thoughtful parents, were scarcely ever
made the subject of serious scientific
research. Wilhelm Preyer was the pioneer
of this study in his interesting work on
The Mind of the Child (1881). To
obtain a perfectly clear knowledge of
the matter, however, we must go further
back still; we must commence at the
first appearance of the soul in the impreg
nated ovum.
The origin of the human individual—
body and soul—was still wrapped in com
plete mystery at the beginning of the nine
teenth’ century. Caspar Friedrich Wolff
had, it is true, discovered the true character
of embryonic development in 1759, in his
theoria generationis, and proved with the
confidence of a critical observer that there
�48
THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE
is a true epigenesis—i.e., a series of very
remarkable formative processes—in the
evolution of the foetus from the simple
ovum. But the physiologists of the time,
with the famous Albert Haller at their
head, flatly refused to entertain these
empirical truths, which may be directly
proved by microscopic observation, and
clung to the old dogma of “ preformation.”
This theory assumed that in the human
ovum—and in the egg of all other animals—
the organism was already present, or “ pre
formed,” in all its parts ; the “ evolution ”
of the embryo consisted literally in an
“ unfolding ” {evolutio) of the folded organs.
One curious consequence of this error was
the theory of scatulation, which we have
mentioned on p. 19 ; since the ovary had to
be admitted to be present in the embryo of
the woman, it was also necessary to suppose
that the germs of the next generation were
already formed in it, and so on in infinitum.
Opposed to this dogma of the “ Ovulists ”
was the equally erroneous notion of the
“ Animalculists ”; the latter held that the
germ was not really in the female ovum,
but in the paternal element, and that the
store of succeeding generations was to be
sought in the spermatozoa.
Leibnitz consistently applied this theory
of scatulation, or “ boxing-up,” to the human
soul; he denied that either soul or body
had a real development (epigenesis'), and
said in his Theodicy: “ Thus I consider
that the souls which are destined one day
to become human exist in the seed, like
those of other species ; that they have
existed in our ancestors as far back as
Adam—that is, since the beginning of the
world—in the forms of organised bodies.”
Similar notions prevailed in biology and
philosophy until the third decade of the
present century, when the reform of
embryology by Baer gave them their death
blow. In the province of psychology,
however, they still find many adherents ;
they form one group of the many curious
mystical ideas which give us a living illustra
tion of the ontogeny of the soul.
The more accurate knowledge which we
have recently obtained, through compara
tive ethnology, of the various forms of
myths of ancient and modern uncivilised
races, is also of great interest in psychogeny.
Still, it would take us too far. from our
purpose if we were to enter into it w’ith any
fulness here ; we must refer the reader to
Adalbert Svoboda’s excellent work on
Forms of Faith (1897). In respect of their
scientific and poetical contents, we may
arrange all pertinent psychogenetic myths in
the following five groups :—
I. The myth of transmigration.—The
soul lived formerly in the body of another
animal, and passed from this into a human
body. The Egyptian'priests, for instance,
taught that the human soul wandered
through all the species of animals after the
death of the body, returning to a human
frame after 3,000 years of transmigration.
II. The myth of the in-planting of the
soul.—-The soul existed independently in
another place—a psychogenetic store, as it
were (in a kind of embryonic slumber or
latent life); it was taken out by a bird
(sometimes represented as an eagle, gene
rally as a white stork), and implanted in the
human body.
III. The myth of the creation of the
soul.—God creates the souls, and keeps
them stored—sometimes in a pond (living
in the form Uplankton\ according to other
myths in a tree (where they are conceived
as the fruit of a phanerogam) ; the Creator
takes them from the pond or tree, and
inserts them in the human germ during the
act of conception.
IV. The myth of the scatulation of the
soul (the theory of Leibnitz which we have
given above).
V. The myth of the division of the soul
(the theory of Rudolph Wagner [1855] and
of other physiologists).—In the act of pro
creation a portion is detached from both
the (immaterial) souls of the parents ; the
maternal contribution passes in the ovum,
the paternal in the spermatazoa; when
these two germinal cells coalesce, the two
psychic fragments that accompany them
also combine to form a new (immaterial)
soul.
Although the poetic fancies we have
mentioned as to the origin of the individual
human soul are still widely accepted, their
purely mythological character is now firmly
established. The deeply interesting and
remarkable research which has been made
in the course of the last twenty-five years
into the more minute processes of the
impregnation and germination Of the ovum
has made it clear that these mysterious
phenomena belong entirely to the province
of cellular physiology (cf. p. 17)- Both the
female element, the ovum, and the male
fertilising body, the sperma or spermatozoa,
are simple cells. These living cells possess
a certain sum of physiological properties to
which we give the title of the “ cell-soul,”
just as we do in the permanently unicellular
protist (see p. 17). Both germinal cells
�THE EMBRYOLOGY OF THE SOUL
have the faculty of movement and sensa
tion. The young ovum, or egg-cell, moves
after the manner of an amoeba; the minute
spermatozoa, of which there are millions in
every drop of the seminal fluid, are ciliated
cells, and swim about as freely in the
sperm, by means of their lashes or cilia,
as the ordinary ciliated infusoria (the
flagellata).
When the two cells meet as a result of
copulation, or when they are brought into
contact through artificial fertilisation (in
the fishes, for instance), they attract each
other and become firmly attached. The
main cause of this cellular attraction is a
chemical sensitive action of the protoplasm,
allied to smell or taste, which we call
“erotic chemicotropism”; it may also be
correctly (both in the chemical and the
romantic sense) termed “ cellular affinity”
or “ sexual cell-love.” A number of the
ciliated cells in the sperm swim rapidly
towards the stationary egg-cell and seek to
penetrate into it. As Hertwig showed in
1875, as a rule only one of the suitors is
fortunate enough to reach the desired goal.
As soon as this favoured spermatozoon has
pierced into the body of the ovum with its
head (the nucleus of the cell), a thin mucous
layer is detached from the ovum which
prevents the further entrance of sperma
tozoa. The formation of this protective
membrane was only prevented when
Hertwig kept the ovum stiff with cold by
lowering the temperature, or benumbed it
with narcotics (chloroform, morphia, nico
tine, etc.); then there was “ super-impreg
nation” or “polyspermy”—a number of
sperm-threads pierced into the body of the
unconscious ovum. This remarkable fact
proved that there is a low degree of
“cellular instinct” (or, at least, of specific,
lively sensation) in the sexual cells just as
effectively as do the important phenomena
that immediately follow in their interior.
Both nuclei—that of the ovum and that of
the spermatozoon —- attract each other,
approach, and, on contact, completely fuse
together. Thus from the impregnated ovum
arises the important new cell which we call
the “ stem-cell ” (cytula), from the repeated
segmentation of which the whole pol} cellular organism is evolved.
The psychological information which is
afforded by these remarkable facts of
impregnation,which have onlybeen properly
observed during the last twenty-five years,
is supremely important; its vast signifi
cance has hitherto been very far from
appreciated. We shall condense the main
4$
conclusions of research in the following five
theses :—
I. —Each human individual, like every
other higher animal, is a single simple cell
at the commencement of his existence.
II. —This “stem-cell” (cytula) is formed
in the same manner in all cases—-that is,
by the blending or copulation of two
separate celts of diverse origin, the female
ovum and the male spermatozoon.
III. —-Each of these sexual cells has its
own “ cell-soul ’’—that is, each is distin
guished by a peculiar form of sensation and
movement.
IV. —At the moment of conception or
impregnation, not only the protoplasm and
the nuclei of the two sexual cells coalesce,
but also their “cell-souls”; in other words,
the potential energies which are latent in
both, and inseparable from the matter of
the protoplasm, unite for the formation of a
new potential energy,. the “ germ-soul ” of
the newly-constructed stem-cell.
V. —Consequently, each personality owes
his bodily and spiritual qualities to both
parents ; by heredity the nucleus of the
ovum contributes a portion of the maternal
features, while the nucleus of the sperma
tozoon brings a part of the father’s charac
teristics.
By these empirical facts of conception,
moreover, the further fact of extreme
importance is established, that every man,
like every other animal, has a beginning oj
existence; the complete copulation of the
two sexual cell-nuclei marks the precise
moment when not only the body, but also
the “ soul,” of the new stem-cell makes its
appearance. This fact suffices of itself to
destroy the myth of the immortality of the
soul, to which we shall return later on. It
suffices, too, for the destruction of the still
prevalent superstition that man owes his
personal existence to the favour of God.
Its origin is rather to be attributed solely
to the “ eros ” of his parents, to that power
ful impulse that is common to all polycellular animals and plants, and leads to
their nuptial union.
But the essential
point in this physiological process is not
the “ embrace,” as was formerly supposed,
or the amorousness connected therewith ; it
is simply the introduction of the sperma
tozoa into the vagina. This is the sole means,
in the land-dwelling animals, by which the
fertilising element can reach the released
ova (which usually takes place in the uterus
in man). In the case of the lower aquatic
animals (fishes, mussels, medusae, etc.) the
mature sexual elements on both sides are
E
�5o
THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE
simply discharged into the water, and their
union is left to chance ; they have no real
copulation, and so they show none of those
higher psychic “ erotic ” functions which
play so conspicuous a part in the life of the
higher animals. Hence it is, also, that all
the lower non-copulating animals are
wanting in those interesting organs which
Darwin has called “ secondary sexual char
acters,” and which are the outcome of
sexual selection : such are the beard of
man, the antlers of the stag, the beau
tiful plumage of the bird of paradise and
of so many other birds, together with
other distinctions of the male, which are
absent in the female.
Among the above theses as to the
physiology of conception, the inheritance of
the psychic qualities of the two parents is
of particular importance for psychological
purposes. It is well known that every
child inherits from both his parents pecu
liarities of character, temperament, talent,
acuteness of sense, and strength of will.
It is equally well known that even psychic
qualities are often (if not always) trans
mitted from grandparents by heredity—
often, in fact, a man resembles his grand
parents more than his parents in certain
respects ; and that is true both of bodily
and mental features. All the chief laws of
heredity which I first formulated in my
General Morphology, and then popularised
in my Natural History of Creation, are just
as valid and universal in their application to
psychic phenomena as to bodily structure
—in fact, they are frequently more striking
and conspicuous in the former than in the
latter.
However, the great province of heredity,
to the inestimable importance of which
Darwin first opened our eyes in 1859, is
thickly beset with obscure problems and
physiological difficulties. We dare not
claim, even after forty years of research,
that all its aspects are clear to us. Yet we
have done so much that we can confidently
speak of 1 eredityas aphysiologicalfunction
of the organism, which is directly connected
with the faculty of generation ; and we
must reduce it, like all other vital pheno
mena, to exclusively physical and chemical
processes, to the mechanics oftheprotoplasm.
We now know accurately enough th ex
process of impregnation itself; we know
that in it the nucleus of the spermatozoon
contributes the qualities of the male parent,
and the nucleus of the ovum gives the
qualities of the mother, to the newly-born
stem-cell. The blending of the two nuclei
is the “ physiological moment” of heredity;
by it the personal features of both body
and soul are transmitted to the new’ indi
vidual. These facts of ontogeny are beyond
the explanation of the dualistic and mystic
psychology which still prevails in the
schools ; whereas they find a perfectly
simple interpretation in our monistic philo
sophy.
The physiological fact which is most
material for a correct appreciation of
individual psychogeny is the continuity
of the psyche through the rise and fall of
generations. A new individual comes into
existence at the moment of conception ;
yet it is not an independent entity, either
in respect of its mental or its bodily features,
but merely the product of the blending of
the two parental factors, the maternal
egg-cell and the paternal sperm-cell. The
cell-souls of these two sexual cells combine
in the act of conception for the formation
of a new cell-soul, just as truly as the two
cell-nuclei, which are the material vehicles
of this psychic potential energy, unite to
form a new nucleus. As we now see that
the individuals of one and the same species
—even sisters born of the same parents—
always show certain differences, however
slight, we must assume that these variations
were already present in the chemical plas
matic constitution of the generative cells
themselves.1
These facts alone would suffice to explain
the infinite variety of individual features,
of soul and of bodily form, that we find in
the organic world. As an extreme, but
one-sided, consequence of them, there is
the theory of Weismann, which considers
the amphimixis, or the blending of the
germ-plasm in sexual generation, to be the
universal and the sole cause of individual
variability. This exclusive theory, which is
connected with his theory of the continuity
of the germ-plasm, is, in my opinion, an exaggerati on. I am convinced, on the contrary,
that the great laws of progressive heredity
and of the correlative functional adaptation
apply to the soul as well as to the body.
The new characteristics which the individual
has acquired during life may react to some
extent on the molecular texture of the germ
plasm in the egg-cell and sperm-cell, and
may thus be transferred to the next genera
tion by heredity in certain conditions
(naturally, only in the form of latent
energy).
1 Law of individual variation.
History of Creation.
Vide Natural
�THE EMBRYOLOGY OF THE SOUL
Although in the sOiil-blending at the
moment of conception only the latent forces
of the two parent souls are transmitted by
the coalescence of the erotic cell-nuclei,
still it is possible that the hereditary psychic
influence of earlier, and sometimes very
much older, generations may be communi
cated at the same time. For the laws of
latent heredity or atavism apply to the soul
just as validly as to the anatomical organi
sation. We find these remarkable pheno
mena of reversion in a very simple and
instructive form in the alternation of
generations of the polyps- and medusae.
Here we see two very different generations
alternate so regularly that the first resembles
the third, fifth, and so on; while the second
(very different from the preceding) is like
the fourth, sixth, etc. {Natural History of
Creation). We do not find such alternation
of generations in man and the higher
animals and plants, in which, owing to
continuous heredity, each generation re
sembles the next ; nevertheless, even in
these cases we often meet with phenomena
of reversion, which must be reduced to the
same law of latent heredity.
Eminent men often take more after their
grandparents than their parents even in the
finer shades of psychic activity—in the
possession of certain artistic talents or
inclinations, in force of character, and in
warmth of temperament ; not infrequently
there is a striking feature which neither
parents nor grandparents possessed, but
which may be traced a long way back to
an older branch of the family. Even in
these remarkable cases of atavism the same
laws of heredity apply to Xhe psyche and to
the physiognomy, to the personal quality
of the sense-organs, muscles, skeleton, and
other parts of the body. We can trace
them most clearly in reigning dynasties
and in old families of the nobility, whose
conspicuous share in the life of the State
has given occasion to a more careful
historical picture of the individuals in the
chain of generations—for instance, in the
Hohenzollerns, the princes of Orange, the
Bourbons, etc., and in the Roman Caesars.
The causal nexus of biontic (individual)
and phyletic (historical) evolution, which I
gave in my General Morphology as the
supreme law at the root of all biogenetic
research, has a universal application to
psychology no less than to morphology.
I have fully treated the special importance
which it has with regard to man, in both
respects, in th? first chapter of my Anthropogeny. In man, as in all other organisms,
5’
“ the embryonic development is an epitome
of the historical development of the species.
This condensed and abbreviated recapitu
lation is the more complete in proportion
as the original epitomised development
(palingenesis) is preserved by a constant
heredity ; on the other hand, it falls off
from completeness in proportion as the
later disturbing development (cenogenesis)
is accentuated by varying adaptation.”
While we apply this law to the evolution
of the soul, we must lay special stress on the
injunction to keep both sides of it critically
before us. For, in the case of man, just as
in all the higher animals and plants, such
appreciable perturbations of type (or cenogeneses) have taken place during the millions
of years of development that the original
simple idea of palingenesis, or “ epitome of
history,” has been greatly disturbed and
altered. While, on the one side, \hzpalingenetic recapitulation is preserved by the
laws of like-time and like-place heredity, it
is subject to an essential cenogenetic change,
on the other hand, by the laws of abbreviated
and simplified heredity. That is clearly
seen in the embryonic evolution of the
psychic organs, the nervous system, the
muscles, and the sense-organs. But it ap
plies in just the same manner to the psychic
functions, which are absolutely dependent
on the normal construction of these organs.
Their evolution is subject to great ceno
genetic modification in man and all other
viviparous animals, precisely because the
complete development of the embryo occu
pies a longer time within the body of the
mother. But we have to distinguish two
periods of individual psychogeny : (i) the
embryonic, and (2) the post-embryonic
development of the soul.
1. Embryonic Psychogeny.—The human
foetus, or embryo, normally takes nine
months (or 270 days) to develop in the
uterus. During this time it is entirely cut
off from the outer world, and protected,
not only by the thick muscular wall of the
womb, but also by the special foetal mem
branes {embryolemmata) which are common
to all the three higher classes of vertebrates
—reptiles, birds, and mammals. In all the
classes of amniotes these membranes (the
amnion and the serolemma) develop in just
the same fashion. They represent the pro
tective arrangements which were acquired
by the earliest reptiles {proreptilia), the
common parents of all the amniotes, in
the Permian period (towards the end of the
palaeozoic age), when these higher verte
brates accustomed themselves to live on
�52
THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE
land and breathe the atmosphere. Their
ancestors, the amphibia of the Carboniferous
period, still lived and breathed in the water,
like their earlier predecessors, the fishes.
In the case of these older and lower
vertebrates that lived in the water, the
embryonic development had the palingenetic character in a still higher degree, as
is the case in most of the fishes and
amphibia of the present day. The familiar
tadpole and the larva of the salamander or
the frog still preserve the structure of their
fish-ancestors in the first part of their life
in the water; they resemble them, likewise,
in their habits of life, in breathing by gills,
in the action of their sense organs, and in
other psychic organs. Then, when the
interesting metamorphosis of the swimming
tadpole takes place, and when it adapts
itself to a land-life, the fish-like body
changes into that of a four-footed, crawling
amphibium ; instead of the gill breathing
in the water comes an exclusive breathing
of the atmosphere by means of lungs, and,
with the changed habits of life, even the
psychic apparatus, the nervous system, and
the sense-organs reach a higher degree
of construction. If we could completely
follow the pyschogeny of the tadpole from
beginning to end, we should be able to
apply the biogenetic law in many ways to
its psychic evolution. For it developes in
direct communication with the changing
conditions of the outer world, and so must
quickly adapt its sensation and movement
to these. The swimming tadpole has not
only the structure, but the habits of life, of
a fish, and only acquires those of a frog in
its metamorphosis.
It is different with man and all the
other amniotes ; their embryo is entirely
withdrawn from the direct influence of the
outer world, and cut off from any reciprocal
action therewith, by enclosure in its pro
tective membranes. Besides, the special
care of the young on the part of the
amniotes gives their embryo much more
favourable conditions for the cenogenetic
abbreviation of the palingenetic evolution.
There is, in the first place, the excellent
arrangement for the nourishment of the
embryo ; in the reptiles, birds, and monotremes (the oviparous mammals) it is
effected by the great yellow nutritive yelk,
which is associated with the egg; in the
rest of the mammals (the marsupials and
placentals) it is effected by the mother s
blood, which is conducted to the foetus by
the blood vessels of the yelk-sac and the
allantois. In the case of the most highly
developed placentals this elaborate nutri
tive arrangement has reached the highest
degree of perfection by the construction of
a placenta; hence in these classes the
embryo is fully developed before birth.
But its soul remains during all this
time in a state of embryonic slumber, a
state of repose which Breyer has justly
compared to the hibernation of animals.
We have a similar long sleep in the
chrysalis stage of those insects which
undergo a complete metamorphosis —
butterflies, bees, flies, beetles, and so forth.
This sleep of the pupa, during which the
most important formations of organs and
tissues take place, is the more interesting
from the fact that the preceding condition
of the free larva (caterpillar, grub, or
maggot) included a highly developed
psychic activity, and that this is, signifi
cantly, lower than the stage which is seen
afterwards (when the chrysalis sleep is over)
in the perfect, winged, sexually mature insect.
Man’s psychic activity, like that of most
of the higher animals, runs through a long
series of stages of development during the
individual life. We may single out the five
following as the most important of them':—
I. —The soul of the new-born infant up
to the birth of self-consciousness and the
learning of speech.
II. —The soul of the boy or girl up to
puberty (z>., until the awakening of the
sexual instinct).
III. —The soul of the youth or maiden up
to the time of sexual intercourse (the
“ idealist ” period).
IV. —The soul of the grown man and
the mature woman (the period of full
maturity and of the founding of families,
lasting until about the sixtieth year for the
man, and the fiftieth for the woman—until
involution sets in).
V. —The soul of the old man or woman
(the period of degeneration).
Man’s psychic life runs the same evolu
tion—upward progress, full maturity, and
downward degeneration—as every other
vital activity in his organisation.
CHAPTER IX.
THE PHYLOGENY OF THE SOUL
Gradual historical evolution of the human soul
from the animal soul. Methods of phylo
genetic psychology. Four chief stages in the
�THE PHYLOGENY OF THE SOUL
phylogeny of the soul.
I. The cell-soul
(cytopsyche) of the protist (infusoria, ova, etc.):
cellular psychology. II. The soul of a colony
of cells, or the cenobitic soul (ccenopsyche) :
psychology of the morula and blastula. III.
The soul of the tissue (histopsyche) : its two
fold nature. The soul of the plant. The
soul of the lower, nerveless animal. Double
soul of the siphonophora (personal and kormal
soul). IV. The nerve-soul (neuro-psyche) of
the higher animal. Three sections of its
psychic apparatus: sense-organs, muscles, and
nerves. Typical formation of the nervecentre in the various groups of animals.
Psychic organ of the vertebrate: the brain and
the spinal cord. Phylogeny of the mammal
soul.
The theory of descent, combined with
anthropological research, has convinced us
of the descent of our human organism from
a long series of animal ancestors by a slow
and gradual transformation occupying many
millions of years. Since, then, we cannot
dissever man’s psychic life from the rest of
his vital functions—-we are rather forced to
a conviction of the natural evolution of our
whole body and mind—it becomes one of
the main tasks of the modern monistic
psychology to trace the stages of the
historical development of the soul of man
from the soul of the brute. Our “phylogeny
of the soul” seeks to attain this object;
it may also, as a branch of general psycho
logy, be called ■phylogenetic psychology, or,
in contradistinction to biontic (individual);
phyletic psychogeny. And, although this
new science has scarcely been taken up in
earnest yet, and most of the “ professional ”
psychologists deny its very right to exist
ence, we must claim for it the utmost
importance and the deepest interest. For,
in our opinion, it is its special province to
solve for us the great enigma of the nature
and origin of the human soul.
The methods and paths which will lead
us to the remote goal of a complete phylo
genetic psychology — a goal that is still
buried in the mists of the future, and almost
imperceptible to many—do not differ from
those of other branches of evolutionary
research. Comparative anatomy, physio
logy, and ontogeny are of the first import
ance.
Much support is given also by
palmontology, for the order in which the
fossil remains of the various classes of
vertebrates succeed each other in the course
of organic evolution reveals to us, to some
extent, the gradual growth of their psychic
power as well as their phyletic connection.
We must admit that we are here, as we
53
are in every branch of phylogenetic research,
driven to the construction of a number of
hypotheses in order to fill up the consider
able lacunae of empirical phylogeny. Yet
these hypotheses cast so clear and signifi
cant a light on the chief stages of his
torical development that we are afforded
a most gratifying insight into their entire
course.
The comparative psychology of man and
the higher animals enables us to learn from
the highest group of the placentals, the
primates, the long strides by which the
human soul has advanced beyond the psyche
of the anthropoid ape. The phylogeny of
the mammals and of the lower vertebrates
acquaints us with the long series of the
earlier ancestors of the primates which have
arisen within this stem since the Silurian
age. All these vertebrates agree in the
structure and development of their charac
teristic psychic organ—the spinal cord.
We learn from the comparative anatomy of
the vermalia that this spinal cord has been
evolved from a dorsal acroganglion, or
vertical brain, of an invertebrate ancestor.
We learn, further, from comparative onto
geny, that this simple psychic organ has
been evolved from the stratum of cells in
the outer germinal layer, the ectoderm, of
the platodes. In these earliest flat-worms,
which have no specialised nervous system,
the outer skin-covering serves as a general
sensitive and psychic organ.
Finally,
comparative embryology teaches us that
these simple metazoa have arisen by gastrulation from blastaeades, from hollow
spheres, the wall of which is merely one
simple layer of cells, the blastoderm; and
the same science, with the aid of the
biogenetic law, explains how these protozoic
ccenobia originally sprang from the simplest
unicellular organisms.
On a critical study of these different
embryonic formations, the evolution of
which from each other we can directly
observe under the microscope, we arrive,
by means of the great law of biogeny, at a
series of most important conclusions as to
the chief stages in the development of our
psychic life. We may distinguish eight of
these, to begin with :—
I. —Unicellular protozoa with a simple
cell-soul: the infusoria.
II. —Multicellular protozoa with a com
munal soul: the catallacta.
III. —The earliest metazoa with an
epithelial soul : the platodes.
IV. —Invertebrate ancestors with a simple
vertical brain : the vermalia.
�54
THÉ RÏDbLË OF THÉ UNI VERSÉ
V. —Vertebrates without skull or brain,
with a simple spinal chord : the acrania.
VI. —Animals with skull and brain (of
five vesicles) : the craniota.
VII. — Mammals with predominant
development of the cortex of the brain : the
placentals.
VIII. —The higher anthropoid apes and
man, with organs of thought (in the
cerebrum) : the anthropomorpha.
Among these eight stages in the develop
ment of the human soul we may further
distinguish more or less clearly a number
of subordinate stages. Naturally, however,
in reconstructing them we have to fall
back on the same defective evidence of
empirical psychology which the compara
tive anatomy and physiology of the actual
fauna affords us. As the craniote animals
of the sixth stage—and these are true
fishes—are already found fossilised in the
Silurian system, we are forced to assume
that the five preceding series of ancestors
(which were incapable of fossilisation) were
evolved in an earlier, pre-Silurian age.
I. The cell-soul (or cytopsyche) : first
stage of phyletic psychogenesis. — The
earliest ancestors of man and all other
animals were unicellular protozoa. This
fundamental hypothesis of rational phylo
geny is based, in virtue of the phylogenetic
law, on the familiar embryological fact that
every man, like every other metazoon (z>.,
every multicellular organism with tissues),
begins his personal existence as a simple
cell, the stem-cell (cytulaf or the impreg
nated egg-cell (see p. 22). As this cell has
a “ soul ” from the commencement, so had
also the corresponding unicellular ancestral
forms, which were represented in the oldest
series of man’s ancestors by a number of
different protozoa.
We learn the character of the psychic
activity of these unicellular organisms from
the comparative physiology of the protists
of to-day. Close observation and careful
experiment have opened out to us in this
respect, in the second half of the nineteenth
century, a new world of the most interesting
phenomena. The best description of them
was given by Max Verworn in his- thought
ful work, based on original research,
Psycho-physiological Studies of the Protists.
The work includes, also, the few earlier
observations of the “psychic life of the
protist.” Verworn came to the firm con
clusion that the psychic processes are
unconscious in all the protists, that the
phenomena of sensation and movement
coincide with the molecular vital processes
in their protoplasm, and that their ultimate
causes are to be sought in the properties of
the protoplasmic molecules (theplastidules').
“ Hence the psychic phenomena of the
protists form a bridge that connects the
chemical processes of the inorganic world
with the psychic life of the highest animals;
they represent the germ of the highest
psychic phenomena of the metazoa and of
man.”
The careful observations and many
experiments of Verworn, together with
those of Wilhelm Engelmann, Wilhelm
Preyer, Richard Hertwig, and other more
recent students of the protists, afford
conclusive evidence for my “ theory of the
cell-soul.” On the strength of several
years of study of different kinds of protists,
especially rhizopods and infusoria, I pub
lished a theory thirty-three years ago to
the effect that every living cell has psychic
properties, and that the psychic life of the
multicellular animals and plants is merely
the sum-total of the psychic functions of
the cells which build up their structure.
In the lower groups (in algae and sponges,
for instance) all the cells of the body have
an equal share in it (or with very slight dif
ferences) ; in the higher groups, in harmony
with the law of the “division of labour,”
only a select portion of them are involved—
the “ soul-cells.” The important con
sequences of this “cellular psychology”
were partly treated in my work on The
Perigenesis of the Plastidule (1876), and
partly in my speech at Munich, in 1877, on
“ Modern Evolution in Relation to the
Whole of Science.” A more popular
presentation of them is to be found
in my two Vienna papers (1878) on “The
Origin and Development of the SenseOrgans ” and on “ Cell-Souls and SoulCells.”
Moreover, the cell-soul, even within the
limits of the protist world, presents a long
series of stages of development, from the
most simple and primitive to a compara
tively elaborate activity. In the earliest and
simplest protists the faculty of sensation
and movement is equally distributed over
the entire protoplasm of the homogeneous
morsel ; in the higher forms certain “ ceffinstruments,” or organella, appear, as their
physiological organs. Motor cell-parts of
that character are found in the pseudopodia
of the rhizopods, and the vibrating hairs,
lashes, or cilia of the infusoria. The cell
nucleus, which is wanting in the earlier
and lower protists, is considered to be an
internal central organ of the cell-life. It ia
�THE PHYLOGENY OF THE SOUL
especially noteworthy, from a physiologicoehemical point of view, that the very
earliest protists were plasmodomous, with
plant-like nutrition—hence protophyta, or
primitive plants; from these came as a
secondary stage, by metasitism, the first
plasmophagi, with animal nutrition—the
protozoa, or primitive animals.1 This
metasitism, or circulation of nutritive
matter, implies an important psychological
advance ; with it began the development of
those characteristic properties of the animal
soul which are wanting in the plant.
We find the highest development of the
animal cell-soul in the class of ciliata, or
ciliated infusoria. When we compare
their activity with the corresponding
psychic life of the higher, multicellular
animals, we find scarcely any psychological
difference ; the sensitive and motor orga
nella of these protozoa seem to accomplish
the same as the sense-organs, nerves, and
muscles of the metazoa. Indeed, we have
found in the great cell nucleus {meganucleus}
of the infusoria a central organ of psychic
activity, which plays much the same part
in their unicellular organism as the brain
does in the psychic life of higher animals.
However, it is very difficult to determine
how far this comparison is justified; the
views of experts diverge considerably over
the matter. Some take all spontaneous
bodily movement in them to be automatic,
or impulsive, and all stimulated movement
to be reflex; others are convinced that such
movements are partly voluntary and inten
tional. The latter would attribute to the
infusoria a certain degree of consciousness,
and even self-consciousness; but this is
rejected by the others. However that very
difficult question may be settled, it does
not alter the fact that these unicellular
protozoa give'proof of the possession of a
highly-developed “cell-soul,” which is of
great interest for a correct decision as to
the psyche of our earliest unicellular
ancestors.
II. The communal or cenobitic soul
{coenopsyche}: second stage of phyletic
psychogenesis. — Individual development
begins, in man and in all other multicellular
animals, with the repeated segmentation of
one simple cell. This stem-cell, the im
pregnated ovum, divides first into two
daughter-cells, by a process of ordinary
indirect segmentation ; as the process is
repeated there arise (by equal division of
1 Cf. E. Haeckel, Systematic Phylogeny,
vol. i.
55
the egg) successively four, eight, sixteen,
thirty-two, sixty-four, such new. cells, or
“blastomeres.” Usually (that is, in the
case of the majority of animals) an irregular
enlargement sooner or later takes the place
of this original regular division of cells.
But the result is the same in all cases—the
formation of a (generally spherical) cluster
of heterogeneous (originally homogeneous)
cells. This stage is called the morula
(“mulberry,” which it somewhat resembles
in shape). Then, as a rule, a fluid gathers
in the interior of this aggregate of cells ;
it changes into a spherical vesicle ; all the
cells go to its surface, and arrange them
selves in one simple layer—the blastoderm.
The hollow sphere which is thus formed is
the important stage of the “ germinal
vesicle,” the blastula, or blastosphere.
The psychological phenomena which we
directly observe in the formation of the
blastula are partly sensations, partly move
ments, of this community of cells. The
movements may be divided into two groups ;
(1) the inner movements, which are always
repeated in substantially the same manner
in the process of ordinary (indirect) seg
mentation of cells (formation of the axis of
the nucleus, mitosis, karyokinesis, etc.);
(2) the outer movements, which are seen in
the regular change of position of the social
cells and their grouping for the construction
of the blastoderm. We assume that these
movements are hereditary and unconscious,1
because they are always determined in the
same fashion by heredity from the earlier
protist ancestors. The sensations, also,
fall into two groups : (1) the sensations
of the individual cells, which reveal them
selves in the assertion of their individual
independence and their relation to neigh
bouring cells (with which theyare in contact,
and partly in direct combination, by means
of protoplasmic fibres); (2) the common
sensation of the entire community of cells
which is seen in the individual formation
of the blastula as a hollow vesicle.
The casual interpretation of the forma
tion of the blastula is given us by the biogenetic law, which explains the phenomena
we directly observe to be the outcome of
heredity, and relates them to corresponding
historical processes which took place long
ago in the origin of the earliest protistcoenobia, the blastaeads. But we. get a
physiological and psychological insight
into these important phenomena of the
earliest cell-communities by observation
and experiment on their modern represen
tatives, Such permanent cell-communities
�56
THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE
or colonies are still found in great numbers
both among the plasmodomous primitive
plants (for instance, the paulotomacea,
diatomacea, volvocinse, etc.) and the plasmophagous primitive animals (the infusoria
and rhizopods). In all these ccenobia we
can easily distinguish two different grades
of psychic activity : (i) the cell-soul of the
individual cells (the “elementary organ
isms ”), and (2) the communal soul of the
entire colony.
III. The tissue-soul (histopsyche): third
stage of phyletic psychogenesis.—In all
multicellular, tissue-forming plants (meta
phyta) and in the lowest, nerveless classes
of tissue-forming animals (metazoa) we
have to distinguish two different forms of
psychic activity—namely, (1) the psyche of
the individual cells which compose the
tissue, and (2) the psyche of the tissue itself,
or of the “ cell-state ” which is made up of
the tissues. This “tissue-soul” is the
higher psychological function which gives
physiological individuality to the compound
multicellular organism as a true “ cell-com
monwealth.” It controls all the separate
“ cell-souls ” of the social cells—the mutu
ally dependent “ citizens ” which constitute
the community. This fundamental twofold
character of the psyche in the metaphyta
and the lower, nerveless metazoa is very
important. It may be verified by unpreju
diced observation and suitable experiment.
In the first place, each single cell has its
own sensation and movement, and, in
addition, each tissue and each organ, com
posed of a number of homogeneous cells,
lias its special irritability and psychic unity
(¿■¿<, the pollen and stamens).
A. The plant-soul (phytopsyche) is, in
our view,the summary of the entire psychic
activity of the tissue-forming, multicellular
plant (the metaphyton, as distinct from the
unicellularprotophytori) ; it is, however, the
subject of the most diverse opinions even
at the present day. It was once customary
to draw an essential distinction between
the plant and the animal, on the ground
that the latter had a “ soul ” and the plant
had none.
However, an unprejudiced
comparison of the irritability and move
ments of various higher plants and lower
animals convinced many observers, even at
the beginning of the century, that there
must be a “soul” on both sides. At a
later date Fechner, Leitgeb, and others
strongly contended for the plant-soul. But
a profounder knowledge of the subject was
obtained when the similarity of the
elementary structure of the plant and of
the animal was proved by the cellular
theory, and especially when the similarity
of conduct of the active living protoplasm
in both was shown in the plasma-theory of
Max Schultze (1859). Modern comparative
physiology has shown that the physiological
attitude towards various stimuli (light, heat,
electricity, gravity, friction, chemical action,
etc.) of the “sensitive” portions of many
plants and animals is exactly the same, and
that the reflex movements which the stimuli
elicit take place in precisely the same
manner on both sides. Hence, if it was
necessary to attribute this activity to a
“ soul ” in the lower, nerveless metazoa
(sponges, polyps, etc.), it was also necessary
in the case of many (if not all) metaphyta,
at least in the very sensitive mimosa, the
“ fly-traps ” (diontza and drosera), and the
numerous kinds of climbing plants.
11 is true that modern vegetal physiology
has given a purely physical explanation of
many of these stimulated movements, or
tropisms, by special features of growth,
variations of pressure, etc. Yet these
mechanical causes are neither more nor less
psycho-physical than the similar “ reflex
movements” of the sponges, polyps, and
other nerveless metazoa, even though their
mechanism is entirely different. The
character of the tissue-soul reveals itself in
the same way in both cases—the cells of
the tissue (the regular, orderly structure of
cells) transmit the stimuli they have
received in one part, and thus provoke
movements of other parts, or of the whole
organ. This transmission of stimuli has as
much title to be called “ psychic activity ”
as its more complete form in the higher
animals with nerves ; the anatomic expla
nation of it is that the social cells of the
tissue, or cell-community, are not isolated
from each other (as was formerly supposed),
but are connected throughout by fine
threads or bridges of protoplasm. When
the sensitive mimosa closes its graceful
leaves and droops its stalk at contact, or on
being shaken ; when the irritable fly-trap
(the dioneea) swiftly claps its leaves together
at a touch, and captures the fly ; the sensa
tion seems to be keener, the transmission of
the stimulus more rapid, and the movement
more energetic, than in the reflex action of
the stimulated bath-sponge and many other
sponges.
B. 77z^ soul of the nerveless metazoa.—
Of very special interest for comparative
psychology in general, and for the phylo
geny of the animal soul in particular, is
the psychic activity of those lower metazoa
�THE PHYLOGENY OF THE SOUL
which have tissues, and sometimes differ
entiated organs, but no nerves or specific
organs of sense. To this category belong
four different groups of the earliest coelen
terates : (a) the gastraeads, (¿) the platodaria,
(r) the sponges, and (¿7) the hydropolyps,
the lowest forms of cnidaria.
The gastrceads (or animals with a primi
tive gut) form a small group of the lowest
coelenterates, which is of great importance
as the common ancestral group of all the
metazoa. The body of these little swimming
animals looks like a tiny (generally oval)
vesicle, which has a simple cavity with one
opening—the primitive gut and the primi
tive mouth. The wall of the digestive
cavity is formed of two simple layers of
cells, or epithelium, the inner of which—
the gut-layer—is responsible for the vegetal
activity of nourishment, while the outer, or
skin-layer, discharges the animal functions
of movement and sensation. The homo
geneous sensitive cells of the skin-layer
bear long, slender hairs or lashes {cilia), by
the vibration of which the swimming
motion is effected. The few surviving
forms of gastraeads, the gastraemaria
{trichoplacidcf and cyemaria {orthonectidcd),
are extremely interesting, from the fact that
they remain throughout life at a stage of
structure which is passed by all the other
metazoa (from the sponge to man) at the
commencement of their embryonic develop
ment. As I have shown in my Theory of
the' Gastrcea (1872), a very characte
ristic embryonic form, the gastrula, is
immediately developed from the blastula in
all the tissue-animals. The germinal mem
brane (blastoderm), which represents the
wall of the hollow vesicle, forms a depression
at one side, and this soon sinks in so deep
that the inner cavity of the vesicle dis
appears. The half of the membrane which
bends in is thus laid on, and inside, the
other half; the latter forms the skin-layer
or ' outer germinal layer (ectoderm or
epiblast), and the former becomes the gut
layer^ or inner germinal layer (endoderm
or hypoblast). The new cavity of the cup
shaped body is the digestive stomach
cavity (the frogaster), and its opening is the
primitive mouth (or frostomaf The skin
layer, or ectoderm, is the primitive psychic
organ in the metazoa ; from it, in all the
nerve-animals, not only the external skin
and the organs of sense, but also the
nervous system, are developed. In the
1 Cf. Anthropogeny and Natural History of
Creation.
57
gastraeads, which have no nerves, all the
cells which compose the simple epithelium
of the ectoderm are equally organs of sen
sation and of movement; we have here the
tissue-soul in its simplest form.
The platodaria, the earliest and simplest
form of the platodes, seem to be of the
same primitive construction. Some of these
cryptoccela—the convoluta, etc.—have no
specific nervous system, while their nearest
relatives, the turbellaria, have already
differentiated one, and even developed a
vertical brain.
The sfonges form a peculiar group in the
animal world, which differs widely in organi
sation from all the other metazoa. The
innumerable kinds of sponges grow, as a
rule, at the bottom of the sea. The simplest
form of sponge, the olynthus, is in reality
nothing more than ■a.gastrcEa, the body-wall
of which is perforated like a sieve, with fine
pores, in order to permit the entrance of
the nourishing stream of water. In the
majority of sponges—even in the most
familiar one, the bath-sponge—the bulbous
organism constructs a kind of stem or tree,
which is made up of thousands of these
gastraeads, and permeated by a nutritive
system of canals. Sensation and move
ment are only developed in the faintest
degree in the sponges ; they have no nerves,
muscles, or organs of sense. It was, there
fore, quite natural that such stationary,
shapeless, insensitive animals should have
been commonly taken to be plants in earlier
years. Their psychic life—for which no
special organs have been differentiated—is
far inferior to that of the mimosa and other
sensitive plants.
The soul of the cnidaria is of the utmost
importance in comparative and phylogenetic
psychology ; for in this numerous group of
the ccelenterates the historical evolution of
the nerve-soul out of the tissue-soul is
repeated before our eyes. To this group
belong the innumerable classes of station
ary polyps and corals, and of swimming
medusae and siphonophora. As the common
ancestor of all the cnidaria we can safely
assign a very simple polyp, which is sub
stantially the same in structure as the
common, still-surviving, fresh water polyp—
the hydra. Yet the hydras, and the station
ary, closely-related hydrofolyps, have no
nerves or higher sense-organs, although
they are extremely sensitive. On the other
hand, the free swimming medusae, which
are developed from them—and are still
connected with them by alternation of
generations—have an independent nervous
�58
THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE.
system and specific sense organs. Here,
also, we may directly observe the ontoge
netic evolution of the nerve-soul {neuro
psyche) out of the tissue-soul (histopsyche),
and thus learn its phylogenetic origin.
This is the more interesting as such pheno
mena are polyphyletic—that is, they have
occurred several times—more than once, at
least—quite independently. As I have
shown elsewhere, the hydromedusae have
arisen from the hydropolyps in a different
manner from that of the evolution of the
scyphomedusce from the scyphopolyps; the
gemmation is terminal in the case of the
latter, and lateral with the former. . In
addition, both groups have characteristic
hereditary differences in the more minute
structure of their psychic organs. The
class of siphonophora is also very interest
ing to the psychologist. In these pretty,
free-swimming organisms, which come from
the hydromedusae, we can observe a double
soul: the personal soul of the numerous
individualities which compose them, and
the common, harmoniously-acting psyche
of the entire colony.
IV. The nerve-soulpneuropsychef, fourth
stage of phyletic psychogeny.—The psychic
life of all the higher animals is conducted,
as in man, by means of a more or less
complicated “psychic apparatus.” This
apparatus is always composed of three
chief sections: the organs of sense are
responsible for the various sensations ; the
muscles effect the movements ; the nerves
form the connection between the two by
means of a special central organ, the brain
or ganglion. The arrangement and action
of this psychic mechanism have been fre
quently compared with those of a telegra
phic system ; the nerves are the wires, the
brain the central, and the sense-organs
subordinate stations. The motor-nerves
conduct the commands of the will centri
fugally from the nerve-centre to the muscles,
by the contraction of which they produce
the movements : the sensitive nerves trans
mit the various sensations centripetally—
that is, from the peripheral sense-organs to
the brain, and thus render an account of
the impressions they receive from the outer
world. The ganglionic cells, or “ psychic
cells,” which compose the central nervous
organ, are the most perfect of all organic
elements ; they not only conduct the com
merce between the muscles and the organs
of sense, but they also effect the highest
performances of the animal soul, the forma
tion of ideas and thoughts, and especially
consciousness.
The great progress of anatomy, physio
logy, histology, and ontogeny has recently
added a wealth of interesting discoveries to
our knowledge of the mechanism of the soul.
If speculative philosophy assimilated only
the most important of these significant
results of empirical biology, it would have
a very different character from that it
unfortunately presents. As I have not
space for an exhaustive treatment of them
here, I will confine myself to a relation of
the chief facts.
Each of the higher animal species has a
characteristic psychic organ ; the central
nervous system of each has certain
peculiarities of shape, position, and composi tion. The m edusm, among the radiating
cnidaria, have a ring of nervous matter at
the border of the fringe, generally provided
with four or eight ganglia. _ The mouth of
the five-rayed cnidarion is girt yvith a
nerve-ring, from which proceed fivebranches.
The bi-symmetrical platodes and the vermalia have a vertical brain, or acroganglion,
composed of- two dorsal ganglia, lying
above the mouth; from these “ upper
ganglia” two branch nerves proceed to the
shin and the muscles. In some of the
vermalia and in the mollusca a pair of
ventral “lower ganglia” are added, which
are connected with the former by a ring
round the gullet. This ring is found also
in the articulata; but in these it is con
tinued on the belly side of the long body
as a ventral medulla, a double fibre like a
rope-ladder, which expands into a double
ganglion in each member. The vertebrates
have an entirely different formation of the
psychic organ ; they have always a spinal
medulla developed at the back of the body ;
and from an expansion of its fore part
there arises subsequently the characteristic
vesicular brain.1
Although the psychic organs of the
higher species of animals differ very
materially in position, form,, and composi
tion, nevertheless comparative anatomy is
in a position to prove a common origin for
most of them—namely, from the vertical
brain of the platodes and vermalia ; they
have all, moreover, had their origin in the
outermost layer of the embryo, the ectoderm,
or outer skin-layer. Hence we find the
same typical structure in all varieties of
the central nervous organ—a combination
of ganglionic cells, or “psychic cells”
(the real active elementary organs of the
soul), and of nerve fibres, which effect
1 Cf. Natural History of Creation.,
�THE PHYLOGENY OE THE SOUL
the connection and transmission of the
action.
The first fact we meet in the compara
tive psychology of the vertebrates, and
which should be the empirical startingpoint of all scientific human psychology,
is the characteristic structure of the central
nervous system. This central psychic
organ has a particular position, shape, and
texture in the vertebrate as it has in all the
higher species. In every case we find a
spinal medulla, a strong cylindrical nervous
cord, which runs down the middle of the
back, in the upper part of the vertebral
column (or the cord, which represents it).
In every case a number of nerves branch
■off from this medulla in regular division,
one pair to each segment or vertebra. In
every case this medullary cord arises in the
same way in the foetus; a fine groove
appears in the middle axis of the skin at
the back ; then the parallel borders of this
medullary groove are lifted up a little, bend
over towards each other, and form into a
kind of tube.
The long dorsal cylindrical medullary
tube which is thus formed is thoroughly
characteristic of the vertebrates ; it is
always the same in the early embryonic
sketch of the organism, and it is always
the chief feature of the different kinds of
psychic organ which evolve from it in time.
Only one single group of invertebrates has
a similar structure : the rare marine tunicata, the copelata, ascidia, and thalidiae.
These animals have other important peculi
arities of structure (especially in the chorda
and the gut) which show a striking diver
gence from the other invertebrates and
resemblance to the vertebrates. The
inference we draw is that both these
groups, the vertebrates and the tunicates,
have arisen from a common ancestral
group of the vermalia, the prochordonia.1Still, there is a great difference between
the two classes in the fact that the body of
the tunicate does not articulate, or form
members, and has a very simple organisa
tion (most of them subsequently attach
themselves to the bottom of the sea and
degenerate). The vertebrate, on the other
hand, is characterised by an early develop
ment of internal members, and the forma
tion of pro-vertebrae (vertebratio). This
prepares the way for a much higher
development of their organism, which
finally attains perfection in man. This is
1 See chaps, xvi. and xvii. of my Anthrofogeny.
ft
easily seen in the finer structure of his
spinal cord, and in the development of a
number of segmental pairs of nerves, the
spinal nerves, which proceed to the various
parts of the body.
The long ancestral history of our “verte
brate-soul” commences with the formation
of the most rudimentary spinal cord in the
earliest acrania ; slowly and gradually,
through a period of many millions of years,
it conducts to that marvellous structure of
the human brain which seems to entitle the
highest primate form to quite an exceptional
position in nature. Since a clear conception
of this slow and steady progress of our
phyletic psychogeny is indispensable for a
true psychology, we must divide that vast
period into a number of stages or sections:
in each of them the perfecting of the
structure of the nervous centre has been
accompanied by a corresponding evolution
of its function, the psyche. I distinguish
eight of these periods in the phylogeny of
the spinal cord, which are characterised by
eight different groups of vertebrates :—(i)
the acrania ; (2) the cyclostomata; (3) the
fishes ; (4) the amphibia ; (5) the implacental mammals (monotremes and marsu
pials); (6) the earlier placental mammals,
especially the prosmiae; (7) the younger
primates, the simiae; and (8) the anthropoid
apes and man.
I. First stage—the acrania: their only
modern representative is the lancelot or
amphioxus; the psychic organ remains a
simple medullary tube, and contains a
regularly segmented spinal cord, without
brain.
II. Second stage—the cyclostomata: the
oldest group of the craniota, now only
represented by the petromyzontes and
myxinoides: the fore-termination of the
cord expands into a vesicle, which then
subdivides into five successive parts—the
great-brain, intermediate - brain, middle
brain, little-brain, and hind-brain: these
five cerebral vesicles form the common type
from which the brain of all craniota has
evolved, from the lamprey to man.
III. Third stage—the primitive fishes
{selachii} : similar to the modern shark : in
these oldest fishes, from which all the
gnathostomata descend, the more pro
nounced division of the five cerebral vesicles
sets in.
IV. Fourth stage—the amphibia. These
earliest land-animals, making their first
appearance in the Carboniferous period,
represent the commencement of the charac
teristic structure of the tetrapod and a
�6o
THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE
corresponding development of the fish-brain:
it advances still further in their Permian
successors, the reptiles^ the earliest repre
sentatives of which, the tocosauria, are the
common ancestors of all the amniota
(reptiles and birds on one side, mammals
on the other).
-VIII.
V.
Fifth to the eighth stages—
the mammals. I have exhaustively treated,
and illustrated with a number of plates, in
my Anthropogeny, the evolution of our
nervous system and the correlative question
of the development of the soul. I have
now, therefore, merely to refer the reader to
that work. It only remains for me to add
a few remarks on the last and most inte
resting class of facts pertaining to this—to
the evolution of the soul and its organs
within the limits of the class mammalia.
In doing so, I must remind the reader that
the monophyletic origin of this class—that
is, the descent of all the mammals from
one common ancestral form (of the Triassic
period)—-is now fully established.
The most important consequence of the
monophyletic origin of the mammals is the
necessity of deriving the human soul from
a long evolutionary series of other mammal
souls. A deep anatomical and physiological
gulf separated the brain structure and the
dependent psychic activity of the higher
mammals from those of the lower : this
gulf, however, is completely bridged over
by a long series of intermediate stages.
The period of at least fourteen (more than
a hundred, on other estimates) million
years, which has elapsed since the com
mencement of the Triassic period, is amply
sufficient to allow even the greatest psycho
logical advance. The following is a
summary of the results of investigation in
this quarter, which has recently been very
penetrating :—
I. The brain of the mammal is differen
tiated from that of the other vertebrates by
certain features, which are found in all
branches of the class ; especially by a pre
ponderant development of the first and
fourth vesicles, the cerebrum and cere
bellum, while the third vesicle, the middle
brain, disappears altogether.
II. The brain development of the lowest
and earliest mammals (the monotremes,
marsupials, and prochoriates) is closely
allied to that of their palteozoic ancestors,
the Carboniferous amphibia (the stegocephala} and the Permian reptiles (the toco
sauria}.
III. During the Tertiary period com
mences the typical development of the I
cerebrum, which distinguishes the youngef
mammals so strikingly from the older.
IV. The special development (quanti
tatively and qualitatively) of the cerebrum
which is so prominent a feature in man,
and which is the root of his pre-eminent
psychic achievements, is only found, out
side humanity, in a small section of the
most highly-developed mammals of the
earlier Tertiary epoch, especially in the
anthropoid apes.
V. The differences of brain-structure
and psychic faculty which separate man
from the anthropoid ape are slighter than
the corresponding interval between the
anthropoid apes and the lower primates
(the earliest simiae and prosimiae).
VI. Consequently, the historical, gradual
evolution of the human soul from a long
chain of higher and lower mammal-souls
must, by application of the universally valid
phyletic laws of the theory of descent, be
regarded as a fact which has been scienti
fically proved.
CHAPTER X.
CONSCIOUSNESS
Consciousness as a natural phenomenon. Its
definition. Difficulties of the problem. Its
relation to the life of the soul. Our human
consciousness. Various theories : I. Anthropistic theory (Descartes). II. Neurological
theory( Darwin). TIL Animal theory (Schopen
hauer). IV. Biological theory (Fechner). V.
Cellular theory (Fritz Schultze). VI. Atomistic
theory. Monistic and dualistic theories. Tran
scendental character of consciousness. The
Ignorabimus verdict of Du Bois-Reymond.
Physiology of consciousness. Discovery of
the organs of thought by Flechsig. Pathology.
Double and intermittent consciousness. Onto
geny of consciousness : modifications at dif
ferent ages. • Phylogeny of consciousness.
Formation of concepts.
No phenomenon of the life of the soul is
so wonderful and so variously interpreted
as consciousness. The most contradictory
views are current to-day, as they were 2,000
years ago, not only with regard to the
nature of this psychic function and its
relation to the body, but even as to its
diffusion in the organic world and its origin
and development. It is more responsible
than any other psychic faculty for the
�CONSC/OUSA^SS
erroneous idea of an “immaterial soul”
and the belief in “personal immortality”;
many of the gravest errors that still
dominate even our modern civilisation may
be traced to it. Hence it is that I have
entitled consciousness “ the central mystery
of psychology”: it is the strong citadel of
all mystic and dualistic errors, before
whose ramparts the best equipped efforts
of reason threaten to miscarry. This fact
would suffice of itself to induce us to make
a special critical study of consciousness
from our monistic point of view. We shall
see that consciousness is simply a natural
phenomenon like any other psychic quality,
and that it is subject to the law of substance
like all other natural phenomena.
Even as to the elementary idea of con
sciousness, its contents and extension, the
viewsof the mostdistinguished philosophers
and scientists are widely divergent. Perhaps
the meaning of consciousness is best con
ceived as an internal perception, and
compared with the action of a mirror. As
its two chief departments we distinguish
objective and subjective consciousness—
consciousness of the outer world, the non
ego, and of the ego. By far the greater part
of our conscious activity, as Schopenhauer
justly remarked, belongs to the conscious
ness of the world, or the non-ego : this
world-consciousness embraces all possible
phenomena of the outer world which are
in any sense accessible to our minds.
Much more contracted is the sphere of
self-consciousness, the internal mirror of all
our own psychic activity, all our presenta
tions, sensations, and volitions.
Many distinguished thinkers, especially
on the physiological side (Wundt and
Ziehen, for instance), take the ideas of
consciousness and psychic function to be
identical—“all psychic action is conscious”;
the province of psychic life, they say, is
co-extensive with that of consciousness.
In our opinion, such a definition gives an
undue extension to the meaning of con
sciousness, and occasions many errors and
misunderstandings. We share, rather, the
view of other philosophers (Romanes, Fritz
Schultze, and Paulsen), that even our
unconscious presentations, sensations, and
volitions pertain to our psychic life ;
indeed, the province of these unconscious
psychic actions (reflex action, and so forth)
is far more extensive than that of conscious
ness. Moreover, the two provinces are
intimately connected, and are separated by
no sharp line of demarcation. An uncon
scious presentation may become conscious
61
at any moment; let our attention be with
drawn from it by some other object, and
forthwith it disappears from consciousness
once more.
The only source of our knowledge of
consciousness is that faculty itself; that is
the chief cause of the extraordinary diffi
culty of subjecting it to scientific research.
Subject and object are one and the same
in it: the perceptive subject mirrors itself
in its own inner nature, which is to be the
object of our inquiry. Thus we can never
have a complete objective certainty of the
consciousness of others; we can only
proceed by a comparison of their psychic
condition with our own. As long as this
comparison is restricted to normal people
we are justified in drawing certain conclu
sions as to their consciousness, the validity
of which is unchallenged. But when we pass
on to consider abnormal individuals (the
genius, the eccentric, the stupid, or the
insane) our conclusions from analogy are
either unsafe or entirely erroneous. The
same must be said with even greater
truth when we attempt to compare human
consciousness with that of the animals
(even the higher, but especially the lower).
In that case such grave difficulties arise
that the views of physiologists and philoso
phers diverge as widely as the poles on the
subject. We shall briefly enumerate the
most important of these views.
I. The anthropistic theory of conscious
ness.—It is peculiar to man. To Descartes
we must trace the widespread notion that
consciousness and thought are man’s exclu
sive prerogative, and that he alone is blessed
with an “immortal soul.” This famous
French philosopher and mathematician (edu
cated in a Jesuit College) established a
rigid partition between the psychic activity
of man and that of the brute. In his opinion
the human soul, a thinking, immaterial being,
is completely distinct from the body, which
is extended and material. Yet it is united
to the body at a certain point in the brain
(the glandula pinealis') for the purpose of
receiving impressions from the outer world
and effecting muscular movements. The
animals, not being endowed with thought,
have no soul: they are mere automata, or
cleverly-constructed machines, whose sensa
tions, presentations, and volitions are purely
mechanical, and take place according to the
ordinary laws of physics. Hence Descartes
was a dualist in human psychology, and a
monist in the psychology of the brute. This
open contradiction in so clear and acute a
thinker is very striking ; in explaining it, it
�64
tHE RIDDLE OF THÉ ÜNIVELE
is not unnatural to suppose that he concealed
his real opinion, and left the discovery of it
to independent scholars. As a pupil of the
Jesuits, Descartes had been taught to deny
the truth in the face of his better insight;
and perhaps he dreaded the power and the
fires of the Church. Besides, his sceptical
principle, that every sincere effort to attain
the truth must start with a doubt of the
traditional dogma, had already drawn upon
him fanatical accusations of scepticism
and atheism. The great influence which
Descartes had on subsequent philosophy
was very remarkable, and entirely in
harmony with his “ book-keeping by double
entry.” The materialists of the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries appealed to the
Cartesian theory of the animal-soul and its
purely mechanical activity in support of
their monistic psychology. The spiritual
ists, on the other hand, asserted that their
dogma of the immortality of the soul and
its independence of the body was firmly
established by Descartes’ theory of the
human soul. This view is still prevalent
in the camp of the theologians and dualistic
metaphysicians. The scientific conception
of nature, however, which has been built
up in the nineteenth century, has, with the
aid of empirical progress in physiological
and comparative psychology, completely
falsified it.
II. Neurological theory of consciousness.
—It is present only in man and those
higher animals which have a centra
lised nervous system and organs of sense.
The conviction that a large number of
animals— at least the higher mammals—
are not less endowed than man with a
thinking soul and consciousness prevails in
modern zoology, exact physiology, and the
monistic psychology. The immense pro
gress we have made in the various branches
of biology has contributed to bring about a
recognition of this important truth. We
confine ourselves for the present to the
higher vertebrates, and especially the
mammals.
That the most intelligent
specimens of these highly-developed verte
brates—apes and dogs, in particular—have
a strong resemblance to man in their whole
psychic life has been recognised and specu
lated on for thousands of years. Their
faculty of presentation and sensation, of
feeling and desire, is so like that of man
that we need adduce no proof of our thesis.
But even the higher associational activity
of the brain, the formation of judgments
and their connection into chains of reason
ing, thought, and consciousness in the
narrower sense, are developed' in them
after the same fashioh as in man : they
differ only in degree, not in kind. More
over, wë learn from comparative anatomy
and histology that the intricate structure of
the brain (both in general and in detail) is
substantially the same in the mammals as it
is in man. The same lesson is enforced by
comparative ontogeny with regard to the
origin of these psychic organs. Compara
tive physiology teaches us that the various
states of consciousness are just the same in
these highest placentals as in man; and we
learn by experiment that there is the same
reaction to external stimuli. The higher
animals can be narcotised by alcohol,
chloroform, ether, etc., and may be hypno
tised by the usual methods, just as in the
case of man.
It is, however, impossible to determine
mathematically at what stage of animal
life consciousness is to be first recognised
as such. Some zoologists draw the line
very high in the scale, others very low.
Darwin, who most accurately distinguishes
the various stages of consciousness, intelli
gence, and emotion in the higher animals,
and explains them by progressive evolu
tion, points out how difficult, or even
impossible, it is to determine the first
beginning of this supreme psychic faculty
in the lower animals. Personally, out of
the many contradictory theories, I take
that to be most probable which holds the
centralisation of the nervous system to be a
condition of consciousness ; and that is
wanting in the lower classes of animals.
The presence of a central nervous organ,
of highly-developed sense-organs, and an
elaborate association of groups of presenta
tions, seem to me to be required before the
unity of consciousness is possible.
III. Animal theory of consciousness.—
All animals, and they alone, have conscious
ness. This theory would draw a sharp
distinction between the psychic life of the
animal and of the plant. Such a distinction
was urged by many of the older writers,
and was clearly formulated by Linné in his
celebrated Systerna Natures : the two great
kingdoms of the organic world are, in his
opinion, divided by the fact that animals
have sensation and consciousness, and the
plants are devoid of them. Later on Schopen
hauer laid stress on the same distinction :
“ Consciousness is only known to us as
a feature of animal nature. Even though
it extend upwards through the whole animal
kingdom, even to man and his reason, the
unconsciousness of the plant, from which
�CONSC/OIBSAIESS
it started, remains as the basic feature. In
tile lowest animals we have but the dawn
of it.” The inaccuracy of this view was
obvious by about the middle of the present
century, when a deeper study was made of
the psychic activity of the lower animal
forms, especially the coelenterates (sponges
and cnidaria) : they are undoubtedly
animals, yet there is no more trace of a
definite consciousness in them than in most
of the plants. The distinction between the
two kingdoms was still further obliterated
when more careful research was made into
their unicellular forms. There is no psy
chological difference between the plasmophagous protozoa and the plasmodomous
protophyta, even in respect to their con
sciousness.
IV. Biological theory of consciousness.—
It is found in all organisms, animal or
vegetal, but not in lifeless bodies (such as
crystals). This opinion is usually asso
ciated with the idea that all organisms (as
distinguished from inorganic substances)
have souls : the three ideas—life, soul, and
consciousness—are then taken to be co
extensive. Another modification of this
view holds that, though these fundamental
phenomena of organic life are inseparably
connected, yet consciousness is only a part
of the activity of the soul, and of the vital
activity. Fechner, in particular, has endea
voured to prove that the plant has a
“ soul,” in the same sense as an animal is
said to have one ; and many credit the
vegetal soul with a consciousness similar to
that of the animal soul. In truth, the re
markable stimulated movements of the
leaves of the sensitive plants (the mimosa,
drosera, and dionaea), the automatic move
ments of.other plants (the clover and wood
sorrel, and especially the hedysarum), the
movements of the “ sleeping plants ” (par
ticularly the papilionacea\ etc., are strikingly
similar to the movements of the lower
animal forms : whoever ascribes conscious
ness to the latter cannot refuse it to such
vegetal forms.
V. Cellular theory of consciousness.—
It is a vital property of every cell. The
application of the cellular theory to every
branch of biology involved its extension to
psychology. Just as we take the living cell
to be the “ elementary organism ” in ana
tomy and physiology, and derive ihe whole
system of the multicellular animal or plant
from it, so, with equal right, we may con
sider the “ cell-soul ” to be the psychological
unit, and the complex psychic activity of
the higher organism to be the result of the
63
combination of the psychic activity of the
cells which compose it. I gave the outlines
of this cellular psychology in my General
Morphology in 1866, and entered more fully
into the subject in my paper on “ Cell-souls
and Soul-cells.” I was led to a deeper study
of this “ elementary psychology ” by my
protracted research into the unicellular
forms of life. Many of these tiny (generally
microscopic) protists show similar expres
sions of sensation and will, and similar
instincts and movements, to those of higher
animals ; that is especially true of the very
sensitive and lively infusoria. In the rela
tion of these sensitive cell-organisms to
their environment, and in many other of
their vital expressions (for instance, in the
wonderful architecture of the rhizopods, the
thalamophora, and the infusoria), we seemed
to have clear indications of conscious
psychic action. If, then, we accept the
biological theory of consciousness (No. IV.),
and credit every psychic function with a
share of that faculty, we shall be compelled
to ascribe it to each independent protistcell. In that case its material basis would
be either the entire protoplasm of the cell,
or its nucleus, or a portion of it. In the
“ psychade-theory ” of Fritz Schultze the
elementary consciousness of the psychade
would have the same relation to the indi
vidual cells as personal consciousness has
to the multicellular organism of the per
sonality in the higher animals and man. It
is impossible definitely to disprove this
theory, which I held at one time. Still, 1
now feel compelled to agree with Max
Verworn in his belief that none of the pro
tists have a developed self-consciousness,
but that their sensations and movements
are of an unconscious character.
VI. Atomistic theory of consciousness.—
It is an elementary property of all atoms.
This atomistic hypothesis goes farthest of
all the different views as to the extension of
consciousness. It certainly escapes the
difficulty which many philosophers and
biologists experience in solving the problem
of the first origin of consciousness. It is
a phenomenon of so peculiar a character
that a derivation of it from other psychic
functions seems extremely hazardous. It
seemed, therefore, the easiest way out of
the difficulty to conceive it as an inherent
property of all matter, like gravitation or
chemical affinity. On that hypothesis there
would be as many forms of this original
consciousness as there are chemical ele
ments ; each atom of hydrogen would have
its hydrogenic consciousness, each atom of
�64
THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE
carbon its carbonic consciousness, and so
forth. There are philosophers, even, who
ascribe consciousness to the four elements
of Empedocles, the union of which, by
“ love and hate,” produces the totality of
things.
Perso rally, I have never subscribed to
this hypothesis of atomic consciousness. I
emphasise the point because Emil du BoisReymond has attributed it to me. In the
controversy I had with him (1880) he
violently attacked my “ pernicious and false
philosophy,” and contended that I had, in
my paper on “ The Perigenesis of the
Plastidule,” “ laid it down as a meta
physical axiom that every atom has its
individual consciousness.” On the con
trary, I explicitly stated that I conceive the
elementary psychic qualities of sensation
and will, which may be attributed to atoms,
to be unconscious—-just as unconscious as
the elementary memory which I, in com
pany with that distinguished physiologist,
Ewald Hering, consider to be “ a common
function of all organised matter ”—or, more
correctly, “ living substance.” Du BoisReymond curiously confuses “soul” and
“ consciousness ” : whether from oversight
or not I cannot say. Since he considers
consciousness to be a transcendental phe
nomenon (as we shall see presently), while
denying that character to other psychic
functions—the action of the senses, for
example—I must infer that he recognises
the difference of the two ideas. Other
parts of his eloquent speeches contain quite
the opposite view, for the famous orator not
infrequently contradicts himself on impor
tant questions of principle. However, I
repeat that, in my opinion, consciousness is
only part of the psychic phenomena which
we find in man and the higher animals ;
the great majority of them are unconscious.
However divergent are the different views
as to the nature and origin of conscious
ness, they may, nevertheless, on a clear and
logical examination, all be reduced to two
fundamental theories—the transcendental
(or dualistic) and the physiological (or
monistic). I have myself always held the
latter view, in the light of my evolutionary
principles, and it is now shared by a great
number of distinguished scientists, though
it is by no means generally accepted. The
transcendental theory is the older and much
more common ; it has recently come once
more into prominence, principally through
du Bois-Revmond, and it has acquired a
great importance in modern discussions of
cosmic problems through his famous
“ Ignorabimus speech.” On account of the
extreme importance of this fundamental
question we must touch briefly on its main
features.
In the celebrated discourse on “ The
Limits of Natural Science,” which E. du
Bois-Reymond gave on August 14th, 1872,
at the Scientific Congress at Leipzig, he
spoke of two “ absolute limits ” to our
possible knowledge of nature which the
human mind will never transcend in its
most advanced science—never, as the oftquoted termination of the address, “Ignora
bimus,” emphatically pronounces. The first
absolutely insoluble “ world-enigma ” is the
“ connection of matter and force,” and the
distinctive character of these fundamental
natural phenomena ; we shall go more fully
into this “problem of substance” in the
twelfth chapter. The second insuperable
difficulty of philosophy is given as the
problem of consciousness — the question
how our mental activity is to be explained
by material conditions, especially move
ments, how “substance [the substance
which underlies matter and force] comes,
under certain conditions, to feel, to desire,
and to think.”
For brevity, and in order to give a
characteristic name to the Leipzig discourse,
I have called it the “Ignorabimus speech ”;
this is the more permissible as E. du BoisReymond himself, with a just pride, eight
years afterwards, speaking of the extra
ordinary consequences of his discourse,
said : “ Criticism sounded every possible
note, from friendly praise to the severest
censure, and the word ‘Ignorabimus,’ which
was the culmination of my inquiry, was at
once transformed into a kind of scientific
shibboleth.” It is quite true that loud
praise and approbation resounded in the
halls of the dualistic and spiritualistic
philosophy, and especially in the camp of
the “Church militant”; even the spiritists
and the host of believers, who thought
the immortality of their precious souls was
saved by the “ Ignorabimus,” joined in the
chorus. The “severest censure” came at
first only from a few scientists and philo
sophers—from the few who had sufficient
scientific knowledge and moral courage to
oppose the dogmatism of the all-powerful
secretary and dictator of the Berlin Academy
of Science.
Towards the end, however, the author of
the “ Ignorabimus speech ” briefly alluded
to the question whether these two great
“ world-eijigmas,” the general problem of
substance and the special problem of
�CONSCIOUSNESS
consciousness, are not two aspects of one and
the same, problem. “ This idea,” he said,
“ it certainly the simplest, and preferable
to the one which makes the world doubly
incomprehensible. Such, however, is the
nature of things that even here we can
obtain no clear knowledge, and it is useless
to speak further of the question.” The
latter sentiment I have always stoutly con
tested, and have endeavoured to prove that
the two great questions are not two distinct
problems. “The neurological problem of
consciousness is but a particular aspect of
the all-pervading cosmological problem of
substance.”
The peculiar phenomenon of conscious
ness is not, as du Bois-Reymond and the
dualistic school would have us believe, a
completely “ transcendental ” problem ; it
is, as I showed thirty-three years ago, a
physiological problem, and, as such, must
be reduced to the phenomena of physics
and chemistry. I subsequently gave it the
more definite title of a neurological problem,
as I share the view that true consciousness
(thought and reason) is only present in
those higher animals which have a centra
lised nervous system and organs of sense
of a certain degree of development. Those
conditions are certainly found in the higher
vertebrates, especially in the placental
mammals, the class from which man has
sprung. The consciousness of the highest
apes, dogs, elephants, etc., differs from that
of man in degree only, not in kind, and
the graduated interval between the con
sciousness of these “rational” placentals
and that of the lowest races of men (the
Veddahs, etc.) is less than the correspond
ing interval between these uncivilised races
and the highest specimens of thoughtful
humanity (Spinoza, Goethe, Lamarck,
Darwin, etc.). Consciousness is but a part
of the higher activity of the soul, and as
such it is dependent on the normal structure
of the corresponding psychic organ, the
brain.
Physiological observation and experiment
determined twenty years ago that the
particular portion of the mammal - brain
which we call the seat (preferably the organ}
of consciousness is a part of the cerebrum,
an area of the late-developed grey bed, or
cortex, which is evolved out of the convex
dorsal portion of the primary cerebral
vesicle, the “fore-brain.” Now, the mor
phological proof of this physiological thesis
has been successfully given by the remark
able progress of the microscopic anatomy
of the brain, which we owe to the perfect
methods of research of modern science
(Kolliker, Flechsig, Golgi, Edinger,Weigert,
and others).
The most important development is the
discovery of the organs of thought by Paul
Flechsig, of Leipzig ; he proved that in the
grey bed of the brain are found the four
seats of the central sense-organs, or four
“ inner spheres of sensation ”—the sphere
of touch in the vertical lobe, the sphere of
smell in the frontal lobe, the sphere of
sight in the occipital lobe, and the sphere
of hearing in the temporal lobe. Between
these four “ sense-centres ” lie the four
great “ thought-centres,” or centres of asso
ciation, the real organs of mental life; they
are those highest instruments of psychic
activity that produce thought and con
sciousness. In front we have the frontal
brain or centre of association ; behind, on
top there is the vertical brain, or parietal
centre of association, and underneath the
principal brain, or “ the great occipito
temporal centre of association ” (the most
important of all) ; lower down, and inter
nally, the insular brain or the insula of
Reil, the insular centre of association.
These four “ thought-centres,” distinguished
from the intermediate “ sense-centres ” by
a peculiar and elaborate nerve-structure,
are the true and sole organs of thought
and consciousness. Flechsig has recently
pointed out that, in the case of man, very
specific structures are found in one part of
them ; these structures are wanting in the
other mammals, and they, therefore, afford
an explanation of the superiority of man’s
mental powers.
The momentous announcement of modern
physiology, that the cerebrum is the organ
of consciousness and mental action in man
and the higher mammals, is illustrated and
confirmed by the pathological study of its
diseases. When parts of the cortex are
destroyed by disease their respective func
tions are affected, and thus we are enabled,
to some extent, to localise the activities of
the brain; when certain parts of the area
are diseased, that portion of thought and
consciousness disappears which depends
on those particular sections. Pathological
experiment yields the same result ; the
decay of some known area (for instance,
the centre of speech) extinguishes its func
tion (speech). In fact, there is proof enough
in the most familiar phenomena bf con
sciousness of their complete dependence on
chemical changes in the substance of the
brain. Many beverages (such as coffee
and tea) stimulate our powers of thought ;
F
�66
THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVER^
others (such as wine and beer) intensify
feeling ; musk and camphor reanimate the
fainting consciousness ; ether and chloro
form deaden it, and so forth. How would
that be possible if consciousness were an
immaterial entity, independent of -these
anatomical organs ? And what becomes
of the consciousness of the “immortal soul”
when it no longer has the use of these
organs ?
These and other familiar facts prove
that man’s consciousness—and that of the
nearest mammals—is changeable., a.nd that
its activity is always open to modification
from inner (alimentation, circulation, etc.)
and outer causes (lesion of the brain,
stimulation, etc.). Very instructive, too,
are the facts of double and intermittent
consciousness, which remind us of “ alter
nate generations of presentations.” The
same individual has an entirely different
consciousness on different days, with a
change of circumstances; he does not
know to-day what he did yesterday: yester
day he could say, “ I am I
to-day he
must say, “I am another being.” Such
intermittence of consciousness may last not
only days, but months, and even years ;
the change may even become permanent.
As everybody knows, the new-born infant
has no consciousness. Preyer has shown
that it is only developed after the child has
begun to speak ; for a long time it speaks
of itself in the third person. In the im
portant moment when it first pronounces
the word “ I,” when the feeling of self
becomes clear, we have the beginning of
self-consciousness, and of the antithesis to
the non-ego. The rapid and solid progress
in knowledge which the child makes in its
first ten years, under the care of parents
and teachers, and the slower progress of
the second decade, until it reaches complete
maturity of mind, are intimately connected
with a great advancement in the growth
and development of consciousness and of
its organ, the brain. But even when the
pupil has got his “ certificate of maturity ”
his consciousness is still far from mature ;
it is then that his “ world-consciousness ”
first begins to develop, in his manifold
relations with the outer world. Then, in
the third decade, we have the full maturity
of rational thought and consciousness,
which, in cases of normal development,
yield their ripe fruits during the next three
decades. The slow, gradual degeneration
of the higher mental powers, which
characterises senility, usually sets in at
the commencement of the seventh decade
—sometimes earlier, sometimes later!
Memory, receptiveness, and interest in
particular objects gradually decay; though
productivity, mature consciousness, and
philosophic interest in general truths often
remain for many years longer.
The individual development of conscious
ness of earlier youth proves the universal
validity of the bicgenetic law ; and, indeed,
it is still recognisable in many ways during
the later years. In any case, the onto
genesis of consciousness makes it perfectly
clear that it is not an “ immaterial entity,”
but a physio-logical function of the brain,
and that it is, consequently, no exception
to the general law of substance.
From the fact that consciousness, like all
other psychic functions, is dependent on
the normal development of certain organs,
and that it gradually unfolds in the child
in proportion to the development of those
organs, we may already conclude that it
has arisen in the animal kingdom by a
gradual historical development.
Still,
however certain we are of the fact of
this natural evolution of conscious
ness, we are, unfortunately, not yet in a
position to enter more deeply into the
question and construct special hypotheses
in elucidation of it. Palaeontology, it is
true, gives us a few facts which are not
without significance. For instance, the
quantitative and qualitative development
of the brain of the placental mammals
during the Tertiary period is very remark
able. The cavity of many of the fossil
skulls of the period has been carefully
examined, and has given us a good deal
of reliable information as to the size, and,
to some extent, as to the structure, of the
brain they enclosed. We find, within the
limits of one and the same group (the
ungulates, the rodents, or the primates), a
marked advance in the later miocene and
pliocene specimens as compared with the
earlier eocene and oligocene representatives
of the same stem : in the former the brain
(in proportion to the size of the organism)
is 6-8 times as large as in the latter. _
Moreover, that highest stage of consciousness, which is reached by man alone, has
been evolved - step by step even by the
very progress of civilisation from a lower
condition, as we find illustrated to-day in
the case of uncivilised races. That is
easily proved by a comparison . of thenlanguages, which is closely connected with
the comparison of their ideas. 1 he higher
the conceptional faculty advances in
thoughtful civilised man, the more qualified
�rffíE IMMORTALITY OF TUE.FOuL
he is to detect common features amid a
multitude of details, and embody them in
general concepts, and so much the clearer
and deeper does his consciousness become.
CHAPTER XI.
THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL
The citadel of superstition. Athanatism and
thanatism. Individual character of death.
Immortality of the unicellular organisms
(protists). Cosmic and personal immortality.
Primary thanatism (of uncivilised peoples).
Secondary thanatism (of ancient and recent
philosophers).
Athanatism and religion.
Origin of the belief in immortality. Christian
athanatism. Eternal life. The day of judg
ment. Metaphysical athanatism. Substance
of the soul. Ether souls and air souls ; fluid
souls and solid souls. Immortality of the
animal soul. Arguments for and against
athanatism. Athanatist illusions.
When we turn from the genetic study of
the soul to the great question of its immor
tality, we come to that highest point of
superstition which is regarded as the
impregnable citadel of all mystical and
dualistic notions. For in this crucial
question, more than in any other problem,
philosophic thought is complicated by the
selfish interest of the human personality,
who is determined to have a guarantee of
his existence beyond the grave at any price.
This “ higher necessity of feeling ” is so
powerful that it sweeps aside all the logical
arguments of critical reason. Consciously
or unconsciously, most men are influenced
in all their general views, and, therefore, in
their theory of life, by the dogma of personal
immortality ; and to this theoretical error
must be added practical consequences of
the most far-reaching character. It is our
task, therefore, to submit every aspect of
this important dogma to a critical examina
tion, and to prove its untenability in the
light of the empirical data of modern
biology.
In order to have a short and convenient
expression for the two opposed opinions on
the question, we shall. call the belief in
man’s personal immortality “athanatism”
(from athanes or athanatos=immortal). On
the other hand, we give the name of
“ thanatism ” (from thanatos—death) to the
opinion which holds that at a man’s death
67
not only all the other physiological functions
áre arrested, but his “soul’’also disappears
—that is, that sum of cerebral functions
which psychic dualism regards as a peculiar
entity, independent of the other vital pro
cesses in the living body.
In approaching this physiological problem
of death we must point out the individual
character of this organic phenomenon. By
death we understand simply the definite
cessation of the vital activity of the indi
vidual organism, no matter to . which
category or stage of individuality the
organism in question belongs. Man is
dead when his own personality ceases to
exist, whether he has left offspring that may
continue to propagate for many generations
or not. In a certain sense we often say
that the minds of great men (in a dynasty
of eminent rulers, for instance, or a family
of talented artists) live for many genera
tions ; and in the same way we speak of
the “ soul ” of a noble woman living in her
children and children’s children. But in
these cases we are dealing with intricate
phenomena of heredity, in which a micro
scopic cell (t^ie sperm-cell of the father or
the egg-cell of the mother) transmits
certain features to offspring. The particular
personalities which produce those sexual
cells in thousands are mortal beings, and
at their death their personal psychic activity
is extinguished like every other physiological
function.
A number of eminent zoologists—Weismann being particularly prominent—have
recently defended the opinion that only the
lowest unicellular organisms, the protists,
are immortal, in contradistinction to the
multicellular plants and animals, whose
bodies are formed of tissues. This curious
theory is especially based on the fact that
most of the protists multiply without sexual
means, by division or the formation of
spores. In such processes the whole body
of the unicellular organism breaks up into
two or more equal parts (daughter-cells),
and each of these portions completes itself
by further growth until it has the size and
form of the mother-cell. However, by the
very process of division the individuality
of the unicellular creature has been des
troyed ; both its physiological and its
morphological unity have gone. The view
of Weismann is logically inconsistent with
the very notion of individual—an “ indi
visible ” entity ; for it implies a unity which
cannot be divided without destroying its
nature. In this sense the unicellular protophyta and protozoa are throughout life
�63
THE RIDDLE OP THE UNIVERSE
physiological individuals, just as much as
the multicellular tissue-plants and animals.
A sexual propagation by simple division is
found in many of the multicellular species
(for instance, in many cnidaria, corals,
medusae, etc.); the mother-animal, the
division of which gives birth to the two
daughter-animals, ceases to exist with the
segmentation. “ The protozoa,” says Weismann, “have no individuals and no genera
tions in the metazoic sense.” I must entirely
dissent from his thesis. As I was the first
to introduce the title of metazoa, and
oppose these multicellular, tissue-forming
animals to the unicellularyJw/izswz(infusoria,
rhizopods, etc.), and as I was the first to
point out the essential difference in the
development of the two (the former from
germinal layers, and the latter not), I must
protest that I consider the protozoa to be
just as mortal in the physiological (and
psychological) sense as the metazoa;
neither body nor soul is immortal in either
group. The other erroneous consequences
of Weismann’s notion have been refuted by
Moebius (1884), who justly remarks that
“ every event in the world is periodic,” and
that “there is no source from which
immortal organic individuals might have
sprung.”
When we take the idea of immortality in
the widest sense, and extend it to the
totality of the knowable universe, it has a
scientific significance; it is then not merely
acceptable, but self-evident, to the monistic
philosopher. In that sense the thesis of the
indestructibility and eternal duration of all
that exists is equivalent to our supreme law
of nature, the .law of substance (see chap,
xii.). As we intend to discuss this immor
tality of the cosmos fully later on, in establish
ing the theory of the persistence of matter
and force, we shall not dilate on it at present.
We pass on immediately to the criticism of
that belief in immortality which is the only
sense usually attached to the word, the
immortality of the individual soul. We
shall first inquire into the extent and the
origin of this mystic and dualistic notion,
and point out, in particular, the wide
acceptance of the contradictory thesis, our
monistic, empirically-established thanatism.
I must distinguish two essentially different
forms of thanatism—primary and secon
dary ; primary thanatism is the original
absence of the dogma of immortality (in
the primitive uncivilised races); secondary
thanatism is the later outcome of a rational
knowledge of nature in the civilised intelli
gence.
We still find it asserted in philosophic,
and specially in theological, works that
belief in the personal immortality of the
hnman soul was originally shared by all
men—or, at least, by all “rational” men.
That is not the case. This dogma is not
an original idea of the human mind, nor
has it ever found universal acceptance. It
has been absolutely proved by modern
comparative ethnology that many uncivi
lised races of the earliest and most primi
tive stage had no notion either of immor
tality or of God. That is true, for instance,
of the Veddahs of Ceylon, those primitive
pygmies whom, on the authority of the able
studies of the Sarasins, we consider to be a
relic of the earliest inhabitants of India
it is also the case in several of the earliest
groups of the nearly related Dravidas,
the Indian Seelongs, and some native
Australian races. Similarly, several of the
primitive branches of the American race, in
the interior of Brazil, on the upper Amazon,
etc., have no knowledge either of gods or
immortality. This primary absence of
belief in immortality and deity is an
extremely important fact; it is, obviously,
easy to distinguish from the secondary
absence of such belief, which has come
about in the highest civilised races as the
result of laborious critico-philosophical
study.
Differently from the primary thanatism
which originally characterised primitive
man, and has always been widely spread,
the secondary absence of belief in immor
tality is only found at a late stage of history:
it is the ripe fruit of profound reflection on
life and death, the outcome of bold and
independent philosophical speculation.
We first meet it in some of the Ionic philo
sophers of the sixth century B.C., then in
the founders of the old materialistic philo
sophy, Democritus and Empedocles, and
also in Simonides and Epicurus, Seneca
and Plinius, and in an elaborate form in
Lucretius Carus.
With the spread of
Christianity at the decay of classical
antiquity, athanatism, one of its chief
articles of faith, dominated the world
and so, amid other forms of superstition,
the myth of personal immortality came to
be invested with a high importance.
Naturally, through the long night of the
Dark Ages it was rarely that a brave free
thinker ventured to express an opinion to
the contrary: the examples of Galileo,
Giordano Bruno, and other independent
1 E. Haeckel, A Visit to Ceylon.
�THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL
philosophers, effectually destroyed all free
dom of utterance. Heresy only became
possible when the Reformation and the
Renaissance had broken the power of the
papacy. The history of modern philo ophy
tells of the manifold methods by which the
matured mind of man sought to rid itself
of the superstition of immortality. Still,
the intimate connection of the belief with
the Christian dogma invested it with such
power, even in the more emancipated
sphere of Protestantism, that the majority
of convinced freethinkers kept their senti
ments to themselves. From time to time
some distinguished scholar ventured to
make a frank declaration of his belief in
the impossibility of the continued life of
the soul after death. This was done in
France in the second half of the eighteenth
century by Danton, Mirabeau, and others,
and by the leaders of the materialistic
school of those days, Holbach, Lamettrie,
etc. The same opinion was defended by
the able friend of the Materialists, the
greatest of the Hohenzollerns, the monistic
“ philosopher of Sans-souci.” What would
Frederick the Great, the “ crowned thanatist and atheist,” say, could he compare
his monistic views with those of his
successor of to-day?
Among thoughtful physicians the con. viction that the existence of the soul came
to an end at death has been common for
centuries: generally, however, they refrained
from giving it expression. Moreover, the
empirical science of the brain remained so
imperfect during the last century that the
soul could continue to be regarded as its
mysterious inhabitant. It was the gigantic
progress of biology in the present century,
and especially in the latter half of the
century, that finally destroyed the myth.
The establishment of the theory of descent
and the cellular theory, the astounding
discoveries of ontogeny and experimental
physiology—above all, the marvellous pro
gress of the microscopic anatomy of the
brain, gradually deprived athanatism of
every basis ; now, indeed, it is rarely that
an informed and honourable biologist is
found to defend the immortality of the
soul. All the monistic philosophers of the
century (Strauss, Feuerbach, Buchner,
Spencer, etc.) are thanatists.
The dogma of personal immortality owes
its great popularity and its high impor
tance to its intimate connection with the
teaching of Christianity. This circum
stance gave rise to the erroneous and still
prevalent belief that the myth is a funda
69
mental element of all the higher religions.
That is by no means the case. The
higher oriental religions include no belief
whatever in the immortality of the soul; it
is not found in Buddhism, the religion that
dominates thirty per cent, of the entire
human race ; it is not found in the ancient
popular religion of the Chinese, nor in the
reformed religion of Confucius which
succeeded it; and, what is still more signi
ficant, it is not found in the earlier and
purer religion of the Jews. Neither in the
“ five Mosaic books,” nor in any of the
writings of the Old Testament which were
written before the Babylonian Exile, is there
any trace of the notion of individual persis
tence after death.
The mystic notion that the human soul
will live for ever after death has had a
polyphyletic origin. It was unknown to
the earliest speaking man (the hypothetical
homo primigenius of Asia), to his prede
cessors, of course, the pithecanthropus and
prothylobates, and to the least developed of
his modern successors, the Veddahs of
Ceylon, the Seelongs of India, and other
distant races. With the development of
reason and deeper reflection on life and
death, sleep and dreams, mystic ideas of a
dualistic composition of our nature were
evolved—independently of each other—in
a number of the earlier races. Very
different influences were at work in these
polyphyletic creations—-worship of ances
tors, love of relatives, love of life and
desire of its prolongation, hope of better
conditions of life beyond the grave, hope
of the reward of good and punishment of
evil deeds, and so forth. Comparative
psychology has recently brought to our
knowledge a great variety of myths and
legends of that character ; they are, for the
most part, closely associated with the oldest
forms of theistic and religious belief. In
most of the modern religions athanatism is
intimately connected with theism; the
majority of believers transfer their materia
listic idea of a “personal God” to their
“ immortal soul.” That is particularly true
of the dominant religion of modern civilised
states, Christianity.
As everybody knows, the dogma of the
immortality of the soul has long since
assumed in the Christian religion that rigid
form which it has in the articles of faith :
“ I believe in the resurrection of the body
and in an eternal life.” Man will arise on
“ the last day,” as Christ is alleged to have
done on Easter morn, and receive a reward
according to the tenour of his earthly life.
�70
THE REDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE
This typically Christian idea is thoroughly
materialistic and anthropomorphic ; it is
very little superior to the corresponding
crude legends of uncivilised peoples. The
impossibility of “ the resurrection of the
body ” is clear to every man who has some
knowledge of anatomy and physiology.
The resurrection of Christ, which is cele
brated every Easter by millions of Christians,
is as purely mythical as “ the awakening of
the dead,” which he is alleged to have
taught. These mystic articles of faith are
just as untenable in the light of pure
reason as the cognate hypothesis of “eternal
life.”
The fantastic notions which the Christian
Church disseminates as to the eternal life
of the immortal soul after the dissolution
of the body are just as materialistic as the
dogma of “ the resurrection of the body.”
In his interesting work on Religion in the
Light of the Darwinian Theory, Savage
justly remarks : “ It is one of the standing
charges of the Church against science that
it is materialistic. I must say, in passing,
that the whole ecclesiastical doctrine of a
future life has always been, and still is,
materialism of the purest type. It teaches
that the material body shall rise, and dwell
in a material heaven.” To prove this one
has only to read impartially some of the
sermons and ornate discourses in which
the glory of the future life is extolled as the
highest good of the Christian, and belief
in it is laid down to be the foundation of
morality. According to them, all the joys of
the most advanced modern civilisation
await the pious believer in Paradise, while
the “All-loving Father” reserves his eternal
fires for the godless materialist.
I n opposition to the materialist athanatism,
which is dominant in the Christian and
Mohammedan Churches, we have, appa
rently, a purer and higher form of faith in
metaphysical athanatism, as taught by most
pf ogr dualist and spiritualist.philosophers,
Plato must be considered its chief creator ;
ip the fourth century before Christ he
taught that complete dualism of body and
soul which afterwards became one of the
most important, theoretically, and one of
the most influential, practically, of the
Christian articles of faith. The body is
mortal, material, physical ; the soul is
immortal, immaterial, metaphysical. They
gre only temporarily associated, for the
course of the individual life. As Plato
postulated an eternal life before as well
gs after this temporary association, he
must be classed as an adherent of
“ metempsychosis,” or transmigration of
souls ; the soul existed as such, or as an
“eternal idea,” before it entered into a
human body. When it quits one body, it
seeks such other as is most suited to its
character for its habitation. The souls of
bloody tyrants pass into the bodies of
wolves and vultures, those of virtuous
toilers migrate into the bodies of bees and
ants, and so forth. The childish naivety
of this Platonic morality is obvious; on
closer examination his views are found to
be absolutely incompatible with the scien
tific truth which we owe to modern anatomy,
physiology, histology, and ontogeny; we
mention them only because, in spite of
their absurdity, they have had a profound
influence on thought and culture. On the
one hand, the mysticism of the NeoPlatonists, which penetrate into Chris
tianity, attached itself to the psychology of
Plato ; on the other hand, it became subse
quently one of the chief supports of
spiritualistic and idealistic philosophy.
The Platonic “idea” gave way in time to
the notion of psychic “substance”; this is
just as incomprehensible and metaphysical,
though it often assumed a physical appear
ance.
The conception of the soul as a
“substance” is far from clear in many
psychologists ; sometimes it is regarded as
an “immaterial” entity of a peculiar
character in an abstract and idealistic
sense, sometimes in a concrete and realistic
sense, and sometimes as a confused tertium
quid between the two. If we adhere to the
monistic idea of substance, which wé
develop in chap, xii., and which takes
it to be the simplest element of our whole
world-system, we find energy and matter
inseparably associated in it. We must,
therefore, distinguish in the “ substance of
the soul” the characteristic psychic energy
which is all we preceive (sensation,presenta
tion, volition, etc.), and the psychic matter,
which is the indispensable basis of its
activity—that is, the living protoplasm,
Thus, in the higher gnimals the ‘‘matter”
of the soul is g part of the nervous system ;
in the lower nerveless animals and plants
it is a part of their multicellular proto
plasmic body; and in the unicellular protists
it is g part of their protoplasmic cell
body. In this way we are brought once
more to the psychic organs, and to an
appreciation of the fact that these material
organs are indispensable for the action of the
soul; but the soul itself is actual—it is the
sum-total of their physiological functions.
�THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL
71
However, the idea of a specific “soul After a time this “living breath” was
substance * found in the dualistic philo identified with the “vital force,” and finally
sophers who admit such a thing is very it came to be regarded as the soul itself, or,
different from this. They conceive the in a narrower sense, as its highest mani
immortal soul to be material, yet invisible, festation, the “spirit.” From that the
and essentially different from the visible imagination went on to derive the mystic
body which it inhabits. Thus invisibility notion.of individual “spirits”; these, also,
comes to be regarded as a most important are still usually conceived as “aeriform
attribute of the soul. Some, in fact, com beings ’’—though they are credited with the
pare the soul with ether, and regard it, like physiological functions of an organism, and
ether, as an extremely subtle, light, and they have been photographed in certain
highly elastic material, an imponderable well-known spiritist circles.
agency, that fills the intervals between the
Experimental physics has succeeded,
ponderable particles of the living organism. ffuring the last decade of the century, in
Others compare the soul with the wind, and reducing all gaseous bodies to a liquid —
so give it a gaseous nature ; and it is this most. of them, also, to a solid—condition.
simile which first found favour with primi Nothing more is needed than special
tive peoples, and led in time to the familiar apparatus, which exerts a violent pressure
dualistic conception. When a man died,
on the gases at a very, low temperature.
the body remained as a lifeless corpse, but By this process not only the atmospheric
the immortal soul “ flew out of it with the elements, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen,
last breath.”
but even compound gases (such as carbonic
The comparison of the human soul with acid gas) and gaseous aggregates (like the
physical ether as a qualitatively similar* atmosphere), have been changed from
idea has assumed a more concrete shape in gaseous to liquid form. In this way the “in
recent times through the great progress of visible” substances have become “visible”
optics and electricity (especially in the last to all, and in a certain sense “tangible.”
decade); for these sciences have taught us With this transformation the mystic nimbus
a good deal about the energy of ether, and which formerly veiled the character of the
enabled us to formulate certain conclusions gas in popular estimation—as an invisible
as to the material character of this all body that wrought visible effects—has
pervading agency. As I intend to describe entirely disappeared. If, then, the substance
these important discoveries later on (in of the soul were really gaseous, it should be
chap, xii.), I shall do no more at present possible to liquefy it by the application of
than briefly point out that they render the a high pressure at a low temperature. We
notion of an “ etheric-soul ” absolutely could then catch the soul as it is “ breathed
untenable. Such an etheric soul—that is, out” at the moment of death, condense it,
a psychic substance—which is similar to and exhibit it in a bottle as “immortal
physical ether, and which, like ether, passes fluid” (Fluidum anima immortale). By
between the ponderable elements of the a further lowering of temperature and
living protoplasm or the molecules of the increase ofpressure it might be possible to
brain, cannot possibly account for the solidify it—to produce “ soul-snow.” The
individual life of the soul. Neither the experiment has not yet succeeded.
mystic notions of that kind which were
If athanatism were true, if indeed the
warmly discussed about the middle of the human soul were to live for all eternity, we
century, nor the attempts of modern should have to grant the same privilege to
“ Neovitalists” to put their mystical “vital the souls of the higher animals, at least to
force ” on a line with physical ether, call those of the nearest related mammals (apes,
for refutation any longer.
dogs, etc.). For man is not distinguished
Much more widespread, and still much from them by a special kind of soul, or by
respected, is the view which ascribes a any peculiar and exclusive psychic function,
gaseous nature to the substance of the soul. but only by a higher degree of psychic
The comparison of human breath with the activity, a superior stage of development.
wind, is a very old one; they were originally In particular, consciousness—the function
considered to be identical, and were both of the association of ideas, thought, and
given the same name. The anemos and reason—has reached a higher level in many
■psyche of the Greeks, and the anima and men (by no means in all) than in most of
spintus of the Romans, were originally all the animals. Yet this difference is far from
names for “ a breath of wind they were being so great as is popularly supposed;
transferred from this to the breath of man. and it is much slighter in every respect than
�72
THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE
the corresponding difference between the
higher and the lower animal souls, or even
the difference between the highest and the
lowest stages of the human soul itself. If
we ascribe “ personal immortality ” to man,
we are bound to grant it also to the higher
animals.
It is, therefore, quite natural that we
should find this belief in the immortality of
the animal soul among many ancient and
modern peoples ; we even meet it some
times to-day in many thoughtful men who
postulate an “immortal life” for themselves,
and have, at the same time, a thorough
empirical knowledge of the psychic life of
the animals. I once knew an old head
forester, who, being left a widower and
without children at an early age, had lived
alone for more than thirty years in a noble
forest of East Prussia. His only companions
were one or two servants, with whom he
exchanged merely a few necessary words,
and a great pack of different kinds of dogs,
with which he lived in perfect psychic
communion. Through many years of train
ing this keen observer and friend of nature
had penetrated deep into the individual
souls of his dogs, and he was as convinced
of their personal immortality as he was of
his own. Some of his most intelligent dogs
were, in his impartial and objective estima
tion, at a higher stage of psychic develop
ment than his old, stupid maid and the
rough, wrinkled manservant. Any unpre
judiced. observer, who will study the con
scious and intelligent psychic activity of a
fine dog for a year, and follow attentively
the physiological processes of its thought,
judgment, and reason, will have to admit
that it has just as valid a claim to immor
tality as man himself.
The proofs of the immortality of the soul,
which have been adduced for the last two
thousand years, and are, indeed, still
credited with some validity, have their
origin, for the most part, not in an effort to
discover the truth, but in an alleged “neces
sity of emotion”—that is, in imagination
and poetic conceit. As Kant puts it, the
immortality of the soul is not an object of
pure reason, but a “ postulate of practical
reason.” But we must set “practical
reason ” entirely aside, together with all the
“ exigencies of emotion, or of moral educa
tion, etc.,” when we enter upon an honest
and impartial pursuit of truth ; for we shall
only attain it by the work of pure reason,
starting from empirical data and capable of
logical analysis. We have to say the same
of athanatism as of theism ; both are
creations of paetic mysticism and of
transcendental “faith,” not of rational
science.
When we come to analyse all the different
proofs that have been urged for the immor
tality of the soul, we find that not a single
one of them is of a scientific character;
not a single one is consistent with the
truths we have learnt in the last few
decades from physiological psychology and
the theory of descent. The theological
proof—that a personal creator has breathed
an immortal soul (generally regarded as a
portion of the divine soul) into man—-is a
pure myth. The cosmological proof—-that
the “ moral order of the world ” demands
the eternal duration of the human soul—is
a baseless dogma. The teleological proof
—that the “hig'her destiny” of man involves
the perfecting of his defective, earthly soul
beyond the grave—rests on a false anthropism. The moral proof—that the defects
and the unsatisfied desires of earthly exis
tence must be fulfilled by “ compensative
justice” on the other side of eternity—is
nothing more than a pious wish. The
ethnological proof — that the belief in
immortality, like the belief in God, is an
innate truth, common to all humanity—is
an error in fact. The ontological proof—
that the soul, being a “ simple, immaterial,
and indivisible entity,” cannot be involved
in the corruption of death—-is based on an
entirely erroneous view of the psychic
phenomena ; it is a spiritualistic fallacy.
All these and similar “proofs of athanatism”
are in a parlous condition ; they are defi
nitely annulled by the scientific criticism of
the last few decades.
The extreme importance of the subject
leads us to oppose to these untenable
“proofs of immortality” a brief exposition
of the sound scientific arguments against it.
The physiological argument shows that the
human soul is not an independent, imma
terial substance, but, like the soul of all the
higher animals, merely a collective title for
the sum-total of man’s cerebral functions ;
and these are just as much determined by
physical and chemical processes as any of
the other vital functions, and just as amen
able to the law of substance. The histo
logical argument is based on the extremely
complicated microscopic structure of the
brain ; it shows us the true “ elementary
organs of the soul ” in the ganglionic cells.
The experimental argument proves that the
various functions of the soul are bound up
with certain special parts of the brain, and
cannot be exercised unless these are in a
�TOE nmURTALfT'Y^JF
normal condition; if the areas are destroyed
their function is extinguished; and this is
especially applicable to the “ organs of
thought,” the four central instruments of
mental activity. The pathological argu
ment is the complement of the physiological;
when certain parts of the brain (the centres
of speech, sight, hearing, etc.) are destroyed
by sickness, their activity (speech, vision,
hearing, etc.) disappears; in this way
Nature herself makes the decisive physio
logical experiment. The ontogenetic argu
ment puts before us the facts of the
development of the soul in the individual;
we see how the child-soul gradually unfolds
its various powers; the youth presents
them in full bloom, the mature man shows
their ripe fruit; in old-age we see the
gradual decay of the psychic powers,
corresponding to the senile degeneration of
the brain. The phylogenetic argument
derives its strength from palseontology, and
the comparative anatomy and physiology
of the brain ; co-operating with and com
pleting each other, these sciences prove to
the hilt that the human brain (and, conse
quently, its function—the soul) has been
evolved step by step from that of the
mammal, and, still further back, from that
of the lower vertebrate.
These inquiries, which might be supple
mented by many other results of modern
science, prove the old dogma of the immor
tality of the soul to be absolutely untenable;
in the twentieth century it will not be
regarded as a subject of serious scientific
research, but will be left wholly to trans
cendental “ faith.” The “ critique of pure
reason ” shows this treasured faith to be a
mere superstition, like the belief in a
personal God which generally accompanies
it. Yet even to-day millions of “ believers”
—not only of the lower, uneducated masses,
but even of the most cultured classes—look
on this superstition as their dearest posses
sion and their most “priceless treasure.”
It is, therefore, necessary to enter more
deeply into the subject, and—assuming it
to be true—to make a critical inquiry into
its practical value. It soon becomes
apparent to the impartial critic that this
value rests, for the most part, on fancy, on
the want of clear judgment and consecutive
thought. It is my firm and honest convic
tion that a definite abandonment of these
“athanatist illusions” would involve no
painful loss, but an inestimable positive
gain for humanity.
Man’s “emotional craving” clings to the
belief on immortality for two main reasons:
TOTroOT
73
firstly, in the hope of securing better con
ditions of life beyond the grave ; and,
secondly, in the hope of seeing once more
the dear and loved ones whom death has
torn from us. As for the first hope, it
corresponds to a natural feeling of the
justice of compensation, which is quite
correct subjectively, but has no objective
validity whatever. We make our claim
for an indemnity for the unnumbered
defects and sorrows of our earthly exist
ence, without the slightest real prospect or
guarantee of receiving it. We long for an
eternal life in which we shall meet no sad
ness and no pain, but an unbounded peace
and joy. The pictures that most men form
of this blissful existence are extremely
curious ; the immaterial soul is placed in
the midst of grossly material pleasures.
The imagination of each believer paints
the enduring splendour according to his
personal taste. The American Indian,
whose athanatism Schiller has so well
depicted, trusts to find in his Paradise the
finest hunting-grounds with innumerable
hordes of buffaloes and bears ; the Eskimo
looks forward to sun-tipped icebergs with
an inexhaustible supply of bears, seals, and
other polar animals; the effeminate Cinga
lese frames his Paradise on the wonderful
island-paradise of Ceylon with its noble
gardens and forests—adding that there
will be unlimited supplies of rice and curry,
of cocoa-nuts and other fruit, always at
hand ; the Mohammedan Arab believes it
will be a place of shady gardens of
flowers, watered by cool springs, and filled
with lovely maidens ; the Catholic fisher
man of Sicily looks forward to a daily
superabundance of the most valuable fishes
and the finest maccaroni, and eternal
absolution for all his sins, which he can
go on committing in his eternal home ; the
evangelical of North Europe longs for an
immense Gothic cathedral, in which he can
chant the praises of the Lord of Hosts for
all eternity.
In a word, each believer
really expects his eternal life to be a direct
continuation of his individual life on earth,
only in a “much improved and enlarged
edition.”
We must lay special stress on the
thoroughly materialistic character of
Christian athanatism, which is closely
connected with the absurb dogma of the
“ resurrection of the body.” As thousands
of paintings of famous masters inform us,
the bodies that have risen again, with the
souls that have been born again, walk
about in heaven just as they did in this
�74
THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE
vale of tears; they see God with their eyes,
they hear his voice with their ears, they
sing hymns to his praise with their larynx,
and so forth. In fine, the modern inhabi
tants of the Christian Paradise have the
same dual character of body and soul, the
same organs of an earthly body, as our
ancient ancestors had in Odiri’s Hall in
Walhalla, as the “immortal” Turks and
Arabs have in Mohammed’s lovely gardens,
as the old Greek demi-gods and heroes
had in the enjoyment of nectar and
ambrosia at the table of Zeus.
But, however gloriously we may depict
this eternal life in Paradise, it remains
endless in duration. Do we realise what
“eternity” means ?—the uninterrupted con
tinuance of our individual life for ever !
The profound legend of the “ wandering
Jew,” the fruitless search for rest of the
unhappy Ahasuerus, should teach us to
appreciate such an “ eternal life ” at its
true value. The best we can desire after
a courageous life, spent in doing good
according to our light, is the eternal peace
of the grave. “ Lord, give them an eternal
rest.”
Any impartial scholar who is acquainted
with geological calculations of time, and
has reflected on the long series of millions
of years the organic history of the earth
has occupied, must admit that the crude
notion of an eternal life is not a comfort,
but a fearful menace, to the best of men.
Only want of clear judgment and consecu
tive thought can dispute it.
The best and most plausible ground for
athanatism is found in the hope that
immortality will reunite us to the beloved
friends who have been prematurely taken
from us by some grim mischance. But
even this supposed good fortune proves to
be an illusion on closer inquiry; and in
any case it would be greatly marred by the
prospect of meeting the less agreeable
acquaintances and the enemies who have
troubled our existence here below. Even
the closest family ties would involve many
a difficulty. There are plenty of men who
would gladly sacrifice all the glories of
Paradise if it meant the eternal companion
ship of their “better half” and their motherin-law.
It is more than questionable
whether Henry VIII. would like the pros
pect of living eternally with his six wives ;
or Augustus the Strong of Poland, who
had a hundred mistresses and three hundred
and fifty-two children. As he was on good
terms with the Vicar of Christ, he must be
assumed to be in Paradise, in spite of his
sins, and in spite of the fact that his mad
military ventures cost the lives of more than
a hundred thousand Saxons.
Another insoluble difficulty faces the
athanatist when he asks in what stage of
their individual development the disem
bodied souls will spend their eternal life.
Will the new - born infant develop its
psychic powers in heaven under the same
hard conditions of the “ struggle for life ”
which educate man here on earth ? Will
the talented youth who has fallen in the
wholesale murder of war unfold his rich, un
used mental powers in Walhalla? Will the
feeble, childish old man, who has filled the
world with the fame of his deeds in the
ripeness of his age, live for ever in mental
decay? Or will he return to an earlier
stage of development? If the immortal
souls in Olympus are to live in a condition
of rejuvenescence and perfectness, then
both the stimulus to the formation of, and
the interest in, personality disappear for
them.
Not less impossible, in the light of pure
feason, do we find the anthropistic myth of
the “last judgment,” and the separation of
the souls of men into two great groups, of
which one is destined for the eternal joys
of Paradise and the other for the eternal
torments of hell—and that from a personal
God who is called the “Father of Love”!
And it is this “ Universal Father” who has
himself created the conditions of heredity
and adaptation, in virtue of which the elect,
on the one side, were bound to pursue the
path towards eternal bliss, and the luckless
poor and miserable, on the other hand,
were driven into the paths of the damned.
A critical comparison of the countless
and manifold fantasies which belief in
immortality has produced during the last
few thousand years in the different races
and religions yields a most remarkable
picture. An intensely interesting presenta
tion of it, based on most extensive original
research, may be found in Adalbert
Svoboda’s distinguished works, The Illusion
of the Soul and Forms of Faith. However
absurd and inconsistent with modern
knowledge most of these myths seem to
be, they still play an important part, and,
as “postulates of practical reason,” they
exercise a powerful influence on the
opinions of individuals and on .the destiny
of races.
The idealist and spiritualist philosophy
of the day will freely grant that these
prevalent materialistic forms of belief in
immortality are untenable ; it will say that
J
1
�THE LAW OF SUBSTANCE
'the refined idea of an immaterial soul, a
Platonic “idea” or a transcendental psychic
substance, must be substituted for them.
But modern realism can have nothing
whatever to do with these incomprehensible
notions ; they satisfy neither the mind’s
feeling of causality nor the yearning of our
emotions.
If we take a comprehensive
glance at all that modern anthropology,
psychology, and cosmology teach with
regard to athanatism, we are forced to this
definite conclusion : “The belief in the
immortality of the human soul is a dogma
which is in hopeless contradiction with the
most solid empirical truths of modern
science.”
CHAPTER XII.
THE LAW OF SUBSTANCE
The fundamental chemical law of the constancy
of matter. The fundamental physical law of
the conservation of energy. Combination of
both laws in the law of substance. The
kinetic, pyknotic, and dualistic ideas of sub
stance.
Monism of matter.
Ponderable
matter. Atoms and elements. Affinity of the
elements. The soul of the atom (feeling and
inclination). Existence and character of ether.
Ether and ponderable matter. Force and
energy. Potential and actual force. Unity of
natural forces. Supremacy of the law of
substance.
The supreme and all-pervading law of
nature, the true and only cosmological law,
is, in my opinion, the law of substance ; its
discovery and establishment is the greatest
intellectual triumph of the nineteenth
century, in the sense that all other known
laws of nature are subordinate to it. Under
the name of “ law of substance ” we embrace
two supreme laws of different origin and
age—the older is the chemical law of the
“conservation of matter,” and the younger
is the physical law of the “ conservation of
energy.”1 It will be self-evident to many
readers, and it is acknowledged by most of
the scientific men of the day, that these
two great laws are essentially inseparable.
This fundamental thesis, however, is still
much contested in some quarters, and we
must proceed to furnish the proof of it.
1 Cf. Monism, by E. Haeckel.
75
But we must first devote a few words to
each of the two laws.
The law of the “persistence” or “in
destructibility of matter? established by
Lavoisier in 1789, may be formulated thus:
The sum of matter, which fills infinite space,
is unchangeable. A body has merely
changed its form, when it seems to have
disappeared. When coal burns, it is
changed into carbolic acid gas by combi
nation with the oxygen of the atmosphere ;
when a piece of sugar melts in water, it
merely passes from the solid to the fluid
condition. In the same way, it is merely
a question of change of form in the cases
where a new body seems to be produced.
A shower of rain is the moisture of the
atmosphere cast down in the form of drops
of water; when a piece of iron rusts, the
surface layer of the metal has combined
with water and with atmospheric oxygen,
and formed a “ rust,” or oxy-hydrate of iron.
Nowhere in nature do we find an example
of the production, or “ creation,” of new
matter ; nowhere does a particle of existing
matter pass entirely away. This empirical
truth is now the unquestionable foundation
of chemistry; it may be directly verified at
any moment by means of the balance. To
the great French chemist Lavoisier belongs
the high merit of first making this experimentwith the balance. At the present day the
scientist, who is occupied from one end of
the year to the other with the study of
natural phenomena, is so firmly convinced
of the absolute “ constancy ” of matter that
he is no longer able to imagine the contrary
state of things.
We may formulate the 11 law of the per
sistence offorce” or “ conservation of energy”
thus : The sum of force, which is at work
in infinite space and produces all pheno
mena, is unchangeable. When the loco
motive rushes along the line, the potential
energy of the steam is transformed into
the kinetic or actual energy of the
mechanical movement ; when we hear its
shrill whistle, as it speeds along, the sound
waves of the vibrating atmosphere are
conveyed through the tympanum and the
three bones of the ear into the inner laby
rinth, and thence transferred by the auditory
nerve to the acoustic ganglionic cells which
form the centre of hearing in the temporal
lobe of the grey bed of the brain. The
whole marvellous panorama of life that
spreads over the surface of our globe is, in
the last analysis, transformed sun-light. It
is well-known how the remarkable progress
of technical science has made it possible
�7(>
THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE
for us to convert the different physical
forces from one form to another ; heat may
be changed into molar movement, or move
ment of mass ; this in turn into light or
sound, and then into electricity, and so
forth. Accurate measurement of the
quantity of force which is used in this
metamorphosis has shown that it is “ con
stant ” or unchanged. No particle of living
energy is every extinguished ; no particle
is ever created anew, Friedrich Mohr, of
Bonn, was very near to the discovery of
this great fact in 1837, but the discovery
was actually made by the able Swabian
physician, Robert Mayer, of Heilbronn, in
1842. Independently of Mayer, however,
the principle was reached almost at the
same time by the famous physiologist,
Hermann Helmholtz; five years afterwards
he pointed out its general application to,
and fertility in, every branch of physics.
We ought to say to-day that it rules also
in the entire province of physiology—that
is, of “ organic physics but on that point
we meet a strenuous opposition from the
vitalistic biologists and the dualist and
spiritualist philosophers. For these the
peculiar “ spiritual forces ” of human nature
are a group of “free ” forces, not subject to
the law of energy ; the idea is closely con
nected with the dogma of the “ freedom of
the will.” We have, however, already seen
(p. 72) that the dogma is untenable.
Modern physics draws a distinction
between “ force ” and “ energy,” but our
general observations so far have not needed
a reference to it.
The conviction that these two great
cosmic theorems, the chemical law of the
persistence of matter and the physical law
of the persistence of force, are funda
mentally one, is of the utmost importance
in our monistic system. The two theories
are just as intimately united as their objects
—matter and force or energy. Indeed,
this fundamental unity of the two laws is
self-evident to many monistic scientists and
philosophers, since they merely relate to
two different aspects of one and the same
object, the cosmos. But, however natural
the thought may be, it is still very far from
being generally accepted. It is stoutly
contested by the entire dualistic philosophy,
vitalistic biology, and parallelistic psy
chology ; even, in fact, by a few (incon
sistent) monists, who think they find a
check to it in “consciousness,” in the
higher mental activity of man, or in other
phenomena of our “ free mental life.”
For my part, I am convinced of the pro
found importance of the unifying “ law of
substance,” as an expression of the insepar
able connection in reality of two laws which
are only separated in conception. That
they were not originally taken together and
their unity recognised from the beginning
is merely an accident of the date of their
respective discoveries. The earlier and
more accessible chemical law of the
persistence of matter was detected by
Lavoisier in 1879, and, after a general
application of the balance, became the
basis of exact chemistry. On the other
hand, the more recondite law of the
persistence of force was only discovered by
Mayer in 1842, and only laid down as the
basis of exact physics by Helmholtz. The
unity of the two laws—still much disputed—
is expressed by many scientists who are
convinced of it in the formula : “ Law’ of
the persistence of matter and force.” In
order to have a briefer and more convenient
expression for this fundamental thought, I
proposed some time ago to call it the “ law
of substance ” or the “fundamental cosmic
law ”; it might also be called the “ universal
law,” or the “ law of constancy,” or the
“ axiom of the constancy of the universe.”
In the ultimate analysis it is found to be a
necessary consequence of the principle of
causality.1
The first thinker to introduce the purely
monistic conception of substance into
science and appreciate its profound impor
tance was the great philosopher Baruch
Spinoza ; his chief work appeared shortly
after his premature death in 1677, just one
hundred years before Lavoisier gave
empirical proof of the constancy of matter
by means of the chemist’s principal instru
ment, the balance. In his stately pan
theistic system the notion of the world (the
universe, or the cosmos) is identical with
the all-pervading notion of, God; it is at
one and the same time the purest and most
rational monism and the clearest and most
abstract monotheism. This universal sub
stance, this “ divine nature of the world,”
shows us two different aspects of its being,
or two fundamental attributes — matter
(infinitely extended substance) and spirit
(the all-embracing energy of thought}. All
the changes which have since come over
the idea of substance are reduced, on a
logical analysis, to this supreme thought of
Spinoza’s ; with Goethe I take it to be the
loftiest, profoundest, and truest thought of
all ages. Every single object in the world
1 Cf. Monism, by Ernst Haeckel.
�THE LA IV OF SUBSTANCE
which comes within the sphere of our
cognizance, all individual forms of existence,
are but special transitory forms—accidents
or modes—of substance. These modes are
material things when we regard them under
the attribute of extension (or “occupation
of space ”), but forces or ideas when we
consider them under the attribute of thought
(or “ energy ”). To this profound thought
of Spinoza our purified monism returns
after a lapse of two hundred years ; for us,
too, matter (space-filling substance) and
energy (moving force) are but two insepar
able attributes of the one underlying sub
stance.
Among the various modifications which
the fundamental idea of substance has
undergone in modern physics, in association
with the prevalent atomism, we shall select
only two of the most divergent theories for
a brief discussion, the kinetic and the
pyknotic. Both theories agree that we
have succeeded in reducing all the different
forces of nature to one common original
force ; gravity and chemical action, electri
city and magnetism, light and heat, etc.,
are only different manifestations, forms, or
dynamodes, of a single primitive force
(frrodynamis\ This fundamental force
is generally conceived as a vibratory
motion of the smallest particles of matter—
a vibration of atoms. The atoms them
selves, according to the usual “kinetic
theory of substance,” are dead, separate
particles of matter, which dance to and fro
in empty space and act at a distance. The
real founder and most distinguished repre
sentative of the kinetic theory is Newton,
the famous discoverer of the law of gravita
tion. In his great work, the Philosophice
Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687),
he showed that throughout the universe
the same law of attraction controls the
unvarying constancy of gravitation ; the
attraction of two particles being in direct
proportion to their mass and in inverse
proportion to the square of their distance.
This universal force of gravity is at work
in the fall of an apple and the tidal wave
no less than in the course of the planets
round the sun and the movements of all
the heavenly bodies.
Newton had the
immortal merit of establishing the law of
gravitation and embodying it in an indis
putable mathematical formula. Yet this
dead mathematical formula, on which most
scientists lay great stress, as so frequently
happens, gives us merely the quantitative
demonstration of the theory ; it gives us no
insight whatever into the qualitative nature
77
of the phenomena. The action at a dis
tance without a medium, which Newton
deduced from his law of gravitation, and
which became one of the most serious and
most dangerous dogmas of later physics,
does not afford the slightest explanation of
the true causes of attraction ; indeed, it
long' obstructed our way to the real dis
covery of them. I cannot but suspect that
his speculations on this mysterious action
at a distance contributed not a little to the
leading of the great English mathematician
into the obscure labyrinth of mystic dreams
and theistic superstition in which he
passed the last thirty-four years of his life ;
we find him, at the end, giving meta
physical hypotheses on the predictions of
Daniel and on the paradoxical fantasies of
St. John.
In fundamental opposition to the theory
of vibration, or the kinetic theory of sub
stance, we have the modern “theory of
condensation,” or the pyknotic theory of
substance. It is most ably established in
the suggestive work of J. C. Vogt on The
Nature of Electricity and Magnetism on
the Basis of a Simplified Conception of
Substance (1891). Vogt assumes the primi
tive force of the world, the universal
prodynamis, to be, not the vibration or
oscillation of particles in empty space, but
the condensation of a simple primitive
substance, which fills the infinity of space
in an unbroken continuity. Its sole in
herent mechanical form of activity consists
in a tendency to condensation or contrac
tion, which produces infinitesimal centres
of condensation ; these may change their
degree of thickness, and, therefore, their
volume, but are constant as such. These
minute parts of the universal substance,
the centres of condensation, which might
be called pyknatoms, correspond in general
to the ultimate separate atoms of the
kinetic theory; they differ, however, very
considerably in that they are credited with
sensation and inclination (or will-move
ment of the simplest form), with souls, in a
certain sense—in harmony with the old
theory of Empedocles of the “love and
hatred of the elements.” Moreover, these
“ atoms with souls ” do not float in empty
space, but in the continuous, extremely
attenuated intermediate substance, which
represents the uncondensed portion of the
primitive matter.
By means of certain
“ constellations, centres of perturbation, or
systems of deformation,” great masses of
centres of condensation quickly unite in
immense proportions, and so obtain a
�THE RiDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE.
preponderance over the surrounding masses.
By that process the primitive substance,
which in its original state of quiescence
had the same mean consistency throughout,
divides or differentiates into two kinds.
The centres of disturbance, which positively
exceed the mean consistency in virtue of
the pyknosis or condensation, form the
ponderable matter of bodies ; the finer,
intermediate substance, which occupies the
space between them, and negatively falls
below the mean consistency, forms the
ether, or imponderable matter. As a con
sequence of this division into mass and
ether there ensues a ceaseless struggle
between the two antagonistic elements, and
this struggle is the source of all physical
processes. The positive ponderable matter,
the element with the feeling of like or
desire, is continually striving to complete
the process of condensation, and thus
collecting an enormous amount vtpotential
energy; the negative, imponderable matter,
on the other hand, offers a perpetual and
equal resistance to the further increase of
its strain and of the feeling of dislike con
nected therewith, and thus gathers the
utmost amount of actual energy.
We cannot go qny further here into the
details of the brilliant theory of J. C. Vogt.
The interested reader cannot do better than
have recourse to the second volume of the
above work for a clear popular exposition
of the difficult problem. I am myself too
little informed in physics and mathematics
to enter into a critical discussion of its
lights and shades ; still, I think that this
pyknotic theory of substance will prove
more acceptable to every biologist who is
convinced of the unity of nature than the
kinetic theory which prevails in physics
to-day. A misunderstanding may easily
arise from the fact that Vogt puts his
process of condensation in explicit contra
diction with the general phenomenon of
motion ; but it must be remembered that
he is speaking of vibratory movement in
the sense of the physicist. His hypothetical
“condensation” is just as much determined
by a movement of substance as is the hypo
thetical “vibration”; only the kind of
movement and the relation of the moving
elements are very different in the two
hypotheses. Moreover, it is not the whole
theory of vibration, but only an important
section of it, that is contradicted by the
theory of condensation.
Modern physics, for the most part, still
firmly adheres to the older theory of vibra
tion, to the idea of an actio in distans and
the eternal vibration. of dead atoms in
empty space; it rejects the pyknotic theory.
Although Vogt’s theory may be still far
from perfect, and his original speculations
may be marred by many errors, yet I think
he has rendered a very good service in
eliminating the untenable principles of the
kinetic theory of substance. As to my own
opinion—and that of many other scientists
—I must lay down the following theses,
which are involved in Vogt’s pyknotic
theory, as indispensable for a truly monistic
view of substance, and one that covers
the whole field of organic and inorganic
nature :—
I. —The two fundamental forms of sub
stance, ponderable matter and ether, are
not dead, and only moved by extrinsic
force, but they are endowed with sensation
and will (though, naturally, of the lowest
grade); they experience an inclination for
condensation, a dislike of strain; they
strive after the one and struggle against
the other.
II. —There is no such thing as empty
space; that part of space which is not
occupied with ponderable atoms is filled
with ether.
III. —There is no such thing as an action
at a distance through perfectly empty space ;
all action of bodies upon each other is either
determined by immediate contact or is
effected by the mediation of ether.
Both the theories of substance which we
have just contrasted are monisticvn. principle,
since the opposition between the two con
ditions of substance—mass and ether—is
not original; moreover, they involve a^continuous immediate contact and reciprocal
action of the two elements. It is otherwise
with the dualistic theories of substance
which still obtain in the idealist and spiritual
ist philosophy, and which have the support
of a powerful theology, in so far as theology
indulges in such metaphysical speculations.
These theories draw a distinction between
two entirely different kinds of substance,
material and immaterial. Material substance
enters into the composition of the bodies
which are the object of physics and chemis
try ; the law of the persistence of matter
and force is confined to this world (apart
from a belief in its “ creation from nothing”
and other miracles). Immaterial substance
is found in the “ spiritual world ” to which
the law does not extend ; in this province
the laws of physics and chemistry are either
entirely inapplicable or they are subordi
nated to a “ vital force,” or a “ free will,”
or a “divine omnipotence,” or some other
�THE LA W OF SUBSTANCE
phantom which is beyond the ken of critical
science. In truth, these profound errors
need no further refutation to-day, for expe
rience has never yet discovered for us a
single immaterial substance, a single force
which is not dependent on matter, or a
single form of energy which is not exerted
by material movement, whether it be of
mass, or of ether, or of both. Even the
most elaborate and most perfect forms of
energy that we know—the psychic life of
the higher animals, the thought and reason
of man—depend on material processes, or
'changes in the neuroplasm of the ganglionic
cells ; they are inconceivable apart from
such modifications. I have already shown
(chap, xi.) that the physiological hypothesis
of a special, immaterial “soul-substance”
is untenable.
The study of ponderable matter is
primarily the concern of chemistry. Few
are ignorant of the astonishing theoretical
progress which this science has made in
the course of the century and the immense
practical influence it has had on every
aspect of modern life. We shall confine
ourselves here to a few remarks on the
more important questions which concern
the nature of ponderable matter. It is well
known that analytical chemistry has suc
ceeded in resolving the immense variety of
bodies in nature into a small number of
simple elements—that is, simple bodies
which are incapable of further analysis.
The number of these elements is about
seventy. Only fourteen of them are widely
distributed on the earth and of much prac
tical importance ; the majority are rare
elements (principally metals) of little
practical moment. The affinity of these
groups of elements, and the remarkable
proportions of their atomic weights, which
Lothar Meyer and Mendelejeff have proved
in their Periodic System of the Elements,
make it extremely probable that they are
not absolute species of ponderable matter—
that is, not eternally unchangeable par
ticles. The seventy elements have in that
system been distributed into eight leading
groups, and arranged in them according to
their atomic weight, so that the elements
which have a chemical affinity are formed
into families. The relations of the various
groups in such a natural system of the
elements recall, on the one hand, similar
relations of the innumerable compounds of
carbon, and, again, the relations of parallel
groups in the natural arrangement of the
animal and plant species. Since in the
latter cases the “affinity” of the related
79
forms is based on descent from a common
parent form, it seems very probable that
the same holds good of the families and
orders of the chemical elements. We may,
therefore, conclude that the “ empirical
elements ” we now know are not really
simple, ultimate, and unchangeable forms
of matter, but compounds of homogeneous,
simple, primitive atoms, variously distributed
as to number and grouping. The recent
speculations of Gustav Wendt, Wilhelm
Preyer, Sir W. Crookes, and others, have
pointed out how we may conceive the evo
lution of the elements from a simple primi
tive material, the prothyl.
The modern atomistic theory, which is
regarded as an indispensable instrument in
chemistry to-day, must be carefully distin
guished from the old philosophic atomism
which was taught more than two thousand
years ago by a group of distinguished
thinkers of antiquity—Leucippus, Demo-:
critus, and Epicurus : it was considerably
developed and modified later on by
Descartes, Hobbes, Leibnitz, and other
famous philosophers. But it was not until
1808 that modern atomism assumed a
definite and acceptable form, and was
furnished with an empirical basis by Dalton,
who formulated the “law of simple and
multiple proportions ” in the formation of
chemical combinations. He first deter
mined the atomic weight of the different
elements, and thus created the solid and
exact foundation on which more recent
chemical theories are based ; these are all
atomistic, in the sense that they assume the
elements to be made up of homogeneous,
infinitesimally small, distinct particles,
which are incapable of further analysis.
That does not touch the question of the
real nature of the atoms—their form, size,
psychology, etc. These atomic qualities
are merely hypothetical; while the chemistry
of the atoms, their “ chemical affinity ”—
that is, the constant proportion in which
they combine with the atoms of other ele
ments—is empirical.1
The different relation of the various ele
ments towards each other, which chemistry
calls “ affinity,” is one of the most impor
tant properties of ponderable matter ; it is
manifested in the different relative quantities
or proportions of their combination in the
intensity of its consummation.
Every
shade of inclination, from complete indiffer
ence to the fiercest passion, is exemplified
in the chemical relation of the various
1 Cf. Monism, by E. Haeckel.
�8o
THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE
elements towards each other, just as we
find in the psychology of man,and especially
in the life of the sexes. Goethe, in his
classical romance, Affinities, compared the
relations of pairs of lovers with the pheno
menon of the same name in the formation
of chemical combinations. The irresistible
passion that draws Edward to the sympa
thetic Ottilia, or Paris to Helen, and leaps
over all bounds of reason and morality, is
the same powerful “unconscious” attrac
tive force which impels the living sperma
tozoon to force an entrance into the ovum
in the fertilisation of the egg of the animal
or plant—the same impetuous movement
which unites two atoms of hydrogen to one
atom of oxygen for the formation of a
molecule of water. This fundamental unity
of affinity in the whole of nature, from the
simplest chemical process to the most com
plicated love story, was recognised by the
great Greek scientist, Empedocles, in the
fifth century B.C., in his theory of “ the
love and hatred of the elements.” It
receives empirical confirmation from the
interesting progress of cellular psychology,
the great significance of which we have
only learned to appreciate in the last thirty
years. On those phenomena we base our
conviction that even the atom is not without
a rudimentary form of sensation and will,
or, as it is better expressed, of feeling
festhesis) and inclination (/ropesis)—that is,
a universal “soul” of the simplest char
acter. The same must be said of the
molecules which are composed of two or
more atoms.
Further combinations of
different kinds of these molecules give
rise to simple and, subsequently, complex
chemical compounds, in the activity of
which the same phenomena are repeated in
a more complicated form.
The study of ether, or imponderable
matter, pertains principally to physics.
The existence of an extremely attenuated
medium, filling the whole of space outside
of ponderable matter, was known and
applied to the elucidation of various
phenomena (especially light) a- long time
ago ; but it was not until the second half of
the nineteenth century that we became
more closely acquainted with this remark
able substance, in connection with our
astonishing empirical discoveries in the
province of electricity, with their experi
mental detection, their theoretical interpre
tation, and their practical application. The
path was opened in particular by the famous
researches of Heinrich Hertz, of Bonn, in
1888. The premature death of a brilliant
young physicist of so much promise cannot
be sufficiently deplored. Like the prema
ture death of Spinoza, Raphael, Schubert,
and many other great men, it is one of those
brutal facts of human history which are
enough of themselves to destroy the unten
able myth of a “ wise Providence ” and an
“All-loving Father in heaven.”
The existence of ether (or cosmic ether)
as a real element is a positive fact, and has
been known as such for the last twelve
years. We sometimes read even to-day
that ether is a “pure hypothesis”; this
erroneous assertion comes not only from
uninformed philosophers and “popular”
writers, but even from certain “prudent and
exact physicists.” But there would be just
as much reason to deny the existence of
ponderable matter. As a matter of fact,
there are metaphysicians who accomplish
even this feat, and whose highest wisdom
lies in denying or calling into question the
existence of an external universe ; accord
ing to them only one real entity exists—
their own precious personality, or, to be
more correct, their immortal soul. Several
modern physiologists have embraced this
ultra-idealist view, which is to be found in
Descartes, Berkeley, Fichte, and others.
Their “ psycho-monism ” affirms : “ One
thing only exists, and that is my own mind.”
This audacious spiritualism seems to us to
rest on an erroneous inference from Kant’s
correct critical theory, that we can know
the outer world only in the phenomenal
aspect which is accessible to our human
organs of thought—the brain and the organs
of sense. If by those means we can attain
only an imperfect and limited knowledge
of the material world, that is no reason for
denying its existence altogether. In my
opinion, the existence of ether is as certain
as that of ponderable matter—as certain as
my own existence, as I reflect and write on
it. As we assure ourselves of the existence
of ponderable matter by its mass and
weight, by chemical and mechanical experi
ments, so we prove that of ether by the
experiences and experiments of optics and
electricity.
Although, however, the existence of ether
is now regarded as a positive fact by nearly
all physicists, and although many effects of
this remarkable substance are familiar to
us through an extensive experience, especi
ally in the way of optical and electrical
experiments, yet we are still far from being
clear and confident as to its real character.
The views of the most eminent physicists,
who have made a special study of it, are
�THE LA W OF SUBSTANCE
extremely divergent; they frequently con
tradict each other on the most important
points. One is, therefore, free to choose
among the contradictory hypotheses accord
ing to one’s knowledge and judgment. I will
put in the following eight theses the view
which has approved itself to me after
mature reflection on the subject, though I
am no expert in this department.
I. —Ether fills the whole of space, in so
far as it is not occupied by ponderable
matter, as a continuous substance; it fully
occupies the space between the atoms of
ponderable matter.
II. —Ether has probably no chemical
quality, and is not composed of atoms. If
it be supposed that it consists of minute
homogeneous atoms (for instance, indi
visible etheric particles of a uniform size),
it must be further supposed that there is
something else between these atoms, either
“empty space” or a third, completely
unknown medium, a purely hypothetical
“ inter-ether the question as to the nature
of this brings us back to the original
difficulty, and so on in infinitum.
III. —As the idea of an empty space and
an action at a distance is scarcely possible
in the present condition of our knowledge
(at least, it does not help to clear a monistic
view), I postulate for ether a special struc
ture which is not atomistic, like that of
ponderable matter, and which may pro
visionally be called (without further deter
mination) etheric or dynamic structure.
IV. —The consistency of ether is also
peculiar, on our hypothesis, and different
from that of ponderable matter. It is
neither gaseous, as some conceive, nor
solid, as others suppose; the best idea of it
can be formed by comparison with an
extremely attenuated, elastic, and light
jelly.
V. —Ether may be called imponderable
matter in the sense that we have no means
of determining its weight experimentally.
If it really has weight, as is very probable,
it must be so slight as to be far below the
capacity of our most delicate balance. Some
physicists have attempted to determine its
weight by the energy of the light-waves,
and have discovered that it is some fifteen
trillion times lighter than atmospheric air ;
on that hypothesis a sphere of ether of the
size of our earth would weigh at least two
hundred and fifty pounds (?).
VI. —The etheric consistency may pro
bably (in accordance with the pyknotic
theory) pass into the gaseous state under
certain conditions by progressive condensa
tion, just as a gas may be converted into a
fluid, and ultimately into a solid, by lower
ing its temperature.
VII. —Consequently, these three condi
tions of matter may be arranged (and it is
a point of great importance in our monistic
cosmogony) in a genetic, continuous order.
We may distinguish five stages in it:
(i) the etheric, (2) the gaseous, (3) the
fluid, (4) the viscous (in the living proto
plasm), and (5) the solid state.
VIII. —Ether is boundless and im
measurable, like the space it occupies. It
is in eternal motion; and this specific
movement of ether (it is immaterial whether
we conceive it as vibration, strain, condensa
tion, etc.), in reciprocal action with mass
movement (or gravitation), is the ultimate
cause of all phenomena.
“The great question of the nature of
ether,” as Hertz justly calls it, includes the
question of its relation to ponderable
matter ; for these two forms of matter are
not only always in the closest external con
tact, but also in eternal, dynamic, reciprocal
action. We may divide the most general
phenomena of nature, which are dis
tinguished by physics as natural forces or
“ functions of matter,” into two groups ;
the first of them may be regarded mainly
(though not exclusively) as a function of
ether, and the second a function of ponder
able matter—as in the following scheme
which I take from my Monism :—
The World (Nature, or the Cosmos).
Ether—Imponderable.
M ass—Ponderable.
i. Consistency:—
Etheric (i.e., neither gaseous, nor fluid, nor solid).
i. Consistency l—
Not etheric (but gaseous, fluid, or solid).
2. Structure:—
Not atomistic, not made up of separate particles
(atoms), but continuous.
2. Structure
Atomistic, made up of infinitesimally small, dis
tinct particles (atoms), discontinuous
3. Chief Functions
Light, radiant heat, electricity, and magnetism.
3. Chief Functions t—
Gravity, inertia, molecular heat, and chemical
affinity.
G
�THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE
The two groups of functions of matter,
which we have opposed in this table, may,
to some extent, be regarded as the outcome
of the first “division of labour” in the
development of matter, the “ primary
ergonomy of matter.” But this distinction
must not be supposed to involve an absolute
separation of the two antithetic groups ;
they always retain their connection, and
are in constant reciprocal action. It is
well known that the optical and electrical
phenomena of ether are closely connected
with mechanical and chemical changes in
ponderable elements ; the radiant heat of
ether may be directly converted into themechanical heat of the mass ; gravitation
is impossible unless the ether effects the
mutual attraction of the separated atoms,
because we cannot admit the idea of an
actio in distans. In like manner, the con
version of one form of energy into another,
as indicated in the law of the persistence
of force, illustrates the constant reciprocity
of the two chief types of substance, ether
and mass.
The great law of nature, which, under
the title of the “ law of substance,” we put
at the head of all physical considerations,
was conceived as the law of “ the per
sistence of force” by Robert Meyer, who
first formulated it, and Helmholtz, who
continued the work. Another German
scientist, Friedrich Mohr, of Bonn, had
clearly outlined it in its main features ten
years earlier (1837). The old idea offorce
was, after a time, differentiated by modern
physics from that of energy, which was at
first synonymous with it. Hence the law
is now usually called the “ law of the per
sistence of energy.” However, this finer
distinction need not enter into the general
consideration, to which I must confine
myself here, and into the question of the
great principle of the “ persistence of sub
stance.” The interested reader will find a
very clear treatment of the question in
Tyndall’s excellent paper on “The Funda
mental Law of Nature,” in his Fragments
of Science. It fully explains the broad
significance of this profound cosmic law,
and points out its application to the main
problems of very different branches of
science. We shall confine our attention
to the important fact that the “ principle of
energy” and the correlative idea of the
unity of natural forces, on the basis of a
common origin, are now accepted by all
competent physicists, and are regarded as
the greatest advance of physics in the nine
teenth century. We now know that heat,
sound, light, chemical action, electricity,
and magnetism are all modes of motion.
We can, by a certain apparatus, convert
any one of these forces into another, and
prove by an accurate measurement that
not a single particle of energy is lost in the
process.
The sum-total of force or energy in the
universe remains constant, no matter what
changes take place around us ; it is eternal
and infinite, like the matter on which it is
inseparably dependent. The whole drama
of nature apparently consists in an alterna
tion of movement and repose ; yet the
bodies at rest have an inalienable quantity
of force, just as truly as those that are in
motion. It is in this movement that the
potential energy of the former is converted
into the kinetic energy of the latter. “ As
the principle of the persistence of force
takes into account repulsion as well as
attraction, it affirms that the mechanical
value of the potential energy and the kinetic
energy in the material world is a constant
quantity. To put it briefly, the force of the
universe is divided into two parts, which
may be mutually converted, according to a
fixed relation of value. The diminution of
the one involves the increase of the other ;
the total value remains unchanged in the
universe.” The potential energy and the
actual, or kinetic, energy are being con
tinually transformed from one condition to
the other ; but the infinite sum of force in
the world at large never suffers the slightest
curtailment.
Once modern physics had established the
law of substance as far as the simpler
relations of inorganic bodies are concerned,
physiology took up the story, and proved
its application to the entire province of the
organic world. It showed that all the
vital activities of the organism—without
exception — are based on a constant
“ reciprocity of force ” and a correlative
change of material, or metabolism, just as
much as the simplest processes in “life
less” bodies. Not only the growth and
the nutrition of plants and animals, but
even their functions of sensation and move
ment, their sense-action and psychic life,
depend on the conversion of potential into
kinetic energy, and vice verscl. This
supreme law dominates also those elaborate
performances of the nervous system which
we call, in the higher animals and man,
“ the action of the mind.”
Our monistic view, that the great cosmic
law applies throughout the whole of nature,
is of the highest moment. For it not only
�THE EVOLUTION OF THE WORLD
involves, on its positive side, the essential
unity of the cosmos and the causal connec
tion of all phenomena that come within
our cognizance, but it also, in a negative
way, marks the highest intellectual progress,
in that it definitely rules out the three
central dogmas of metaphysics — God,
freedom, and immortality. In assigning
mechanical causes to phenomena every
where, the law of substance comes into
line with the universal law of causality.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE EVOLUTION OF THE WORLD
The notion of creation. Miracles. Creation of
the whole universe and of its various parts.
Creation of substance (cosmological creation).
Deism : one creative day.
Creation of
separate entities. Five forms of ontological
creationism. Theory of evolution. I. Monistic
cosmogony. Beginning and end of the
world. The infinity and eternity of the uni
verse. Space and time. Universumperpetuum
mobile. Entropy of the universe. II. Monistic
geogeny. History of the inorganic and organic
worlds. III. Monistic biogeny. Transformism and the theory of descent. Lamarck and
Darwin. IV. Monistic anthropogeny. Origin
of man.
The greatest, vastest, and most difficult
of all cosmic problems is that of the origin
and development of the world—the “ ques
tion of creation,” in a word. Even to the
solution of this most difficult world-riddle
the nineteenth century has contributed
more than all its predecessors ; in a certain
sense, indeed, it has- found the solution.
We have at least attained to a clear view of
the fact that all the partial questions of
creation are indivisibly connected, that they
represent one single,comprehensive“cosmic
problem,” and that the key to this problem
is found in the one magic word—evolution.
The great questions of the creation of
man, the creation of the animals and plants,
the creation of the earth and the sun,
etc., are all parts of the general question,
What is the origin of the whole world ?
Has it been created by supernatural power,
or has it been evolved by a natural process?
What are the causes and the manner of
this evolution ? If we succeed in finding
the correct answer to one of these ques
tions, we have, according to our monistic
conception of the world, cast a brilliant
83
light on the solution of them all, and on
the entire cosmic problem.
The current opinion as to the origin of
the world in earlier ages was almost an
universal belief in creation. This belief
has been expressed in thousands of inte
resting, more or less fabulous, legends,
poems, cosmogonies, and myths. A few
great philosophers were devoid of it,
especially those remarkable free-thinkers of
classical antiquity who first conceived the
idea of natural evolution. All the creation
myths, on the contrary, were of a super
natural, miraculous, and transcendental
character. Incompetent, as it was, to
investigate for itself the nature of the
world and its origin by natural causes, the
undeveloped mind naturally had recourse
to the idea of miracle. In most of these
creation-myths anthropism was blended
with the belief in the miraculous. The
creator was supposed to have constructed
the world on a definite plan, just as man
accomplishes his artificial constructions ;
the conception of the creator was generally
completely anthropomorphic, a palpable
“ anthropistic creationism.” The “ allmighty maker of heaven and earth,” as he
is called in Genesis and the Catechism, is
just as humanly conceived as the modern
creator of Agassiz and Reinke, or the
intelligent “engineer” of other recent
biologists.
Entering more fully into the notion of
creation, we can distinguish as two entirely
different acts the production of the universe
as a whole and the successive production
of its various parts, in harmony with
Spinoza’s idea of substance (the universe) and
accidents (or modes, the individual pheno
mena of substance). This distinction is of
great importance, because there are many
eminent philosophers who admit the one;
and reject the other.
According to this creationist theory,
then, God has “ made the world out of
nothing.” It is supposed that God (a.
rational, but immaterial, being) existed by
himself for an eternity before he resolved
to create the world. Some supporters of
the theory restrict God’s creative function
to one single act ; they believe that this
extramundane god (the rest of whose life is
shrouded in mystery) created the substance
of the world in a single moment, endowed
it with the faculty of the most extensive
evolution, and troubled no further about it.
This view may be found, for instance, in the
English Deists in many forms. It ap
proaches very close to our monistic theory
�84
THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE
of evolution, only abandoning it in the one
instance in which God accomplished the
creation. Other creationists contend that
God did not confine himself to the mere
creation of matter, but that he continues
to be operative as the “sustainer and ruler
of the world.” Different modifications of
this belief are found, some approaching
very close to pantheism and others to com
plete theism. All these and similar forms
of belief in creation are incompatible with
the law of the persistence of matter and
force ; that law knows nothing of a begin
ning..
It is interesting to note that E. du BoisReymond has identified himself with this
cosmological creationism in his latest speech
(on “ Neovitalism,” 1894). “ It is more con
sonant with the divine omnipotence,” he
says, “to assume that it created the whole
material of the world in one creative act
unthinkable ages ago in such wise that it
should be endowed with inviolable laws to
control the origin and the progress of living
things—that, for instance, here on earth
rudimentary organisms should arise from
which, without further assistance, the whole
of living nature could be evolved, from a
primitive bacillus to the graceful palm
wood, from a primitive micrococcus to
Solomon’s lovely wives or to the brain of
Newton. Thus we are content with one
Creative day, and we derive organic nature
mechanically, without the aid of either old
or new vitalism.” Du Bois-Reymond here
shows, as in the question of consciousness,
the shallow and illogical character of his
monistic thought.
According to another still prevalent
theory, which may be called “ ontological
creationism,” God not only created the
world at large, but also its separate contents.
In the Christian world the old Semitic
legend of Creation, taken from Genesis, is
still very widely accepted ; even among
modern scientists it finds an adherent here
and there. I have fully entered into the
criticism of it in the first chapter of my
Natural History of Creation. The follow
ing theories may be enumerated as the
most interesting modifications of this onto
logical creationism.
I. Dualistic creation.—God restricted his
interference to two creative acts. First he
created the inorganic world, mere dead
substance, to which alone the law of energy
applies, working blindly and aimlessly in
the mechanism of material things and the
building of the mountains ; then God
attained intelligence and communicated it
to the purposive intelligent forces which
initiate and control organic evolution.1
II. Trialistic creation.—God made the
world in three creative acts : («) the creation
of the heavens—the extra-terrestrial world,
(¿) the creation of the earth (as the centre
of the world) and of its living inhabitants,
and (r) the creation of man (in the image
and likeness of God). This dogma is still
widely prevalent among theologians and
other “ educated ” people ; it is taught as
the truth in many of our schools.
III. Heptameral creation; a creation in
seven days {teste Moses).—Although few
educated people really believe in this Mosaic
myth now, it is still firmly impressed on our
children in the biblical lessons of their
earliest years. The numerous attempts
that have been made, especially in England,
to harmonise it with the modern theory of
evolution have entirely failed. It obtained
some importance in science when Linné
adopted it in the establishment of his
system, and based his definition of organic
species (which he considered to be un
changeable) on it : “ There are as many
different species of animals and plants as
there were different forms created in the
beginning by the Infinite.” The dogma
was pretty generally held until the time of
Darwin (1859), although Lamarck had
already proved its untenability in 1809.
IV. Periodic creation.—At the beginningof each period of the earth’s history, the
whole population of animals and plants was
created anew, and destroyed by a general
catastrophe at its close ; there were as
many general creative acts as there are
distinct geological periods (the catastrophic
theory of Cuvier [1818] and Louis Agassiz
[1858]). Palaeontology, which seemed, in
its more imperfect stage, to support this
theory, has since completely refuted it.
V. Individual creation.—Every single
man—and every individual animal and
plant—does not arise by a natural process
of growth, but is created by the favour of
God. This view of creation is still often
met with in journals, especially in the
“births” column. The special talents and
features of our children are often gratefully
acknowledged to be “ gifts of God”; their
hereditary defects fit into another theory.
The error of these creation-legends and
the cognate belief in miracles must have
been apparent to thoughtful minds at an
early period; more than two thousand
years ago we find that many attempts were
1 Reinke, Die. Welt als That (iSccj).
�THS EVOLUTION OF THE WORLD
made to replace them by a rational theory,
and to explain the origin of the world by
natural causes. In the front rank, once
tnore, we must place the leaders of the
Ionic school, with Democritus, Heraclitus,
Empedocles, Aristotle, Lucretius, and other
ancient philosophers. The first imperfect
attempts which they made astonish us, in a
measure, by the flashes of mental light in
which they anticipate modern ideas. It
must be remembered that classical antiquity
had not that solid groundwork for scientific
speculation which has been provided by
the countless observations and experiments
of modern scientists. During the Middle
Ages—especially during the domination of
the papacy—scientific work in this direction
entirely ceased. The torture and the stake
of the Inquisition ensured that an uncon
ditional belief in the Hebrew mythology
should be the final answer to all the ques
tions of creation Even the phenomena
which led directly to the observation of
the facts of evolution—the embryology of
the plant and the animal, and of man—
remained unnoticed, or only excited the
interest of an occasional keen observer,
whose discoveries were ignored or forgotten.
Moreover, the path to a correct knowledge
of natural development was barred by the
dominant theory of preformation, the
dogma which held that the characteristic
form and structure of each animal and
plant were already sketched in miniature
in the germ (cf. p. 19).
The science which we now call the
science of evolution (in the broadest sense)
is, both in its general outline and in its
separate parts, a child of the nineteenth
century ; it is one of its most momentous
and most brilliant achievements. Almost
unknown in the preceding century, this
theory has now become the sure foundation
of our whole world-system. I have treated
it exhaustively in my General Morphology
(1866), more popularly in my Natural
History of Creation (1868), and in its special
application to man in my Anthropogeny
(1874). Here I shall restrict myself to a
brief survey of the chief advances which
the science has made in the course of the
century. It falls into four sections, accord
ing to the nature of its object; that is, it
deals with the natural origin of (1) the
cosmos, (2) the earth, (3) terrestrial forms
of life, and (4) man.
I.—MONISTIC COSMOGONY.
The first attempt to explain the constitu
'5
tion and the mechanical origin of the world
in a simple manner by “Newtonian laws”
—that is, by mathematical and physical
laws—was made by Immanuel Kant in the
famous work of his youth (1755), General
History of the Earth and Theory of the
Heavens. Unfortunately, this distinguished
and daring work remained almost unknown
for ninety years ; it was only disinterred in
1845 by Alexander Humboldt in the first
volume of his Cosmos. In the meantime
the great French mathematician, Pierre
Laplace, had arrived independently at
similar views to those of Kant, and he
gave them a mathematical foundation in
his Exposition du Système du Monde ( 1796).
His chief work, the Mécanique Céleste,
appeared a hundred years ago. The
analogous features of the cosmogony of
Kant and Laplace consist, as is well known,
in a mechanical explanation of the move
ments of the planets, and the conclusion
which is drawn therefrom, that all the
cosmic bodies were formed originally
by a condensation of rotating nebulous
spheres. This “nebular hypothesis” has
been much improved and supplemented
since, but it is still the best of all the
attempts to explain the origin of the world
on monistic and mechanical lines. It has
recently been strongly confirmed and
enlarged by the theory that this cosmogonic
process did not simply take place once, but
is periodically repeated. While new cosmic
bodies arise and develop out of rotating
masses of nebula in some parts of the
universe, in other parts old, extinct, frigid
suns come into collision, and are once
more reduced by the heat generated to the
condition of nebulas.
Nearly all the older and the more recent
cosmogonies, including most of those which
were inspired by Kant and Laplace, started
from the popular idea that the world had
had a beginning. Hence, according to a
widespread version of the nebula hypothesis,
“ in the beginning ” was made a vast
nebula of infinitely attenuated and light
material, and at a certain moment (“ count
less ages ago ”) a movement of rotation was
imparted to this mass. Given this “ first
beginning”of the cosmogonic movement,
it is easy, on mechanical principles, to
deduce and mathematically establish the
further phenomena of the foundation of the
cosmic bodies, the separation of the planets,
and so forth. This first “origin of move
ment ” is Du Bois-Reymond’s second
“world-enigma”; he regards it as tran
scendental. Many other scientists and
�86
THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE
philosophers are equally helpless before this
difficulty; they resign themselves to the
notion that we have here a primary “super
natural impetus ” to the scheme of things,
a “ miracle.”
In our opinion, this second “world
enigma ’’ is solved by the recognition that
movement is as innate and original a
property of substance as is sensation. The
proof of this monistic assumption is found,
first, in the law of substance, and, secondly,
in the discoveries which astronomy and
physics have made in the latter half of the
century. By the spectrum analysis of
Bunsen aud Kirchhoff (i860) we have
found, not only that the millions of bodies,
which fill the infinity of space, are of the
same material as our own sun and earth,
but also that they are in various stages of
evolution; we have obtained by its aid
information as to the movements and
distances of the stars, which the telescope
would never have given us. Moreover, the
telescope itself has been vastly improved,
and has, in alliance with photography,
made a host of scientific discoveries of
which no one dreamed at the beginning of
the century.
In particular, a closer
acquaintance with comets, meteorites, star
clusters, and nebulae has helped us to
realise the great significance of the smaller
bodies which are found in millions in the
space between the stars.
We now know that the paths of the
millions of heavenly bodies are changeable,
and to some extent irregular, whereas the
planetary system was formerly thought to
be constant, and the rotating spheres were
described as pursuing their orbits in eternal
regularity. Astrophysics owes much of its
triumph to the immense progress of other
branches of physics, of optics, and elec
tricity, and especially of the theory of ether.
And here, again, our supreme law of
substance is found to be one of the most
valuable achievements of modern science.
We now know that it rules unconditionally
in the most distant reaches of space, just
as it does in our planetary system, in the
most minute particle of the earth as well
as in the smallest cell of our human frame.
We are, moreover, justified in concluding,
if we are not logically compelled to
conclude, that the persistence of matter
and force has held good throughout all
time as it does to-day. Through all
eternity the infinite universe has been, and
is, subject to the law of substance.
From this great progress of astronomy
and physics, which mutually elucidate and
supplement each other, we draw a series of
most important conclusions with regard to
the constitution and evolution of the
cosmos, and the persistence and trans
formation of substance. Let us put them
briefly in the following theses :—
I. —The extent of the universe is infinite
and unbounded ; it is empty in no part,
but everywhere filled with substance.
II. —The duration of the world is equally
infinite and unbounded; it has no beginning
and no end ; it is eternity.
III. —Substance is everywhere and always
in uninterrupted movement and transforma
tion : nowhere is there perfect repose and
rigidity; yet the infinite quantity of matter
and of eternally changing force remains
constant.
IV. —This universal movement of sub
stance in space takes the form of an eternal
cycle or of a periodical process of evolution.
V. —The phases of this evolution consist
in a periodic change of consistency, of
which the first outcome is the primary
division into mass and ether—the ergonomy
of ponderable and imponderable matter.
VI. — This division is effected by a
progressive condensation of matter as the
formation of countless infinitesimal “centres
of condensation,” in which the inherent
primitive properties of substance—feeling
and inclination—are the active causes.
VII. —While minute and then larger
bodies are being formed by this pyknotic
process in one part of space, and the
intermediate ether increases its strain, the
opposite process—the destruction of cosmic
bodies by collision—is taking place in
another quarter.
VIII. —The immense quantity of heat
which is generated in this mechanical
process of the collision of swiftly-moving
bodies represents the new kinetic energy
which effects the movement of the resultant
nebulae and the construction of new rotating
bodies. The eternal drama begins afresh.
Even our mother earth, which was formed
of part of the gyrating solar system millions
of ages ago, will grow cold and lifeless
after the lapse of further millions, and,
gradually narrowing its orbit, will fall
eventually into the sun.
It seems to me that these modern dis
coveries as to the periodic decay and
re-birth of cosmic bodies, which we owe
to the most recent advance of physics and
astronomy, associated with the law of
substance, are especially important in
giving us a clear insight into the uni vet sal
cosmic process of evolution. In their
�THE EVOLUTION OF THE WORLD
light our earth shrinks into the slender
proportions of a “ mote in the sunbeam,”
of which unnumbered millions chase each
other through the vast depths of space.
Our own “ human nature,” which exalted
itself into an image of God in its anthropistic illusion, sinks to the level of a
placental mammal, which has no more
value for the universe at large than, the
ant, the fly of a summer’s day, the micro
scopic infusorium, or the smallest bacillus.
Humanity is but a transitory phase of the
evolution of an eternal substance, a par
ticular phenomenal form of matter and
energy, the true proportion of which we
soon perceive when we set it on the back
ground of infinite space and eternal time.
Since Kant explained time and space to
be merely “ forms of perception ”■ space
—
the form of external, time of internal,
sensitivity—there has been a keen contro
versy, which still continues, over this
important problem. A large section of
modern metaphysicians have persuaded
themselves that this “ critical fact ”
possesses a great importance, as the
starting-point of “ a purely idealist theory
of knowledge,” and that, consequently, the
natural opinion of the ordinary healthy
mind as to the reality of time and space is
swept aside. This narrow and ultra-idealist
conception of time and space has become
a prolific source of error. It overlooks the
fact that Kant only touched one side of the
problem, the subjective side, in that theory,
and recognised the equal validity of its
objective side. “Time and space,” he said,
“ have empirical reality, but transcendental
ideality.” Our modern monism is quite
compatible with this thesis of Kant’s, but
not with the one-sided exaggeration of the
subjective aspect of the problem ; the latter
leads logically to the absurd idealism, that
culminates in Berkeley’s thesis. “ Bodies
are but ideas ; their essence is in their
perception.” The thesis should be read
thus : “ Bodies are only ideas for my
personal consciousness ; their existence is
just as real as that of my organs of thought,
the ganglionic cells in the grey bed of my
brain, which receive the impress of bodies
on my sense organs and form those ideas
by association of the impressions.” It is
just as easy to doubt or to deny the reality
of my own consciousness as to doubt that
of time and space. In the delirium of
fever, in hallucinations, in dreams, and in
double-consciousness, I take ideas to be
true which are merely fancies. I mistake
my own personality for another (vide
,
j
|
I
■
'
!
i
*1
p. 66); Descartes’s famous Cogito ergo
sum applies no longer. On the other hand,
the reality of time and space is now fully
established by that expansion of our
philosophy which we owe to the law of
substance and to our monistic cosmogony.
When we have happily got rid of the
untenable idea of “empty space,” there
remains as the infinite “space-filling”
medium matter, in its two forms of ether
and mass. So also we find a “time-filling”
event in the eternal movement, or genetic
energy, which reveals itself in the uninter
rupted evolution of substance in the
perpetuum mobile of the universe.
As a body which has been set in motion
continues to move as long as no external
agency interferes with it, the idea was con
ceived long ago of constructing apparatus
which should illustrate perpetual motion.
The fact was overlooked that every move
ment meets with external impediments and
gradually ceases, unless a new impetus is
given to it from without and a new force is
introduced to counteract the impediments.
Thus, for instance, a pendulum would swing
backwards and forwards for an eternity at
the same speed if the resistance of the
atmosphere and the friction at the point it
hangs from did not gradually deprive it of
the mechanical kinetic energy of its motion
and convert it into heat. We have to
furnish it with fresh mechanical energy by
a spring (or, as in the pendulum-clock, by
the drag of a weight). Hence it is impos
sible to construct a machine that would
produce, without external aid, a surplus of
energy by which it could keep itself going.
Every attempt to make such a perpetuum
mobile must necessarily fail ; the discovery
of the law of substance showed, in addition,
the theoretical impossibility of it.
The case is different, however, when we
turn to the world at large, the boundless
universe that is in eternal movement. The
infinite matter, which fills it objectively, is
what we call space in our subjective impres
sion of it; time is our subjective conception
of its eternal movement, which is, objec
tively. a periodic, cyclic evolution. These
two “ forms of perception ” teach us the
infinity and eternity of the universe. That
is, moreover, equal to saying that the
universe itself is a perpetuum mobile. This
infinite and eternal “ machine of the
universe” sustains itself in eternal and
uninterrupted movement, because every
impediment is compensated by an “ equiva
lence of energy,” and the unlimited sum of
kinetic and potential energy remains always
�THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE
the same. The law of the persistence of
force proves also that the idea of a perpetuurn mobile is just as applicable to, and
as significant for, the cosmos as a whole as
it is impossible for the isolated action of
any part of it. Hence the theory of entropy
is likewise untenable.
The able founder of the mechanical
theory of heat (1850), Clausius, embodied
the momentous contents of this important
theory in two theses. The first runs: “The
energy of the universe is constant”-—that
is one half of our law of substance, the
principle of energy {vide p. 82). The
second thesis is: “ The entropy of the
universe tends towards a maximum.” In
my opinion this second assertion is just as
erroneous as the first is true. In the
theory of Clausius the entire energy of the
universe is of two kinds, one of which (heat
of the higher degree, mechanical, electrical,
chemical energy, etc.) is partly convertible
into work, but the other is not; the latter
energy, already converted into heat and
distributed in the cooler masses, is irre
vocably lost as far as any further work is
concerned. Clausius calls this unconsumed
energy, which is no longer available for
mechanical work, entropy (that is, force
that is directed inwards); it is continually
increasing at the cost of the other half.
As, therefore, the mechanical energy of the
universe is daily being transformed into
heat, and this cannot be reconverted into
mechanical force, the sum of heat and
energy in the universe must continually
tend to be reduced and dissipated. All
difference of temperature must ultimately
disappear, and the completely latent heat
must be equally distributed through one
inert mass of motionless matter. All organic
life and movement must cease when this
maximum of entropy has been reached.
That would be a real “ end of the world.”
If this theory of entropy were true, we
should have a “beginning” corresponding
to this assumed “ end ” of the world—a
minimum of entropy, in which the differ
ences in temperature of the various parts
of the cosmos would be at a maximum.
Both ideas are quite untenable in the light
of our monistic and consistent theory of
the eternal cosmogenetic process; both
contradict the law of substance. There is
neither beginning nor end of the world.
The universe is infinite, and eternally in
motion; the conversion of kinetic into
potential energy, and vicissim, goes on
uninterruptedly ; and the sum of this actual
and potential energy remains constant.
The second thesis of the mechanical theory
of heat contradicts the first, and so must
be rejected.
The representatives of the theory of
entropy are quite correct as long as they
confine themselves to distinct processes, in
which, under certain conditions, the latent
heat cannot be reconverted into work.
Thus, for instance, in the steam-engine the
heat can only be converted into mechanical
work when it passes from a warmer body
(steam) into a cooler (water) ; the process
cannot be reversed. In the world at large,
however, quite other conditions obtain—
conditions which permit the reconversion
of latent heat into mechanical work. For
instance, in the collision of two heavenly
bodies, which rush towards each other at
inconceivable speed, enormous quantities
of heat are liberated, while the pulverised
masses are hurled and scattered about
space. The eternal drama begins afresh—
the rotating mass, the condensation of its
parts, the formation of new meteorites, their
combination into larger bodies, and so on.
II.—MONISTIC GEOGENY.
The history of the earth of which we
are now going to make a brief survey is
only a minute section of the history of the
cosmos. Like the latter, it has been the
object of philosophic speculation and
mythological fantasy for many thousand
years. Its true scientific study, however,
is much younger ; it belongs, for the most
part, to the nineteenth century. The fact
that the earth is a planet revolving round
the sun was determined by the system of
Copernicus (1543) ; Galilei, Kepler, and
other great astronomers, mathematically
determined its distance from the sun, the
laws of its motion, and so forth. Kant and
Laplace indicated, in their cosmogony, the
way in which the earth had been developed
from the parent sun. But the later history
of the earth, the formation of its crust, the
origin of its seas and continents, its moun
tains and deserts, was rarely made the
subject of serious scientific research in the
eighteenth century, and in the first two
decades of the nineteenth. As a rule, men
were satisfied with unreliable*' conjectures,
or with the traditional story of creation ;
once more the Mosaic legend barred the
way to an independent investigation.
In 1822 an important work appeared,
which followed the same method in the
scientific investigation of the history of
the earth that had already proved the most
�THE EVOLUTION OF THE WORLD
fertile—the ontological method, or the
principle of “ actualism.” It consists in a
careful study and manipulation of actual
phenomena with a view to the elucidation
of the analogous historical processes of the
past. The Society of Science at Gottingen
had offered a prize in 1818 for “the most
searching and comprehensive inquiry into
the changes in the earth’s crust which are
historically demonstrable, and the appli
cation which may be made of a knowledge
of them in the investigation of the terres
trial revolutions which lie beyond the range
of history.” This prize was obtained by
Karl Hoff of Gotha for his distinguished
work, History of the Natural Changes in
the Crust of the Earth in the Light of
Tradition (1822-34). Sir Charles Lyell
then applied this ontological or actualistic
method with great success to the whole
province of geology; his Principles of
Geology (1830) laid the firm foundation on
which the fabric of the history of the earth
was so happily erected. The important
geogenetic research ofAlexander Humboldt,
Leopold Buch, Gustav Bischof, Edward
Suss, and other geologists, was wholly
based on the empirical foundation and the
speculative principles of Karl Hoff and
Charles Lyell. They cleared the way for
purely rational science in the field of
geology; they removed the obstacles that
had been put in the path by mythological
fancy and religious tradition, especially by
the Bible and its legends. I have already
discussed the merits of Lyell, and his
relations with his friend Charles Darwin,
in the sixteenth and seventeenth chapters
of my Natural History of Creation, and
must refer the reader to the standard works
on geology for a further acquaintance with
the history of the earth and the great
progress which dynamical and historical
geology have made during the century.
The first division of the history of the
earth must be a separation of inorganic
and organic geogeny; the latter begins
with the first appearance of living things
on our planet. The earlier section, the
inorganic history of the earth, ran much
the same course as that of the other planets
of our system. ’ They were all cast off as
rings of nebula at the equator of the rotating
solar mass, and gradually condensed into
independent bodies. After cooling down
a little, the glowing ball of the earth was
formed out of the gaseous mass, and
eventually, as the heat continued to radiate
put into space, there was formed at its
surface the thin solid crust on which we
89
live. When the temperature at the surface
had gone down to a certain point, the water
descended upon it from the environing
clouds of steam, and thus the first condition
was secured for the rise of organic life.
Many million years—certainly more than a
hundred—have passed since this important
process of the formation of water took
place, introducing the third section of
cosmogony, which we call biogeny.
HI.—MONISTIC BIOGENY.
The third phase of the evolution of the
world opens with the advent of organisms
on our planet, and continues uninterrupted
from that point until the present day. The
great problems which this most interesting
part of the earth’s history suggests to us
were still thought insoluble at the beginning
of the nineteenth century, or, at least, so
difficult that their solution seemed to be
extremely remote. Now, at the close of
; the century, we can affirm with legitimate
pride that they have been substantially
solved by modern biology and its theory of
transformism ; indeed, many of the pheno
mena of the organic world are now inter
preted on physical principles as completely
as the familiar physical phenomena of
inorganic nature. The merit of making
the first important step in this difficult path,
and of pointing out the way to the monistic
solution of all the problems of biology,
must be accorded to the great French
scientist, Jean Lamarck ; it was in 18091,
the year of the birth of Charles Darwin,
that he published his famous Philosophic
Zoologique. In this original work not only
is a splendid effort made to interpret all
the phenomena of organic life from a
monistic and physical point of view, but
the path is opened which alone leads to the
solution of the greatest enigma of this
branch of science—the problem of the
natural origin of organic species. Lamarck,
who had an equally extensive empirical
acquaintance with zoology and botany,
drew the first sketch of the theory of
descent; he showed that all the countless
members of the plant and animal kingdoms
have arisen by slow transformation from
simple, common ancestral types, and that
it is the gradual modification of forms by
adaptation, in reciprocal action with
heredity, which has brought about this
secular metamorphosis.
I have fully appreciated the merit of
Lamarck in the fifth chapter, and of Darwin
in the sixth and seventh chapters, of the
�THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE
Natural History of Creation. Darwin,
fifty years afterwards, not only gave a solid
foundation to all the essential parts of the
theory of descent, but he filled up the
lacunce of Lamarck’s work by his theory of
selection. Darwin reaped abundantly the
success that Lamarck had never seen;
with all his merit. His epoch-making
work on The Origin of Species by Natural
Selection has transformed modern biology
from its very foundations, in the course of
the last forty years, and has raised it to a
stage of development that yields to no
other science in existence. Darwin is the
Copernicus of the organic world, as I said
in 1868, and E. du Bois-Reymond repeated
fifteen years afterwards.1
IV.—MONISTIC ANTHROPOGENY.
CHAPTER XIV.
the unity of nature
The monism of the cosmos. Essential unity ot
organic and inorganic nature. Carbon-theory.
The hypothesis of abiogenesis.
Mechanical
and purposive causes. Mechanism and teleo
logy in Kant’s works. Design in the organic
and inorganic worlds. Vitalism. Neovitalism.
Dysteleology (the moral of the rudimentary
organs). Absence of design in, and imper
fection of, nature. Telic action in organised
bodies. Its absence in ontogeny and phylo
geny. The Platonist “ideas.” No moral
order discoverable in the history of the organic
world, of the vertebrates, or of the human
race. Prevision. Design and chance.
The fourth and last phase of the world’s One of the first things to be proved by the
history must be for us men that latest law of substance is the basic fact that any
period of time which has witnessed the natural force can be directly or indirectly
development of our own race. Lamarck converted into any other. Mechanical and
(1809). had already recognised that this chemical energy, sound and heat, light and
evolution is only rationally conceivable as electricity, are mutually convertible ; they
the outcome of a natural process, by seem to be but different modes of one and
“descent from the apes,” our next of kin the same fundamental force or energy.
among the mammals. Huxley then proved, Thence follows the important thesis of the
in his famous essay on The Place of Man in unity of all natural forces, or, as’ it may also
Nature, that this momentous thesis is an be expressed, the “monism of energy.’
inevitable consequence of the theory of This fundamental principle is now generally
descent, and is thoroughly established by recognised in the entire province of physics
the facts of anatomy, embryology, and and chemistry, as far as it applies to
palmontology. He considered this “ques inorganic substances.
tion of all questions” to be substantially
It seems to be otherwise with the organic
answered. Darwin followed with a brilliant world and its wealth of colour and form.
discussion of the question under many
It is, of course, obvious that a great part
aspects in his Descent of Man (1871). I
of the phenomena of life maybe immediately
ha.d myself devoted a special chapter to traced to mechanical and chemical energy,
this important problem of the science of and to the effects of electricity and light.
evolution in my General Morphology
For . other vital processes, however,
In 1874 I published my Anthropogeny,
especially for psychic activity and con
which contains the first attempt to trace sciousness, such an interpretation is vigor
the _ descent of man through the entire ously contested. Yet the modern science
chain of his ancestry right up to the earliest of evolution has achieved the task of con
archigonous monera; the attempt was based structing a bridge between these two
equally on the three great “ documents ” of apparently irreconcilable provinces. We
evolutionary science — anatomy, embry are now certain that all the phenomena of
ology, and palmontology. The progress organic life are subject to the universal law .
we have made in anthropogenetic research of substance no less than the phenomena
during the last few years is described in of the inorganic universe.
the paper which I read bn * Our Present
The unity of nature which necessarily
Knowledge of the Origin of Man ” at the follows, and the demolition of the earlier
International Congress of Zoologists at dualism, are certainly among the most
Cambridge in 1898.2
valuable results of modern evolution.
Thirty-three years ago I made an exhaustive
effort to establish this “ monism of the
1 Cf. Monism, by E. Haeckel.
cosmos” and the essential unity of organic
The Last Link, translated by Dr. Gadow.
and inorganic nature by a thorough critical
�THE UNITY OF NATURE
demonstration, and a comparison of the
accordance of these two great divisions of
nature with regard to matter, form, and
force.1 A short epitome of the result is
given in the fifteenth chapter of my Natural
History of Creation. The views I put
forward are accepted by the majority of
modern scientists, but an attempt has been
made in many quarters lately to dispute
them, and to maintain the old antithesis of
the two divisions of nature. The ablest of
these efforts is to be found in the recent
Welt als That of the botanist Reinke. It
defends pure cosmological dualism with
admirable lucidity and consistency, and
only goes to prove how utterly untenable
the teleological system is that is connected
therewith. According to the author,
physical and chemical forces alone are at
work in the entire field of inorganic nature,
while in the organic world we find “ intelli
gent forces,” regulative or dominant forces.
The law of substance is supposed to apply
to the one, but not to the other. On the
whole, it is a question of the old antithesis
of a mechanical and a teleological system.
Before we go more fully into it, let us
glance briefly at two other theories, which
seem to me to be of great importance in the
decision of that controversy—the carbontheory and the theory of spontaneous
generation.
Physiological chemistry has, after count
less analyses, established the following five
facts during the last forty years
I. —No other elements are found in
organic bodies than those of the inorganic
world.
II. —-The combinations of elements which
are peculiar to organisms, and which are
responsible for their vital phenomena, are
compound protoplasmic substances, of the
group of albuminoids.
III. —Organic life itself is a chemicophysical process, based on the metabolism
(or interchange of material) of these
albuminoids.
■ IV.—The only element which is capable
of building up these compound albuminoids,
in combination with other elements (oxygen,
hydrogen, nitrogen, and sulphur), is carbon.
V.—These protoplasmic compounds of
carbon are distinguished from most other
chemical combinations by their very
intricate molecular structure, their insta
bility, and their jelly-like consistency.
On the basis of these five fundamental
facts ' the following “ carbon-theory ” was
1 General Morphology, bk. 2, ch. v.
91
erected thirty - three years ago : “ The
peculiar, chemico - physical properties of
carbon—especially the fluidity and the
facility of decomposition of the most
elaborate albuminoid compounds of carbon
—are the sole and the mechanical causes
of the specific phenomena of movement,
which distinguish organic from inorganic
substances, and which are called life, in the
usual sense of the word ” (see The Natural
History of Creation). Although this “ car
bon-theory” is warmly disputed in some
quarters, no better monistic theory has yet
appeared to replace it. We have now a
much better and more thorough knowledge
of the physiological relations of cell-life,
and of the chemistry and physics of the
living protoplasm, than we had thirty-three
years ago, and so it is possible to make a
more confident and .effective defence of the
carbon-theory.
The old idea of spontaneous generation
is now taken in many different senses. It
is owing to this indistinctness of the idea,
and its application to so many different
hypotheses, that the problem is one of the
most contentious and confused in the
science of the day. I restrict the idea of
spontaneous generation—also called abio
genesis or archigony—to the first develop
ment of living protoplasm out of inorganic
carbonates, and distinguish two phases in
this “beginning of biogenesis(T) autogony, or the rise of the simplest protoplas
mic substances in a formative fluid, and (2)
plasmogony, the differentiation of individual
primitive organisms out of these protoplas
mic compounds in the form of monera. I
have treated this important, though difficult,
problem so exhaustively in the fifteenth
chapter of my Natural History of Creation
that I may content myself here with refer
ring to it. There is also a very searching
and severely scientific inquiry into it in my
General Morphology (1866). Naegeli has
also treated the hypothesis in quite the
same sense in his mechanico-physiological
theory of descent (1884), and has repre
sented it to be an indispensable thesis in
any natural theory of evolution. I entirely
agree with his assertion that “to reject
abiogenesis is to admit a miracle.”
The hypothesis of spontaneous genera
tion and the allied carbon-theory are of
great importance in deciding the long
standing conflict between the teleological
(dualistic) and the mechanical (monistic)
interpretation of phenomena. Since Darwin
gave us the key to the monistic explanation
of organisation in his theory of selection
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THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE
forty years ago, it has become possible for
us to trace the splendid variety of orderly
tendencies of the organic world to mechani
cal, natural causes, just as we could formerly
in the organic world alone. Hence the
supernatural and telic forces, to which the
scientist had had recourse, have been
rendered superfluous. Modern metaphysics,
however, continues to regard the latter as
indispensable and the former as inade
quate.
No philosopher has done more than
Immanuel Kant in defining the profound
distinction between efficient and final causes,
with relation to the interpretation of the
whole cosmos. In his well-known earlier
work on The General Natural History and
Theory of the Heavens he made a bold
attempt “ to treat the constitution and the
mechanical origin of the entire fabric of
the universe according to Newtonian laws.”
This “cosmological nebular theory” was
based entirely on the mechanical pheno
mena of gravitation. It was expanded and
mathematically éstablished later on by
Laplace. When the famous French astro
nomer was asked by Napoleon I. where
God, the creator and sustainer of all things,
came in in his system, he clearly and
honestly replied : “ Sire, I have managed
without that hypothesis.” That indicated
the atheistic character which this mechanical
cosmogony shares with all the other inorganic
sciences. This is the more noteworthy
because the theory of Kant and Laplace is
now almost universally accepted; every
attempt to supersede it has failed. When
atheism is denounced as a grave reproach,
as it so often is, it is well to remember that
the reproach extends to the whole of
modern science, in so far as it gives a purely
mechanical interpretation of the inorg-anic
world.
Mechanicism (in the Kantian sense) alone
can give us a true explanation of natural
phenomena, for it traces them to their real
efficient causes, to blind and unconscious
agencies, which are determined in their
action only by the material constitution of
the bodies we are investigating. Kant
himself emphatically affirms that “ there can
be no science without this mechanicism of
nature,” and that the capacity of human
reason to give a mechanical interpretation
of phenomena is unlimited. But when he
came subsequently to give an elucidation of
the complex phenomena of organic nature
in his critique of the teleological system, he
declared that these mechanical causes were
inadequate ; that in this we must call final
causes to our assistance. It is true, he said,
that even here we must recognise the
theoretical faculty of the mind to give a
mechanical interpretation, but its actual
competence to do so is restricted. He
grants it this capacity to some extent ; but
for the majority of the vital processes (and
especially for man’s psychic activity) he
thinks we are bound to postulate final
causes. The remarkable § 79 of the critique
of judgment bears the characteristic head
ing : “ On the Necessity for the Subordina
tion of the Mechanical Principle to the
Teleological in the Explanation of a Thing
as a Natural End.” It seemed to Kant so
impossible to explain the orderly processes
in the living organism without postulating
supernatural final causes (that is, a purposive
creative force) that he said : “ It is quite
certain that we cannot even satisfactorily
understand, much less elucidate, the nature
of an organism and its internal faculty on
purely mechanical natural principles ; it is
so certain, indeed, that we may confidently
say, ‘ It is absurd for a man to conceive the
idea even that some day a Newton will
arise who can explain the origin of a single
blade of grass by natural laws which are
uncontrolled by design ’—such a hope is
entirely forbidden us.” Seventy years
afterwards this impossible “Newton of the
organic world” appeared in the person of
Charles Darwin, and achieved the great
task that Kant had deemed impracticable.
Since Newton (1682) formulated the law
of gravitation, and Kant (1755) established
“ the constitution and mechanical origin of
the entire fabric of the world on Newtonian
laws,” and Laplace (1796) provided a
mathematical foundation for this law of
cosmic mechanicism, the whole of the
inorganic sciences have become purely
mechanical, and at the same time purely
atheistic. Astronomy, cosmogony, geology,
meteorology, and inorganic physics and
chemistry are now absolutely ruled by
mechanical laws on a mathematical founda
tion. The idea of “design” has wholly
disappeared from this vast province of
science. At the close of the nineteenth
century, now that this monistic view has
fought its way to general recognition, no
scientist ever asks seriously of the “ pur
pose” of any single phenomenon in the
whole of this great field. Is any astronomer
likely to inquire seriously to-day into the
purpose of planetary motion, or a miner
alogist to seek design in the structure of a
crystal? Does the physicist investigate
the purpose of electric force, or the chemist
�THE UNITY OF NATURE
that of atomic weight? We may confidently
answer in the negative—certainly not, in
the sense that God, or a purposive natural
force, had at some time created these
fondamental laws of the mechanism of the
universe with a definite design, and causes
them to work daily in accordance with his
rational will. The anthropomorphic notion
of a deliberate architect and ruler of the
world has gone for ever from this field ;
the “eternal, iron laws of nature” have
taken his place.
But the idea of design has a very great
significance and application in the organic
world. We do undeniably perceive a
purpose in the structure and in the life of
» organism. The plant and the animal
seem to be controlled by a definite design
in the combination of their several parts,
just as clearly as we see in the machines
which man invents and constructs ; as long
as life continues the functions of the several
organs are directed to definite ends, just as
is the operation of the various parts of a
machine. Hence it was quite natural that
foe older naïve study of nature, in explain
ing the origin and activity of the living
being, should postulate a creator who had
“ arranged all things with wisdom and
understanding,” and had constructed each
plant and animal according to the special
purpose of its life. The conception of this
“almighty creator of heaven and earth”
Was usually quite anthropomorphic ; he
created “everything after its kind.” As
long as the creator seemed to man to be of
human shape, to think with his brain, see
with his eyes, and fashion with his hands,
it was possible to form a definite picture of
this “ divine engineer ” and his artistic
work in the great workshop of creation.
This was not so easy when the idea of God
became refined, and man saw in his
“ invisible God ” a creator without organs
—a gaseous being. Still more unintel
ligible did these anthropomorphic ideas
become when physiology substituted for
the conscious, divine architect an uncon
scious, creative “vital force”—a mysterious,
purposive, natural force, which differed
from the familiar forces of physics and
chemistry, and only took these in part,
during life, into its service. This vitalism
prevailed until about the middle of the
nineteenth century. Johannes Müller, the
great Berlin physiologist, was the first to
menace it with a destructive dose of facts.
It is true that the distinguished biologist
had himself (like all others in the first half
of the century) been educated in a belief in
93
this vital force, and deemed it indispensable
for an elucidation of the ultimate sources
of life ; nevertheless, in his classical and
still unrivalled Manual of Physiology (1833)
he gave a demonstrative proof that there is
really nothing to be said for this vital force.
Müller himself, in a long series of remark
able observations and experiments, showed
that most of the vital processes in the
human organism (and in the other animals)
take place according to physical and
chemical laws, and that many of them are
capable of mathematical determination.
That was no less true of the animal
functions of the muscles and nerves, and of
both the higher and the lower sense
organs, than of the vegetal functions of
digestion, assimilation, and circulation.
Only two branches of the life of the organism,
mental action and reproduction, retained
any element of mystery, and seemed inex
plicable without assuming a vital force.
But immediately after Müller’s death such
important discoveries and advances were
made in these two branches that the uneasy
“ phantom of vital force ” was driven from
its last refuge. By a very remarkable coin
cidence Johannes Müller died in the year
1858, which saw the publication of Darwin’s
first communication concerning his famous
theory. The theory of selection solved the
great problem that had mastered Müller—
the question of the origin of orderly arrange
ments from purely mechanical causes.
Darwin, as we have often said, had a
twofold immortal merit in the field of
philosophy—firstly, the reform of Lamarck’s
theory of descent, and its establishment on
the mass of facts accumulated in the course
of the half-century ; secondly, the concep
tion of the theory of selection, which first
revealed to us the true causes of the gradual
formation of species. Darwin was the first
to point out that the “ struggle for life ” is
the unconscious regulator which controls
the reciprocal action of heredity and adap
tation in the gradual transformation of
species ; it is the great “ selective divinity”
which, by a purely “natural choice,”without
preconceived design, creates new forms,
just as selective man creates new types by
an “artificial choice,” with a definite design.
That gave us the solution of the great
philosophic problem : “How can purposive
contrivances be produced by purely
mechanical processes without design ?”
Kant held the problem to be insoluble,
although Empedocles had pointed out the
direction of the solution two thousand
years before. His principle of “teleological
�94
THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE
mechanicism ” has become more and more
accepted of late years, and has furnished a
mechanical explanation even of the finest
and most recondite processes of organic
life by “the functional self-production of
the purposive structure.” Thus have we
got rid of the transcendental “design” of
the teleological philosophy of the schools,
which was the greatest obstacle to the
growth of a rational and monistic concep
tion of nature.
Very recently, however, this ancient
phantom of a mystic vital force, which
seemed to be effectually banished, has put
in a fresh appearance ; a number of dis
tinguished biologists have attempted to
reintroduce it under another name. The
clearest presentation of it is to be found in
the Welt als That, of the Kiel botanist, J.
Reinke. He takes upon himself the defence
of the notion of miracle, of theism, of the
Mosaic story of creation, and of the con
stancy of species ; he calls “ vital forces,”
in opposition to physical forces, the directive
or dominant forces. Other neovitalists
prefer, in the good old anthropomor
phic style, a “ supreme ” engineer, who
has endowed organic substance with a
purposive structure, directed to the
realisation of a definite plan. These
curious teleological hypotheses, and the
objections to Darwinism which generally
accompany them, do not call for serious
scientific refutation to-day.
Thirty-three years ago I gave the title of
“ dysteleology ” to the science of those
extremely interesting and significant bio
logical facts which, in the most striking
fashion, give a direct contradiction to the
teleological idea “ of the purposive arrange
ment of the living organism.”1 This
“science of rudimentary, abortive, arrested,
distorted,_ atrophied, and cataplastic indi
viduals ” is based on an immense quantity
of remarkable phenomena, which were
long familiar to zoologists and botanists,
but were not properly interpreted, and their
great philosophic significance appreciated,
until Darwin.
All the higher animals and plants, or, in
general, all organisms which are not
entirely simple in structure, but are made
up of a number of organs in orderly co
operation, are found, on close examination,
to possess a number of useless or inopera
tive members, sometimes, indeed, hurtful
and dangerous. In the flowers of most
1 Cf. General Morphology, vol. ii., and The
Natural History of Creation.
plants we find, besides the actual sex-leaves
that effect reproduction, a number of other
leaf-organs which have no use or meaning
(arrested or “miscarried” pistils, fruit,
corona and calix-leaves, etc.). In the two
large and variegated classes of flying
animals, birds and insects, there are,
besides the forms which make constant
use of their wings, a number of species
which have undeveloped wings and cannot
fly. In nearly every class of the higher
animals which have eyes there are certain
types that live in the dark ; they have eyes,
as a rule, but undeveloped and useless for
vision. In our own human organism we
have similar useless rudimentary structures
in the muscles of the ear, in the eye-lid, in
the nipple and milk-gland of the male, and
in other parts of the body; indeed, the
vermiform appendix of our cæcum is not
only useless, but extremely dangerous, and
inflammation of it is responsible for a
number of deaths every year.
Neither the old mystic vitalism nor the
new, equally irrational, neovitalism can
give any explanation of these and many
other purposeless contrivances in the
structure of the plant and the animal ; but
they are very simple in the light of the
theory of descent, It shows that these
rudimentary organs are atrophied, owing
to disuse. Just as our muscles, nerves, and
organs of sense are strengthened by exer
cise and frequent use, so, on the other
hand, they are liable to degenerate more
or less by disuse or suspended exercise.
But, although the development of the
organs is promoted by exercise and adapta
tion, they by no means disappear without
leaving a trace after neglect ; the force of
heredity retains them for many generations,
and only permits their gradual disappear
ance, after a lapse of a considerable time.
The blind “ struggle for existence between
the organs ” determines their historical
disappearance, just as it effected their first
origin and development. There is no
internal “purpose” whatever in the drama.
The life of the animal and the plant bears
the same universal character of incom
pleteness as the life of man. This is
directly attributable to the circumstance
that nature—organic as well as inorganic
—is in a perennial state of evolution, change,
and transformation. This evolution seems
on the whole—at least as far as we can
survey the development of organic life on
our planet—to be a progressive improve
ment, an historical advance from the simple
to the complex, the lower to the higher,
�THE, UNITY OF NATURE
the imperfect to the perfect. I have proved
in my General Morphology that this histori
cal progress-—or gradual perfecting(/d?Z^iA)
—is the inevitable result of selection, and
not the outcome of a preconceived design.
That is clear from the fact that no organism
is perfect; even if it does perfectly adapt
itself to its environment at a given moment,
this condition would not last Very long ;
the conditions of existence of the environ
ment are themselves subject to perpetual
change, and they thus necessitate a con
tinuous adaptation on the part of the
organism.
Under the title of Design in the Living
Organism, the famous embryologist, Carl
Ernst Baer, published a work in 1876 which,
together with the article on Darwinism
which accompanied it, proved very
acceptable to our opponents, and is still
much quoted in opposition to evolution.
It was a revival of the old teleological
system under a new name, and we must
devote a line of criticism to it. We must
premise that, though Baer was a scientist
of the highest order, his original monistic
views were gradually marred by a tinge of
mysticism with the advance of age, and he
eventually became a thorough dualist. In
his profound work on “ the evolution of
animals” (1828), which he himself entitled
Observation and Experiment, these two
methods of investigation are equally
applied. By careful observation of the
various phenomena of the development of
the animal ovum Baer succeeded in giving
the first consistent presentation of the
remarkable changes which take place in
the growth of the vertebrate from a simple
egg-cell. At the same time he endeavoured,
by far-seeing comparison and keen reflec
tion, to learn the causes of the transforma
tion, and to reduce them to general
constructive laws.
He expressed the
general result of his research in the
following thesis : “The evolution of the
individual is the story of the growth of
individuality in every respect.” He meant
that “ the one great thought that controls
all the different aspects of animal evolution
is the same that gathered the scattered
fragments of space into spheres, and linked
them into solar systems. This thought is
no other than life itself, and the words and
syllables in which it finds utterance are the
varied forms of living things.”
Baer, however, did not attain to a deeper
knowledge of this great genetic truth and a
clearer insight into the real efficient causes
of organic evolution, because his attention
95
was exclusively given to one half of
evolutionary science, the science of the
evolution of the individual, embryology, or,
in a wider sense, ontogeny. The other half,
the science of the evolution of species,
phylogeny, was not yet in existence, although
Lamarck had already pointed out the way
to it in 1809. When it was established by
Darwin in 1859 the aged Baer was no
longer in a position to appreciate it; the
fruitless struggle which he led against the
theory of selection clearly proved that he
understood neither its real meaning nor its
philosophic importance. Teleological and,
subsequently, theological speculations had
incapacitated the ageing scientist from
appreciating this greatest reform of biology.
The teleological observations which he
published against it in his Species and
Studies in his eighty-fourth year are mere
repetitions of errors which the teleology
of the dualists has opposed to the
mechanical or monistic system for more
than 2,000 years. The “telic idea” which,
according to Baer, controls the entire
evolution of the animal from the ovum is
only another expression for the eternal
“idea” of Plato and the entelecheia of his
pupil Aristotle.
Our modern biogeny gives a purely
physiological explanation of the facts of
embryology, in assigning the functions of
heredity and adaptation as their causes.
The great biognetic law, which Baer failed
to appreciate, reveals the intimate causal
connection between the ontogenesis of the
individual and the phylogenesis of its an
cestors ; the former seems to be a recapitu
lation of the latter. Nowhere, however, in
the evolution of animals and plants do we
find any trace of design, but merely the
inevitable outcome of the struggle for
existence, the blind controller, instead of
the provident God, that effects the changes
of organic forms by a mutual action of the
laws of heredity and adaptation. And
there is no more trace of “ design ” in the
embryology of the individual plant, animal,
or man. This ontogeny is but a brief epitome
of phylogeny, an abbreviated and condensed
recapitulation of it, determined by the
physiological laws of heredity.
Baer ended the preface to his classical
Evolution of Animals (1828) with these
words : “ The palm will be awarded to the
fortunate scientist who succeeds in reducing
the constructive forces of the animal body
to the general forces or life-processes of the
entire world. The tree has not yet been
planted which is to make his cradle.” The
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THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE
great embryologist erred once more. That
very year, 1828, witnessed the arrival of
Charles Darwin at Cambridge University
(for the purpose of studying theology!)—
the “ fortunate scientist ” who richly earned
the palm thirty years afterwards by his
theory of selection.
In the philosophy of history—that is, in
the general reflections which historians
make on the destinies of nations and the
complicated course of political evolution—
there still prevails the notion of a “moral
order of the universe.” Historians seek in
the vivid drama of history a leading design,
an ideal purpose, which has ordained one
or other race or State to a special triumph,
and to dominion over the others. This
teleological view of history has recently
become more strongly contrasted with our
monistic view in proportion as monism has
proved to be the only possible interpreta
tion of inorganic nature. Throughout the
whole of astronomy, geology, physics, and
chemistry there, is no question to-day of a
“ moral order,” or a personal God, whose
“ hand hath disposed all things in wisdom
and understanding.” And the same must
be said of the entire field of biology, the
whole constitution and history of organic
nature, if we set aside the question of man
for the moment. Darwin has not only
proved by his theory of selection that the
orderly processes in the life and structure
of animals and plants have arisen by
mechanical laws without any preconceived
design, but he has shown us in the “struggle
for life ” the powerful natural force which
has exerted supreme control over the entire
course of organic evolution for millions of
years. It may be said that the struggle for
life is the “survival of the fittest” or the
“victory of the best”; that is only correct
when we regard the strongest as the best
(in a moral sense). Moreover, the whole
history of the organic world goes to prove
that, besides the predominant advance
towards perfection, there are at all times
cases of retrogression to lower stages.
Even Baer’s notion of “design” has no
moral feature whatever.
Do we find a different state of things in
the history of peoples, which man, in his
anthropocentric presumption, loves to call
“ the history of the world ”? Do we find in
every phase of it a lofty moral principle or
a wise ruler, guiding the destinies of
nations ? There can be but one answer in
the present advanced stage of natural and
human history : No. The fate of those
branches of the human family, those nations
and races which have struggled for existence
and progress for thousands of years, is
determined by the same “ eternal laws of
iron ” as the history of the whole organic
world which has peopled the earth for
millions of years.
Geologists distinguish three great epochs
in the organic history of the earth, as far as
we can read it in the monuments of the
science of fossils—the primary, secondary,
and tertiary epochs. According to a recent
calculation, the first occupied at least
34,000,000, the second 11,000,000, and the
third 3,000,000 years. The history of the
family of vertebrates, from which our own
race has sprung, unfolds clearly before our
eyes during this long period. Three
different stages in the evolution of the
vertebrate correspond to the three epochs ;
the fishes characterised the primary (palaeo
zoic) age, the reptiles the secondary
(mesozoic), and the mammals the tertiary
(cænozoic). Of the three groups the fishes
rank lowest in organisation, the reptiles
come next, and the mammals take the
highest place. We find, on nearer examina
tion of the history of the three classes,
that their various orders and families also
advanced progressively during the three
epochs towards a higher stage of perfection.
May we consider this progressive develop
ment as the outcome of a conscious design
or a moral order of the universe? Certainly
not. The theory of selection teaches us
that this organic progress, like the earlier
organic differentiation, is an inevitable con
sequence of the struggle for existence.
Thousands of beautiful and remarkable
species of animals and plants have perished
during those 48,000,000 years, to give place
to stronger competitors, and the victors in
this struggle for life were not always the
noblest or most perfect forms in a moral
sense.
It has been just the same with the
history of humanity. The splendid civili
sation of classical antiquity perished
because Christianity, with its faith in a
loving God and its hope of a better life
beyond the grave, gave a fresh, strong im
petus to the soaring human mind. The Papal
Church quickly degenerated into a pitiful
caricature of real Christianity, and ruth
lessly scattered the treasures of knowledge
which the Hellenic philosophy had gathered;
it gained the dominion of the world through
the ignorance of the credulous masses. In
time the Reformation broke the chains of
this mental slavery, and assisted reason to
secure its right once more. But in the new
�GOD AND 7NE WORLD
as in the older, period the great struggle
for existence went on in its eternal fluctua
tion, with no trace of a moral order.
And it is just as impossible for the im
partial and critical observer to detect a
“ wise providence” in the fate of individual
human beings as a moral order in the
history of peoples. Both are determined
with iron necessity by a mechanical cau
sality which connects every single pheno
menon with one or more antecedent causes.
Even the ancient Greeks recognised ananke,
the blind heimarmene, the fate “ that rules
gods and men,” as the supreme principle of
the universe. Christianity replaced it by a
conscious Providence, which is not blind,
but sees, and which governs the world in
patriarchal fashion. The anthropomorphic
character of this notion, generally closely
connected with belief in a personal God, is
quite obvious. Belief in a “ loving Father,”
who unceasingly guides the destinies of
1,500,000,000 men on our planet, and is
attentive at all times to their millions of
contradictory prayers and pious wishes, is
absolutely impossible ; that is at once per
ceived on laying aside the coloured
spectacles of “faith” and reflecting ration
ally on the subject.
As a rule, this belief in Providence and
the tutelage of a “ loving Father ” is more
intense in the modern civilised man—just
as in the uncultured savage—when some
good fortune has befallen him : an escape
from peril of life, recovery from a severe
illness, the winning of the first prize in a
lottery, the birth of a long-delayed child,
and so forth. When, on the other hand, a
misfortune is met with, or an ardent wish
is not fulfilled, “ Providence ” is forgotten.
The wise ruler of the world slumbered—or
refused his blessing.
In the extraordinary development of
commerce in the nineteenth century the
number of catastrophes and accidents has
necessarily increased beyond all imagina
tion ; of that the journal is a daily witness.
Thousands are killed every year by ship
wreck, railway accidents, mine accidents,
etc. Thousands slay each other every year
in war, and the preparation for this whole
sale massacre absorbs much the greater
part of the revenue in the highest civilised
nations, the chief professors of “ Christian
charity.” And among these hundreds of
thousands of annual victims of modern
civilisation strong, industrious, courageous
workers predominate. Yet the talk of a
* moral order ” goes on.
Since impartial study of the evolution of
97
the world teaches us that there is no definite
aim and no special purpose to be traced in
it, there seems to be no alternative but to
leave everything to “ blind chance.” This
reproach has been made to the transformism
of Lamarck and Darwin, as it had been to
the previous systems of Kant and Laplace ;
there are a number of dualist philosophers
who lay great stress on it. It is, therefore,
worth while to make a brief remark upon it.
One group of philosophers affirms, in
accordance with its teleological conception,
that the whole cosmos is an orderly system,
in which every phenomenon has its aim
and purpose ; there is no such thing as
chance. The other group, holding a
mechanical theory, expresses itself thus :
The development of the universe is a
monistic mechanical process, in which we
discover no aim or purpose whatever; what
we call design in the organic world is a
special result of biological agencies; neither
in the evolution of the heavenly bodies nor
in that of the crust of our earth do we find
any trace of a controlling purpose—all is
the result of chance. Each party is right
—according to its definition of chance.
The general law of causality, taken in con
junction with the law of substance, teaches
us that every phenomenon has a mechanical
cause ; in this sense there is no such thing
as chance. Yet it is not only lawful, but
necessary, to retain the term for the purpose
of expressing the simultaneous occurrence
of two phenomena, which are not causally
related to each other, but of which each
has its own mechanical cause, independent
of that of the other. Everybody knows
that chance, in this monistic sense, plays an
important part in the life of man and in the
universe at large. That, however, does
not prevent us from recognising in each
“chance” event, as we do in the evolution
of the entire cosmos, the universal
sovereignty of nature’s supreme law, the
law of substance.
CHAPTER XV.
GOD AND THE WORLD
The idea of God in general. Antithesis of God
and the world ; the supernatural and nature.
Theism and Pantheism. Chief forms of
Theism. Polytheism. Tritheism. Amphitheism. Monotheism. Religious statistics.
H
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fffE RrD/rfímr*!
Naturalistic Monotheism, Solarism. Anthropistic Monotheism. The three great Mediter
ranean religions. Mosaism. Christianity.
The cult of the Madonna and the saints.
Papal Polytheism.
Islam.
Mixotheism.
Nature of Theism. An extramundane and
anthropomorphic God—a gaseous vertebrate.
Pantheism.
Intramundane God (nature).
The hylozoism of the Ionic Monists (Anaxi
mander). Conflict of Pantheism and Chris
tianity. Spinoza. Modern Monism. Atheism.
For thousands of years humanity has placed
the last and supreme basis of all pheno
mena in an efficient cause, to which it gives
the title of God {deus, theos}. Like all
general ideas, this notion of God has under
gone a series of remarkable modifications
and transformations in the course of the
evolution of reason. Indeed, it may be
said that no other idea has had so many
metamorphoses ; for no other belief affects
in so high a degree the chief objects of the
mind and of rational science, as well as the
deepest interests of the emotion and poetic
fancy of the believer.
A comparative criticism of the many
different forms of the idea of God would
be extremely interesting and instructive ;
but we have not space for it in the present
work. We must be content with a passing
glance at the most important forms of the
belief and their relation to the modern
thought that has been evoked by a sound
study of nature. For further information
on this interesting question the reader
would do well to consult the distinguished
work of Adalbert Svoboda, Forms of Faith
(1897)When we pass over the finer shades and
the variegated clothing of the God-idea
and confine our attention to its chief
element, we can distribute all the different
presentations of it in two groups—the
theistic and pantheistic groups. The latter
is closely connected with the monistic, or
rational, view of things, and the former is
associated with dualism and mysticism.
I.—THEISM.
In this view God is distinct from, and
opposed to, the world as its creator, sustainer,
and ruler. He is always conceived in a
more or less human form, as an organism
which thinks and acts like a man—only on
a much higher scale. This anthropomorphic
God, polyphyletically evolved by the different
races, assumes an infinity of shapes in their
imagination, from fetichism to the refined
monotheistic religions of the present day.
The chief forms of theism are polytheism,
triplotheism, amphitheism, and mono
theism.
The polytheist peoples the world with a
variety of gods and goddesses, which enter
into its machinery more or less indepen
dently. Fetichism sees such subordinate
deities in the lifeless bodies of nature, in
rocks, in water, in the air, in human pro
ductions of every kind (pictures, statues,
etc.). Demonism sees gods in living
organisms of every species—trees, animals,
and men. This kind of polytheism is found in
innumerable forms even in the lowest tribes.
It reaches its highest stage in Hellenic
polytheism, in the myths of ancient Greece,
which still furnish the finest images to the
modern poet and artist. At a much lower
stage we have Catholic polytheism, in which
innumerable “saints” (many of them of
very equivocal repute) are venerated as
subordinate divinities, and prayed to exert
their mediation with the supreme divinity.
The dogma of the “Trinity,” which still
comprises three of the chief articles of faith
in the creed of Christian peoples, culminates
in the notion that the
God of Christianity
is really made up of three different persons :
(1) God the Father, the omnipotent creator
of heaven and earth (this untenable myth
was refuted long ago by scientific cosmo
gony, astronomy, and geology); (2) Jesus'
Christ; and (3) the Holy Ghost, a mystical
being, over whose incomprehensible relation
to the Father and the Son millions of
Christian theologians have racked their
brains in vain for the last 1,900 years. The
Gospels, which are the only clear sources
of this triplotheism, are very obscure as to
the relation of these three persons to each
other, and do not give a satisfactory answer
to the question of their unity. On the other
hand, it must be carefully noted what con
fusion this obscure and mystic dogma of
the Trinity must necessarily cause in the
minds of our children even in the earlier
years of instruction. One morning they
learn (in their religious instruction) that
three times one are one, and the very next
hour they are told in their arithmetic class
that three times one are three. I remember
well the reflection that this confusion led
me to in my early school days.
For the rest, the “Trinity” is not an
original element in Christianity ; like most
of the other Christian dogmas, it has been
borrowed from earlier religions. Out of
the sun-worship of the Chaldaean magi was
evolved the Trinity of Ilu, the mysterious
�Ai^TfnrwuRLD
source of the world ; its three manifesta
tions were Anu, primeval chaos, Bel, the
architect of the world, and Aa, the heavenly
light, the all-enlightening wisdom. In the
Brahmanic religion the Trimurti is also
conceived as a “ divine unity” made up
of three persons—Brahma (the creator),
Vishnu (the sustainer), and Shiva (the
destroyer). It would seem that in this and
other ideas of a Trinity the “sacred
number, three,” as such—as a “ symbolical
number ”— has counted for something.
The three first Christian virtues—Faith,
Hope, Charity—form a similar triad.
According to the amphitheists, the world
is ruled by two different gods, a good and
an evil principle, God and the Devil. They
are engaged in a perpetual struggle, like
rival emperors, or pope and anti-pope.
The condition of the world is the result of
this conflict. The loving God, or good
principle, is the source of all that is good
and beautiful, of joy and of peace. The
world would be perfect if his work were
not continually thwarted by the evil
principle, the Devil; this being is the
cause of all that is bad and hateful, of
contradiction and of pain.
Amphitheism is undoubtedly the most
rational of all forms of belief in God, and
the one which is least incompatible with a
scientific view of the world. Hence we
find it elaborated in many ancient peoples
thousands of years before Christ.
In
ancient India Vishnu, the preserver,
struggles with Shiva, the destroyer. In
ancient Egypt the good Osiris is opposed
by the wicked Typhon. The early Hebrews
had a similar dualism of Aschera (or
Keturah), the fertile mother-earth, and
Elion (Moloch or Sethos), the stern heavenly
father. In the Zend religion of the ancient
Persians, founded by Zoroaster 2,000 years
before Christ, there is a perpetual struggle
between Ormuzd, the good god of light,
and Ahriman, the wicked god of darkness.
In Christian mythology the devil is
scarcely less conspicuous as the adversary
of the good deity, the tempter and seducer,
the prince of hell, and lord of darkness.
A personal devil was still an important
element in the belief of most Christians at
the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Towards the middle of the century he was
gradually eliminated by being progressively
explained away, or he was restricted to the
subordinate rAkhe plays as Mephistopheles
in Goethe’s great drama. To-day the
majority of educated people look upon
“ belief in a personal devil ” as a medieval
99
superstition, while “belief in God” (that is,
the personal, good, and loving God) is
retained as an indispensable element of
religion. Yet the one belief is just as much
(or as little) justified as the other. In any
case, the much-lamented “imperfection of
our earthly life,” the “struggle for existence”
and all that pertains to it, are explained
much more simply and naturally by this
struggle of a good and an evil god than by
any other form of theism.
The dogma of the unity of God may in
some respects be regarded as the simplest
and most natural type of theism ; it is
popularly supposed to be the most widely
accepted element of religion, and to
predominate in the ecclesiastical systems
of civilised countries. In reality that is not
the case,because this alleged“monotheism”
usually turns out on closer inquiry to be
one of the other forms of theism we have
examined, a number of subordinate deities
being generally introduced besides the
supreme one. Most of the religions which
took a purely monotheistic standpoint have
become more or less polytheistic in the
course of time. Modern statistics assure
us that of the 1,500,000,000 men who
people the earth the great majority are
monotheists; of these, nominally, about
600,000,000 are Brahma - Buddhists,
500,000,000are called Christians, 200,000,000
are heathens (of various types), 180,000,000
are Mohammedans, 10,000,000 are Jews,
and 10,000,000 have no religion at all.
However, the vast majority of these
nominal monotheists have very confused
ideas about the deity, or believe in a
number of gods and goddesses besides
the chief god—angels, devils, etc.
The different forms which monotheism
has assumed in the course of its polyphyletic development may be distributed in
two groups — those of naturalistic and
anthropistic monotheism.
Naturalistic
monotheism finds the embodiment of the
deity in some lofty and dominating natural
phenomena. The sun, the deity of light
and warmth, on whose influence all organic
life insensibly and directly depends, was
taken to be such a phenomenon many
thousand years ago. Sun-worship (solarism
or heliotheism) seems to the modern
scientist to be the best of all forms of
theism, and the one which may be most
easily reconciled with modern monism.
For modern astrophysicsand geogeny have
taught us that the earth is a fragment
detached from the sun, and that it will
eventually return to the bosom of its parent.
�TOO
THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE
Modern physiology teaches us that the first
source of organic life on the earth is the
formation of protoplasm, and that this
synthesis of simple inorganic substances,
water, carbonic acid, and ammonia, only
takes place under the influence of sun-light.
On the primary evolution of the plasmodomous plants followed, secondarily, that
of the . plasmophagous animals, which
directly or indirectly depend on them for
nourishment; and the origin of the human
race itself is only a later stage in the
development of the animal kingdom.
Indeed, the whole of our bodily and mental
life depends, in the last resort, like all other
organic life, on the light and heat rays of
the sun. Hence, in the light of pure reason,
sun-worship, as a form of naturalistic
monotheism, seems to have a much better
foundation than the anthropistic worship of
Christians and of other monotheists who
conceive their god in human form. As a
matter of fact, the sun-worshippers attained,
thousands of years ago, a higher intellectual
and moral standard than most of the other
theists. When I. was in Bombay in 1881 I
watched with the greatest sympathy the
elevating rites of the pious Parsees, who,
standing on the sea-shore, or kneeling on
their prayer-rugs, offered their devotion to
the sun at its rise and setting.1
Moon-worship (lunarism and seleno
theism) is of much less importance than
sun-worship. There are a few uncivilised
races that have adored the moon as their
only deity, but it has generally been asso
ciated with a worship of the stars and the
sun.
The humanisation of God, or the idea
that the “ Supreme Being” feels, thinks,
and acts like man (though in a higher
degree), has played a most important part,
as anthropomorphic monotheism, in the
history of civilisation. The most prominent
in this respect are the three great religions
of the Mediterranean peoples—the old
Mosaic religion, the intermediate Christian
religion, and the younger Mohammedanism.
These three great Mediterranean religions,
all three arising on the east coast of the
most interesting of all seas, and originating
in an imaginative enthusiast of the Semitic
race, are intimately connected, not only by
this external circumstance of an analogous
origin, but by many common features of
their eternal contents. Just as Christianity
borrowed a good deal of its mythology
1 Vide A Visit to Ceylon, E. Haeckel, trans
lated by C. Bell.
directly from ancient Judaism, so Islam
has inherited much from both its
predecessors. All the three were originally
monotheistic ; all three were subsequently
overlaid with a great variety of polytheistic
features, in proportion as they extended,
first along the coast of the Mediterranean
with its heterogeneous population, and
eventually into every part of the world.
The Hebrew monotheism, as it was
founded by Moses (about 1600 B.C.), is
usually regarded as the ancient faith which
has been of the greatest importance in the
ethical and religious development of
humanity. This high historical apprecia
tion is certainly valid in the sense that the
two other world-conquering Mediterranean
religions issued from it; Christ was just as
truly a pupil of Moses as Mohammed was
afterwards of Christ. So also the New
Testament, which has become the founda
tion of the belief of the highest civilised
nations in the short space of 1,900 years,
rests on the venerable basis of the Old
Testament. The Bible, which the two
compose, has had a greater influence and a
wider circulation than any other book in
the world. Even to-day the Bible—in spite
of its curious mingling of the best and the
worst elements—is in a certain sense the
“book of books.” Yet, when we make an
impartial and unprejudiced study of this
notable historical source, we find it very
different in several important respects
from the popular impression. Here again
modern criticism and history have come to
certain conclusions which destroy the
prevalent tradition in its very foundations.
The monotheism which Moses en
deavoured to establish in the worship of
Jehovah, and which the prophets—the
philosophers of the Hebrew race—after
wards developed with great success, had at
first to sustain a long and severe struggle
with the dominant polytheism which was
in possession. Jehovah, or Yahveh, was
originally derived from the heaven-god,
which, under the title of Moloch, or Baal,
was one of the most popular of the Oriental
deities (the Sethos or Typhon of the
Egyptians, and the Saturn or Cronos of the
Greeks). There were, however, other gods
in great favour with the Jewish people, and
so the struggle with “ idolatry ” continued.
Still, Jehovah was, in principle, the only
God, explicitly claiming, in the first precept
of the decalogue: “I am the Lord thy God;
thou shalt have no other gods beside me.”
Christian monotheism shared the fate ol
its mother, Mosaism ; it was generally only
�GOD AND THE WORLD
monotheistic in theory, while it degenerated
practically into every kind of polytheism.
In point of fact, monotheism was logically
abandoned in the very dogma of the
Trinity which was adopted as an indispen
sable foundation of the Christian religion.
The three persons, which are distinguished
as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, are three
distinct individuals (and, indeed, anthropo
morphic persons), just as truly as the three
Indian deities of the Trimurti (Brahma,
Vishnu, and Shiva) or the Trinity of the
ancient Hebrews (Anu, Bel, and Aa).
Moreover, in the most widely-distributed
form of Christianity the “ virgin ” mother
of Christ plays an important part as a
fourth deity ; in many Catholic countries
she is practically taken to be much more
powerful and influential than the three male
persons of the celestial administration.
The cult of the madonna has been
developed to such an extent in these
countries that we may oppose it to the
usual masculine form of monotheism as
one of a feminine type. The “ Queen of
Heaven ” becomes so prominent, as is seen
in so many pictures and legends of the
madonna, that the three male persons prac
tically disappear.
In addition, the imagination of the pious
Christian soon came to increase this celestial
administration by a numerous company of
“ saints ” of all kinds, and bands of musical
angels, who should see that “ eternal life ”
should not prove too dull. The Popes—
the greatest charlatans that any religion
ever produced—have constantly studied to
increase this band of celestial satellites by
repeated canonisation. This curious com
pany received its most interesting acquisi
tion in 1870, when the Vatican Council pro
nounced the Popes, as the vicars of Christ,
to be infallible, and thus raised them to a
divine dignity. When we add the “personal
Devil ” that they acknowledge, and the
“ bad angels ” who form his court, we have
in modern Catholicism, still the most exten
sive branch of Christianity, a rich and
variegated polytheism that dwarfs the
Olympic family of the Greeks.
Islam, or the Mohammedan monotheism,
is the youngest and purest form of mono
theism. When the young Mohammed
(born 570) learned to despise the poly
theistic idolatry of his Arabian compatriots,
and became acquainted with the Nestorian
Christianity, he adopted its chief doctrines
in a general way; but he could not bring
himself to see anything more than a pro
phet in Christ, like Moses. He found in
IOI
the dogma of the Trinity what every eman
cipated thinker finds on impartial reflection
—an absurd legend, which is neither recon
cilable with the first principles of reason,
nor of any value whatever for our religious
advancement.
He justly regarded the
worship of the immaculate mother of God
as a piece of pure idolatry, like the venera
tion of pictures and images. The longer
he reflected on it, and the more he strove
after a purified idea of deity, the clearer
did the certitude of his great maxim
appear : “ God is the only God”—there are
no other gods beside him.
Yet Mohammed could not free himself
from the anthropomorphism of the God
idea. His one only God was an idealised,
almighty man, like the stern, vindictive God
of Moses, and the gentle, loving God of
Christ. Still, we must admit that the
Mohammedan religion has preserved the
character of pure monotheism throughout
the course of its historical development and
its inevitable division much more faithfully
than the mosaic and Christian religions.
We see that to-day, even externally, in its
forms of prayer and preaching, and in the
architecture and adornment of its mosques.
When I visited the East for the first time
in 1873, and admired the noble mosques of
Cairo, Smyrna, Brussa,and Constantinople,
I was inspired with a feeling of real devotion
by the simple and tasteful decoration of the
interior, and the lofty and beautiful archi
tectural work of the exterior. How noble
and inspiring do these mosques appear in
comparison with the majority of Catholic
churches, which are covered internally with
gaudy pictures and gilt, and are outwardly
disfigured by an immoderate crowd of
human and animal figures ! Not less ele
vated are the silent prayers and the simple
devotional acts of the Koran when com
pared with the loud, unintelligible verbosity
of the Catholic Mass and the blatant music
of their theatrical processions.
Under the title of mixotheism we may
embrace all the forms of theistic belief
which contain mixtures of religious notions
of different, sometimes contradictory,kinds.
In theory this most widely diffused type of
religion is not recognised at all ; in the
concrete it is the most important and most
notable of all. The vast majority of men
who have religious opinions have always
been, and still are, mixotheists ; their idea
of God is picturesquely compounded from
the impressions received m childhood from
their own sect, and a number of other im
pressions which are received later on, from
�102
THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE.
contact with members of other religions,
The personal anthropism of God has
and which modify the earlier notions. In become so natural to the majority of be
educated people there is also sometimes the lievers that they experience no shock when
modifying influence of philosophic studies they find God personified in human form
in maturer years, and especially the unpre in pictures and statues, and in the varied
judiced study of natural phenomena, which images of the poet, in which God takes
reveals the futility of the theistic idea. The human form—that is, is changed into a
conflict of these contradictory impressions, vertebrate. In some myths even God takes
which is very painful- to a sensitive soul, the form of other mammals (an ape, lion,
and which often remains undecided through bull, etc.), and more rarely of a bird (eagle,
out life, clearly shows the immense power dove, or stork), or of some lower vertebrate
of the heredity of ancient myths on the (serpent, crocodile, dragon, etc.).
one hand, and the early adaptation to erro
In the higher and more abstract forms
neous dogmas on the other. The particular of religion this idea of bodily appearance
faith in which the child has been brought is entirely abandoned, and God is adored
up generally remains in power, unless a as a “pure spirit” without a body. “ God
“ conversion ” takes place subsequently, is a spirit, and they who worship him must
owing to the stronger influence of some worship him in spirit and in truth.” Never
other religion. But even in this superses theless, the psychic activity of this “pure
sion of one faith by another the new name,
spirit ” remains just the same as that of the
like the old one, proves to he merely an anthropomorphic God. In reality, even
outward label covering a mixture of the this immaterial spirit is not conceived
most diverse opinions and errors. The to be incorporeal, but merely invisible,
greater part of those who call themselves gaseous. We thus arrive at the paradoxical
Christians are not monotheists (as they conception of God as a gaseous vertebrate.
think), but amphitheists, triplotheists, or
polytheists. And the same must be said of
II.—PANTHEISM.
Islam and Mosaism, and other monotheistic
religions. Everywhere we find associated
Pantheism teaches that God and the
with the original idea of a “ sole and triune world are one. The idea of God is identical
God” later beliefs in a number of subor with that of nature or substance. This
dinate deities—angels, devils, saints, etc.— pantheistic view is sharply opposed in
a picturesque assortment of the most diverse principle to all the systems we have
theistic forms.
described, and to all possible forms of
All the above forms of theism, in the theism ; although there have been many
proper sense of the word — whether the attempts made from both sides to bridge
belief assumes a naturalistic or an anthro- over the deep chasm that separates the
pistic form—represent God to be an extra- two. There is always this fundamental
mundane or a supernatural being. He is contradiction between them, that in theism
always opposed to the world, or nature, as God is opposed to nature as an extraan independent being ; generally as its mundane being, as creating and sustaining
creator, sustainer, and ruler.
In most the world, and acting upon it from without,
religions he has the additional character of while in Pantheism God, as an intrapersonality, or, to put it more definitely mundane being, is everywhere identical
still, God as a person is likened to man. with nature itself, and is operative •within
“In his gods man paints himself.” This the world as “force” or “energy.” The
anthropomorphic conception of God as one latter view alone is compatible with our
who thinks, feels, and acts like man pre supreme law—the law of substance. It
vails with the great majority of theists, follows necessarily that pantheism is the
sometimes in a cruder andmore naïve form, 'world-system of the modern scientist. There
sometimes in a more refined and abstract are, it is true, still a few men of science
degree. In any case the form of theosophy who contest this, and think it possible to
we have described is sure to affirm that reconcile the old theistic theory of human
God, the supreme being, is infinite in per nature with the pantheistic truth of the law
fection, and, therefore, far removed from of substance. All these effects rest on
the imperfection of humanity. Yet, when confusion or sophistry—when they are
we examine closely, we always find the same honest.
psychic or mental activity in the two. God
As pantheism is a result of an advanced
feels, thinks, and acts as man does, although
conception of nature in the civilised mind,
it be in an infinitely more perfect form.
it is naturally much younger than theism,
�iJ»r. n
the crudest forms of which are found in
great variety in the uncivilised races of ten
thousand years ago. We do, indeed, find
the germs of pantheism in different religions
at the very dawn of philosophy in the
earliest civilised peoples (in India, Egypt,
China, and Japan), several thousand years
before the time of Christ; still, we do not
meet a definite philosophical expression of
it until the hylozoism of the Ionic philo
sophers, in the first half of the sixth century
before Christ. All the great thinkers of
this flourishing period of Hellenic thought
are surpassed by the famous Anaximander
of Miletus, who conceived the essential
unity of the infinite universe (apeiron)
more profoundly and more clearly than his
master, Thales, or his pupil, Anaximenes.
Not only the great thought of the original
unity of the cosmos and the development
of all phenomena out of the all-pervading
primitive matter found expression in Anaxi
mander, but he even enunciated the bold
idea of countless worlds in a periodic alter
nation of birth and death.
Many other great philosophers of classical
antiquity, especially Democritus, Hera
clitus, and Empedocles, had, in the same
or an analogous sense, a profound concep
tion of this unity of nature and God, of
body and spirit, which has obtained its
highest expression in the law of substance
of our modern monism. The famous
Roman poet and philosopher, Lucretius
Carus, has presented it in a highly poetic
form in his poem, “De Rerum Natura.”
However, this true pantheistic monism was
soon entirely displaced by the mystic
dualism of Plato, and especially by the
powerful influence which the idealistic
philosophy obtained by its blending with
Christian dogmas. When the papacy
attained to its spiritual despotism over the
world, pantheism was hopelessly crushed ;
Giordano Bruno, its most gifted defender,
was burnt alive by the “ Vicar of Christ ”
in the Campo dei Fiori at Rome, on
February 17 th, 1600.
It was not until the middle of the seven
teenth century that pantheism was exhibited
in its purest form by the great Baruch
Spinoza ; he gave for the totality of things
a definition of substance in which God and
the world are inseparably united. The
clearness, confidence, and consistency of
Spinoza’s monistic system are the more
remarkable when we remember that this
gifted thinker of 250 years ago was without
the support of all those sound empirical
bases which have been obtained in the
io
second half of the nineteenth century.
We have already spoken, in the first
chapter, of Spinoza's relation to the mate
rialism of the eighteenth and the monism
of the nineteenth century. The propagation
of his views, especially in Germany, is due,
above all, to the immortal works of our
greatest poet and thinker, Wolfgang Goethe.
His splendid God and the World, Prome
theus, Faust,etc., embody the great thoughts
of pantheism in the most perfect poetic
creations.
Atheism affirms that there are no gods
Or goddesses, assuming that god means
a personal, extramundane entity. This
“ godless world - system ” substantially
agrees with the monism or pantheism of
the modern scientist ; it is only another
expression for it, emphasising its negative
aspect, the non-existence of any super
natural deity. In this sense Schopenhauer
justly remarks: “Pantheism is only a polite
form of atheism. The truth of pantheism
lies in its destruction of the dualist anti
thesis of God and the world, in its recog
nition that the world exists in virtue of its
own inherent forces. The maxim of the
pantheist, ‘ God and the world are one,’ is
merely a polite way of giving the Lord GocI
his conge'.”
During the whole of the Middle Ages,
under the bloody despotism of the popes,
atheism was persecuted with fire and sword
as a most pernicious system. As the
“ godless ” man is plainly identified with
the “ wicked ” in the Gospel, and is threat
ened—simply on account of his “want of
faith ”—with the eternal fires of hell, it was
very natural that every good Christian
should be anxious to avoid the suspicion of
atheism. Unfortunately, the idea still
prevails very widely. The atheistic scientist,
who devotes his strength and his life to the
search for the truth, is freely credited with
all that is evil ; the theistic church-goer,
who thoughtlessly follows the empty cere
monies of Catholic worship, is at once
assumed to be a good citizen, even if there
be no meaning whatever in his faith, and
his morality be deplorable.. This error will
only be destroyed when, in the twentieth
century, the prevalent superstition gives
place to rational knowledge and to a
monistic conception of the unity of God and
the world.
�104
the riddle of the universe
CHAPTER XVI.
KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF
The knowledge of the truth and its sources : the
activity of the senses and the association of
presentations. Organs of sense and organs of
thought.
Sense-organs and theii specific
energy.. Their evolution. The philosophy of
sensibility. Inestimable value of the senses.
Limits of sensitive knowledge. Hypothesis
and faith. Theory and faith.
Essential
difference of scientific (natural) and religious
(supernatural) faith. Superstition of savage
and of civilised races. Confessions of faith.
Unsectarian schools. The faith of our fathers.
. Spiritism. Revelation.
Every effort of genuine science makes for
a knowledge of the truth. Our only real
and valuable knowledge is a knowledge of
nature itself, and consists of presentations
which correspond to external things. We
are incompetent, it is true, to penetrate
into the innermost nature of this real world
—the “thing in itself” —but impartial
critical observation and comparison inform
us that in the normal action of the brain
and the organs of sense the impressions
received by them from the outer world are
the same in all rational men, and that in
the normal function of the organs of thought
certain presentations are formed which are
everywhere the same. These presentations
we call true, and we are convinced that
their content corresponds to the knowable
aspect of things. We know that these facts
are not imaginary, but real.
All knowledge of the truth depends on
two different, but intimately connected,
groups of human physiological functions :
firstly, on the sense-impressions of the
object by means of sense-action, and,
secondly, on the combination of these im
pressions by an association into presenta
tions in the subject. The instruments of
sensation are the sense-organs {sensilla or
cestheta) ; the instruments which form and
link together the presentations are the
organs of thought (phroneta). The latter
are part of the central, and the former are
part of the peripheral, nervous system—
that important and elaborate system of
organs in the higher animals which alone
effects their entire psychic activity.
Man’s sense-activity, which is the start
ing-point of all knowledge, has been slowly
and gradually developed from that of his
nearest mammal relatives, the primates.
The sense-organs are of substantially the
same construction throughout this highest
animal group, and their function takes place
always according to the same physical and
chemical laws. They have had the same
historical development in all cases. In the
mammals, as in the case of all other
animals, the sensilla were originally parts of
the skin ; the sensitive cells of the epi
dermis are the sources of all the different
sense-organs, which have acquired their
specific energy by adaptation to different
stimuli (light, heat, sound, chemical action,
etc.). The rod-cells in the retina of the
eye, the auditory cells in the cochlea of the
ear, the olfactory cells in the nose, and the
taste cells on the tongue, are all originally
derived from the simple, indifferent cells of
the epidermis, which cover the entire sur
face of the body. This significant fact can
be directly proved by observation of the
embryonic development of man or any of
the higher animals. And from this onto
genetic fact we confidently infer, in virtue
of the great biogenetic law, the important
phylogenetic proposition, that in the long
historical evolution of our ancestors, like
wise, the higher sense-organs with their
specific energies were originally derived
from the epidermis of lower animals, from
a simple layer of cells which had no trace
of such differentiated sensilla.
_ A particular importance attaches to the
circumstance that different nerves are
qualified to perceive different properties of
the. environment, and these only. The
optic nerve accomplishes only the percep
tion of light, the auditory nerve the percep
tion of sound, the olfactory nerve the
perception of smell, and so on. No matter
what stimuli impinge on and irritate a given
sense-organ, its reaction is always of the
same character. From this specific energy
of the. sense-nerves, which was first fully
appreciated by Johannes Müller, very erro
neous inferences have been drawn, espe
cially in favour of a dualistic and à priori
theory of knowledge. It has been affirmed
that the brain, or the soul, only perceives
a certain condition of the stimulated nerve,
and that, consequently, no conclusion can
be drawn from the process as to the exist
ence and nature of the stimulated environ
ment. Sceptical philosophy concluded that
the very existence of an outer world is
doubtful, and extreme idealism went on
positively to deny it, contending that
things only exist in our impressions of
them.
In opposition to these erroneous views,
�JOT A tvb
we must recall the fact that the Si specific
energy* was not originally an innate,
Special quality of the various nerves, but it
has arisen by adaptation to the particular
activity of the epidermic cells in which
they terminate.
In harmony with the
great law of “ division of labour ” the
Originally indifferent “sense-cells of the
skin ” undertook different tasks, one group
of them taking over the stimulus of the
light rays, another the impress of the
sound waves, a third the chemical impulse
of odorous substances, and so on. In the
course of a very long period these external
stimuli effected a gradual change in the
physiological, arid later in the morpho
logical, properties of these parts of the
epidermis, and there was a correlative
modification of the sensitive nerves which
conduct the impressions they receive to
the brain. Selection improved, step by
step, such particular modifications as
proved to be useful, and thus eventually,
in the course of many millions of years,
created those wonderful instruments, the
eye and the ear, which we prize so highly ;
their structure is so remarkably purposive
that they might well lead to the erroneous
assumption of a “creation on a preconceived
design.” The peculiar character of each
sense-organ and its specific nerve has thus
been gradually evolved by use and exercise
—that is, by adaptation—and has then
been transmitted by heredity from genera
tion to generation. Albrecht Rau has
thoroughly established this view in his
excellent work on Sensation and Thought,
a physiological inquiry into the nature of
the human understanding (1896). It points
out the correct significance of Muller’s law
of specific sense-energies, adding searching
investigations into their relation to the
brain ; and in the last chapter there is an
able “philosophy of sensitivity,” based
on the ideas of Ludwig Feuerbach. I
thoroughly agree with his convincing work.
Critical comparison of sense-action in
man and the other vertebrates has brought
to light a number of extremely important
facts, the knowledge of which we owe to
the penetrating research of the nineteenth
century, especially of the second half of the
century. This is particularly true of the
two most elaborate “ aesthetic ” organs, the
eye and the ear. They present a different
and more complicated structure in the
vertebrates than in the other animals, and
have also a characteristic development in
the embryo. This typical ontogenesis and
structure of the sensilla of all the vertebrates
bitTjetF
165
is only explained by heredity from a common
ancestor. Within the vertebrate group,
however, we find a great variety of structure
in points of detail, and this is due to adapta
tion to their manner of life on the part of
the various species, to the increasing or
diminishing use of various parts.
In respect of the structure of his sense
organs man is by no means the most
perfect and most highly-developed verte
brate. The eye of the eagle is much keener,
and can distinguish small objects at a
distance much more clearly than the human
eye. The hearing of many mammals,
especially of the carnivora, ungulata, and
rodentia of the desert, is much more sensi
tive than that of man, and perceives slight
noises at a much greater distance ; that
may be seen at a glance by their large and
very sensitive cochlea. Singing birds have
attained a higher grade of development,
even in respect of musical endowment, than
the majority of men. The sense of smell
is much more developed in most of the
mammals, especially in the carnivora and
the ungulata, than in man; if the dog could
compare his own fine scent with that of
man, he would look down on us with com
passion. Even with regard to the lower
senses—taste, sex-sense, touch, and tempe
rature—man has by no means reached the
highest stage in every respect.
We can naturally only pass judgment on
the sensations which we ourselves experi
ence. However, anatomy informs us of the
presence in the bodies of many animals of
other senses than those we are familiar
with. Thus fishes and other lower aquatic
vertebrates have peculiar sensilla in the skin
which are in connection with special sense
nerves. On the right and left sides of the
fish’s body there is a long canal, branching
into a number of smaller canals at the head.
In this “mucous canal” there are nerves
with numerous branches, the terminations
of which are connected with peculiar nerve
aggregates.
This extensive epidermic
sense-organ probably serves for the percep
tion of changes in the pressure, or in other
properties, of the water. Some groups are
distinguished by the possession of other
peculiar sensilla, the meaning of which is
still unknown to us.
But it is already clear from the above
facts that our human sense-activity is
limited, not only in quantity, but in quality
also. We can thus only perceive with our
senses, especially with the eye and the
sense of touch, a part of the qualities of
the objects in our environment. And even
�io6
Twit R/DDL® OF THE UN^ERSE
this partial perception is incomplete, in the
sense that our organs are imperfect, and
our sensory nerves, acting as interpreters,
communicate to the brain only a translation
of the impressions received.
However, this acknowledged imperfection
of our senses should not prevent us from
recognising their instruments, and especially
the eye, to be organs of the highest type ;
together with the thought-organs in the
brain, they are nature’s most valuable gift
to man. Very truly does Albrecht Rau
say : “ All science is sensitive knowledge
in the ultimate analysis ; it does not deny,
but interpret, the data of the senses. The
senses are our first and best friends. Long
before the mind is developed the senses
tell man what he must do and avoid. He
who makes a general disavowal of the
senses in order to meet their dangers acts
as thoughtlessly and as foolishly as the
man who plucks out his eyes because they
once fell on shameful things, or the man
who cuts off his hand lest at any time it
should reach out to the goods of his neigh
bour.” Hence, Feuerbach is quite right in
calling all philosophies, religions, and
systems which oppose the principle of
sense-action not only erroneous, but really
pernicious. Without the senses there is no
knowledge—“ Nihil est in intellectu, quod
non fuerit in sensup as Locke said. Twenty
years ago I pointed out, in my chapter “ On
the Origin and Development of the SenseOrgans,”1 the great service of Darwinism
in giving us a pi'bfounder knowledge and a
juster appreciation of the senses.
The thirst for knowledge of the educated
thinker is not contented with the defective
acquaintance with the outer world which is
obtained through our imperfect sense
organs. He endeavours to build up the
sense-impressions which they have brought
him into valuable knowledge. He trans
forms them into specific sense-perceptions
in the sense-centres of the cortex of the
brain, and combines them into presenta
tions, by association, in the thought-centres.
Finally, by a further concatenation of the
groups of presentations he attains to con
nected knowledge. But this knowledge
remains defective and unsatisfactory until
the imagination supplements the inade
quate power of combination of the intel
ligence, and, by the association of stored-up
images, unites the isolated elements into a
connected whole. Thus are produced new
general presentative images, and these
1 Collected Popular Lectures ; Bonn, 1878.
suffice to interpret the facts perceived and
satisfy “reason’s feeling of causality.’
The presentations which fill up the gaps
in our knowledge, or take its place, may
be called, in a broad sense, “ faith.” That
is what happens continually in daily life.
When we are not sure about a thing we
say, I believe it. In this sense we are
compelled to make use of faith even in
science itself; we conjecture or assume that
a certain relation exists between two
phenomena, though we do not know it for
certain. If it is a question of a cause, we
form a hypothesis ; though in science only
such hypotheses are admitted as lie within
the sphere of human cognizance, and do
not contradict known facts. Such hypo
theses are, for instance—in physics the
theory of the vibratory movement of ether,
in chemistry the hypothesis of atoms and
their affinity, in biology the theory of the
molecular structure of living protoplasm,
and so forth.
The explanation of a great number of
connected phenomena by the assumption
of a common cause is called a theory. Both
in theory and hypothesis “ faith ” (in the
scientific sense) is indispensable ; for here
again it is the imagination that fills up the
gaps left by the intelligence in our know
ledge of the connection of things. A theory,
therefore, must always be regarded only
as an approximation to the truth ; it must
be understood that it may be replaced in
time byanother and better-grounded theory.
But, in spite of this admitted uncertainty,
theory is indispensable for all true science;
it elucidates facts by postulating a cause
for them. The man who renounces theory
altogether, and seeks to construct a pure
science with certain facts alone (as often
happens with wrong-headed representa
tives of our “ exact sciences ”), must give
up the hope of any knowledge of causes,
and, consequently, of the satisfaction of
reason’s demand for causality.
The theory of gravitation in astronomy
(Newton), the nebular theory in cosmog'ony
(Kant and Laplace), the principle of energy
in physics (Meyer and Helmholtz), the
atomic theory in chemistry (Dalton), the
vibratory theory in optics (Huyghens). the
cellular theory in histology (Schleiden and
Schwann), and the theory of descent in
biology (Lamarck and Darwin), are all
important theories of the first rank; they
explain a whole world of natural phenomena
by the assumption of a common cause for
all the several facts of their respective
provinces, and by showing that all the
�KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF
phenomena thereof are inter-connected
and controlled by laws which issue from
this common cause. Yet the cause itself
may remain obscure in character, or be
merely a “ provisional hypothesis.” The
“force of gravity” in the theory of gravita
tion and in cosmogony, “energy” itself in
its relation to matter, the “ether” of optics
and electricity, the “ atom” of the chemist,
the living “protoplasm” of histology, the
“ heredity” of the evolutionist—-these and
similar conceptions of other great theories
may be regarded by a sceptical philosophy
as “mere hypotheses” and the outcome of
scientific “faith,” yet they are indispensable
for us, until they are replaced by better
hypotheses.
The dogmas which are used for . the
explanation of phenomena in the various
religions, and which go by the name of
“ faith ” (in the narrower sense), are of a
very different character from the forms of
scientific faith we have enumerated. . The
two types, however—the “ natural ” faith of
science and the “supernatural” faith of
religion—are not infrequently confounded,
so that we must point out their fundamental
difference. Religious faith always means
belief in a miracle, and as such is in hope. less contradiction with the natural faith of
reason. In opposition to reason it postu
lates supernatural agencies, and therefore
may be justly called superstition. The
essential difference of this superstition from
-rational faith lies in the fact that it assumes
supernatural forces and phenomena, which
are unknown and inadmissible to science,
and which are the outcome of illusion and
fancy; moreover, superstition contradicts
the well-known laws of nature, and is there
fore irrational.
Owing to the great progress of ethnology
during the century, we have learned a vast
quantity of different kinds and practices of
superstition, as they still survive in uncivi
lised races. When they are compared
with each other and with the mythological
notions of earlier ages, a manifold analogy
is discovered, frequently a common origin,
and eventually one simple source for them
all. This is found in the “ demand of
causality in reason,” in the search for an
explanation of obscure phenomena by the
discovery of a cause. That applies particu
larly to such phenomena as threaten us
with danger and excite fear, like thunder
and lightning, earthquakes, eclipses, etc.
The demand for a causal explanation of
such phenomena is found in uncivilised
races of the lowest grade, transmitted from
107
their primate ancestors by heredity. It is
even found in many other vertebrates.
When a dog barks at the full moon, or at
a ringing bell, of which it sees the hammer
moving, or at a flag that flutters in the
breeze, it expresses not only fear, but also
the mysterious impulse to learn the cause
of the obscure phenomenon. The crude
beginnings of religion among primitive
races spring partly from this hereditary
superstition of their primate ancestors, and
partly from the worship of ancestors, from
various emotional impulses, and from habits
which have become traditional.
The religious notions of modern civilised
peoples, which they esteem so highly,
profess to be on a much higher level than
the “ crude superstition ” of the savage ;
we are told of the great advance which
civilisation has made in sweeping it aside.
That is a great mistake. Impartial com
parison and analysis show that they only
differ in their special “form of faith” and
the outer shell of their creed. In the clear
light of reason the refined faith of the most
liberal ecclesiastical religion—inasmuch as
it contradicts the known and inviolable
laws of nature—is no less irrational a
superstition than the crude spirit-faith of
primitive fetichism on which it looks down
with proud disdain.
And if, from this impartial standpoint, we
take a critical glance at the kinds of faith
that prevail to-day in civilised countries, we
find them everywhere saturated . with
traditional superstition. The Christian
belief in Creation, the Trinity, the Imma
culate Conception, the Redemption, the
Resurrection and Ascension of Christ, and
so forth, is just as purely imaginative as the
belief in the various dogmas of the Moham
medan, Mosaic, Buddhistic, and Brahmanic
religions, and is just as incapable of recon
ciliation with a rational knowledge of
nature. Each of these religions is for the
sincere believer an indisputable truth,
and each regards the other as heresy and
damnable error. The more confidently a
particular sect considers itself “ the only
ark of salvation,” and the more ardently
this conviction is cherished, the more
zealously does it contend against all other
sects and give rise to the fearful religious
wars that form the saddest pages in the
book of history. And all the time the un
prejudiced “critique of pure reason”
teaches us that all these different forms of
faith are equally false and irrational, mere
creatures of poetic fancy and uncritical
tradition. Rational science must reject
�io8
THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE
them all alike as the outcome of super
stition.
The incalculable injury which irrational
superstition has done to credulous humanity
is conspicuously revealed in the ceaseless
conflict of confessions of faith. Of all the
wars which nations have waged against
each other with fire and sword the religious
wars have been the bloodiest ; of all the
forms of discord that have shattered the
happiness of families and of individuals
those that arise from religious differences
are still the most painful. Think of the
millions who have lost their lives in
Christian persecutions, in the religious con
flicts of Islam and of the Reformation, by
the Inquisition, and under the charge of
witchcraft. Or think of the still greater
number of luckless men who, through
religious differences, have been plunged
into family troubles, have lost the esteem
of their fellow citizens and their position in
the community, or have even been com
pelled to fly from their country. The
official confession of faith becomes most
pernicious of all when it is associated with
the political aims of a modern state, and is
enforced as “ religious instruction ” in our
schools. The child’s mind is thus early
diverted from the pursuit of the truth and
impregnated with superstition.
Every
friend of humanity should do all in his
power to promote unsectarian schools as
one of the most valuable institutions of the
modern state.
The great value which is, nonetheless,
still very widely attached to sectarian
instruction is not only due to the compulsion
of a reactionary state and its dependence
on a dominant clericalism, but also to the
weight of old traditions and “emotional
cravings” of various kinds. One of the
strongest of these is the devout reverence
which is extended everywhere to sectarian
tradition, to the “faith of our fathers.” In
thousands of stories and poems fidelity to
it is extolled as a spiritual treasure and a
sacred duty. Yet a little impartial study
of the history of faith suffices to show the
absurdity of the notion. The dominant
evangelical faith of the second half of the
nineteenth century is essentially different
from that of the first half, and this again
from that of the eighteenth century. The
faith of the eighteenth century diverges
considerably from the “faith of our fathers”
of the seventeenth, and still more from that
of the sixteenth, century. The Reformation,
releasing enslaved reason from the tyranny
of the popes, is naturally regarded by
them as darkest heresy ; but even the faith
of the papacy itself had been completely
transformed in the course of a century.
And how different is the faith of a Christian
from that of his heathen ancestors. Every
man with some degree of independent
thought frames a more'or less personal
religion for himself, which is always different
from that of his fathers ; it depends largely
on the general condition of thought in his
day.. The further we go back in the history
of civilisation, the more clearly do we find
this esteemed “ faith of our fathers ” to be
an.indefensible superstition which is under
going continual transformation.
One of the most remarkable forms of
superstition, which still takes a very active
part in modern life, is spiritism. It is a
surprising and a lamentable fact that millions
of educated people are still dominated by
this dreary superstition ; even distinguished
scientists are entangled in it. A number of
spiritualist journals spread the faith far and
wide, and our “ superior circles ” do not
scruple to hold séances in which “spirits”
appear, rapping, writing, giving messages
from “the beyond,” and so on. It is a
frequent boast of spiritists that even eminent
men of science defend their superstition.
In Germany A. Zöllner and Fechner are
quoted as instances ; in England, Wallace
and Crookes. The regrettable circum
stance that physicists and biologists of such
distinction have been led astray by spiritism
is accounted for, partly by their excess of
imagination and defect of critical faculty,
and partly by the powerful influence of
dogmas which a religious education im
printed on the brain in early youth. More
over, it was precisely through the famous
séances at Leipzig, in which the physicists
Zöllner, Fechner, and Wilhelm Weber were
imposed on by the clever American conjurer
Slade, that the fraud of the latter was
afterwards fully exposed ; he was discovered
to be a common impostor. In other cases,
too, where the alleged marvels of spiritism
have been thoroughly investigated, they
have been traced to a more or less clever
deception ; the mediums (generally of the
weaker sex) have been found to be either
smart swindlers or nervous persons of
abnormal irritability. Their supposed gift
of “ telepathy ” (or “ action at a distance of
thought without material medium”) has no
more existence than the “voices” or the
“ groans ” of spirits, etc. The vivid
pictures which Carl du Prel, of Munich,
and other spiritists give of their phenomena
must be regarded as the outcome of a lively
�SC7FNCE AND CHRTST/ANITY
'imagination, together with a lack of
critical power and a.knowledge of physio
logy. .
.
.
109
CHAPTER XVII.
SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY
I
The majority ot religions have, m spite
of their great differences, one common
feature, which is, at the same time, one of
their strongest supports in many quarters.
They declare that they can elucidate the
problem of existence, the solution of which
is beyond the natural power of reason, by
the supernatural way of revelation ; from
that they derive the authority of the dogmas
which, in the guise of “ divine laws,” con• trol morality and the practical conduct of
life. “Divine” inspirations of that kind
form the basis of many myths and legends,
the human origin of which is perfectly
clear. It is true that the God who reveals
- himself does not always appear in human
shape, but in thunder and lightning, storm
and earthquake, fiery bush or menacing
! cloud. But the revelation which he is
supposed to bring to the credulous children
of men is always anthropomorphic; it
invariably takes the form of a communi
cation of ideas or commands which are
formulated and expressed precisely as is
done in the normal action of the human
Increasing opposition between modern science
and Christian theology. The old and the new
faith. Defence of rational science against the
attacks of Christian superstition, especially
against Catholicism. Four periods in the
evolution of Christianity :
I. Primitive
Christianity (the first three centuries). The
four canonical Gospels. The epistles of Paul.
II. The papacy (ultramontane Christianity).
Retrogression of civilisation in the Middle
Ages. Ultramontane falsification of history.
The papacy and science. The papacy and
Christianity. III. The Reformation. Luther
and Calvin. The year of emancipation. IV.
The pseudo-Christianity of the nineteenth
century. The papal declaration of war against
reason and science: (a) Infallibility, (i) The
Encyclica, (c) The Immaculate Conception.
One of the most distinctive features of
the expiring century is the increasing
vehemence of theoppositionbetween science
and Christianity. That is both natural and
inevitable. In the same proportion in
which the victorious progress of modern
science has surpassed all the scientific
achievements of earlier ages has the untenability been proved of those mystic views
which would subdue reason under the yoke
of an alleged revelation ; and the Christian
religion belongs to that group. The more
solidly modern astronomy, physics, and
chemistry have established the sole do
minion of inflexible natural laws in the
universe at large, and modern botany,
zoology, and anthropology have proved
the validity of those laws in the entire
kingdom of organic nature, so much the
more strenuously has the Christian religion,
in association with dualistic metaphysics,
striven to deny the application of these
natural laws in the province of the so-called
“ spiritual life ”—that is, in one section of
the physiology of the brain.
No one has more clearly, boldly, and
unanswerably enunciated this open and
irreconcileable opposition between the
modern scientific and the outworn Christian
view than David Friedrich Strauss, the
greatest theologian of the nineteenth
century. His last work, The Old Faith
and the New, is a magnificent expression
of the honest conviction of all educated
people of the present day who understand
this unavoidable conflict between the dis
credited, dominant doctrines of Christianity
�no
THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE
and the illuminating, rational revelation of
modern science—all those who have the
courage to defend the right of reason
against the pretensions of superstition, and
who are sensible of the philosophic demand
for a unified system of thought. Strauss,
as- an honourable and courageous free
thinker, has expounded far better than I
could the principal points of difference
between “ the old and the new faith.” The
absolute irreconcileability of the opponents
and the inevitability of their struggle (“for
life or death”) have been ably presented
on the philosophic side by E. Hartmann
in his interesting work on The Self-Des
truction of Christianity.
When the works of Strauss and Feuer
bach and The History of the Conflict
between Religion and Science of J. W.
Draper have been read, it may seem super
fluous for us to devote a special chapter to
the subject. Yet we think it useful, and
even necessary for our purpose, to cast a
critical glance at the historical course of
this great struggle ; especially seeing that
the attacks of the “Church militant” on
science in general, and on the theory
of evolution in particular, have become
extremely bitter and menacing of late
years. Unfortunately, the mental relaxa
tion which has lately set in, and the rising
flood of reaction in the political, social, and
ecclesiastical world, are only too well calcu
lated to give point to those dangers. If
anyone doubts it, he has only to look over
the conduct of Christian synods and of the
German Reichstag during the last few
years. Quite in harmony are the recent
efforts of many secular Governments to get
on as good a footing as possible with the
“spiritual regiment,” their deadly enemy
—that is, to submit to its yoke. The two
forces find a common aim in the suppression
of free thought and free scientific research,
for the purpose of thus more easily securing
a complete despotism.
Let us first emphatically protest that it
is a question for us of the necessary defence
of science and reason against the vigorous
attacks of the Christian Church and its
vast army, not of an unprovoked attack of
science on religion. And, in the first place,
our defence must be prepared against
Romanism or Ultramontanism. This “ one
ark of salvation,” this Catholic Church
“ destined for all,” is not only much larger
and more powerful than the other Christian
sects, but it has the exceptional advantage
of a vast, centralised organisation and an
unrivalled political ability. Men of science
are often heard to say that the Catholic
superstition is no more astute than the
other forms of supernatural faith, and that
all these insidious institutions are equally
inimical to reason and science. As a
matter of general theoretical principle the
statement may pass, but it is certainly
wrong when we look to its practical side.
The deliberate and indiscriminate attacks
of the ultramontane Church on science,
supported by the apathy and ignorance of
the masses, are, on account of its power
ful organisation, much more severe and
dangerous than those of other religions.
In order to appreciate correctly the
extreme importance of Christianity in
regard to the entire history of civilisation,
and particularly its fundamental opposition
to reason and science, we must briefly run
over the principal stages of its historical
evolution. It may be divided into four
periods: (i) primitive Christianity (the first
three centuries), (2) papal Christianity
(twelve centuries, from the fourth to the
fifteenth), (3) the Reformation (three cen
turies, from the sixteenth to the eighteenth),
and (4) modern pseudo-Christianity.
I.—PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY.
Primitive Christianity embraces the first
three centuries. Christ himself, the noble
prophet and enthusiast, so full of the love
of humanity, was far below the level of
classical culture ; he knew nothing beyond
the Jewish traditions ; he has not left a
single line of writing. He had, indeed, no
suspicion of the advanced stage to which
Greek philosophy and science had pro
gressed five hundred years before.
All that we know of him and of his
original teaching is taken from the chief
documents of the New Testament—the
four gospels and the Pauline epistles. As
to the four canonical gospels, we now know
that they were selected from a host of con
tradictory and forged manuscripts of the
first three centuries by the 318 bishops who
assembled at the Council of Nicæa in 327.
The entire list of gospels numbered forty ;
the canonical list contains four. As the
contending and mutually abusive bishops
could not agree about the choice, they
determined to leave the selection to a
miracle. They put all the books (according
to the Synodicon of Pappus) together
underneath the altar, and prayed that the
apocryphal books, of human origin, might
remain there, and the genuine, inspired
books might be miraculously placed on the
�in
table of the Lord. And that, says tradi
tion, really occurred ! The three synoptic
gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke—all
written after them, not ¿y them, at the
beginning of the second century) and the
very different fourth gospel (ostensibly
“ after ” John, written about the middle of
the second century) leaped on the table,
and were thenceforth recognised as the
inspired (with their thousand mutual con
tradictions) foundations of Christian doc
trine. If any modern “unbeliever” finds
this story of the “leap of the sacred books”
incredible, we must remind him that it is
just as credible as the table-turning and
spirit-rapping that are believed to take
place to-day by millions of educated people ;
and that hundreds of millions of Christians
believe just as implicitly in their personal
immortality, their “ resurrection from the
dead,” and the Trinity of God—-dogmas
that contradict pure reason no more and
no less than that miraculous bound of the
gospel manuscripts.
The most important sources after the
gospels are the fourteen separate (and
generally forged) epistles of Paul. The
genuine Pauline epistles {three in number,
according to recent criticism—to the
Romans, Galatians, and Corinthians) were
written before the canonical gospels, and
contain less incredible miraculous matter
than they. They are also more concerned
than the gospels to adjust themselves with
a rational view of the world. Hence the
advanced theology of modern times con
structs its “ ideal Christianity ” rather on
the base of the Pauline epistles than on
the gospels, so that it has been called
“ Paulinism.”
The remarkable personality of Paul, who
possessed much more culture and practical
sense than Christ, is extremely interesting,
from the authropological point of view,
from the fact that the racial origin of the
two great religious founders is very much
the same. Recent historical investigation
teaches that Paul’s father was of Greek
nationality, and his mother of Jewish.1
The half-breeds of these two races, which
are so very distant in origin (although they
are branches of the same species, the homo
mediterraneus\ are often distinguished by
a happy blending of talents and tempera
ment, as we find in many recent and actual
instances. The plastic Oriental imagina
tion and the critical Western reason often
1 As to the Greek paternity of Christ, vide
p. 116.
admirably combine and complete each
other. That is visible in the Pauline
teaching, which soon obtained a greater
influence than the earliest Christian notions.
Hence it is not incorrect to consider
Paulinism a new phenomenon, of which
the father was the philosophy of the
Greeks, and the mother the religion of the
Jews. Neo-Platonism is an analogous
combination.
As to the real teaching' and aims of
Christ (and as to many important aspects
of his life) the views of conflictingtheologians
divergemoreandmore, as historical criticism
(Strauss, Feuerbach, Baur, Renan, etc.)
puts the accessible facts in their true light,
and draws impartial conclusions from them.
Two things, certainly, remain beyond
dispute—the lofty principle of universal
charity and the fundamental maxim of
ethics, the “golden rule,” that issues there
from ; both, however, existed in theory and
in practice centuries before the time of
Christ (cf. chap. xix.). For the rest, the
Christians of the early centuries were
generally pure Communists, sometimes
“ Social Democrats,” who, according to
the prevailing theory in Germany to-day,
ought to have been exterminated with fire
and sword.
II.—PAPAL CHRISTIANITY.
Latin Christianity, variously called
Papistry, Romanism, Vaticanism, Ultramontanism, or the Roman Catholic Church,
is one of the most remarkable phenomena
in the history of civilised man ; in spite of
the storms that have swept over it, it still
exerts a most powerful influence. Of the
500,000,000 Christians who are scattered
over the earth the majority—that is, more
than 250,000,000—are Roman Catholics.
During a period of 1,200 years, from the
fourth to the sixteenth century, the Papacy
has almost absolutely controlled and tainted
the spiritual life of Europe ; on the other
hand, it has won but little territory from
the ancient religions of Asia and Africa.
In Asia Buddhism still accounts 503,000,000
followers, the Brahmanic religion more
than 100,000.000, and Islam 120,000,000.
It is the despotism of the Papacy that
lent its darkest character to the Middle
Ages ; it meant death to all freedom of
mental life, decay to all science, corruption
to all morality. From the noble height to
which the life of the human mind had
attained in classical antiquity, in the
centuries before Christ and the first century
�112
THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE
after Christ, it soon sank, under the rule of
the Papacy, to a level which, in respect of
the knowledge of the truth, can only be
termed barbarism. It is often protested
that other aspects of mental life— poetry
and architecture, scholastic learning and
patristic philosophy—were richly developed
in the Middle Ages. But this activity was
in the service of the Church ; it did not tend
to the cultivation, but to the suppression,
of free mental research. The exclusive
preparing for an unknown eternity beyond
the tomb, the contempt of nature, the
withdrawal from the study of it, which are
essential elements of Christianity, were
urged as a sacred duty by the Roman
hierarchy. It was not until the beginning
of the sixteenth century that a change for
the better came in with the Reformation.
It is impossible for us to describe here
the pitiful retrogression of culture and
morality during the twelve centuries of the
spiritual despotism of Rome. It is very
pithily expressed in a saying of the greatest
and ablest of the Hohenzollerns ; Frederick
the Great condensed his judgment in the
phrase that the study of history led one to
think that from Constantine to the date of
the Reformation the whole world was insane.
L. Büchner has given us an admirable, brief
description of this “ period of insanity ” in
his work on Religious and Scientific Systems.
The readerwho desiresacloseracquaintance
with the subject would do well to consult
the historical works of Ranke, Draper,
Kolb, Svoboda, etc. The truthful descrip
tion of the awful condition of the Christian
Middle Ages, which is given by these and
other unprejudiced historians, is confirmed
by all the reliable sources of investigation,
and by the historical monuments which
have come down from this saddest period
of human history. Educated Catholics,
who are sincere truthseekers, cannot be too
frequently recommended to study these
historical sources for themselves. This
is the more necessary as ultramontane
literature has still a considerable influence.
The old trick of deceiving the faithful by a
complete reversal of facts and an invention
of miraculous circumstances is still worked
by it with great success. We will only
mention Lourdes and the “ Holy Coat ” of
Trêves. The ultramontane professor of
history at Frankfurt, Johannes Janssen,
affords a striking example of the length
they will go in distorting historical truth ;
his much-read works (especially his History
of the German People since the Middle Ages')
are marred by falsification to an incredible
extent. The untruthfulness ofthese Jesuitical
productions is on a level with the credulity
and the uncritical judgment of the simple
German nation that takes them for gospel.
One of the most interesting of the historical
facts which clearly prove the evil of the
ultramontane despotism is its vigorous and
consistent struggle with science. This was
determined on, in principle, from the very
beginning of Christianity, inasmuch as faith
was set above reason and the blind subjec
tion of the one to the other was preached ;
that was natural, seeing that our whole life
on earth was held to be only a preparation
for the legendary life beyond, and thus
scientific research was robbed of any real
value.. The deliberate and successful attack
on science began in the early part of the
fourth century, particularly after the Council
of N icaea (327), presided over by Constantine
—called the “ Great ” because he raised
Christianity totheposition of a State religion,
and founded Constantinople, though a
worthless character, a falsehearted hypocrite,
and a murderer. The success of the Papacy
in its conflict with independent scientific
thought and inquiry is best seen in the
distressing condition of science and its
literature during the Middle Ages. Not
only were the rich literary treasures that
classical antiquity had bequeathed to the
world destroyed for the most part, or with
drawn from circulation, but the rack and
the stake ensured the silence of every
heretic—that is, every independent thinker.
If he did not keep his thoughts to himself,
he had to look forward to being burnt alive,
as was the fate of the great monistic
philosopher Giordano Bruno, the reformer
John Huss, and more than a hundred
thousand other “witnesses to the truth.”
The history of science in the Middle Ages
teaches us on every page that independent
thought and empirical research were com
pletely buried for twelve sad centuries under
the oppression of the omnipotent Papacy.
All that we esteem in true Christianity,
in the sense of its founder and of his noblest
followers, and that we must endeavour to
save from the inevitable wreck of this
great world-religion for our new monistic
religion, lies on its ethical and social planes.
The principles of true humanism, the golden
rule, the spirit of tolerance, the love of man,
in the best and highest sense of the word—
all these true graces of Christianity were
not, indeed, first discovered and given to
the world by that religion, but were success
fully developed in the critical period when
classical antiquity was hastening to its
�SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY
doom. The Papacy, however, has attempted
to convert all those virtues into the direct
contrary, and still to hang out the sign of
the old firm. Instead of Christian charity,
it introduced a fanatical hatred of the
followers of all other religions ; with fire
and sword it has pursued, not only the
heathen, but every Christian sect that
dared resist the imposition of ultramontane
dogma. Tribunals for heretics were erected
all over Europe, yielding unnumbered
victims, whose torments seemed only to
fill their persecutors, with all their Christian
charity, with a peculiar satisfaction. The
power of Rome was directed mercilessly
for centuries against everything that stood
in its way. Under the notorious Torquemada (1481-98), in Spain alone 8,000
heretics were burnt alive and 90,000
punished with the confiscation of their
goods and the most grievous ecclesiastical
fines ; in the Netherlands, under -the rule
of Charles V., at least 50,000 men fell
victims to the clerical bloodthirst. And
while the heavens resounded with the cry
of the martyrs, the wealth of half the world
was pouring into Rome, to which the whole
of Christianity paid tribute, and the selfstyled representatives of God on earth and
their accomplices (not infrequently Atheists
themselves) wallowed in pleasure and vice
of every description. “And all these privi
leges,” said the frivolous, syphilitic Pope,
Leo X., “have been secured to us by the
fable of Jesus Christ.”
Yet, with all the discipline of the Church
and the fear of God, the condition of
European society was pitiable. Feudalism,
serfdom, the grace of God, and the favour
of the monks ruled the land ; the poor
helots were only too glad to be permitted
to raise their miserable huts under the
shadow of the castle or the cloister, their
secular and spiritual oppressors and
exploiters. Even to-day we suffer from the
aftermath of these awful ages and con
ditions, in which there was no question of
care for science or higher mental culture
save in rare circumstances and in secret.
Ignorance, poverty, and superstition com
bined with the immoral operation of the
law of celibacy, which had been introduced
in the eleventh century, to consolidate the
ever-growing power of the Papacy. It has
been calculated that there were more than
10,000,000 victims of fanatical religious
hatred during this “ Golden Age ” of Papal
domination ; and how many more million
human victims must be put to the account
pf celibacy, oral confession, and moral con
113
straint, the most pernicious and accursed
institutions of the Papal despotism! Un
believing philosophers, who have collected
disproofs of the existence of God, have
overlooked one of the strongest arguments
in that sense—the fact that the Roman
“Vicar of Christ’’could for twelve centuries
perpetrate with impunity the most shame
ful and horrible deeds “in the name of
God.”
III.—THE REFORMATION.
The history of civilisation, which we are
so fond of calling “the history of the world,”
enters upon its third period with the
Reformation of the Christian Church, just
as its second period begins with the found
ing of Christianity. With the Reformation
begins the new birth of fettered reason, the
reawakening of science, which the iron
hand of the Christian Papacy had relent
lessly crushed for 1,200 years. At the same
time the spread of general education had
already commenced, owing to the invention
of printing about the middle of the fifteenth
century; and towards its close several
great events occurred, especially the dis
covery of America in 1492, which prepared
the way for the “renaissance” of science
in company with that of art. Indeed,
certain very important advances were made
in the knowledge of nature during the first
half of the sixteenth century, which shook
the prevailing system to its very founda
tions. Such were the circumnavigation of
the globe by Magellan in 1522, which
afforded empirical proof of its rotundity,
and the founding of the new system of the
world by Copernicus in 1543.
Yet the 31st of October in the year 1517,
the day on which Martin Luther nailed his
ninety-five theses to the wooden door of
Wittenburg Cathedral, must be regarded
as the commencement of a new epoch ; for
on that day was forced the iron door of the
prison in which the Papal Church had
detained fettered reason for 1,200 years.
The merits of the great reformer have been
partly exaggerated, partly underestimated.
It has been justly pointed out that Luther,
like all the other reformers, remained in
manifold subjection to the deepest super
stition. Thus he was throughout life a
supporter of the rigid dogma of the verbal
inspiration of the Bible ; he zealously
maintained the doctrines of the resurrection,
original sin, predestination, justification by
faith, etc. He rejected as folly the great
discovery of Copernicus, because in the
Bible “ Joshua bade the sun, not the earth,
1
�114
THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE
stand still.” He utterly failed to appreciate
the great political revolutions of his time,
especially the profound and just agitation
of the peasantry. Worse still was, the
fanatical Calvin, of Geneva, who had the
talented Spanish physician, Serveto, burnt
alive in 1553, because he rejected the
absurd dogma of the Trinity. The fanatical
“true believers” of the reformed Church
followed only too frequently in the blood
stained footsteps of their Papal enemies ;
as they do even in our own day. Deeds
of unparalleled cruelty followed in the train
of the Reformation—the massacre of St.
Bartholomew and the persecution of the
Huguenots in France, bloody heretic
hunts in Italy, civil war in England, and
the Thirty Years’ War in Germany. Yet,
in spite of those grave blemishes, to the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries belongs
the honour of once more opening a free
path to the thoughtful mind, and delivering
reason from the oppressive yoke of the
Papacy. Thus only was made possible
that great development of different tenden
cies in critical philosophy and of new paths
in science which won for the subsequent
eighteenth century the honourable title of
“ the century of enlightenment.”
IV.—THE PSEUDO-CHRISTIANITY OF THE
NINETEENTH CENTURY.
As the fourth and last stage in the history
of Christianity we oppose our nineteenth
century to all its predecessors. It is true that
the enlightenment of preceding centuries
had promoted critical thought in every
direction, and the rise of science itself had
furnished powerful empirical weapons ; yet
it seems to us that our progress along both
lines has been quite phenomenal during the
nineteenth century. It has inaugurated an
entirely new period in the history of the
human mind, characterised by the develop
ment of the monistic philosophy of nature.
At its very commencement the foundations
were laid of a new anthropology (by the
comparative anatomy of Cuvier) and a
new biology (by the Philosophie Zoologique
of Lamarck). The two great French
scientists were quickly succeeded by two
contemporary German scholars—Baer, the
founder of the science of evolution, and
Johannes Müller, the founder of compara
tive morphology and physiology. A pupil
of Müller, Theodor Schwann, created the
far-reaching cellular theory in 1838, in con
junction with M. Schleiden. Lyell had
already traced the evolution of the earth to
natural causes, and thus proved the applica
tion to our planet of the mechanical cosmo
gony which Kant had sketched with so
much insight in 1755. Finally, Robert
Mayer and Helmholtz established the
principle of energy in 1842—the second,
complementary half of the great law of
substance, the first half of which (the per
sistence of matter) had been previously
discovered by Lavoisier. Forty years ago
Charles Darwin crowned all these profound
revelations of the intimate nature of the
universe by his new theory of evolution, the
greatest natural-philosophical achievement
of our century.
What is the relation of modern Chris
tianity to this vast and unparalleled progress
of science? In the first place, the deep
gulf between its two great branches, con
servative Romanism and progressive Pro
testantism, has naturally widened. The
ultramontane clergy (and we must associate
with them the orthodox “ evangelical
alliance”) had naturally to offer a strenuous
opposition to this rapid advance of the
emancipated mind ; theycontinuedunmoved
in their rigid literal belief, demanding the
unconditional surrender of reason to dogma.
Liberal Protestantism, on the other hand,
took refuge in a kind of monistic pantheism,
and sought a means of reconciling’ two
contradictory principles. It endeavoured
to combine the unavoidable recognition of
the established laws of nature, and the
philosophic conclusions that followed from
them, with a purified form of religion, in
which scarcely anything remained of the
distinctive teaching of faith. There were
many attempts at compromise to be found
between the two extremes ; but the con
viction rapidly spread that dogmatic
Christianity had lost every foundation, and
that only its valuable ethical contents
should be saved for the new monistic
religion of the twentieth century. As, how
ever, the existing external forms of the domi
nant Christian religion remained unaltered,
and as, in spite of a progressive political
development, they are more intimately than
ever connected with the practical needs of
the State, there has arisen that widespread
religious profession in educated spheres
which we can only call “ Pseudo - Chris
tianity”—at the bottom it is a “religious lie”
of the worst character. The great dangers
which attend this conflict between sincere
conviction and the hypocritical profession of
modern pseudo-Christians are admirably
described in Max Nordau’s interesting work
on The Conventional Lies of Civilisation.
�SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY
In the midst of this obvious falseness of
prevalent pseudo-Christianity there is one
favourable circumstance for the progress
of a rational study of nature : its most
powerful and bitterest enemy, the Roman
Church, threw off its mask of ostensible
concern for higher mental development
about the middle of the nineteenth century,
and declared a guerre a outrance against
independent science. This happened in
three important challenges to reason, for
the explicitness and resoluteness of which
modern science and culture cannot but be
grateful to the “ Vicar of Christ.” (i) In
December, 1854, the Pope promulgated
the dogma of the immaculate conception
of Mary. (2) Ten years afterwards—in
December, 1864—the Pope published, in
his famous encyclica, an absolute condemna
tion of the whole of modern civilisation
and culture ; in the syllabus that accom
panied it he enumerated and anathematised
all the rational theses and philosophical
principles which are regarded by modern
science as lucid truths. (3) Finally, six
years afterwards—on July 13th, 1870—the
militant head of the Church crowned his
folly by claiming infallibility for himself
and all his predecessors in the Papal chair.
This triumph of the Roman curia was
communicated to the astonished world five
days afterwards, on the very day on which
France declared war with Prussia. Two
months later the temporal power of the
Pope was taken from him in consequence
of the war.
These three stupendous acts ot the
Papacy were such obvious assaults on the
reason of the nineteenth century that they
gave rise, from the very beginning, to a
most heated discussion even within orthodox
Catholic circles. When the Vatican Council
proceeded to define the dogma of infalli
bility on July 13th, 1870, only three-fourths
of the bishops declared in its favour, 451
out of 601 assenting ; many other bishops,
who wished to keep clear of the perilous
definition, were absent from the Council.
But the shrewd Pontiff had calculated
better than the timid “discreet Catholics”:
even this extraordinary dogma was blindly
accepted by the credulous and uneducated
masses of the faithful.
The whole history of the Papacy, as it
is substantiated by a thousand reliable
sources and accessible documents, appears
to the impartial student as an unscrupulous
tissue of lying and deceit, a reckless pursuit
of absolute mental despotism and secular
power, a frivolous contradiction of all the
115
high moral precepts which true Christianity
enunciates—charity and toleration, truth
and chastity, poverty and self-denial.
When we judge the long series of Popes
and of the Roman princes of the Church,
from whom the Pope is chosen, by the
standard of pure Christian morality, it is
clear that the great majority of them were
pitiful impostors, many of them utterly
worthless and vicious. These well-known
historical facts, however, do not prevent
millions of educated Catholics from admit
ting the infallibility which the Pope has
claimed for himself; they do not prevent
Protestant princes from going to Rome, and
doing reverence to the Pontiff (their most
dangerous enemy); they do not prevent
the fate of the German people from being
entrusted to-day to the hands of the
servants and followers of this “ pious im
postor” in the Reichstag—thanks to the
incredible political indolence and credulity
of the nation.
The most interesting of the three great
events by which the Papacy has endeavoured
to maintain and strengthen its despotism
in the nineteenth century is the publication
of the encyclica and the syllabus in
December, 1864. In these remarkable
documents all independent action was for
bidden to reason and science, and they
were commanded to submit implicitly to
faith—that is, to the decrees of the infallible
Pope. The great excitement which followed
this sublime piece of effrontery in educated
and independent circles was in proportion
to the stupendous contents of the encyclica.
Draper has given us an excellent discussion
of its educational and political significance
in his History of the Conflict between Science'
and Religion.
The dogma of the immaculate concep
tion seems, perhaps, to be less audacious
and significant than the encyclica and the
dogma of the infallibility of the Pope. Yet
not only the Roman hierarchy, but even
some of the orthodox Protestants (the
Evangelical Alliance of Germany, for
instance), attach great importance to this
thesis. What is known as the “immaculate
oath ”—that is, the confirmation of faith by
an oath taken on the immaculate conception
of Mary—is still regarded by millions of
Christians as a sacred obligation. Many
believers take the dogma in a twofold
application ; they think that the mother of
Mary was impregnated by the Holy Ghost
as well as Mary herself. Comparative and
critical theology has recently shown that
this myth has no greater claim to originality
�116
THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE
than most of the other stories in the
Christian mythology ; it has been borrowed
from older religions, especially Buddhism.
Similar myths were widely circulated in
India, Persia, Asia Minor, and Greece
several centuries before the birth of Christ.
Whenever a king’s un wedded daughter, or
some other maid of high degree, gave birth
to a child, the father was always pronounced
to be a god, or a demi-god; in the Christian
case it was the Holy Ghost.
The special endowments of mind or body
which often distinguished these “ lovechildren” above ordinary offspring were
thus partly explained by “heredity.” Dis
tinguished “sons of God” of this kind
were held in high esteem both in antiquity
and during the Middle Ages, while the
moral code of modern civilisation reproaches
them with their want of honour of parentage.
This applies even more forcibly to “daughters
of God,” though the poor maidens are just
as little to blame for their want of a father.
For the rest, everyone who is familiar with
the beautiful mythology7 of classical antiquity
knows that these sons and daughters of the
Greek and Roman gods often approached
nearest to the highest ideal of humanity.
Recollect the large legitimate family, and the
still more numerous illegitimate offspring,
of Zeus.
To return to the particular question of
the impregnation of the Virgin Mary by
the Holy Ghost, we are referred to the
Gospels for testimony to the fact. The
only two evangelists who speak of it,
Matthew and Luke, relate in harmony
that the Jewish maiden Mary was betrothed
to the carpenter Joseph, but, became
pregnant without his co-operation, and,
indeed, “by the Holy Ghost.” As we
have already related, the four canonical
gospels which are regarded as the only
genuine ones by the Christian Church, and
adopted as the foundation of faith, were
deliberately chosen from a much larger
number of gospels, the details of which
contradict each other sometimes just as
freely as the assertions of the four. The
fathers of the Church enumerate from
forty to fifty of these spurious or apocryphal
gospels ; some of them are written both in
Greek and Latin—for instance, the gospel
of James, of Thomas, of Nicodemus, and so
forth. The details which these apocryphal
gospels give of the life of Christ, especially
with regard to his birth and childhood,
have just as much (or, on the whole, just as
little) claim to historical validity as the four
canonical gospels.
Now, we find in one of these documents
an historical statement, confirmed, more
over, in the Sepher Toldoth Jeschua, which
probably furnishes the simple and natural
solution of the “ world-riddle ” of the
supernatural conception and birth of Christ.
The author curtly gives us in one sentence
the remarkable statement which contains
this solution: “Josephus Pandera, the
Roman officer of a Calabrian legion which
was in Judaea, seduced Miriam of Bethlehem,
and was the father of Jesus.” Other details
given about Miriam (the Hebrew name for
Mary) are far from being to the credit of
the “ Queen of Heaven.”
Naturally, these historical details are
carefully avoided by the official theologian,
but they assort badly with the traditional
myth, and lift the veil from its mystery in
a very simple and natural fashion. That
makes it the more incumbent on impartial
research and pure reason to make a critical
examination of these statements. It must
be admitted that they have much more
title to credence than all the other state
ments about the birth of Christ. When,
on familiar principles of science, we put
aside the notion of supernatural conception
through an “ overshadowing of the Most
High ” as a pure myth, there only remains
the widely-accepted version of modern
rational theology—that Joseph, the Jewish
carpenter, was the true father of Christ.
But this assumption is explicitly con
tradicted by many texts of the gospels ;
Christ himself was convinced that he was
a “ Son of God,” and he never recognised
his foster-father Joseph as his real parent.
Joseph, indeed, wanted to leave his
betrothed when he found her pregnant
without his interference. He gave up this
idea when an angel appeared to him in a
dream and pacified him. As it is expressly
stated in the first chapter of Matthew
(vv. 24, 25), there was no sexual intercourse
between Joseph and Mary until after Jesus
was born.
The statement of the apocryphal gospels,
that the Roman officer Pandera was the
true father of Christ, seems all the more
credible when we make a careful anthropo
logical study of the personality of Christ.
He is generally regarded as purely Jewish.
Yet the characteristics which distinguish
his high and noble personality, and which
give a distinctive impress to his religion,
are certainly not Semitical; they are rather
features of the higher Aryan race, and
especially of its noblest branch, the Hellenes.
Now, the name of Christ’s real father,
�OUR MONISTIC RELIGION
u Bandera,” points unequivocally to a Greek
origin; in one manuscript, in fact, it is
written “ Pandora.” Pandora was, accord
ing to the Greek mythology, the first
woman, born of the earth by Vulcan and
adorned with every charm by the gods,
who was espoused by Epimetheus, and sent
by Zeus to men with the dread “ Pandora
box,” containing every evil, in punishment
for the stealing of divine fire from heaven
by Prometheus.
And it is interesting to see the different
reception that the love-story of Miriam has
met with at the hands of the four great
Christian nations of civilised Europe. The
stern morality of the Teutonic races entirely
repudiates it; the righteous German and
the prudish Briton prefer to believe blindly
in the impossible thesis of a conception
“by the Holy Ghost.” It is well known
that this strenuous and carefully paraded
prudery of the higher classes (especially in
England) is by no means reflected in the
true condition of sexual morality in high
quarters. The revelations which the Pall
Mall Gazette, for instance, made on the
subject twelve years ago vividly recalled
the condition of Babylon.
The Romantic races, which ridicule this
prudery and take sexual relations less
seriously, find Mary’s Romance attractive
enough; the special cult which “ Our
Lady” enjoys in France and Italy is often
associated with this love-story with curious
naivety. Thus, for example, Paul de Regia
(Dr. Desjardin), author of Jesus of Nazareth
consideredfrom a Scientific, Historical, and
Social Standpoint (1894), finds precisely in
the illegitimate birth of Christ a special
“ title to the halo that irradiates his noble
form.”
It seemed to me necessary to enter fully
into this important question of the origin
of Christ in the sense of impartial historical
science, because the Church militant itself
lays great emphasis on it, and because it
regards the miraculous structure which has
been founded on it as one of its strongest
weapons against modern thought. The
high ethical value of pure primitive Chris
tianity and the ennobling influence of this
“ religion of love ” on the history of civili
sation are quite independent of those
mythical dogmas. The so-called “ revela
tions” on which these myths are based are
incompatible with the firmest results of
modern science.
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CHAPTER XVIII.
OUR MONISTIC RELIGION
Monism as a connecting-link between religion
and science. The cultur-kampf. The rela
tions of Church and State. Principles of
the monistic religion. Its three-fold ideal :
the good, the true, and the beautiful. Con
tradiction between scientific and Christian
truth. Harmony of the monistic and the
Christian idea of virtue. Opposition between
monistic and Christian views of art. Modern
expansion and enrichment of our idea of the
world. Landscape-painting and the modern
enjoyment of nature. The beauties of nature.
This world and beyond. Monistic churches.
Many distinguished scientists and philo
sophers of the day, who share our monistic
views, consider that religion is generally
played out. Their meaning is that the
clear insight into the evolution of the world
which the great scientific progress of the
nineteenth century has afforded us will
satisfy, not only the causal feeling of our
reason, but even our highest emotional
cravings. This view is correct in the sense
that the two ideas, religion and science,
would indeed blend into one if we had a
perfectly clear and consecutive system of
monism. However, there are but a few
resolute thinkers who attain to this most
pure and lofty conception of Spinoza and
Goethe. Most of the educated people of
our time (as distinct from the uncultured
masses) remain in the conviction that
religion is a separate branch of our mental
life, independent of science, and not less
valuable and indispensable.
If we adopt this view, we can find a
means of reconciling the two great and
apparently quite distinct branches in the
idea I put forward in “ Monism, as a con
necting-link between religion and science”
in 1892. In the preface to this Confession
of Faith of a Man of Science I expressed
myself in the following words with regard
to its double object : “ In the first place, I
must give expression to the rational system
which is logically forced upon us by the
recent progress of science ; it dwells in the
intimate thoughts of nearly every impartial
and thoughtful scientist, though few have
the courage or the disposition to avow it.
In the second place, I would make of it a
connecting-link between religion and
science, and thus do away with the anti
thesis which has been needlessly main
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THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE
tained between these two branches of the empire, which had attained its indispensable
highest activity of the human mind. The national unity by the heavy sacrifices of
ethical craving of our emotion is satisfied the wars of 1866 and 1871, the insolent
by monism no less than the logical demand attacks of the Pope were felt to be par
for causality on the part of reason.”
ticularly offensive. On the one hand,
The remarkable interest which the dis Germany is the cradle of the Reformation
course enkindled is a proof that in this and the modern emancipation of reason ;
monistic profession of faith I expressed the on the other hand, it unfortunately has in
feeling not only of many scientists, but of a its 18,000,000 Catholics a vast host of
large number of cultured men and women
militant believers, who are unsurpassed by
of very different circles. Not only was I
any other civilised people in blind obedience
rewarded by hundreds of sympathetic to their chief shepherd.
letters, but by a wide circulation of the
The dangers of such a situation were
printed address, of which six editions were clearly recognised by the great statesmen
required within six months. I had the who had solved the political “ world
more reason to be content with this unex riddle ” of the dismemberment of Germany,
pected success, as this “ confession of and had led us by a marvellous statecraft
faith ” was originally merely an occasional
to the long-desired goal of national unity
speech which I delivered unprepared on and power. Prince Bismarck began the
October 9th, 1892, at Altenburg, during the famous struggle with the Vatican, which is
jubilee of the Scientific Society of East known as the cultur-kampf in 1872, and
Germany. Naturally there was the usual
it was conducted with equal ability and
demonstration on the other side ; I was
energy by the distinguished Minister of
fiercely attacked, not only by the ultra Worship, Falk, author of the May Laws of
montane press, the sworn defenders of 1873. Unfortunately, Bismarck had to
superstition, but also by the “liberal” con desist six years afterwards. Although the
troversialists of evangelical Christianity, great statesman was a remarkable judge of
who profess to defend both scientific truth
men and a realistic politician of immense
and purified faith. In the seven years that
tact, he had under-estimated the force of
have ensued since that time the great
three powerful obstacles—firstly, the unsur
struggle between modern science and
passed cunning and unscrupulous treachery
orthodox Christianity has become more
of the Roman curia; secondly, the corre
threatening ; it has grown more dangerous
lative ingratitude and credulity of the
uneducated Catholic masses, on which the
for science in proportion as Christianity
has found support in an increasing mental
Papacy built; and, thirdly, the power of
apathy, the continuance of the irrational,
and political reaction. In some countries
simply because it is in possession. Hence,
the Church has made such progress that
in 1878, when the abler Leo XIII. had
the freedom of thought and conscience,
ascended the pontifical throne, the fatal
which is guaranteed by the laws, is in
“To Canossa” was heard once more.
practice gravely menaced (for instance, in
From that time the newly-established power
Bavaria). The great historic struggle which
Draper has so admirably depicted in his of Rome grew in strength ; partly through
the unscrupulous intrigues and serpentine
Conflict between Religion and Science is
bends of its slippery Jesuitical politics,
to-day more acute and significant than ever.
partly through the false Church-politics of
For the last twenty-seven years it has been
the German Government and the marvellous
rightly called the “ cultur-kamflfT
The famous encyclica and syllabus which political incompetence of the German
the militant Pope, Pius IX., sent out into people. We have, therefore, at the close
of the nineteenth century to endure the
the entire world in 1864 were a declaration
pitiful spectacle of the Catholic “ Centre ”
of war on the whole of modern science ;
they demanded the blind submission of being the most important section of the
Reichstag, and the fate of our humiliated
reason to the dogmas of the infallible Pope.
country depending on a Papal party, which
The enormity of this crude assault on the
highest treasures of civilisation even roused does not constitute numerically a third part
many indolent minds from the slumber of of the nation.
When the cultur-kampf began in 1872,
belief. Together with the subsequent
promulgation of the Papal infallibility it was justly acclaimed by all independent
thinkers as a political renewal of the
(1870), the eneyclica provoked a deep wave
of irritation and an energetic repulse which, Reformation, a vigorous attempt to free
modern civilisation from the yoke of Papal
held out high hopes. In the new German
�OUR MONISTIC RELIGION
despotism. The whole of the Liberal press
hailed Bismarck as a “ political Luther ”—
as the great hero, not only of the national
unity, but also of the rational emancipation,
of Germany. Ten years afterwards, when
the Papacy had proved victorious, the same
“Liberal press” changed its colours, and
denounced the cultur-kampf as a great
mistake ; and it does the same thing to
day. The facts show how short is the
memory of our journalists, how defective
their knowledge of history, and how poor
their philosophic education.- The so-called
“Peace between Church and State”
is never more than a suspension of hos
tilities. The modern Papacy, true to the
despotic principles it has followed for the
last 1,600 years, is determined to wield
sole dominion over the credulous souls of
men ; it must demand the absolute sub
mission of the cultured State, which, as
such, defends the rights of reason and
science. ' True and enduring peace there
cannot be until one of the combatants lies
powerless on the’ ground. Either the
Church wins, and then farewell to all “ free
science and free teaching”—then are our
universities no better than gaols, and our
colleges become cloistral schools ; or else
the modern rational State proves victorious
—then, in the twentieth century, human
culture, freedom, and prosperity will con-tinue their progressive development until
they far surpass even the height of the
nineteenth century.
In order to compass these high aims, it
is of the first importance that modern
science not only shatter the false structures
of superstition and sweep their ruins from
the path, but that it also erect a new abode
for human emotion on the ground it has
cleared—a “palace of reason,” in which,
under the influence of our new monistic
views, we do reverence to the real trinity of
the nineteenth century—the trinity of “ the
true, the good, and the beautiful.” In
order to give a tangible shape to the cult of
this divine ideal, we must first of all com
pare our position with the dominant forms
of Christianity, and realise the changes
that are involved in the substitution of the
one for the other. For, in spite of its
errors and defects, the Christian religion
(in its primitive and purer form) has so
high an ethical value, and has entered so
deeply into the most important social and
political movements of civilised history for
the last 1,500 years, that we must appeal as
much as possible to its existing institutions
in the establishment of our monistic
ng
religion. We do not seek a mighty revolu
tion, but a rational reformation, of our
religious life. And just as, 2,000 years ago,
the classic poetry of the ancient Greeks
incarnated their ideals of virtue in divine
shapes, so may we, too, lend the character
of noble goddesses to our three rational
ideals. We must inquire into the features
of the three goddesses of the monist—
truth, beauty, and virtue ; and we must
study their relation to the three corres
ponding ideals of Christianity which they
are to replace.
I.—The preceding inquiries (especially
those of the first and third sections) have
convinced us that truth unadulterated is
only to be found in the temple of the study
of nature, and that the only available paths
to it are critical observation and reflection
—the empirical investigation of facts and
the rational study of their efficient causes.
In this way we arrive, by means of pure
reason, at true science, the highest treasure
of civilised man. We must, in accordance
with the arguments of our sixteenth chapter,
reject what is called “ revelation,” the
poetry of faith, that affirms the discovery of
truth in a supernatural fashion, without the
assistance of reason. And since the entire
structure of the Judaeo-Christian religion,
like that of the Mohammedan and the
Buddhistic, rests on these so-called revela
tions, and these mystic fruits of the imagi
nation directly contradict the clear results
of empirical research, it is obvious that we
shall only attain to a knowledge of the
truth by the rational activity of genuine
science, not by the poetic imagining of a
mystic faith. In this respect it is quite
certain that the Christain system must give
way to the monistic. The goddess of truth
dwells in the temple of nature, in the green
woods, on the blue sea, and on the snowy
summits of the hills—-not in the gloom of
the cloister, nor in the narrow prisons of
our gaol-like schools, nor in the clouds of
incense of the Christian Churches. _ The
paths which lead to the noble divinity of
truth and knowledge are the loving study
of nature and its laws, the observation of
the infinitely great star-world with the aid
of the telescope, and the infinitely tiny cell
world with the aid of the microscope—not
senseless ceremonies and unthinking
prayers, not alms and Peter’s-pence. The
rich gifts which the goddess of truth
bestows on us are the noble fruits of
the tree of knowledge and the ines
timable treasure of a clear, unified
view of the world——not belief in super
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THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE
natural miracles and the illusion of an
History teaches us that this ascetical
eternal life.
morality that would scorn the whole of nature
II. —It is otherwise with the divine ideal had, as a natural consequence, the very oppo
of eternal goodness. In our search for the
site effect to that it intended. Monasteries,
truth we have entirely to exclude the
the homes of chastity and discipline, soon
“ revelation ” of the Churches, and devote
became dens of the wildest orgies ; the
ourselves solely to the study of nature ; but,
sexual commerce of monks and nuns has
on the other hand, the idea of the good,
inspired shoals of novels, as it is so
which we call virtue, in our monistic faithfully depicted in the literature of the
religion coincides for the most part with
Renaissance. The cult of the “ beautiful,”
the Christian idea of virtue. We are
which was then practised, was in flagrant
speaking, naturally, of the primitive and
contradiction with the vaunted “ abandon
pure Christianity of the first three centuries,
ment of the world”; and the same must be
as far as we learn its moral teaching from
said of the pomp and luxury which soon
the gospels and the epistles of Paul ; it
developed in the immoral private lives of
does not apply to the Vatican caricature of the higher ecclesiastics and in the artistic
that pure doctrine which has dominated decoration of Christian churches and mon
European civilisation, to its infinite preju asteries.
dice, for 1,200 years. The best part of
It may be objected that our view is
Christian morality, to which we firmly
refuted by the splendour of Christian art,
adhere, is represented by the humanist which, especially in the best days of the
precepts of charity and toleration, com Middle Ages, created works of undying
passion and assistance. However, these beauty. The graceful Gothic cathedrals
noble commands, which are set down as and Byzantine basilicas, the hundreds of
“Christian” morality (in its best sense), magnificent chapels, the thousands of
are by no means original discoveries of marble statues of saints and martyrs, the
Christianity; they were derived from millions of fine pictures of saints, of pro
earlier religions. The Golden Rule, which foundly conceived representations of Christ
sums up these precepts in one sentence, is
and the madonna—all are proofs of the
centuries older than Christianity. In the development of a noble art in the Middle
conduct of life this law of natural morality Ages, which is unique of its kind. All
has been followed just as frequently by these splendid monuments of mediaeval
non-Christians and atheists as it has been art are untouched in their high aesthetic
neglected by pious believers. Moreover, value, whatever we say of their mixture of
Christian ethics was marred by the great truth and fancy. Yes; but what has all
defect of a narrow insistence on altruism that to do with the pure teaching of
and a denunciation of egoism. Our Christianity—with that religion of sacrifice
-monistic ethics lays equal emphasis on the that turned scornfully away from all earthly
two, and finds perfect virtue in the just parade and glamour, from all material
balance of love of self and love of one’s beauty and art; that made light of the
neighbour (cf. chap. xix.).
life of the family and the love of woman ;
III. —But monism enters into its strongest that urged an exclusive concern as to the
opposition to Christianity on the question immaterial goods of eternal life ? The
of beauty. Primitive Christianity preached idea of a Christian art is a contradiction in
the worthlessness of earthly life, regarding terms—a contradict™ in adjecto. The
it merely as a preparation for an eternal
wealthy princes of the Church who fostered
life beyond. Hence it immediately followed it were candidly aiming at very different
that all we find in the life of a man here
ideals, and they completely attained them.
below, all that is beautiful in art and
In directing the whole interest and activity
science, in public and in private life, is of of the human mind in the Middle Ages to
no real value. The true Christian must the Christian Church and its distinctive
avert his eyes from them ; he must think art they were diverting it from nature and
only of a worthy preparation for the life from the knowledge of the treasures that
beyond. Contempt of nature, aversion from were hidden in it, and would have con
all its inexhaustible charms, rejection of ducted to independent science. Moreover,
every kind of fine art, are Christian duties ;
the daily sight of the huge images of the
and they are carried out to perfection when
saints and of the scenes of “sacred history”
a man separates himself from his fellows,
continually reminded the faithful of the vast
chastises his body, and spends all his time in
collection of myths that the Church had
prayers in the cloister or the hermit’s cell.
made. The legends themselves were
�OUR MONISTIC RELIGION
taught and believed to be true narratives,
and the stories of miracles to be records of
actual events. It cannot be doubted that
in this respect Christian art has exercised
an immense influence on general culture,
and especially in the strengthening of
Christian belief—an influence which still
endures throughout the entire civilised
world.
The diametrical opposite of this domi
nant Christian art is the new artistic
tendency which has been developed during
the present century in connection with
science. The remarkable expansion of our
knowledge of nature, and the discovery of
countless beautiful forms of life which it
includes, have awakened quite a new
aesthetic sense in our generation, and thus
given a new tone to painting and sculpture.
Numerous scientific voyages and expedi
tions for the exploration of unknown lands
and seas, partly in earlier centuries, but
more especially in the nineteenth, have
brought to light an undreamed abundance
of new organic forms. The number of new
species of animals and plants soon became
enormous, and among them (especially
among the lower groups that had been
neglected before) there were thousands of
forms of great beauty and interest, afford
ing an entirely new inspiration for painting,
Sculpture, architecture, and technical art.
In this respect a new world was revealed
by the great advance of microscopic
research in the second half of the cefitury,
and especially by the discovery of the mar
vellous inhabitants of the deep sea, which
were first brought to light by the famous
expedition of the Challenger (1872-6).
Thousands of graceful radiolaria and thalamophora, of pretty medusse and corals, of
extraordinary molluscs and crabs, suddenly
introduced us to a wealth of hidden organ
isms beyond all anticipation, the peculiar
beauty and diversity of which far transcend
all the creations of the human imagination.
In the fifty large volumes of the account of
the Challenger expedition a vast number of
these beautiful forms are delineated on
3,000 plates ; and there are millions of
other lovely organisms described in other
great works that are included in the fast
growing literature of zoology and botany of
the last ten years. I began on a small
scale to select a number of these beautiful
forms for more popular description in my
A rt Forms in Nature (1899).
However, there is now no need for long
voyages and costly works to appreciate the
beauties of this world. A man need only
121
keep his eyes open and his mind disciplined.
Surrounding nature offers us everywhere a
marvellous wealth of lovely and interesting
objects of all kinds. In every bit of moss
and blade of grass, in every beetle and
butterfly, we find, when we examine it care
fully, beauties which are usually overlooked.
Above all, when we examine them with a
powerful glass, or, better still, with a good
microscope, we find everywhere in nature a
new world of inexhaustible charms.
But the nineteenth century has not only
opened our eyes to the aesthetic enjoyment
of the microscopic world ; it has shown us
the beauty of the greater objects, in nature.
Even at its commencement it was the
fashion to regard the mountains as magni
ficent but forbidding, and the sea as sublime
but dreaded. At its close the majority of
educated people—especially they who dwell
in the great cities—are delighted to enjoy
the glories of the Alps and the crystal
splendour of the glacier-world for a fort
night every year, or to drink in the majesty
of the ocean and the lovely scenery of its
coasts. All these sources of the keenest
enjoyment of nature have only recently
been revealed to us in all their splendour,
and the remarkable progress we have made in facility and rapidity of conveyance has
given even the less wealthy an opportunity
of approaching them. All this progress in
the eesthetic enjoyment of nature—and,
proportionately, in the scientific under
standing of nature—implies an equal
advance in higher mental, development,
and, consequently, in the direction of our
monistic religion.
The opposite character of our naturalistic
century to that of the anthropistic centuries
that preceded is especially noticeable in
the different appreciation and spread of
illustrations of the most diverse natural
objects. In our own days a lively interest
in artistic work of that kind has been
developed, which did not exist in earlier
ages; it has been supported by the remark
able progress of commerce and technical
art which have facilitated a wide populari
sation of such illustrations.
Countless
illustrated periodicals convey along with
their general information a sense of the
inexhaustible beauty of nature in all its
departments. In particular, landscape
painting has acquired an importance that
surpassed all imagination. K <he first
half of the century one of our greatest
and most erudite scientists, Alexander
Humboldt, had pointed out that the
development of modern landscape painting
�122
THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE
is not only of great importance as an
incentive to the study of nature and as a
means of geographical description, but that
it is to be commended in other respects as
a noble educative medium. Since that
time the taste for it has considerably
increased. It should be the aim of every
school to teach the children to enjoy
scenery at an early age, and to give them
the valuable art of imprinting on the
memory by a drawing or water-colour
sketch.
The infinite wealth of nature in what is
beautiful and sublime offers everyman with
open eyes and an aesthetic sense an incal
culable sum of choicest gifts. Still, however
valuable and agreeable is the immediate
enjoyment of each single g'ift, its worth is
doubled by a knowledge of its meaning
and its connection with the rest of nature.
When Humboldt gave us the “ outline of a
physical description of the world ” in his
magnificent Cosmos forty years ago, and
when he combined scientific and sesthetic
consideration so happily in his standard
Prospects of Nature, he justly indicated
how closely the higher enjoyment of nature
is connected with the “ scientific establish
ment of cosmic laws,” and that the con
junction of the two serves to raise human
nature to a higher stage of perfection. The
astonishment with which we gaze upon the
starry heavens and the microscopic life in
a drop of water, the awe with which we
trace the marvellous working of energy in
the motion of matter, the reverence with
which we grasp the universal dominance
of the law of substance throughout the
universe—all these are part of our emotional
life, falling under the heading of “ natural
religion.”
This progress of modern times in know
ledge of the true and enjoyment of the
beautiful expresses, on the one hand, a
valuable element of our monistic religion,
but is, on the other hand, in fatal opposition
to Christianity. For the human mind is
thus made to live on this side of the grave;
Christianity would have it ever gaze beyond.
Monism teaches that we are perishable
children of the earth, who, for one or two,
or, at the most, three generations, have the
good fortune to enjoy the treasures of
our planet, to drink of the inexhaustible
fountain of its beauty, and to trace out the
marvellous play of its forces. Christianity
would teach us that the earth is “ a vale of
tears,” in which we have but a brief period
to chasten and torment ourselves in order
to merit the life of eternal bliss beyond. I
Where this “ beyond” is, and of what joys
the glory of this eternal life is compacted,
no revelation has ever told us. As long as
“ heaven ” was thought to be the blue vault
that hovers over the disk of our planet, and
is illumined by the twinkling light of a few
thousand stars, the human imagination
could picture to itself the ambrosial
banquets of the Olympic gods above or
the laden tables of the happy dwellers in
Valhalla. But now all these deities and
the immortal souls' that sat at their tables
are “ houseless and homeless,” as David
Strauss has so ably described; for we
know from astrophysical science that the
immeasurable depths of space are filled
with a prosaic ether, and that millions of
heavenly bodies, ruled by eternal laws of
iron, rush hither and thither in the great
ocean, in their endless rhythm of life and
death.
The places of devotion, in which men
seek the satisfaction of their religious
emotions and worship the objects of their
reverence, are regarded as sacred
“ churches.” The pagodas of Buddhistic
Asia, the Greek temples of classical
antiquity, the synagogues of Palestine, the
mosques of Egypt, the Catholic cathedrals
of the south, and the Protestant cathedrals
of the north, of Europe—all these “ houses
of God ” serve to raise man above the
misery and the prose of daily life, to lift
him into the sacred, poetic atmosphere of
a higher, ideal world. They attain this
end in a thousand different ways, according
to their various forms of worship and their
age. The modern man who “ has science
and art,” and therefore “ religion,” needs no
special church, no narrow, enclosed portion
of space. For through the length and
breadth of free nature, wherever he turns
his gaze, to the whole universe or to any
single part of it, he finds, indeed, the grim
“ struggle for life,” but by its side are ever
“the good, the true, and the beautiful”;
his church is commensurate with the whole
of glorious nature. Still, there will always
be men of special temperament who will
desire to have decorated temples or
churches as places of devotion, to which
they may withdraw. Just as the Catholics
had to relinquish a number of churches to
the Reformation in the sixteenth century,
so a still larger number will pass over to
“free societies” of monists in the coming
years.
�OUR MONISTIC ETHICS
CHAPTER XIX.
OUR MONISTIC ETHICS
Monistic and dualistic ethics. Contradiction of
pure and practical reason in Kant. . His
categorical imperative. The neo-Kantians.
Herbert Spencer. Egoism and altruism.
Equivalence of the two instincts. The funda
mental law of ethics ■ the Golden Rule. Its
antiquity. Christian ethics. Contempt. of
self, the body, nature, civilisation, the family,
woman. Roman Catholic ethics. Immoral
results of celibacy. Necessity for the abolition
of the laws of celibacy, oral confession, and
indulgences. State and Church. Religion a
private concern. Church and school. State
and school. Need of school reform.
The practical conduct of life makes a
number of definite ethical claims on a man
which can only be duly and naturally
satisfied when they are in complete harmony
with his view of the world. In accordance
with this fundamental principle of our
monistic philosophy, our whole system , of
ethics must be rationally connected with
the unified conception of the cosmos which
we have formed by our advanced knowledge
of the laws of nature. Just as the infinite
universe is one great whole in the light of
our monistic teaching, so the spiritual and
moral life of man is a part of this cosmos,
and our naturalistic ordering of it must
also be monistic. There are not- two
different, separate worlds—the one physical
and material, and the other moral and
immaterial.
The great majority of philosophers and
theologians still hold the contrary opinion.
They affirm, with Kant, that the moral
world is quite independent of the physical,
and is subject to very different laws; hence,
a man’s conscience, as the basis of his
moral life, must also be quite independent
of our scientific knowledge of . the world,
and must be based rather on his religious
faith. On that theory the study of the
moral world belongs to practical i'eason>
while that of nature, or of the physical
world, is referred to pure or theoretical
reason. This unequivocal and conscious
dualism of Kant’s philosophy was its
greatest defect ; it has caused, and still
causes, incalculable mischief. . First of all
the “ critical Kant ” had built up the
splendid and marvellous palace of pure
reason, and convincingly proved that the
three great central dogmas of metaphysics
-—a personal God, free will, and the im
I2j
mortal soul—had no place whatever in it,
and that no rational proof could be found
of their reality. Afterwards, however, the
“dogmatic Kant” superimposed on this
true crystal palace of pure reason the
glittering, ideal castle in the air of practical
reason, in which three imposing church
naves were designed for the accommoda
tion of those three great mystic divinities.
When they had been put out at the front
door by rational knowledge they returned
by the back door under the guidance of
irrational faith.
The cupola of his great cathedral, of
faith was crowned by Kant with his curious
idol, the famous “ categorical imperative.”
According to it, the demand of the. uni
versal moral law is unconditional, inde
pendent of any regard to actuality or
potentiality. It runs : “Act at all times.in
such wise that the maxim (or the subjective
law of thy will) may hold good as a
principle of a universal law.” On that
theory all normal men would have the same
sense of duty. Modern anthropology has
ruthlessly dissipated that pretty dream ; it
has shown that conceptions of duty differ
even more among uncivilised than among
civilised nations. All the actions and
customs which we regard as sins or loath
some crimes (theft, fraud, murder, adulteiy,
etc.) are considered by other nations in
certain circumstances to be virtues, or even
sacred duties.
Although the obvious contradiction of the
two forms of reason in Kant’s teaching, the
fundamental antagonism of pure and prac
tical reason, was recognised and attacked at
the very beginning of the century, it is still
pretty widely accepted. The modern school
of neo-Kantians urges a “ return to Kant.”
so pressingly precisely on account of this
agreeable dualism ; the Church, militant
zealously supports it because it fits in
admirably with its own mystic faith. But
it met with an effective reverse at the hands
of modern science in the second half of the
nineteenth century, which entirely demo
lished the theses of the system of practical
reason. Monistic cosmology proved, on the
basis of the law of substance, that there is
no personal God ; comparative and genetic
psychology showed that there cannot be
an immortal soul; and monistic physiology
proved the futility of the assumption of
“ free will.” Finally, the science of evolu
tion made it clear that the same eternal
iron laws that rule in the inorganic world
are valid, too, in the organic and moral
world.
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THE RIDDLE OE THE UNIVERSE
But modern science gives not only a
negative _ support to practical philosophy
and ethics in demolishing the Kantian
dualism, but it renders the positive service
of substituting for it the new structure of
ethical monism. It shows that the feeling
of duty does not rest on an illusory “ cate
gorical imperative,” but on the solid ground
of social instinct, as we find in the case of
all social animals. It regards as the highest
aim of all morality the re-establishment of
a sound harmony between egoism and
altruism, between self-love and the love of
one’s neighbour. It is to the great English
philosopher, Herbert Spencer,1 that we owe
the founding of this monistic ethics on a
basis of evolution.
Man belongs to the social vertebrates,
and has, therefore, like all social animals,
two sets of duties—firstly to himself, and
secondly to the society to which he belongs.
The former are the behests of self-love or
egoism, the latter of love for one’s fellows
or altruism. The two sets of precepts are
equally just, equally natural, and equally
indispensable. If a man desire to have the
advantage of living in an organised com
munity, he has to consult not only his own
fortune, but also that of the society, and of
the “neighbours” who form the society. He
must realise that its prosperity is his own
prosperity, and that it cannot suffer without
his own injury. This fundamental law of
society is so simple and so inevitable that
one cannot understand how it can be con
tradicted in theory or in practice ; yet that
is done to-day, and has been done for
thousands of years.
The equal appreciation of these two
natural impulses, or the moral equivalence
of self-love and love of others, is the chief
and the fundamental principle of our
morality. Hence the highest aim of all
ethics is very simple—it is the re-establish
ment of “the natural equality of egoism
and altruism, of the love of oneself and the
love of one’s neighbour.” The Golden
Rule says : “ Do unto others as you would
that they should do unto you.” From this
highest precept of Christianity it follows of
itself that we have just as sacred duties
towards ourselves as we have towards our
fellows. I have explained my conception
of this principle in my Monism, and laid
down three important theses. (i) Both
1 Professor Haeckel places Mr. Spencer’s
works at the head of the bibliography in the
German edition. We have omitted these lists,
as they are chiefly German.—Trans.
these concurrent impulses are natural laws
of equal importance and necessity for the
preservation of the family and the society ;
egoism secures the self-preservation of
the individual, altruism that of the species
which is made up of the chain of perishable
individuals. (2) The social duties which
are imposed by the social structure of the
associated individuals, and by means of
which it secures its preservation, are merely
higher evolutionary stages of the social
instincts, which we find in all higher social
animals (as “ habits which have become
hereditary”). (3) In the case of civilised
man all ethics, theoretical or practical,
being “a science of rules,” is connected
with his view of the world at large, and
consequently with his religion.
From the recognition of the fundamental
principle of our morality we may imme
diately deduce ‘its highest precept, that
noble command which is often called the
Golden Rule of morals, or, briefly, the
Golden Rule. Christ repeatedly expressed
it in the simple phrase : “ Thou shalt love
thy neighbour as thyself.” Mark adds
that “there is no greater commandment
than this,” and Matthew says : “ In these
two commandments is the whole law and
the prophets.” In this greatest and highest
commandment our monistic ethics is com
pletely at one with Christianity. We must,
however, recall the historical fact that the
formulation of this supreme command is
not an original merit of Christ, as the
majority of Christian theologians affirm and
their uncritical supporters blindly accept.
The Golden Rule is 500 years older than
Christ ; it was laid down as the highest
moral principle by many Greek and Oriental
sages. Pittacus of Mytilene, one of the
seven wise men of Greece, said 620 years
before Christ : “ Do not that to thy neigh
bour that thou would’st not suffer from
him.” Confucius, the great Chinese philo
sopher and religious founder (who rejected
the idea of a personal God and of the
immortality of the soul), said 500 years B.c.:
“ Do to every man as thou would’st have
him do to thee ; and do not to another
what thou would’st not have him do to
thee. This precept only dost thou need ;
it is the foundation of all other command
ments.” Aristotle taught, about the middle
of the fourth century B.c.: “We must act
towards others as we wish others to act
towards us.” In the same sense, and partly
in the same words, the Golden Rule was
given by Thales, Isocrates, Aristippus,
Sextus the Pythagorean, and other philo-
�OUR MONISTIC ETHICS
sophers of classic antiquity — several
centuries before Christ. From this collec
tion it is clear that the Golden Rule had a
polyphyletic origin—that is, it was formu
lated by a number of philosophers at
different times and in different places quite
independently of each other. Otherwise
it must be assumed that Jesus derived it
from some other oriental source, from
ancient Semitic, Indian, Chinese, or especi
ally Buddhistic traditions, as has been
proved in the case of most of the other
Christian doctrines.
As the great ethical principle is thus
2,500 years old, and as Christianity itself
has put it at the head of its moral teaching
as the highest and all-embracing command
ment, it follows that our monistic ethics is
in complete harmony on this important
point, not only with the ethics of the
ancient heathens, but also with that of
Christianity. Unfortunately this harmony
is disturbed by the fact that the gospels
and the Pauline epistles contain many other
points of moral teaching, which contradict
our first and supreme commandment.
Christian theologians have fruitlessly
Striven to explain away these striking and
painful contradictions by their ingenious
interpretations. We need not enter into
that question now, but we must briefly con
sider those unfortunate aspects of Christian
ethics which are incompatible with the
better thought of the modern age, and
which are distinctly injurious in their
practical consequences. Of that character
is the contempt which Christianity has
shown for self, for the body, for nature, for
civilisation, for the family, and for woman.
L«—The supreme mistake of Christian
ethics, and one which runs directly counter
the Golden Rule, is its exaggeration of
love of one’s neighbour at the expense of
$elf-love. Christianity attacks and despises
egoism on principle. Yet that natural
impulse is absolutely indispensible in view
of self-preservation ; indeed, one may say
that even altruism, its apparent opposite, is
only an enlightened egoism. Nothing
great or elevated has ever taken place with
out egoism, and without the passion that
urges us to great sacrifices. It is only the
excesses of the impulse that are injurious.
One of the Christian precepts that were
impressed upon us in our early youth as of
great importance, and that are glorified in
millions of sermons, is : “ Love your
enemies, bless them that curse you, do good
to them that hate you, and pray for them
which despitefully use you and persecute
125
you.” It is a very ideal precept, but as
useless in practice as it is unnatural. So it
is with the counsel, “If any man will take
away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.”
Translated into the terms of modern life,
that means : “ When some unscrupulous
scoundrel has defrauded thee of half thy
goods, let him have the other half also.”
Or, again, in the language of modem
politics : “ When the pious English take
from you simple Germans one after another
of your new and valuable colonies in Africa,
let them have all the rest of your colonies
also—or, best of all, give them Germany
itself.” And, while we touch on the
marvellous world-politics of modern Eng
land, we may note in passing its direct
contradiction of every precept of Christian
charity, which is more frequently on the
lips of that great nation than of any other
nation in the world. However, the glaring
contradiction between the theoretical, ideal
altruistic morality of the human individual
and the real purely selfish morality of the
human community, and especially of the
civilised Christian state, is a familiar fact.
It would be interesting to determine mathe
matically in what proportion among orga
nised men the altruistic ethical ideal of the
individual changes into its contrary, the
purely egoistic “real politics” of the state
and the nation.
II._Since the Christian faith takes a
wholly dualistic view of the human organism
and attributes to the immortal soul only a
temporary sojourn in the mortal frame, it
very naturally sets a much greater value on
the soul than on the body. Hence results
that neglect of the care of the body, of
training, and of cleanliness, which contrasts
the life of the Christian Middle Ages so
unfavourably with that of pagan classical
antiquity. Christian ethics contains none
of those firm commands as to daily
ablutions which are theoretically laid down
and practically fulfilled in the Moham
medan, Hindoo, and other religions. . In
many monasteries the ideal of the pious
Christian is the man who does not wash
and clothe himself properly, who never
changes his malodorous gown, and who,
instead of regular work, fills up his useless
life with mechanical prayers, senseless
fasts, and so forth. As a special outgrowth
of this contempt of the body we have the
disgusting discipline of the flagellants and
other ascetics.
III.—One source of countless theoretical
errors and practical blemishes, of deplorable
crudity and privation, is found in the false
�Ì2Ó
the riddle oe the universe
anthropism of Christianity—that is, in the
unique position which it gives to man, as
the image of God, in opposition to all the
rest of nature. In this way it has con
tributed, not only to an extremely injurious
isolation from our glorious mother “nature,”
but also to a regrettable contempt of all
other organisms. Christianity has no
place for that well-known love of animals,
that sympathy with the nearly related and
friendly mammals (dogs, horses, cattle, etc.),
which is urged in the ethical teaching of
many of the older religions, especially
Buddhism. Whoever has spent much
, time in the south of Europe must have
often witnessed those frightful sufferings of
animals which fill us friends of animals
.vith the deepest sympathy and indignation.
And when one expostulates with these
brutal “Christians” on their cruelty, the
only answer is, with a laugh : “But the
beasts are not Christians.” Unfortunately
Descartes gave some support to the error
in teaching that man only has a sensitive
soul, not the animal.
How much more elevated is our monistic
ethics than the Christian in this regard !
Darwinism teaches us that we have
descended immediately from the primates,
and, in a secondary degree, from a long
series of earlier mammals, and that, there
fore, they are “our brothers”; physiology
informs us that they have the same nerves
and sense-organs as we, and the same
feelings of pleasure and pain.
No
sympathetic monistic scientist would ever
be guilty of that brutal treatment of animals
which comes so lightly to the Christian in
his anthropistic illusion—to the “ child of
the God of love.” Moreover, this Christian
contempt of nature on principle deprives
man of an abundance of the highest earthly
joys, especially of the keen, ennobling
enjoyment of nature.
IV.—Since, accordingto Christ’s teaching,
our planet is “ a vale of tears,” and our
earthly life is valueless and a mere prepara
tion for a better life to come, it has
succeeded in inducing men to sacrifice all
happiness on this side of eternity and make
light of all earthly goods. Among these
“ earthly goods,” in the case of the modern
civilised man, we must include the count
less great and small conveniences of
technical science, hygiene, commerce, etc.,
which have made modern life cheerful and
comfortable; we must include all the
gratifications of painting, sculpture, music,
and poetry, which flourished exceedingly
even during the Middle Ages (in spite of
its principles), and which we esteem as
“ideal pleasures”; we must include all
that invaluable progress of science, espe
cially of the study of nature, of which the
nineteen th century is j ustly proud. All these
“ earthly goods,” that have so high a value
in the eyes of the monist, are worthless—
nay, injurious—for the most part, according
to Christian teaching; the stern code of
Christian morals should look just as un
favourably on the pursuit of these pleasures
as our humanistic ethics fosters and
encourages it.
Once more, therefore,
Christianity is found to be an enemy to
civilisation, and the struggle which modern
thought and science are compelled to con
duct with it is, in this additional sense, a
“ cultur-kampfl
V.—Another of the most deplorable
aspects of Christian morality is its belittlement of the life of the family, of that
naturalliving together with our next of kin
which is just as necessary in the case of
man as in the case of all the higher social
animals. The family is justly regarded as
the “foundation of society,”and the healthy
life of the family is a necessary condition
of the prosperity of the State. Christ,
however, was of a very different opinion :
with his gaze ever directed to “the beyond,”
he thought as lightly of woman and the
family as of all other goods of “ this life.”
Of his infrequent contact with his parents
and sisters the Gospels have very little to
say ; but they are far from representing his
relations with his mother to have been so
tender and intimate as they are poetically
depicted in so many thousands of pictures.
He was not married himself. Sexual love,
the first foundation of the family union,
seems to have been regarded by Jesus as a
necessary evil.
His most enthusiastic
apostle, Paul, went still farther in the same
direction, declaring it to be better not to
marry than to marry: “It is good for a
man not to touch a woman.” If humanity
were to follow this excellent counsel, it
would soon be rid of all earthly misery and
suffering; it would be killed off by such a
“ radical cure ” within half a century.
VI.—As Christ never knew the love of
woman, he had no personal acquaintance
with that refining of man’s true nature that
comes only from the intimate life of man
with woman. The intimate sexual union,
on which the preservation of the human
race depends, is just as important on that
account as the spiritual penetration of the
two sexes, or the mutual complement which
they bring to each other in the practical
�OUR MONISTIC ETHICS
wants of daily life as well as in the highest
ideal functions of the soul. For man and
woman are two different organisms, equal
in worth, each having its characteristic
virtues and defects. As civilisation advanced,
this ideal value of sexual love was more
appreciated, and women held in higher
honour, especially among the Teutonic
races ; she is the inspiring source of the
highest achievements of art and poetiy.
But Christ was as far from this view as
nearly the whole of antiquity ; he shared
the idea that prevailed everywhere in the
Rast—that woman is subordinate to man,
and intercourse with her is “unclean.”
Long-suffering nature has taken a feaiful
revenge for this blunder ; its sad conse
quences are written in letters of blood in
the history of the papal Middle Ages.
The marvellous hierarchy of the Roman
Church, that never disdained any means of
strengthening its spiritual despotism, found
an exceptionally powerful instrument in the
manipulation of this “ unclean ” idea, and
in the promotion of the ascetic notion that
abstinence from intercourse with women is
a virtue of itself. In the first few centuries
after Christ a number of priests voluntarily
abstained from marriage, and the supposed
value of this celibacy soon rose to such a
degree that it was obligatory. In the
Middle Ages the seduction of women of
good repute and of their daughters by
Catholic priests (the confessional was an
active agency in the business) was a public
scandal; many communities, in order to
prevent such things, pressed for a license
of concubinage to be given to the clergy.
And it was done in many, and sometimes
very romantic, ways. Thus, for instance,
the canon law that the priest’s cook
should not be less than forty years old was
very cleverly “ explained ” in the sense that
the priest might have two cooks, one in the
presbytery, another without ; if one was
twenty-four and the other eighteen, that
made forty-two together—two years above
the prescribed age. At the Christian coun
cils, at which heretics were burnt alive, the
cardinals and bishops sat down with whole
troops of prostitutes. The private and
public debauchery of the Catholic clergy
was so scandalous and dangerous to the
commonwealth that there was a general
rebellion against it before the time of
Luther, and a loud demand for a “ refermation of the Church’ in head and
members.” It is well known that these
immoral relations still continue in Roman
Catholic lands, although more in secret.
127
Formerly, proposals were made from time
to time for the definite abrogation of celi
bacy, as was doue, for instance, in the
chambers of Baden, Bavaria, Hesse,
Saxony, and other lands ; but they have,
unfortunately, hitherto proved unavailing.
In the German Reichstag, in which the
ultramontane Centre is now proposing the
most ridiculous measures for the suppres
sion of sexual immorality, there is now no
party that will urge the abolition of celibacy
in the interest of public morality. The socalled “Freethought” Party and the utopian
social democracy coquette with the favour
of the Centre.
The modern state that would lift not
only the material, but the moral, life of its
people to a higher level is entitled, and
indeed bound, to sweep away such un
worthy and harmful conditions- The
obligatory celibacy of the Catholic clergy
is as pernicious and immoral as the prac
tice of auricular confession or the sale of
indulgences. All three have nothing what
ever to do with primitive Christianity. All
three are directly opposed to true Chris
tian morality. All three are disreputable
inventions of the Papacy, designed for the
sole purpose of strengthening its despotic
rule over the credulous masses and making
as much material profit as possible out of
them.
The Nemesis of history will sooner or
later exact a terrible account of the Roman
Papacy, and the millions who have been
robbed of their happiness by this degene
rate relig'ion will help to give it its death
blow in the coming twentieth century at
least in every truly civilised state. It has
been recently calculated that the number of
men who lost their lives in the Papal per
secutions of heretics, the Inquisition, the
Christian religious wars, etc., is much more
than 10,000,000. But what is this in com
parison with the tenfold greater number of
the unfortunate moral victims of the institu
tions and the priestly domination of the
degenerate Christian Church with the un
numbered millions whose higher mental
life was existinguished, whose conscience
was tortured, whose family life was des
troyed, by the Church? We may with
truth apply the words of Goethe, in his
Bride of Corinth :—
“Victims fall, nor lambs nor bulls,
But human victims numberless.”
In the great cidtur-kampf which must
go on as long as these sad conditions exist,
the first aim must be the absolute separation
�128
THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE
of Church and State. There shall be
a “ free Church in a free State ”—that is,
every Church shall be free in the practice
of its special worship and ceremonies, and
in the construction of its fantastic poetry
and superstitious dogmas—with the sole
condition that they contain no danger to
social order or morality. Then there will
be equal rights for all. Free societies and
monistic religious bodies shall be equally
tolerated, and just as free in their move
ments as Liberal Protestant and orthodox
ultramontane congregations. But for all
these “faithful” of the most diverse sects
religion will have to be a private concern.
The State shall supervise them and prevent
excesses ; but it must neither oppress nor
support them. Above all, the ratepayers
shall not be compelled to contribute to the
support and spread of a “ faith ” which they
honestly believe to be a harmful super
stition. In the United States such a com
plete separation of Church and State has
long been accomplished, greatly to the
satisfaction of all parties. They have also
the equally important separation of the
Church from the school; that is, undoubtedly,
a powerful element in the great advance
which science and culture have recently
made in America.
It goes without saying that this exclusion
of the Church from the school only refers
to its sectarian principles, the particular
form of belief which each Church has
evolved in the course of its life. This
sectarian education is a purely private
concern, and should be left to parents and
tutors, or to such priests or teachers as may
have the personal confidence of the parents.
Instead of the rejected sectarian instruc
tion, two important branches of education
will be introduced—monistic or humanist
ethics and comparative religion. During
the last thirty years an extensive literature
has appeared dealing with the new system
of ethics which has been raised on the
basis of modern science—especially evolu
tionary science. Comparative religion will
be a natural companion to the actual
elementary instruction in “ biblical history ”
and in the mythology of Greece and Rome.
Both of these will remain in the curriculum.
The reason for that is obvious enough ;
the whole of our painting and sculpture,
the chief branches of monistic aesthetics,
are intimately blended with the Christian,
Greek, and Roman mythologies. There
will only be this important difference—that
the Christian myths and legends will not
be taught as truths, but as poetic fancies,
like the Greek and Roman myths ; the
high value of the ethical and aesthetical
material they contain will not be lessened,
but increased, by this means. As regards
the Bible, the “ book of books ” will only
be given to the children in carefully-selected
extracts (a sort of “ school Bible ”); in this
way we shall avoid the besmirching of the
child’s imagination with the unclean stories
and passages which are so numerous in the
Old Testament.
Once the modern State has freed itself
and its schools from the fetters of the
Church, it will be able to devote more
attention to the improvement of education.
The incalculable value of a good system of
education has forced itself more and more
upon us as the many aspects of modern
civilised life have been enlarged and
enriched in the course of the century. But
the development of educational methods
has by no means kept pace with life in
general. The necessity for a comprehen
sive reform of our schools is making itself
felt more and more. On this question, too,
a number of valuable works have appeared
in the course of the last forty years. We
shall restrict ourselves to making a few
general observations which we think of
special importance.
1. In all education up to the present time
man has played the chief part, and especially
the grammatical study of his language ;
the study of nature was entirely neglected.
2. In the school of the future nature will
be the chief object of study; a man shall
learn a correct view of the world he lives
in ; he will not be made to stand outside
and opposed to nature, but be represented
as its highest and noblest product.
3. The study of the classical tongues
(Latin and Greek), which has hitherto
absorbed most of the pupil’s time and
energy, is indeed valuable ; but it will be
much restricted, and confined to the mere
elements (obligatory for Latin, optional for
Greek).
4. In consequence, modern languages
must be all the more cultivated in all
the higher schools (German, English,
and French to be obligatory, Italian
optional).
5. Historical instruction must pay more
attention to the inner mental and spiritual
life of a nation, and to the development of
its civilisation, and less to its external
history (the vicissitudes of dynasties, wars,
and so forth).
6. The elements of evolutionary science
must be learned in conjunction with
�SOLUTION OF THE WORLD-PROBLEMS
cosmology, geology must . go with geo
graphy, and anthropology with biology.
7. The first principles of biology must be
namiliar to every educated man; the modern
¡training in observation furnishes an attrac
tive introduction to the biological sciences
(anthropology, zoology, and botany). A
start must be made with descriptive system
(in conjunction with aetiology or bionomy) ;
the elements of anatomy and physiology to
be added later on.
8. The first principles of physics and
chemistry must also be taught, and their
exact establishment with the aid of mathe
matics.
9. Every pupil must be taught to draw
well, and from nature ; and, wherever it is
possible, the use of water colours. The
execution of drawings and of water-colour
sketches from nature (of flowers, animals,
landscapes, clouds, etc) not only excites
interest in nature and helps memory to
enjoy objects, but it gives the pupil his first
lesson in seeing correctly and understanding
what he has seen.
10. Much more care and time must be
devoted than has been done hitherto to
corporal exercise, to gymnastics and swim
ming ; but it is especially important to have
walks in common every week, and journeys
on foot during the holidays. The lesson in
observation which pupils obtain in this way
is invaluable.
The chief aim of higher education up to
the present time, in most countries, has
been a preparation for the subsequent pro
fession, and the acquisition of a certain
amount of information and direction for
civic duties. The school of the twentieth
century will have for its main object the
formation of independent thought, the clear
understanding of the knowledge acquired,
and an insight into the natural connection
of phenomena. If the modern State gives
every citizen a vote, it should also give him
the means of developing his reason .by a
proper education, in order to make a
rational use of his vote for the common
weal.
CHAPTER XX.
SOLUTION OF THE -WORLD
PROBLEMS
129
and chemical unity of the universe. Cosmic
metamorphoses. Evolution of the planetary
system. Analogy of the phylogenetic pro
cesses on the earth and on other planets.
Organic inhabitants of other heavenly bodies.
Periodic variation in the making of worlds.
II. Progress of geology and palaeontology.
Neptunism and Vulcanism. Theory of con
tinuity. III. Progress of physics and chemis
try. IV. Progress of biology. Cellular theory
and theory of descent. V. Anthropology.
Origin of man. General conclusion.
At the close of our philosophic study of the
riddles of the universe we turn with confi
dence to the answer to the momentous
question, How nearly have we approached
to a solution of them ? What is the value
of the immense progress which the nine
teenth century has made in the knowledge
of nature ? And what prospect does it open
out to us for the future, for the further
development of our system in the twentieth
century ? Every unprejudiced thinker who
impartially considers the solid progress of
our empirical science, and the unity and
clearness of our philosophic interpretation
of it, will share our view : the nineteenth
century has made greater progress in know
ledge of the world and in grasp of its nature
than all its predecessors; it has solved many
great problems that seemed insoluble a
hundred years ago ; it has opened out to us
new provinces of learning, the very exist
ence of which was unsuspected at the
beginning of the century. Above all, it has
put clearly before our eyes the lofty aim of
monistic cosmology, and has pointed out
the path which alone will lead us towards it
—the way of the exact empirical investiga
tion of facts, and of the critical, genetic
study of their causes. The great abstract
law of mechanical causality, of which our
cosmological law—the law of substance—is
but another and a concrete expression, now
rules the entire universe, as it does the
mind of man ; it is the steady, immovable
pole-star, whose clear light falls on our
path through the dark labyrinth of the
countless separate phenomena. To see the
truth of this more clearly, let us cast a brief
glance at the astonishing progress which
the chief branches of science have made in
this remarkable period.
I.—PROGRESS OF ASTRONOMY.
The study of the heavens is the oldest,
the study of man the youngest, of the
A glance at the progress of the nineteenth
sciences. With regard to himself and the
century in solving cosmic problems. I. Pro
gress of astronomy and cosmology. Physical I character of his being man only obtained a
�13°
THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE
clear knowledge in the second half of the
present century ; with regard to the starry
heavens, the motions of the planets, and so
on, he had acquired astonishing informa
tion 4,500 years ago. The ancient Chinese,
Hindoos, Egyptians, and Chaldæans in the
distant East knew more of the science of
the spheres than the majority of educated
Christians did in the West 4,000 years after
them. An eclipse of the sun was astrono
mically observed in China in the year 2697
B.C., and the plane of the ecliptic was deter
mined by means of a gnome 1,100 years B.C.,
while Christ himself had no knowledge
whatever of astronomy—indeed, he looked
out upon heaven and earth, nature and
man, from the very narrowest geocentric
and anthropocentric point of view. The
greatest advance of astronomy is generally,
and rightly, said to be the founding of the
heliocentric system of Copernicus, whose
famous work, De Revolutionibus Orbium
Celestium, of itself caused a profound revo
lution in the minds of thoughtful men. In
overthrowing the Ptolemaic system he
destroyed the foundation of the Christian
theory, which regarded the earth as the
centre of the universe and man as the god
like ruler of the earth. It was natural,
therefore, that the Christian clergy, with
the Pope at its head, should enter upon a
fierce struggle with the invaluable dis
covery of Copernicus. Yet it soon cleared
a path for itself, when Kepler and Galileo
grounded it on their true “ mechanics of
the heavens,” and Newton gave it a solid
foundation by his theory of gravitation
(1686).
A further great advance, comprehending
the entire universe, was the application of
the idea of evolution to astronomy. It was
done by the youthful Kant in 1755 ; in his
famous general natural history and theory
of the heavens he undertook the discussion,
not only of the “ constitution,” but also of
the “mechanical origin” of the whole world
structure on Newtonian principles. The
splendid Système du Monde of Laplace,
who had independently come to the same
conclusions as Kant on the world-problem,
gave so firm a basis to this new Mécanique
Celeste in 1796 that it looked as if nothing
entirely new of equal importance was left
to be discovered in the nineteenth century.
Yet here again it had the honour of opening
out entirely new paths and infinitely enlarg
ing our outlook on the universe. The
invention of photography and photometry,
and especially of spectrum analysis (in
i860 by Bunsen and Kirchoff), introduced
physics and chemistry into astronomy and
led to cosmological conclusions of the
utmost importance. It was now made
perfectly clear that matter is the same
throughout the universe, and that its
physical and chemical properties in the
most distant stars do not differ from those
of the earth under our feet.
The monistic conviction, which we thus
arrived at, of the physical and chemical
unity of the entire cosmos is certainly one
of the most valuable general truths which
we owe to astrophysics, the new branch of
astronomy which is honourably associated
with the name of Friedrich Zöllner. Not
less important is the clear knowledge we
have obtained that the same laws of
mechanical development which we have
on the earth rule throughout the infinite
universe. A vast, all-embracing metamor
phosis goes on continuously in all parts of
the universe, just as it is found in the
geological history of the earth ; it can be
traced in the evolution of its living inhabi
tants as surely as in the history of peoples
or in the life of each human individual.
In one part of space we perceive, with the
aid of our best telescopes, vast nebulae of
glowing, infinitely attenuated gas ; we see
in them the embryos of heavenly bodies,
billions of miles away, in the first stage of
their development.
In some of these
“stellar embryos” the chemical elements
do not seem to be differentiated yet, but
still to be buried in the homogeneous
primitive matter {prothyl) at an enormous
temperature (calculated to run into millions
of degrees); it is possible that the original
basic “substance” {vide p. 81) is not yet
divided into ponderable and imponderable
matter. In other parts of space we find
stars that have cooled down into glowing
fluid, and yet others that are cold and
rigid ; we can tell their stage of evolution
approximately by their colour. We find
stars that are surrounded with rings and
moons like Saturn ; and we recognise in
the luminous ring of the nebula the embryo
of a new moon, which has detached itself
from the mother-planet, just as the planet
was released from the sun.
Many of the stars, the light of which has
taken thousands of years to reach us, are
certainly suns like our own mother-sun,
and are girt about with planets and moons,
just as in our own solar system. We are
justified in supposing that thousands of
these planets are in a similar stage of
development to that of our earth—that is,
they have arrived at a period when the
�SOLUTION OF THE WORLD-PROBLEMS
temperature of the surface lies between the
freezing and boiling point of water, and so
permits the existence of water in its liquid
condition. That makes it possible that
carbon has entered into the same complex
combinations on those planets as it has
done on our earth, and that from its nitrogeneous compounds protoplasm has been
evolved—that wonderful substance which
alone, as far as our knowledge goes, is the
possessor of organic life. The moneia
(for instance, chromacea and bacteria),
which consist only of this primitive proto
plasm, and which arise by spontaneous
generation from these inorganic nitro
carbonates, may thus have entered upon
the same course of evolution on many
other planets as on our own ; first of all,
living cells of the simplest character would
be formed from their homogeneous proto
plasmic body by the separation of an inner
nucleus from the outer cell-body (cytostoma). Further, the analogy that we find
in the life of all cells—whether plasmodomous plant - cells or plasmophagous
animal cells—justifies the inference that the
further course of organic evolution on these
other planets has been analogous to that of
our own earth—always, of course, given
the same limits of temperature which
permit water in a liquid form. In the
glowing liquid bodies of the stars, where
water can only exist in the form of steam,
and on the cold extinct suns, where it can
only be in the shape of ice, such organic
life as we know is impossible.
The similarity of phylogeny, or the
analogy of organic evolution, which we
may thus assume in many stars which are
at the same stage of biogenetic develop
ment, naturally opens out a wide field of
brilliant speculation to the constructive
imagination. A favourite subject for such
speculation has long been the question
whether there are men, or living beings
like ourselves, perhaps much more highly
developed, in other planets ? Among the
many works which have sought to answer
the question, those of Camille Flammarion,
the Parisian astronomer, have recently
been extremely popular ; they are equally
distinguished by exuberant imagination
and brilliant style, and by a deplorable lack
of critical judgment and biological know
ledge. We may condense in the following
theses the present condition of our know
ledge on the subject :—
I.—It is very probable that a similar
biogenetic process to that of our own earth
is taking place on some of the other
planets of our solar system (Mars and
Venus), and on many planets of other solar
systems ; first simple raonera are formed
by spontaneous generation, and from these
arise unicellularprotists (first plasmodomous
primitive plants, and then plasmophagous
primitive animals).
II. —It is very probable that from these
unicellular protists arise, in the further
course of evolution, first social cell-com
munities (ccenobia),and subsequently tissue
forming plants and animals (metaphyta and
metazoa).
III. — It is also very probable that thallophyta (algae and fungi) were the first to
appear in the plant-kingdom, then diaphyta
(mosses and ferns), finally anthophyta
(gymnosperm and angiosperm flowering
plants).
IV. —It is equally probable that the bio
genetic process took a similar course in the
animal kingdom—that from the blastseads
(catallacta) first gastraeads were formed,
and from these lower animal forms (coelenteria) higher organisms (coelomaria) were
afterwards evolved.
V. —On the other hand, it is very question
able whether the different stems of these
higher animals (and those of- the higher
plants as well) run through the same course
of development on other planets as on our
earth.
VI. —In particular, it is wholly uncertain
whether there are vertebrates on other
planets, and whether, in the course of their
phyletic development, taking millions of
years, mammals are formed as on earth,
reaching their highest point in the forma
tion of man ; in such an event, millions of
changes would have to be just the same in
both cases.
VII. —-It is much more probable, on the
contrary, that other planets have produced
other types of the higher plants and animals,
which are unknown on our earth ; perhaps
from some higher animal stem, which is
superior to the vertebrate in formation,
higher beings have arisen who far transcend
us earthly men in intelligence.
VII I.—The possibility of our ever entering
into direct communication with such inhabi
tants of other planets seems to be excluded
by the immense distance of our earth from
the other heavenly bodies, and the absence
of the requisite atmosphere in the inter
vening space, which contains only ether.
But while many of the stars are probably
in a similar stage of biogenetic development
to that of our earth (for the last 100,000,000
years at least), others have advanced far
»
�132
THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE
beyond this stage, and, in their planetary
old age, are hastening towards their end—
the same end that inevitably awaits our own
globe. The radiation of heat into space
gradually lowers the temperature until all
the water is turned into ice; that is the end
of all organic life. The substance of the
rotating mass contracts more and more ;
the rapidity of its motion gradually falls off.
The orbits of the planets and of their moons
grow narrower. At length the moons fall
upon the planets, and the planets, are drawn
into the sun that gave them birth. The
collision again produces an enormous
quantity of heat. The pulverised mass of
the colliding bodies is distributed freely
through infinite space, and the eternal
drama of sun-birth begins afresh.
The sublime picture which modern astro
physics thus unveils before the mind's eye
shows us an eternal birth and death of
countless heavenly bodies, a periodic change
from one to the other of the different cosmogenetic conditions, which we observe
side by side in the universe. While the
embryo of a new world is being formed
from a nebula in one corner of the vast
stage of the universe, another has already
condensed into a rotating sphere of liquid
fire in some far distant spot; a third has
already cast off rings at its equator, which
round themselves into planets ; a fourth
has become a vast sun whose planets have
formed a secondary retinue of moons, and
so on. And between them are floating
about in space myriads of smaller bodies,
meteorites, or shooting-stars, which cross
and re-cross the paths of the planets,
apparently like lawless vagabonds, and of
which a great number fall on to the planets
every day. Thus there is a continuous but
slow change in the velocities and the orbits
of the revolving spheres. The frozen moons
fall on to the planets, the planets on to
their suns. Two distant suns, perhaps
already stark and cold, rush together with
inconceivable force and melt away into
nebulous clouds. And such prodigious
heat is generated by the collision that the
nebula is once more raised to incandes
cence, and the old drama begins again.
Yet in this “perpetual motion” the infinite
substance of the universe, the sum-total of
its matter and energy, remains eternally
unchanged, and we have an eternal repeti
tion in infinite time of the periodic dance
of the worlds, the metamorphosis of the
cosmos that ever returns to its startingpoint. Over all rules the law of sub
stance.
II.—PROGRESS OF GEOLOGY.
The earth and its origin were much later
than the heavens in becoming the object of
scientific investigation. The numerous
ancient and modern cosmogonies do,
indeed, profess to give us as good an insight
into the origin of the earth as into that of
the heavens; but the mythological raiment,
in which all alike are clothed, betrays their
origin in poetic fancy. Among the count
less legends of creation which we find in
the history of religions and of thought
there is one that soon took precedence of
all the rest—the Mosaic story of creation
as told in the first book of the Hexateuch.
It did not exist in its present form until
long after the death of Moses (probably not
until 800 years afterwards) ; but its sources
are much older, and are to be found for the
most part in Assyrian, Babylonian, and
Hindoo legends. This Hebrew legend of
creation obtained its great influence through
its adoption into the Christian faith and
its consecration as the “ Word of God.”
Greek philosophers had already, five
hundred years before Christ, explained the
natural origin of the earth in the same
way as that of other cosmic bodies.
Xenophanes of Colophon had even recog
nised the true character of the fossils which
were afterwards to prove of such moment;
the great painter, Leonardo da Vinci, of
the fifteenth century, also explained the
fossils as the petrified remains of animals
which had lived in earlier periods of the
earth’s history. But the authority of the
Bible, especially the myth of the deluge,
prevented any further progress in this
direction, and ensured the triumph of the
Mosaic legend until about the middle of
the last century. It survives even at the
present day among orthodox theologians.
However, in the second half of the
eighteenth century scientific inquiry into
the structure of the crust of the earth set to
work independently of the Mosaic story,
and it soon led to certain conclusions as to
the origin of the earth. The founder of
geology, Werner of Freiberg, thought that
all the rocks were formed in water, while
Voigt and Hutton (1788) rightly contended
that only the stratified, fossil-bearing rocks
had had an aquatic origin, and that the
Vulcanic or Plutonic mountain ranges had
been formed by the cooling down of molten
matter.
The heated conflict of these “Neptunian”
and “ Plutonic ” schools was still going on
during the first three decades of the present
�SOLUTION OF THE WORLD-PROBLEMS
century; it was only settled when Karl
Hoff (1822) established the principle of
** actualism,” and Sir Charles Lyell applied
it with signal success to the entire natural
evolution of the earth. The Principles of
Geology of Lyell (1830) secured the full
recognition of the supremely important
theory of continuity in the formation of the
earth’s crust, as opposed to the catastrophic
theory of Cuvier.1 Palaeontology, which
had been founded by Cuvier’s work on
fossil bones (1812), was of the greatest
service to geology; by the middle of the
present century it had advanced so far that
the chief periods in the history of the earth
and its inhabitants could be established.
The comparatively thin crust of the earth
was now recognised with certainty to be
the hard surface formed by the cooling of
an incandescent fluid planet, which still
continues its slow, unbroken course of
refrigeration and condensation.
The
crumpling of the stiffened crust, “the
reaction of the molten fiery contents on
the cool surface,” and especially the un
ceasing geological action of water, are the
natural causes which are daily at work in
the secular formation of the crust of the
earth and its mountains.
To the brilliant progress of modern
geology we owe three extremely important
results of general import.. In the first place,
it has excluded from the story of the earth
all question of miracle, all question of
supernatural agencies, in the building of
the mountains and the shaping of the
continents. In the second place, our idea
of the length of the vast period of time
which has been absorbed in their formation
has been considerably enlarged. We now
know that the huge mountains of the
palaeozoic, mesozoic, and cenozoic forma
tions have taken, not thousands, but
millions of years in their growth. In the
third place, we now know that all the
countless fossils that are found in those
formations are not “ sports of nature,” as
was believed 150 years ago, but the petrified
remains of organisms that lived in earlier
periods of the earth’s history, and arose
by gradual transformation from a long
series of ancestors.
III.—PROGRESS OF PHYSICS AND
CHEMISTRY.
The many important discoveries which
...1 Cf- The Natural History of Creation, chaps,
iii., vi., xv., and xvi.
133
these fundamental sciences have made
during the nineteenth century are so well
known, and their practical application in
every branch of modern life is so obvious,
that we need not discuss them in detail
here. In particular, the application of
steam and electricity has given to our nine
teenth century its characteristic “machinist
stamp.” But the colossal progress of in
organic and organic chemistry is not less
important. All branches of modern civili
sation—medicine and technology, industry
and agriculture, mining and forestry, land
and water transport—have been so much
improved in the course of the century,
especially in the second half, that our
ancestors of the eighteenth century would
find themselves in a new world, could they
return. But more valuable and important
still is the great theoretical expansion of
our knowledge of nature, which we owe to
the establishment of the law of substance.
Once Lavoisier (1789) had established the
law of the persistence of matter, and Dalton
(1808) had founded his new atomic theory
with its assistance, a way was open to
modern chemistry along which it has
advanced with a rapidity and success
beyond all anticipation. The same must
be said of physics in respect of the law of
the conservation of energy. Its discovery
by Robert Mayer (1842) and Hermann
Helmholtz (1847) inaugurated for this
science also a new epoch of the most
fruitful development; for it put physics in
a position to grasp the universal unity of
the forces of nature and the eternal play of
natural processes, in which one force may
be converted into another at any moment.
IV.—PROGRESS OF BIOLOGY.
The great discoveries which astronomy
and geology have made during the nine
teenth century, and which are of extreme
importance to our whole system, are,
nevertheless, far surpassed by those of
biology. Indeed, we may say that the
greater part of the many branches which
this comprehensive science of organic life
has recently produced have seen the light
in the course of the present century. As
we saw in the first section, during the
century all branches of anatomy and
physiology, botany and zoology, ontogeny
and phylogeny, have been so marvellously
enriched by countless discoveries that the
present condition of biological science is
immeasurably superior to its condition a
hundred years ago. That applies first of
�134
THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE
all quantitatively to the colossal growth of
our positive information in all those
provinces and their several parts. But it
applies with even greater force qualitatively
to the deepening of our comprehension of
biological phenomena, and our knowledge
of their efficier|t causes. In this Charles
Darwin (1859) takes the palm of victory ;
by his theory of selection he has solved the
great problem of “ organic creation,” of the
natural origin of the countless forms of life
by gradual transformation. It is true that
Lamarck had recognised fifty years earlier
that the mode of this transformation lay in
the reciprocal action of heredity and adap
tation. . However, Lamarck was hampered
by his ignorance of the principle of selec
tion, and of that deeper insight into the
true nature of organisation which was only
rendered possible after the founding of the
theory of evolution and the cellular theory.
When we collated the results of these and
other disciplines, and found the key to their
harmonious interpretation in the ancestral
development of living beings, we succeeded
in establishing the monistic biology, the
principles of which I have endeavoured to
lay down securely in my General Morpho
logy.
V.—PROGRESS OF ANTHROPOLOGY.
In a certain sense, the true science of
man, rational anthropology, takes pre
cedence of every other science. The
saying of the ancient sage, “ Man, know
thyself,” and that other famous maxim,
“ Man is the measure of all things,” have
been accepted and applied from all time.
And yet this science—taking it in its widest
sense—has languished longer than all
other sciences in the fetters of tradition
and superstition. We saw in the first
section how slowly and how late the science
of the human organism was developed.
One of its chief branches—embryology —
was not firmly established until 1828 (by
Baer), and another, of equal importance—
the cellular theory—until 1838 (by Schwann).
It was even later still when the answer was
given to the “ question of all questions,”
the great riddle of the origin of man.
Although Lamarck had pointed out the
only path to a correct solution of it in
1809, and had affirmed the descent of man
from the ape, it fell to Darwin to establish
the affirmation securely fifty years after
wards, and to Huxley to collect the most
important proofs of it in 1863, in his Place
of Man in Nature. I have myself made
the first attempt in my Anthropogeny (18747
to present in their historical connection the
entire series of ancestors through which
our race has been slowly evolved from the
animal kingdom in the course of many
millions of years.
CONCLUSION.
The number of world-riddles has been
continually diminishing in the course of
the nineteenth century through the afore
said progress of a true knowledge of nature.
Only one comprehensive riddle of the
universe now remains—-the problem of
substance. What is the real character of
this mighty world-wonder that the realistic
scientist calls Nature or the Universe,
the idealist philosopher calls Substance 01
the Cosmos, the pious believer calls Creator
or God ? Can we affirm to-day that the
marvellous progress of modern cosmology
has solved this “problem of substance,” or
at least that it has brought us nearer to the
solution ?
The answer to this final question naturally
varies considerably according to the stand
point of the philosophic inquirer and his
empirical acquaintance with the real world.
We grant at once that the innermost
character of nature is just as little under
stood by us as it was by Anaximander and
Empedocles 2,400 years ago, by Spinoza
and Newton 200 years ago, and by Kant
and Goethe 100 years ago. We must even
grant that this essence of substance
becomes more mysterious and enig
matic the deeper we penetrate into the
knowledge of its attributes, matter and
energy, and the more thoroughly we study
its countless phenomenal forms and their
evolution. We do not know the “ thing in
itself” that lies behind these knowable
phenomena. But why trouble about this
enigmatic “ thing in itself” when we have
no means of investigating it, when we do
not even clearly know whether it exists or
not? Let us, then, leave the fruitless
brooding over this ideal phantom to the
“ pure metaphysician,” and let us instead,
as “real physicists,’’ rejoice in the immense
progress which has been actually made by
our monistic philosophy of nature.
Towering above all the achievements and
discoveries of the century we have the
great, comprehensive “ law of substance,”
the fundamental law of the constancy of
matter and force. The fact that substance
is everywhere subject to eternal movement
and transformation gives it the character
�SOLUTION OF THE WORLD-PROBLEMS
also of the universal law of evolution. As
this supreme law has been firmly established,
and all others are subordinate to it, we
arrive at a conviction of the universal unity
of nature and the eternal validity of its
laws. From the gloomy problem of sub
stance we have evolved the clear law of
substance. The monism of the cosmos
which we establish thereon proclaims the
absolute dominion of “the great eternal
iron laws” throughout the universe. It
thus shatters, at the same time, the three
central dogmas of the dualistic philosophy
—the personality of God, the immortality
of the soul, and the freedom of the will.
Many of us certainly view with sharp
regret, or even with a profound sorrow, the
death of the gods that were so much to our
parents and ancestors. We must console
ourselves in the words of the poet :
“The times are changed, old systems,fall,
And new life o’er their ruins dawns.”
The older view of idealistic dualism is
breaking up with all its mystic and anthropistic dogmas ; but upon the vast field of
ruins rises, majestic and brilliant, the new
sun of our realistic monism, which reveals
to us the wonderful temple of nature in all 1
its beauty. In the sincere cult of “ the true,
the good, and the beautiful,”.which is the
heart of our new monistic religion, we find
ample compensation for the anthropistic
ideals of “ God, freedom, and immortality ”
■which we have lost.
Throughout this discussion of the riddles
of the universe I have clearly defined my
consistent monistic position and its oppo
sition to the still prevalent dualistic theory.
In this I am supported by the agreement
of nearly all modern scientists who have the
courage to accept a rounded philosophical
system. I must not, however, take leave of
my readers without pointing out in a con
ciliatory way that this strenuous opposition
may be toned down to a certain degree on
clear and logical reflection—may, indeed, I
135
even be converted into a friendly harmony.
In a thoroughly logical mind, applying the
highest principles with equal force in the
entire field of the cosmos—in both organic
and inorganic nature — the antithetical
positions of theism and pantheism, vitalism
and mechanism, approach until they touch
each other. Unfortunately, consecutive
thought is a rare phenomenon in nature.
The great majority of philosophers are
content to grasp with the right hand the
pure knowledge that is built on experience,
but they will not part with the mystic faith
based on revelation, to which they cling
with the left. The best type of this contra
dictory dualism is the conflict of pure and
practical reason in the critical philosophy
of the most famous of modern thinkers,
Immanuel Kant.
On the other hand, the number is always
small of the thinkers who will boldly reject
dualism and embrace pure monism. That
is equally true of consistent idealists and
theists, and of logical realists and pantheists.
However, the reconciliation of these apparent
antitheses, and, consequently, the advance
towards the solution of the fundamental
riddle of the universe, is brought nearer to
us every year in the ever-increasing growth
of our knowledge of nature. We may,
therefore, express a hope that the twentieth
century will complete the task of resolving
the antitheses, and, by the construction of
a system of pure monism, spread far and
wide the long-desired unity of world-con
ception. Germany’s greatest thinker and
poet, whose 150th anniversary will soon be
upon us—Wolfgang Goethe—gave this
“philosophy of unity” a perfect poetic
expression, at the very beginning of the
century, in his immortal poems, Faust,
Prometheus, and God and the World:—-
THE END
“ By eternal laws
Of iron ruled,
Must all fulfil
The cycle of
Their destiny.”
�INDEX
Abiogenesis, 91, 130
Abortive organs, 94
Accidents, 77
Acrania, 59
Actio in distans, 77
Actualism, 88
ASsthesis, 80
Affinity, 79
Altruism, 124
Amphibia, 59
Amphimixis, 50
Amphitheism, 99
Ananke, 97
Anatomy, 8, etc.
----- Comparative, 9
Anaximander, 103, 134
Anthropism, 4
Anthropistic illusion, 5
----- world-theory, 7
Anthropocentric dogma, 5
Anthropogeny, 30
Anthropolatric dogma, 5
Anthropomorphic dogma, 5
Anthropomorpha, 13
Apes, 13, 60
----- Anthropoid, 13
Archaeus, 15
Archigony, 91
Aristotle, 8, 95
Association, Centres of, 65
----- of ideas, 43
----- of presentations, 43
Astronomy, Progress of, 129
Astrophysics, 130
Atavism, 51
Athanatism, 67
Athanatistic illusions, 73
Atheism, 103
Atheistic science, 92
Atom, The, 79
Atomism, 79
Atomistic consciousness, 63
Attributes of ether, 80
----- of substance, 77
Augustine of Hippo, 46
Auricular confession, 113, 127
Autogony, 91
Baer (Carl Ernst), 20, 114
Bastian (Adolf), 37
Beginning of the world, 85, 88
Bible, The, 100, 128
Biogenesis, 91
Biogenetic law, 29, 51
Bismarck, 118
Blastoderm, 53, 55
Blastosphere, 55
Blastula, 55
Bruno (Giordano), 105, 112
Büchner (Ludwig), 33
Buddhism, 116
Calvin, 46
Canonical gospels, no
Carbonas creator, 91
----- theory, 91
Catarrhinæ, 13
Catastrophic theory, 26
Categorical imperative, 124
Causes, Efficient, 92
----- Final, 92
Celibacy, 126
Cell-love, 49
----- state, 56
----- soul, 54
----- community, soul of the, 55
Cellular pathology, 18
----- physiology, 17
----- psychology, 54, 63
----- theory, 9
Cenogénesis, 29
----- of the psyche, 51
Chance, 97
Chemicotropism, 23, 49
Chordula, 23
Chorion, 24
Church and school, 128
---- - and State, 128
Christ, Father of, 116
Christian art, 120
----- contempt of the body, 125
------------ animals, 126
------------ civilisation, 126
------------ the family, 126
------------ nature, 126
------------ self, 125
------------ woman, 126
------ ethics, 125
Christianity, 123
Cnidaria, 57
Conception, 22
Concubinage of the clergy, 127 ,
Confession of faith, 108
Consciousness, 60
----- Animal, 62
----- Atomistic, 63
----- Biological, 63
----- Cellular, 63
�INDEX
Consciousness, Development of, 66
----- - Dualistic, 64
----- Human, 61
----- Monistic, 65
----- Neurological, 62
----- Ontogeny of, 66
----- Pathology of, 65
----- Physiological, 64
----- Transcendental, 64
Constancy of energy, 75, 82
----- matter, 75
Constantine the Great, 112
Constellations of substance, 77
Conventional lies, 114
Copernicus, 9, 113, 130
Cosmic immortality, 68
Cosmogonies, 83
Cosmological dualism, 91
----- creationism, 83
----- law, 75 _
------ perspective, 6
Cosmos, The, 81
Creation, 26, 29, 83
Creation, Dualistic, 84
----- Cosmological, 84
----- Heptameral, 84
----- Individual, 84
----- Myths of, 84
----- Periodic, 84
----- Trialistic, 84
Cultur-kampf, 118
Cuvier, 26
Cyclostomata, 59
Cytology, 10
Cytopsyche, 54
Cytula, 23
Darwin (Charles), 28, etc.
Decidua, 24
Deduction, 6
Demonism, 98
Descartes, 34, 35, 126
Descent of the ape, 30
- ---- of man, 31
----- Theory of, 27
Design, 94
------in nature, 92
------in organisms, 94
----- in selection, 93
Destruction of heavenly bodies, 86
Determinists, 47
Diaphragm, 11
Division of labour in matter, 82
Draper, no, 118
Dualism, 7
Du Bois Reymond, 6, 64, 84
Du Prel (Carl), 108
Duty, Feeling of, 124
Dynamodes, 77
Dysteleology, 94
Echinodermata, 22
Ectoderm, 57
----- Sense-cells in the, 104
Egoism, 124
•
Elements, Chemical, 79
------------ System of the, 79
Embryo, Human, 23
Embryology, 19
Embryonic psychogeny, 51
----- - sleep, 52
Empedocles, 8, 80
Encyclica (of Pius IX.), 115
End of the world, 88
Energy, Kinetic, 82
----- Principle of, 82
----- Potential, 82
----- Specific, 105
Entelecheia, 95
Entoderm, 57
Entropy of the universe, 88
Epigenesis, 20, 48
Ergonomy of matter, 82
Eternity of the world, 86
Ether, 80
Etheric souls, 71
Ethics, Fundamental law of, 124
Evolution, Theory of, 19, 85, 186
----- Chief element in, 95
Experience, 6
Extra-mundane God, 102
Faith, Confession of, 108
----- of our fathers, 108
Family, The, and Christianity, 126
Fate, 95
Fechner, 35
Fecundation, 22
Fetishism, 98
Feuerbach (Ludwig), 105
Flecbsig, 65
Foetal membranes, 24
Folk-psychology, 37
Forces, Conversion of, 82
Frederick the Great, 69, 112
Galen, 8, 15
Gaseous souls, 71
----- vertebrate, 102
Gastræa, 57
----- Theory of the, 21
Gastræads, 57
Gastrula, 22
Gegenbaur, 9, 11
Generation, Theory of, 20
Genus, 26
Geology, Periods of, 96
----- Progress of, 132
Germinal disc, 20
Gills, 23
God, 98
—*- the Father, 98
----- the Son, 98, 116
Goethe, 8, etc.
Goethe’s monism, 117
Golden Rule, The, 124
Gospels, no
Gravitation, Theory of, 77
Gut-layer, 57
137
�138
Haller, 15
Harvey, 15
Helmholtz (Hermann), 76, 82, 114
Heredity, Psychic, 49
Hertz (Heinrich), 80
Hippocrates, 8
Histology, 9
Histopsyche, 56
Hoff (Carl), 89
Holbach (Paul), 69
Holy Ghost, 98, 115
Humboldt (Alexander), 122
Hydra, 57
Hylozoism, 103
Hypothesis, 106
Iatrochemicists, 16
Iatromechanicists, 16
Ideal of beauty, 120
----- of truth, 119
----- of virtue, 120
Ignorabimus, 64
Immaculate conception, 115
Immaterial substance, 78
Immortality of animals, 71
----- of the human soul, 67
----- Personal, 68
----- of unicellùlar organisms, 67
Imperfection of nature, 94
Imponderable matter, 80
Impregnation, 22
Indeterminists, 47
Induction, 6
Indulgences, 127
Infallibility of the Pope, 115
Instinct, 37, 44
Intellect, 45
Intramundane God, 102
Introspective psychology, 34
Islam, 101
Janssen (Johannes), 112
Jehovah, 100
Journeys on foot, 129
Kant, 92, 123, etc.
Kant’s metamorphosis, 33
Kinetic energy, 82
----- theory of Substance, 77
Kdlliker, 10, 17
Lamarck, 27, etc.
Lamettrie, 69
Landscape-painting, 121
Language, 45
----- - Study of, 128
Last judgment, 74
Lavoisier, 75, 114
Leap of the Gospels, Miraculous, no
Leydig, 10
Life, Definition of, 14
Limits of our knowledge, 65
Love, 126
----- of animals, 126
----- of neighbour, 124
INDEX
Love of self, 125
Lucretius Carus, 103
Lunarism, 100
Luther, 113
Lyell, 28, 89
Madonna, Cult of the, 101,116
Malphigi, 19
Mammals, n, etc.
Mammary glands, II
Man, ancestors of, 29
Marsupials, n, 30
Mass, 79
Materialism, 78
Mayer (Robert), 76, 114, 133
Mechanism, 92
Mechanical causality, 129
----- explanation, 92
----- theory of heat, 88
Mediterranean religions, The, 100
Memory, Conscious, 43
----- Cellular, 43
----- Histionic, 43
----- Unconscious, 43
Mephistopheles, 99
Metabolism, 82
Metamorphoses of the cosmos, 132
—-— of philosophers, 33
Metaphyta, 56
Metasitism, 55
Metazoa, 21, 56
Middle Ages, hi, 127
Mixotheism, 101
Mohammedanism, 101
Mohr (Friedrich), 76
Monera, 91, 130
Monism, 7, and passim
----- of energy, 90
----- of the cosmos, 90
----- of Spinoza, 117
Monistic anthropogeny, 90
----- art, 121
----- biogeny, 89
----- cosmology, 130
----- churches, 122
----- ethics, 123
----- geogeny, 88
Monotheism, 99
Moon-worship, 100
Monotrema, n
Moral order of the universe, 96
Morula, 55
Mosaism, 100
Muller (Johannes), 9, 16, 93, 114
Mythology of the soul, 48
Navel-chord, 25
Natural religion, 122
Neo-Kantians, 123
Neovitalism, 94
Neptunian geology, 132
Neuromuscular cells, 41
Neuroplasm, 32, 39
Neuropsyche, 58
Nomocracy, 4
�INDEX
Ontogenetic psychology, 37
Ontological creationism, 83
----- methods, 89
Orbits of the heavenly bodies, 86
Origin of movement, 6, 86
-——■ of feeling, 6, 86
Ovary, 22
Palingenesis, 29
----- of the psyche, 51
Pandera (the Father of Christ), 116
Pantheism, 102
Papacy, ill
Papal ethics, 127
Papiomorpha, 13
Paul, ill, 126
----- Epistles of, 120
Paulinism, ill
Pedicle of the allantois, 25
Perpetual motion, 87
Persistence of force, 75, 82
----- of matter, 75
Phroneta, 104
Phylogeny, 25, 29
----- Systematic, 29
----- of the apes, 17
Physiology, 14
Phytopsyche, 56
Pithecanthropus, 31
Pithecoid theory, 29
Pithecometra-thesis, 25, 30
Placenta, II, 24
Placentals, II, 30
Plasmodoma, 55
Plasmogony, 91
Plasmophaga, 55
Plato, 35, 70
Plato’s theory of ideas, 95
Platodaria, 57
Platodes, 57
Platyrrhinse, 13
Pneuma zoticon, 14
Polytheism, 98
Ponderable matter, 79
Preformation theory, 20
Primaria, 12
Primates, 12, 31
Primitive Christianity, I IO
----- gut, 22, 57
Prodynamis, 77
Progaster, 57
Proplacentals, 30
Prosimise, 12
Prostoma, 57
Prothyl, 79
Protoplasm, 32
Protozoa, 21
Provertebrae, 59
Psychade-theory, 63
Psyche, 31
Psychogeny, 48
----- Phyletic, 53
----- Post-embryonic, 52
Psychology, 31, seqq.
----- Ontogenetic, 37
Psychology, Phylogenetic, 37
Psychomonism, 80
Psychophysics, 34
Psychoplasm, 32, 39
Pseudo-Christianity, 114
Pupa, Sleep of the, 52
Pyknosis, 77
Pyknotic theory of substance, 77
Reason, 6, 44
Reflex action, 40
----- arches, 41
Reformation, The, 113
Religion a private concern, 128
Remak, 21
Revelation, 109
Reversion, 51
Romance of the Virgin Mary, 116
Romanes, 38
Rudimentary organs, 93
Saints, ioi
Scale of emotion, 45
----- - of memory, 43
----- of movement, 39
----- of presentation, 42
----- of reason, 43
■----- - of reflex action, 40
----- of will, 46
Scatulation theory, 20
Schleiden, 10, 17
School, Reform of the, 128
----- and Church, 128
------ and State, 128
Schwann, 10, 17
Selachii, 59
Selection, Theory of, 28
Self-consciousness, 61
Sense-knowledge, 105
----- organs, 104
Senses, Philosophy of the, 105
Sentiment, 7, 117
Siebold, 10
Simiae, 12
Social instincts, 124
----- duties, 124
Solarism, 99
Solar systems, 85, 130
Sources of knowledge, 104
Soul, 31, seqq.
■ ----- Apparatus of the, 58
----- - Blending of the, 50
------ Creation of the, 48
----- Division of the, 48
------ Etheric, 71
■ ----- Gaseous, 71
----- History of the, 60
------ Ilistionic, 56
----- Hydra, 57
----- Liquid, 71
------ Life of the, 32
• ----- Mammal, 60
■ ----- Nerve, 58
• ---- - Origin of the, 48
• ----- Personal, 58
139
■•
�140
Soul, of the plant, 56
----- Solid, 71
----- Substance of the, 70
------ Transmigration of the, 48
Space and time, 86
----- Infinity of, 86
----- Reality of, 86
Species, 26
Spectrum analysis, 86
Spermarium, 22
Spermatozoa, 22
Spinal cord, 59
Spinoza, 8, 76, 103
Spirit-rapping, 108
------ world, 78
Spiritism, 108
Spiritualism, 8
Sponge, Soul of the, 57
Stem-cell, 22, 49, 54
Stimulated movement, 40, 41
Stimuli, Conduction of, 56
Strauss (David), 109, hi
Struggle for life, 96
Substance, 76
------ Law of, 75, etc.
----- Structure of, 81
Superstition, 107
Siiss (Eduard), 89
Syllabus, 115
Synodikon (of Pappus), 310
Table-turning, 108
Teleology, 91
Teleological explanation, 91
Tetrápoda, n
Thanatism, 67
----- primary, 68
----- secondary, 68
Theism, 98
Theocracy, 3
Theory, 106
Thought, Organs of, 45, 65, 104
Time and space, 86
INDEX
Time and Space, Reality of, 86
Tissue, Theory of, 9
----- forming animals, 56
----- forming plants, 56
Transformism, 27
Trimurti, 99
Trinity, Dogma of the, 99
—— Monistic, 119
Triplotheism, 99
Tropesis, 80
Tropismata, 45
Tunicata, 59
Turbellaria, 57
Ultramontanism, iio
Understanding, 44
Unity of Natural Forces, 82
---- — of Substance, 76
Universum Perpetuum Mobile, 87
Uterus, 12
Vaticanism,
hi
Vertebrates, 10, passim
Verworn (Max), 17, 41
Vesalius, 9
Vibration, Theory of, 77
Virchow, 10, 18
Virchow’s Metamorphosis, 33
Vital Force, 15, 93
Vitalism, 15, 93
Vivisection, 15
Vogt (J. E.), 77
Vogt (Carl), 33
Water-colour drawing, 129
Weismann, 67
Will, Liberty of the, 46
----- Scale of the, 46
Wolff (C. F.), 20
Woman and Christianity, 126
World-consciousness, 61
------riddles, Number of, 6
Wundt (Wilhelm), 36, 61
*
I
I
�
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The riddle of the universe at the close of the nineteenth century
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Haeckel, Ernst Heinrich Philipp August [1834-1919]
McCabe, Joseph [1867-1955] (tr)
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Text
NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
OUTLINE
AN
EVOLUTIONARY
ETHICS
BY
C.
COHEN.
Vice-President National Secular Society.
PUBLISHED
BY
R. FORDER,
28,
STONECUTTER STREET.
LONDON, E.C.
1896.
�PREFACE.
The object of the present essay is disclosed in the title;
it is that of presenting, in as few words as possible, an
outline of a System of Ethics based upon the doctrine of
Evolution.
Accordingly, I have avoided entering into a
discussion of the value of any of the special virtues—to do
so would require a volume, not a pamphlet—being content
with putting forward what I conceive to be the essential
principles of a Science of Ethics, leaving it for those who
are interested, to pursue the subject further. There is,
therefore, no attempt at completeness in this essay ; it is
meant as an outline, and an introduction, nothing more.
Nor is there in any sense, a claim of originality on behalf
of the ideas suggested ; that, again, has not been my object.
I doubt whether there is a single original idea throughout
the whole. I have simply aimed at putting in a small
compass, and in plain language, conclusions that are at pre
sent locked up in bulky and expensive volumes, which
the average individual has neither time nor opportunity
to consult or study 'systematically.
Students of Mr.
Herbert Spencer’s Works, Mr. Leslie Stephen’s “ Science
of Ethics,” and Mr. Henry Sidgwick’s “ Methods of Ethics,”
will recognise readily how much I am indebted to these
writers.
‘
Where direct quotations occur, I have named the
sources from which they are drawn ; to have particularized
my indebtedness further would have meant more notes
than text. My one object has been to place the subject
in a brief, clear, and convincing light; if I have succeeded
in doing that, I am quite content.
�B2J347
I.—Introductory.
In endeavouring to carry out the oracular utterance :
*' Man know thyself,” there is no branch of study at once
so interesting and so important, as that which relates to
■conduct. At bottom, all our social, religious, and political
■questions find their supreme justification or condemna
tion in their influence upon human behaviour. A question
that had no reference to conduct, one that could not
possibly influence it for better or worse, might interest
the mere spinner of words, but to the earnest thinker
■or sober reformer, it would be valueless. It is true that
the seeker after knowledge has not always an ethical end
as the conscious object of his studies ; he—to use a com
mon phrase—“ seeks knowledge for its own sake ; ” but
it is clear, on reflection, that the only reason why increased
knowledge should be regarded as of value, is, that it will
enable us to better adjust our actions to the varying
circumstances of life. The fears often expressed, lest
some new theory of knowledge should weaken the force
■of accepted moral precepts, is, again, a tacit admission of
“ the sovereignty of ethics; ” and, when genuine, may
be regarded with a certain amount of favour. Even un
willingness to depart from old forms and customs, when
not pushed too far is good ; a querulous dissatisfaction,
with existing conditions being quite as foolish as a slavish
adherence to obsolete customs.
But customs and ideas, be they ever so firmly rooted,
reach, eventually, a stage when they are either summarily
dismissed, or are called upon to show decisive proof of
their title to our respect and obedience. This fate, which
sooner or later overtakes all institutions has in our own
day beset ethics; and at the great bar of human reason,
our ethical codes and teachers are called upon to show
reason why we should still follow their lead. In the
region of morals, as elsewhere, old lights are fading and
new ones are beginning to dawn ; and, perhaps, the
fading of the old lights would be matter for unalloyed
gratification, were it not that while many have lost faith in
the old teaching, they have not yet advanced sufficiently to
have a sincere trust in the new.
Much of this want of confidence in such guides as
�4
modern science has furnished us with, is doubtless due to
the inability of many to accustom their minds to funda
mentally different conceptions from those in which they
were nurtured; but much also is due to the unnecessary
obscurity of writers upon ethical subjects. May I venture
to say—and I say it with all becoming humility—that a
number of needless difficulties have been allowed to encum
ber the subject of morals. Writers have approached the
subject with such an amount of religious and transcen
dental prejudice; have dwelt so strongly upon the
sacredness, the sublimity and the difficulty of the subject,
that their method has served to create difficulties that
have no right to exist. Plainly, if we are going to make
any real headway, we must sweep away all this rhetorical
and metaphysical fog, and deal with human conduct in.
the same careful and unimpassioned manner that we deal
with the subject matter of any of the sciences.
That this subject has its special difficulties, none will
deny—the complexity of the factors renders this inevit
able—but these difficulties need not be increased by the
discussion of a number of casuistical questions that have
scarce an existence in real life ; nor need they blind us to
the fact that a science of human conduct is both necessary
and possible. Human actions are among the facts of
existence ; their causes and results—when they can be
ascertained—are constant, and they must, therefore, be
collected, arranged, and studied, in precisely the same
way that the geologist or chemist deals with the facts
that come within the scope of his respective department
of knowledge.
But before ethics could assume anything like a thoroughly
scientific form, it was essential that many other branches
of knowledge—particularly physiology and psychology—
should be fairly well developed ; and the shortcomings of
earlier systems may be partly attributed to the incom
pleteness of the necessary data. A scientific system of
ethics can only be constructed upon data furnished by a,
number of other sciences ; and this necessary knowledge
has only been forthcoming within very recent times.
But where facts were wanting, fancy filled the gap, and
theories of morals were propounded which satisfied
without enlightening, and darkened that which they pre
tended to explain.
�5
The great weakness of all theological and meta
physical systems of morals, is, that they take man as
he is, without reference to his past history or evol
ution, and proceed to frame rules for his future
guidance. The result is just 5frhat might be expected.
It is precisely what would happen to a man who set him
self to write a description of the British constitution,
without any reference to the history of its gradual
•development : certain features would be misunderstood,
others under or over rated, while many would be left out
of sight altogether. The only way to understand what is,
is to find out how it became so; and this rule is as true
of moral ideas as it is of social institutions and national
customs.
It is in this direction, in emphasising the
importance of the element of time in our speculations
concerning the universe, that Evolution has left its clearest
impress upon modern thought.
Until very recently,
writers—with rare exceptions—were agreed in taking the
order of the universe as fixed from the beginning. Crea
tion being thus taken for granted, there remained merely
a constitution to discover ; and all enquiries as to how
this constitution reached its present condition were looked
upon as beside the mark, or were met by the dogma. “ and
God said, let there be —” Gradually, however, first in one
department, then in another, there grew up the idea of
development, and instead of the present condition of things
being regarded as having come into existence fully formed
the conception of its gradual formation, through vast
periods of time began to gain ground. As philosophers
regarded the physical universe, so they regarded man’s
moral nature. No matter how widely moralists differed,
they were in substantial agreement thus far—they all
viewed the moral nature of man as being constant, as
having been always as it is ; and from this hypotheti
cally constant human nature, proceeded to elaborate their
ethical theories—with much satisfaction to themselves, if
not with benefit to others. As a matter of fact, however,
human nature is as variable as the conditions amid which
it exists—or even more so—while our moral instincts,
appetites, and aversions, which were taken as primary
endowments of the race, in the light of more correct
knowledge, are seen to be the results of slowly acquired
experiences stretching over thousands of generations. As
�6
I have said, it is in this direction that the influence of
Evolutionary thought is mo9t apparent. What others
took for granted, we now find it necessary to explain —
the problem from being—“ given certain instincts what isour reason for calling them moral ? ” has expanded intoHow have the moral feelings come into existence, what
is their nature, and how far should their authority
extend ? ”
It is these questions that I purpose attempting to>
answer in the following pages.
II.—The Meaning of Morality.
The business of the following essay, be it repeated, is a
study of conduct from a purely scientific standpoint;
that is, to establish a rational foundation for moral actions,
and a reasonable motive for their performance, apart from
all religious or supernatural considerations. To the
student of ethics there are two sources from which may
be drawn those facts upon which moral rules or laws are
based. The first is the study of all those mental states to
which praise or blame may be attached. The subjective
view of ethics has hitherto claimed by far the larger share
of attention, at times utterly excluding any other aspect of
the subject; and whatever good might have resulted from
a close examination of mental states, has been frustrated
owing to its neglect of an equally important division of
ethics, namely, the study of conduct from the objective and.
historic side. It is this aspect of the scientific treatment
of ethics that is brought into prominence by the doctrineof evolution. Its main features are comparative and histor
ical ; it embraces a study of customs as affected by race and
age, and even the actions of all animals whose conduct
exhibits any marked degree of conscious forethought. The
importance of this branch of study can hardly be exagger
ated : introspection unchecked by objective verification is.
responsible for most of the errors that abound in philoso
phical writings; while the historical and objective
method has thrown as much light upon mental and moral
problems in fifty years, as had been shed by the intro
spective method in as many generations. Following Mr.
Herbert Spencer, we may define the subject matter of
ethics as “the conscious adjustment of acts to ends;”’
and the object of ethics the statement of such rules as
�7
will lead to the realisation of the welfare of those for
whose benefit such rules are devised.
The main questions that ethical systems are called upon
to answer are :—What is morality ? Why are some
actions classed as moral and others as immoral ? How
did our moral instincts and feelings come into existence ?
and, What are the conditions of their preservation and
improvement ?
In the discussion of all questions such as these,
much time is saved, and much confusion avoided, by
setting out with a clear idea of the meanings of the
cardinal terms in use. All things that we seek to avoid
or possess, whether they be actual objects or states of con
sciousness, fall under one of two heads : they are either
good or bad. Health, riches, friendship, are classed as
good ; disease, poverty, enmity, are classed as bad. We
speak of a good horse, a good knife, a good house, or the
reverse. Upon what ground is this division drawn ? In
virtue of what common quality possessed by these differ
ent objects is the above classification made ? Clearly it
is not because of any intrinsic quality possessed by them.
Considered by themselves they would be neither good
nor bad A knife viewed without regard to the purpose
of cutting, or as an object exhibiting skilled workmanship,
would be subject to neither praise nor censure. An
action that neither helped nor hindered self or fellows,
would awaken no feelings of approbation or disappro
bation. It is only in relation to some end that we have
in view that an object becomes either good or bad, or an
action moral or immoral. Further, an object that may be
classed as good in relation to one end, would be classed
as bad in relation to another. A horse that would be
valuable for deciding a wager as to speed, would be of
little use for the purpose of ploughing a field.
As
Professor Clifford pointed out, the fundamental trait that
determines goodness is efficiency—the capability of an
object or an action for reaching a desired end. A thing
must be good for something or for someone ; a knife for
cutting, a horse for carrying or drawing, a house for
shelter; fresh air, pure water, good food, because they
promote a healthy physique ; and each will be classed as
possessing a greater degree of goodness as it reaches the
desired end in a more effectual manner. A good action,
�8
may, therefore, be defined as one which attains the end
desired with the least expenditure of time and energy.
A further distinction needs to be pointed out between the
terms good and moral ; for in the light of the above
definition, the two terms are by no means always synony
mous, although they may be so in special cases. A man
who so adjusted his actions as to commit a burglary in
the most expeditious manner, might be rightly spoken of
as a good burglar, but no one, I opine, would speak of
him as a moral one. Nevertheless, an action becomes
moral for the same reason that an action becomes good,
that is, in view of a certain result to be attained, although
in this case certain ulterior considerations are involved.
Now, in examining all those actions classed as moral,
I find them to be either socially or individually bene
ficial, while those actions classed as immoral are injurious
either to the individual or to society ; while actions which
neither injure nor help are classed as indifferent.
Even
in the case of those actions that are performed instinc
tively, the justification for their existence or practice is
always to be found in reasons arising from their social or
individual utility. Analyse carefully the highest and
most complex moral action, and it will be found in its
ultimate origin to be an act of self or social preservation.
Press home the enquiry why the feeling of moral obliga
tion should be encouraged, and the answer will be the
same. This fundamental significance of the terms used,
is frequently veiled under such phrases as Duty, Perfec
tion, Virtue, etc. Thus Immanuel Kant declares that
“ No act is good unless done from a sense of duty.” But
why should we act from a sense of duty ? What reason
is there for following its dictates ?
Clearly a sense of
duty is only to be encouraged or its dictates obeyed
because it leads to some desired result; there must be
some reason why a sense of duty is to be acted upon,
rather than ignored, and in the very nature of the case
that reason can only be found in the direction indicated.
Nor can we on reflection and in the light of modern
science, think of moral actions as having any other origin
or justification than their tendency to promote the well
being of society. Given a race of animals with a
particular set of surroundings, and the problem before it
will be “ How to maintain a constant harmony between
�9
the species and its medium ; how the former shall adjust
its movements in such a manner as to ward off all
aggressive forces, both conscious and unconscious, to
rear its young and preserve that modifiability of actions
requisite to meet the needs of a changing environment ;
without which death rapidly ensues.” This is the problem
of life stated in its plainest terms; a problem which
presses upon savage and civilised alike, and one with
which we are all constantly engaged. It may be said that
we are all engaged in playing the same game—the game
of life —and ethics may be spoken of as the rules of the
game that we are always learning but never thoroughly
master. The one condition of existence for all life, from
lowest to highest, is that certain definite lines of conduct
—determined by the surrounding conditions—shall be
pursued ; and just as any invention, be it steam engine,
printing press, or machine gun, is the result of a long
series of adjustments and readjustments reaching over
many generations, so our present ability to maintain our
lives in the face of a host of disturbing forces, is the
result of a long series of adjustments and re-adjustments,
conscious and unconscious, dating back to the dawn of
life upon the globe. Self-preservation is the fundamental
cause of the beginnings of morality, and only as the
sphere of self becomes extended so as to embrace others
does conduct assume a more altruistic character. At
beginning these adjustments by means of which life is
preserved are brought about unconsciously, natural selec
tion weeding out all whose conduct is of an undesirable
or life-diminishing character; but with the growth of
intelligence and the conscious recognition of the nature of
those forces by which life is moulded, these unconscious
adaptations are superseded—or rather have superadded to
them—conscious ones. It is this conscious recognition of
the nature of these forces by which life is maintained,
and of the reason for pursuing certain courses of conduct,
that is the distinguishing feature of human society.
Human morality seeks to effect consciously what has
hitherto been brought about slowly and unconsciously.
It aims at this, but at more than this; for a system of
ethics not only seeks to preserve life, but to intensify it,
to increase its length and add to its beauties. It declares
not only what is, or what may be, but what ought to be.
�10
Moral principles or laws, therefore, consist in the main in
furnishing a reason for those courses of conduct which
experience has demonstrated to be beneficial, and the
acquisition of which have been accentuated by the struggle
for existence.
In this case, however, progress is effected much more
rapidly than where the evolution is unconscious, while
the ability to discern more clearly the remote effects of
our actions renders that progress more certain and perma
nent. We maintain ourselves, we rear our young, and lay
up the means of future happiness in virtue of the
presence of a particular set of instincts or the formulation
of a number of rules which experience has demonstrated
to be beneficial.
It is a detailed account of these actions
and the reason for their existence that constitutes our
moral code. Long before moral principles are formulated
society conforms to them. Custom exists before law;
indeed, a large part of law is only custom recognised and
stereotyped; the law, so to speak, does but give the
reason for the custom, and by the very exigences of exis
tence such customs as are elevated into laws must be
those that have helped to preserve the race, otherwise
there would be a speedy end to both law and law-makers.
As, therefore, in the course of evolution only the societies
can continue to exist whose actions serve, on the whole, to
bring them into harmony with their environment, and as
it will be these actions the value of which will afterwards
come to be recognised and their performances enforced
by law, there is brought about an identification of moral
rules with life preserving actions from the outset, and
this identification tends to become still closer as society
advances. The impulses that urge men to action cannot
be, in the main, anti-social or society would cease to exist.
In the last resort, as will be made clear later, a man will do
that which yields him the most satisfaction, and unless
there is some sort of identity between what is pleasant
and what is beneficial, animate existence would soon
cease to be. Morality can, then, from the scientific stand
point, have no other meaning except that of a general
term for all those preservative instincts and actions by
means of which an individual establishes definite and har
monious relations between himself and fellows, and wards
off all those aggressive forces that threaten his existence.
�11
We have now, I think, reached a clear conception of
what is meant by a “ Moral Action.” A moral action is.
one that adds to the “ fitness” of society; makes life fuller
and longer; adds to the fulness of life by nobility of
action, and to its duration by length of years. An.
immoral action is one that detracts from the “ fitness ” of
society, and renders it less capable of responding to the
demands of its environment. The only rational meaning:
that can be attached to the phrase “a good man,” is that
of one whose actions comply with the above conditions ;
and his conduct will become more or less immoral as it
approaches to or falls away from this ideal.
III.—The Moral Standard.
Although I have but little doubt that the majority of
people would on reflection yield a general assent to the
considerations set forth above, yet, it may be complained,
that they are too vague. To say that moral actions are such
as promote life, it may further be said, is hardly to tell us
what such actions are, or to provide us with a rational
rule of action, since our verdict as to whether an action is
moral or immoral must clearly depend upon our view as
to what the end of life is. The man who holds that all
pleasure is sinful, and that mortification of the flesh is the
only way to gain eternal happiness, will necessarily pass
a very different judgment upon actions from the one
who holds that all happiness that is not purchased at the
expense of another’s misery is legitimate and desirable.
The justice of the above complaint must be admitted ; it
remains, therefore, to push our enquiries a step further.
Ethical Methods, in common with other systems, pass
through three main stages—Authoritative, critical, and
constructive. The first is a period when moral precepts
are accepted on the bare authority of Priest or Chieftain.
In this stage all commands have an equal value, little or
no discrimination is exercised, and all acts of disobedience
meet with the most severe punishment.
*
The second
period represents a season of upheaval occasioned either
by the growing intelligence of men perceiving the faults or
shortcomings of the current teaching, or a healthy revolt
against the exercise of unfettered authority. And then,
*As in the Bible where picking up sticks upon the Sabbath merits
the same punishment as murder.
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finally, there ensues a constructive stage, when an attempt
is made to place conduct upon a rational foundation.
It is not very easy to point out the line of demarcation
between the different stages, nor is it unusual to find
them existing side by side, but they are stages that can be
■observed by a careful student with a tolerable amount of
■ease. And in this latter stage the difficulty is, not so
much the formulation of moral precepts, as furnishing
the reason for them. The great question here is, not so
much “ How shall I be moral,’’ as—“ Why should I be
moral,” it is this question we have now to answer.
All Ethical systems are compelled to take some
standard as ultimately determining the rightness or
wrongness of conduct, and we may roughly divide all
these systems into three groups—two of which regard the
moral sense as innate, and the third as derivative. These
three groups are, (1) Theological systems which take the
will of deity as supplying the necessary standard, (2)
Intuitional which holds the doctrine of an innate moral
sense that is in its origin independent of experience, and
professes to judge actions independent of results, (3)
*
Utilitarian, which estimates conduct by observing the
results of actions upon self and fellows, and holds that
■our present stock of moral sentiments have been acquired
by experience both individual and racial.
Concerning the first of these schools—the theological—
its weakness must be apparent to all who have given any
serious attention to the subject. For, setting on one side
the difficulty of ascertaining what the will of deity is, and
the further difficulty that from the religious world there
■comes in answer to moral problems replies as numerous
as the believers themselves, it is plain that the expressed
will of deity cannot alter the morality of an action to the
slightest extent. It does not follow that spoiling the
Egyptians is a moral transaction because God com
manded it, nor are we justified in burning witches or
stoning heretics because their death sentence is contained
in the bible. It would be but a poor excuse after commit
* We have used the term “Intuitional” to denote the method which
recognises rightness as a quality belonging to actions independently of their
conduciveness to any ulterior end. The term implies that the presence of
the quality is ascertained by simply looking at the actions themselves
-without considering their consequences.—Sidgwick, “ Methods of Ethics”
bk. I. c. viii, sec. i.
�13
ting a crime to plead that God commanded it. The
reply to all such excuses would be, “ crime is crime no
matter who commanded it ; wrong actions must be
reprobated, the wrong doer corrected, or society would
fall to pieces,” and such a decision would have the sup
port of all rational men and women. A belief that my
actions are ordered by God can only guarantee my honesty
as a believer in deity in carrying them out, but can in no
way warrant their morality.
Further, those who claim that the will of God as ex
pressed in a revelation or discovered by a study of nature,
furnishes a ground of distinction between right and
wrong, overlook the fact that all such positions are self
contradictory, inasmuch as they assume a tacit recognition
at the outset of the very thing they set out to discover—
they all imply the existence of a standard of right and
wrong to which God’s acts conform. To speak of biblical
precepts as good implies that they harmonize with our
ideas of what goodness is ; to say that God is good and
that his actions are righteous, implies, in the same manner,
a conformity between his actions and some recognised
standard. Either that, or it is a meaningless use of terms
to speak of God’s actions as good, and at the same time
claim that it is his actions alone which determine what
goodness is. In short, all such terms as good and bad,
moral and immoral, take for granted the existence of some
standard of goodness discoverable by human reason, and
from which such terms derive their authority. This much
appears to me clear:—either actions classed respectively as
moral and immoral have certain definite effects upon our
lives or they have not. If they have, then their effects remain
the same with or without religious considerations; and
granting the possession of an ordinary amount of common
sense, it will always be possible to build up a code of
morals from the observed consequences of actions. If
actions have no definite effects upon our lives, then those
who believe that our only reason for calling an action
moral or immoral lies in the will of God, given in revela
tion or expressed in the human consciousness, are com
mitted to the startling proposition that theft, murder and
adultery would never have been recognised as immoral
had these commands not have been in existence. This
last alternative is rather too ridiculous to merit serious
�14
disproof. In brief, neither the theologian nor, as we shall
see later, the intuitionist can avoid assuming at the outset
■of their investigations all that he seeks to reach as a con
clusion. The very phrases both are compelled to use have
no validity unless there exist principles of morality derived
from experience—and this thay are constantly seeking to
disprove.
Nor do the advocates of a dim religious sense mani
fest in the human mind, fare any better than those who
hold the cruder form of the same doctrine. The strength
•of their position is apparent only ; due to the vagueness
of language rather than the logical force of their ideas.
Dr. Martineau—who may be taken as one of the best
representatives of the religious world upon this subject—
declares that if there be no supernatural authority for
morals, “ nothing remains but to declare the sense of
responsibility a mere delusion, the fiduciary aspect of
life must disappear; there is no trust committed to us,
no eye to watch, no account to render ; we have but to
settle terms with our neighbours and all will be well.
Purity within, faithfulness when alone, harmony and
depth in the secret affections, are guarded by no caution
ary presence, and aided by no sacred sympathy ; it may
be happy for us if we keep them, but if we mar them it
is our own affair, and there is none to reproach us and
put us to shame.”* To all of which one may say that
that conduct can hardly be called moral which needs the
constant supervision of an eternal “cautionary presence”
to ensure its rectitude
To refrain from wrong-doing
because of the presence of an “ all-seeing eye,” whether
its possessor be a supernatural power or a mundane
policeman can hardly entitle one to be called
virtuous ; and society would be in a poor way indeed did
right conduct rest upon no firmer foundation than this.
A man so restrained may not be such a direct danger to
society as he would otherwise be, but he is far from being
a desirable type of character. Surely purity, faithfulness
to wife, children and friends, honesty in our dealings,
truthfulness in our speech, and confidence in our fellows,
are not such poor, forlorn things as to be without some
inherent personal recommendation ?
Indeed, Dr.
* “ A Study of Religions,” II. p. 40.
�15
Martineau himself is a splendid disproof of his own
position, for if there is one thing certain about a man of
his type, it is that the absence of religious beliefs would
influence his conduct but little for the worse, while it might
even give more breadth to his sympathies and character.
True morality finds its incentives in the effects of actions
upon self and fellows, and not in fears inspired by either
god or devil. As Mr. Spencer has said, “ The truly moral
deterrent from murder is not constituted by a represen
tation of hanging as a consequence, or by a representation
of tortures in hell as a consequence, or by a representation
of the horror or hatred excited in fellow men, but by a
representation of the necessary natural results — the
infliction of death agony upon the victim, the destruc
tion of all his possibilities of happiness, the entailed
suffering to his belongings.
Neither the thought of
imprisonment, nor of divine anger, nor of social disgrace,
is that which constitutes the check on theft, but the
thought of injury to the person robbed, joined with a
vague consciousness of the general evils caused by a
disregard of proprietory rights .... Throughout, then,
the moral motive differs from the motives it is associated
with in this ; that instead of being constituted by repre
sentations of incidental, collateral, non-necessary conse
quences of acts, it is constituted by representations of
consequences which the acts naturally produce.”* Of all
moral sanctions the religious sanction is the most delusive
and unsatisfactory. Changing as human nature changes,
reflecting here benevolence and there cruelty, sanctioning
all crimes at the same time that it countenances much
that is virtuous, it is an authority that people have
appealed to in all ages to justify every action that human
nature is capable of committing. Surely a sanction which
justifies at the same time the religion of the Thug and
the benevolence of the humanitarian must be an eminently
fallacious one ? And yet we are warned that the removal
of the religious sanction will weaken, if it does not destroy,
morality! I do not believe it.
Conduct can gain no
permanent help from a false belief, and no permanent
strength from a lie ; and had the energies of our religious
teachers been devoted to impressing upon the people
“ Data of Ethics,” sec. 45.
�16
under their control the natural sanction of morality they
might have been kept moral without a sham of a priest
hood, or the perpetuation of superstitious beliefs that are
a stain upon our civilisation. But we have been taught
for so long that religion alone could furnish a reason for
right living, that now that time has set its heavy hand upon
religious creeds and death is claiming them for its own,
many honestly fear that there will be a corresponding
moral deterioration. Yet of this much we may be certain,
so long as men continue to live together morality
can never die ; so long as suffering exists or injustice
is done, there will not be wanting ;those who will
burn to release the one and redress the other.
Nay, rather will the value of life and of conduct
during life be enhanced by stripping it of all false fears
and groundless fancies. Whatever else is proven false
this life remains certain ; if it is shown that we share the
mortality of the brute we need not share its life, and we
may at least make as much of the earth we are now in
possession of as the heaven we may never enter. As
George Eliot says, “ If everything else is doubtful, this
suffering that I can help is certain ; if the glory of the
cross is an illusion, the sorrow is only the truer.
While
the strength is in my arm I will stretch it out to the
fainting ; while the light visits my eyes they shall seek
the forsaken.”*
The intuitional theory of morals while displaying
fewer errors than the scheme of the theological
school, yet presents a fundamental and insurmountable
difficulty. With the general question as to the nature
and authority of conscience, we shall deal more fully
when we come to treat of the “ Moral Sense.” The
question at issue between the intuitionist and the upholder
of the doctrine of evolution is, not the present existence
in man of a sense of right or wrong, but whether that
sense is an original endowment of the species or has been
derived from experience. According to this school ight
*
and wrong are known as such in virtue of a divinely
implanted sense or faculty = soul or conscience; we
recognise the virtue of an action as we recognise the
presence of a colour, because we possess a special sense
* “ Eomola.”
�17
fitted for the task ; and it is impossible to furnish any
other reason why it should be so. Right and wrong are
immediately perceived by the mind as such, and there is
an end of the matter. .A plain and obvious comment
upon this position is that the intuitions of men are
neither uniform nor infallible in their judgments.
Instead of finding, as the intuitional theory of morals
would lead us to expect, that moral judgments are every
where the same, we find them differing with race, age,
and even individuals. The only thing common to the
moral sense is that of passing judgment, or making a
selection of certain actions, and this much is altogether
inadequate for the purpose of the intuitionist. The
moral sense of one man leads him to murder his enemy ;
that of another to feed him ; in one age the moral sense
decrees that polygamy, death for heresy, witch burning,
and trial by combat are legitimate proceedings, and in
another age brands them as immoral. Obviously, if our
intuitions are to be regarded as trustworthy guides, there
is no reason why we should adopt one set of intuitions
more than another. All must be equally valuable or the
theory breaks down at the outset. If, however, we pro
nounce in favour of the intuitions of the cultured European
and against that of the savage, it must be because of a com
parison of the consequences of the different intuitions
upon human welfare ; and in this case the authority of
the moral sense as an arbitrary law-giver disappears.
If
the moral sense be ultimate, then our duty is to follow
its dictates. Any questioning of what the moral sense
decides to be right involves an appeal to some larger fact,
or to some objective guide. To arbitrarily select one
intuition out of many and label that and that only as good
is simply to set up another god in place of the one
dethroned. All moral growth implies the fallibility of
our intuitions, since such growth can only proceed by
correcting and educating our primary ethical impulses.
There is one point, however, which seems to have escaped
the notice of intuitionists, and that is, that the existence of
their own writings is a direct disproof of the truth of
their position. For if all men possessed such a faculty as it
is claimed they possess, its existence should be sufficiently
obvious as to command the assent of all; there could
exist no such questioning of the fact as to necessitate the
�18
existence of the proof offered. No man ever yet needed
to write a volume to prove that the sun gave light, or
that men experience feelings of pleasure and pain, and an
intuition that is co.extensive with humanity, which is not
reducible to experience, and which is the very ground
work of our moral judgments should be so obvious as to
be independent of all proof. The mere fact of it being
called into question is sufficient disproof of its existence.
But, as already said, the diversities of moral judgments
are fatal to the hypothesis. Press the intuitionist with the
question why he should prefer the intuition of one man
to that of another, and he is compelled to forsake his
original position and justify his selection upon the grounds
of the beneficial effects of one and the injurious effects
of the other; thus constituting experience as the final
court of appeal. The conclusion is, then, that neither the
theologian nor the intuitionist can avoid taking into con
sideration the effects of action in the formation of moral
judgments ; both of them when pressed are compelled to
fall back upon something outside their system to support
it; neither can justify himself without making an appeal
to that experience, which according to his hypothesis
is unnecessary and untrustworthy.
Turning now to the last of the three schools named—the
utilitarian—let us see if we can derive from it a satisfactory
standard of right and wrong. Practically the question has
already been answered in our examination of “the meaning
of morality,” where it was determined that moral actions
were such as led to an increase of life in length of days
and nobility of action ; but as this may be thought too
vague it becomes necessary to frame some more detailed
expression.
The essence of Utilitarianism may be stated in a sen
tence it asserts that “ actions are right in proportion as
they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to
produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is in
tended pleasure and the absence of pain ; by unhappiness
pain and the privation of pleasure. ” Act so as to ensure
*
the happiness of all around you, may be said to be the
one great precept of Utilitarianism. According to this
doctrine all things become of value only in so far as they
minister to the production of happiness, while the end of
*J. S. Mil), “ Utilitarianism ” p. 9.
�19
action is always the production of an agreeable or pleas
urable state of consciousness. The correctness of this
position admits of ample demonstration. Indeed, the
fact that happiness is the end contemplated by all is so
plain as to scarcely need proof, were it not that the means
to this end have by long association come to stand in con
sciousness as ends in themselves.
Yet a very little
analysis will show that each of the prudential or benevo
lent virtues must find their ultimate justification in their
tendency to increase happiness. As Mill says: “The
clearest proof that the table is here is that I see it ; and
the clearest proof that happiness is the end of action is
that all men desire it.” Upon every hand we are brought
face to face with the truth of this statement. It matters
little whether we take the honest man or the thief ; the
drunkard in his cups or the reformer in his study,
the one object that they have in common will be
found to be the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of
pain. The difference between men does not consist in
the fact that the motives urging them to action are gener
ically different, they are not; the difference consists
rather in the kind of happiness sought after or the means
adopted to obtain it. As will presently be made clear,
feeling induces action at all timesand under all conditions.
The immediate cause of conduct is the desire to bring
into existence a pleasant state of consciousness or to subdue
a painful one—although there is plainly much diversity
in the pleasures sought after. The biological reason for
this pursuit of pleasure will be seen later ; but that the
tendency of actions to produce happiness is our sole reason
for classing them as good will be seen by imagining the
contrary to be the case. Suppose, to quote Mr. Spencer,
“ that gashes and bruises caused agreeable sensations, and
brought in their train increased power of doing work and
receiving enjoyment; should we regard assault in the
same manner as at present; or, suppose that self-mutila
tion, say by cutting off a hand, was both intrinsically
pleasant and furthered performance of the processes by
which personal welfare and the welfare of dependents is
achieved ; should we hold as now that deliberate injury
done to one’s own body is to be reprobated ; or again,
suppose that picking a man’s pocket excited in him joyful
emotions by brightening his prospects; would that theft
�20
be counted among crimes, as in existing law books and
moral codes ? In these extreme cases, no one can deny
that what we call the badness of actions is ascribed to
them solely for the reason that they entail pain, immediate
or remote, and would not be so ascribed did they entail
pleasure.”*
The difference between a selfish and an unselfish action
is not that in the latter case the feeling itself is absent—
this is never the case—the difference is that in a selfish
action a man’s happiness is in things confined to himself,
while in an unselfish action his happiness embraces the
happiness of others likewise. Does a man give away his
last shilling to one poorer than himself ; it is because he
escapes the greater pain of witnessing distress and not
relieving it. Does the martyr go to the stake in vindica
tion of his belief ?
It is because to hide those beliefs, to
profess a belief which he did not enjtertain, to play the
hypocrite and escape persecution by an act of smug con
formity, would be far more unbearable than any torment
that intolerence could inflict.
Whatever man does he acts so as to avoid a pain and
gain a pleasure ; and the function of the ethical teacher is
to train men to perform only those actions which eventu
ally produce the greatest and most healthful pleasures.
And let it not be imagined for a moment that in thus
reducing the distinction, between good and bad, to the
simpler elements of pleasure and pain, that we have
thereby destroyed all distinction between them. Far
from it. The perfume of the rose and the evil smell of
asafcetida remain as distinct as ever, even though we
reduce both to the vibrations of particles; and we shall
not cease to care for one and dislike the other on that
account. And so long as a distinction is felt between a
pleasurable and a painful sensation, so long will the
difference between good and bad remain clear and distinct;
it is a distinction that cannot disappear so long as life
exists.
A complete moral code is but a complete statement of
actions that are of benefit to self and society in terms of
pleasure and pain ; and, therefore, until we can cease to
distinguish between the two sets of feelings we can never
* “Data or Ethics,” sec. 2.
�21
cease to know the grounds of morality and to find a
sound basis for its sanctions.
Every individual then acts so as to avoid a pain or
cultivate a pleasure. A state of happiness to be realised
at some time and at some place, is an inexpugnable ele
ment in all estimates of conduct; is the end to which all
men are striving, no matter how they may differ in their
methods of achieving it. Unfortunately, such considera
tions, as have been pointed out. are disguised under such
phrases as “ Perfection,” “ Blessedness,” &c. And yet, to
quote Mr. Spencer once again, “ If it (Blessedness) is a
state of consciousness at all, it is necessarily one of three
states—painful, indifferent, or pleasurable,” and as no
one, I presume, will say that it is either of the first two,
we are driven to the conclusion, that after all, “ Blessed
ness ” is but another name for happiness.
Or take as an illustration of the same principle, a plea that
is sometimes put forward on behalf of self-denial, which,
it is urged, contravenes the principle of utility. It is
claimed that that conduct is highest which involves self
sacrifice. But, clearly, self-sacrifice, as self-sacrifice, has
little or nothing to commend it. The man who denied
himself all comfort, who continually “mortified the
flesh,” without benefiting any one by so doing, would be
regarded by all sane thinking people as little better than
a lunatic. The only possible justification f or self-sacrifice
is that the happiness of self in some future condition of
existence, or the happiness of society in the present, will
be rendered greater thereby. Even the fanatical religionist
indulging in acts of self-torture, is doing so in the full
belief that his conduct will bring him greater happiness
hereafter. So that once more we are brought back to the
same position, viz., that no individual can avoid taking
happiness in some form as the motive for and sanction of
his conduct.
Here, then, upon the widest possible review of human
conduct, we are warranted in asserting that the ultimate
criterion of the morality of an action is its tendency to
produce pleasurable states of consciousness. To speak of
an action as good or bad apart from the effect it produces
upon human life, is as absurd as to speak of colour apart
from the sense of sight. An action becomes good because
of its relation to a human consciousness, and apart from
�22
this relation its goodness disappears. As Spinoza says—
“We do not desire a thing because it is good, we call it
good because we desire it.”
This, then, is our test of the morality of an action—
will it result in a balance of painful feelings ? Then it
is bad. Will it produce a surplus of pleasurable ones ?
Then it is good,
But although, in ultimate analysis, to desire a thingand call it good, or the performance of an action
and call it moral, is merely another way of saying the
same thing, it by no means follows that all desires are to
be gratified merely because they exist. Nothing is plainer
than that the gratification of many desires would lead to
anything but beneficial results. Our desires need at all
times to be watched, controlled and educated. It is in
this direction that reason plays its part in the determin
ation of conduct.
Its function is, by the perception and
calculation of the consequences of actions, to so train the
feelings as to lead us eventually to gratify only such,
desires as will ultimately lead to individual and social
happiness.
And not only is it clear on analysis that the avoidance
of a painful state of consciousness or the pursuit of an
agreeable one, is the underlying motive for all our actions,
but it is difficult to see how it could be otherwise. An
ethical relation between ourselves and an object can never
be established by simple perception ; nor is perception
ever the immediate cause of action.
The immediate
cause of action is, as I have already said, feeling ; that is,
we associate pleasurable or painful feelings with an
object perceived, and shape our conduct in accordance
with past experience.
*
No abstract conception of life
and its duties could ever give rise to action, were
not such conduct closely associated with pleasant or
* May we not justly affirm, as we clearly perceive, that the intellectual
life does not supply the motive or impulse to action ; that the understand
ing or reason is not the cause of our outward actions, but that the desiresare? Our most effective energies spring from our most urgent needs. . .
The desire is the fundamental expression of the individual’s character. . ►.
In fact the power of the understanding is reflective and inhibitory,
being exhibited rather in the hindrance of passion-prompted action, and in
the guidance of our impulses, than in the instigation of conduct; its office
in the individual, as in the race is, as Comte systematically and emphati
cally pointed out, not to impart the habitual impulsion but deliberative.
—Maudesley, “ Physiology of Mind,” p. 357.
�23
painful feelings—as escaping censure, personal approba
tion or disapprobation, direct personal reward or punish
ment, or the admiration of our neighbours. We may
put the case briefly as follows : Every action consciously
performed aims at calling into existence a particular state
of consciousness. States of consciousness, so far as they
are the subjects of ethical judgments, are of two kinds—
agreeable and disagreeable, or pleasant and painful. The
former we desire to maintain, the latter to destroy. By
experience pleasurable feelings have become associated
with a particular object or the performance of a particular
action, and the possession of the object or the performance
of the action is the means by which such agreeable sensa
tions are revived It is upon this principle only that the
past can serve as a guide in the present; although the
past can never induce action, the future alone can do
this. Our conduct is necessarily based upon the belief
that the future will resemble the past, and that actions
which resulted in happiness in the past will have the
same effect in the future. If, then, the motive resulting
in action is the wish to revive and return some state of
consciousness, and if all states of consciousness are either
painful or pleasurable, and if it is further admitted that
pleasurable states are sought after and painful ones
avoided, then it becomes clear that the ideal state is one
in which pleasurable states only are experienced ; or, as
it is briefly described, a state of happiness.
And now having reached the conclusion that the pro
duction of a pleasurable feeling is the end of all our
actions, the question remaining to be answered is, “ why
should happiness be the end of action, what is it that
constitutes happiness, and what justification for the
pursuit of happiness is there to be found in a study of
the laws of life ? ”
Here we may be met with the remark that happiness is
an extremely variable factor, that it varies at different
times and with different individuals ; the happiness of the
drunkard or the debauchee is quite as real as the happi. ness of the philosopher, and therefore upon what grounds
do we class one as bad and the other as good ? The
drunkard may say, “ my conduct yields me pleasure,
while to imitate yours would prove extremely irksome
and painful, and therefore I prefer to keep on my present
�24
course in spite of all that may be said concerning other
sources of happiness, the beauty of which I am unable to
appreciate.” In what way, then, the evolutionist may be
asked, can we prove the drunkard to be in the wrong ?
This objection, although a fairly common one, yet repre
sents an entire misunderstanding of the utilitarian position.
Certainly pleasures of a special kind accompany such
actions as those named, for, as I have shown, conduct
must always be produced by feeling, and feeling always
aims at the one end ; but it is not by taking into con
sideration the immediate effects of actions only and
ignoring the remote ones that any sound conclusions
can be reached, this can only be done by combining both,
and when it is shown, and it will not be disputed, that
the immediate pleasures of the drunkard carry with them
as final results a long train of miseries in the shape of
ruined homes, shattered constitutions, and general social
evils, we have shown that these actions are not such as
produce ultimate happiness, and therefore have no valid
claim to the title of good.
But waiving the discussion of such objections as these,
the problem facing us is, “granting that the end of action
is as stated, in what way can we identify what is with
what ought to be ; or how can it be shown that actions
which rightly viewed yield happiness and actions that
preserve life are. either identical or tend to become so ? ”
This question, it is clear, can only be thoroughly answered
by determining the physiological and psychological con
ditions of happiness.
The incentives to action, it has been shown, is the desire
to call into existence, or to drive out of being a particular
state of consciousness. All changes in consciousness are
brought about either by sensations directly experienced,
or by the remembrance of sensations previously ex
perienced. We receive sensations by means of what are
called faculties—including under that term both organ
and function. Of a certain number of possible sensations
some are pleasant, others are unpleasant; the former we
seek, the latter we shun; and the desire to revise the
agreeable states of feeling is the immediate motive for all
our actions. A pleasurable feeling, then, results from the
*
* To say that we seek the revival of a disagreeable feeling would be a
contradiction in terms.
�25
exercise of our energies in a particular direction ; the ques
tion is, in what direction ? It is in answering this question
that Mr. Spencer has made one of his most important con
tributions to ethical science, and thereby placed the utilitar
ian theory of morals upon a thoroughly scientific footing.
Clearly, the indiscriminate exercise of our faculties, or
the promiscuous gratification of our desires, will not lead
to ultimate happiness. Apart from the existence in our
selves of desires which being either of a morbid character,
or survivals from times when the conditions of life were
different, and the gratification of which would therefore be
looked upon as anything but desirable ; even the exercise
of what may be termed legitimate desires needs to be care
fully watched and regulated. Indeed a large part of
wrong doing results, not from the existence of a faculty,
but from its misdirection; an intemperate gratification
of desires that, rightly directed, would yield but good.
No one, for example, would condemn the desire of people
to “ make a name,” a perfectly legitimate and even laud
able aspiration ; yet, owing to the method adopted, there
are few desires that lead to greater wrong doing.
Again, over indulgence in any pursuit, as in over eating,
over studying, or over indulgence in physical exercise, is
likely to lead to extremely injurious results. And equally
significant are the pains—cravings—that result from too
little exercise in any of these directions. If, therefore,
conduct that approaches either extreme leads to painful
results, the implication is that a pleasurable state of
consciousness is the accompaniment of actions that lie
midway between the two. But actions that leave behind
naught but a diffused feeling of pleasure, imply that the
body has received just that amount of exercise necessary
to maintain it in a state of well being, and are, therefore,
healthful actions; or in other words, pleasure—using that
term in the sense given to it above—will result from the
exercise of each organ of the body up to that point
necessary to maintain the entire organism in a healthy
condition. Concerning the quantity of exercise required
no hard and fast rule can be laid down, it will differ with
each individual, and even with the same individual at
different times, the amount of exercise necessary to keep
one man in a state of health would kill another, and vice
versa.
�26
Thus, from a biological standpoint we may define
happiness as a state of consciousness resulting from the
exercise of every organ of the body and faculty of the mind,
up to that point requisite to secure the well being of the
entire organism; and from the psychological side, the
gratification of all such desires as lead to this result. Now
if this be admitted as true, it follows that pleasure
producing actions and pain-producing actions are, in the
long run the equivalents of life preserving and life
destroying actions respectively ; that as Spencer says,
“ Every pleasure raises the tide of life ; and every pain
lowers the tide of life,’’ or as Professor Bain has it—“ States
of pleasure are connected with an increase, and states of
pain with an abatement of some, or all, of the vital
functions ; ” * and therefore to say .that the tendency of an
action to produce happiness is the ultimate test of its
morality, is simply saying in effect that that conduct is
moral which leads to a lengthening and broadening of
life.
And not only is this the conclusion reached by an
examination of animal life as it now is, but it is a con
clusion logically deducible from the hypothesis of
evolution and the laws of life in general. The connection
between pain and death, and happiness and life, is too
deeply grounded in general language and thought not to
have some foundation in fact. The general accuracy of
this connection is witnessed by all physiologists and
medical men, the latter of whom readily recognise how
importantian element is cheerfulness in a patient’s recovery,
while the former demonstrates that pain lowers and
pleasure raises the general level of life.
And upon no other condition could life have developed
upon the earth. As has been pointed out, actioii springs
directly from feeling and seeks to obtain pleasure either
immediately or remotely ; therefore, unless the pleasures
pursued are such as will preserve life the result is
extinction.
Imagine for example that life-destroying
actions produced pleasurable sensations—that is a state of
consciousness that animals sought to bring into existence
and retain—that bodily wounds, impure foods, and
exhausting pursuits generally, yielded nothing but
pleasure, and would, therefore, be performed eagerly,
* “ Senses and the Intellect,” p. 283.
�27
it is obvious that such a state of things would cause a
rapid disappearance of life altogether. Illustrations of
this may be readily found in individual instances, for
example, opium eaters or excessive drinkers, but it is
clear that such habits could not maintain themselves for
long upon a general scale. Something of the same thing
may even be seen in the case of lower races, that, coming
in contact with European culture and finding pleasure in
the performance of actions suitable to their past life but
unsuitable to their present one, have become extinct.
Thus, as Mr. Spencer puts it. “ At the very outset, life is
maintained by persistence in acts which conduce to it,
and desistence from acts which impede it; and whenever
sentiency makes its appearance as an accompaniment, its
forms must be such that in the one case the produced,
feeling is of a kind that will be sought—pleasure, and in
the other case is of a kind that will be shunned—pain.” *
And again, “ Those races of beings only can have survived
in which, on the average, agreeable or desired feelings
went along with activities conducive to the maintenance
of life, while disagreeable and habitually-avoided feelings
went along with activities directly or indirectly destruc
tive of life; and there must have been, other things being
equal, the most numerous and long-continued survivals
among races in which these adjustments of feelings to
actions were the best, tending ever to bring about perfect
adjustment.” f The answer, therefore, to the question,
“Why should we pursue happiness ? ” is, that we cannot
do otherwise and live. Pursuit of happiness, properly
understood, means conformity to those conditions that
render a continued and healthful life possible. The final
and ultimate reason for performing any action is that a
special desire exists urging me to do so, and the reason
for the existence of that desire must be sought for in
deeper ground than consciousness—which is relatively a
late product in biologic evolution. It is to be found in
those laws of life to which all living beings must conform,
and to which natural selection, by weeding out all of a
contrary disposition, secures an intrinsic or organic com
pliance. Morality is evidenced in action before it is
explained in thought ; its justification, the causes of its
* “ Data of Ethics.”, sec. 33.
+ “ Principles of Psychology,” Vol. i. sec. 128.
�28
growth, and the nature of its authority, are to be found
in the natural conditions of existence, and depends no
more upon the presence of a mysterious self-realising ego
than upon a conception of God furnished by current or
future theologies. It is a false and ruinous antithesis
that places virtue and happiness as two things distinct
from each other.
Virtue has no meaning other than
can be expressed in terms of pleasure ; as Spinoza said,
“ Happiness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself.”
The utilitarian formula that actions are right which
promote pleasure, and wrong which promote pain receives,
therefore, the fullest possible justification from an ex
amination of the laws of life. Highet authority than that
can no system have.
The various steps of the above argument may now be
recapitulated.
(1) Conduct is always immediately dependent upon
feeling.
(2) The immediate object will be to invite agreeable,
and obviate or modify disagreeable states of consciousness.
(3) Therefore, unless there is a general agreement
between conduct that preserves life and conduct that
produces agreeable feelings, the race must die out; while
life will increase in length and breadth as that general
agreement becomes explicit and complete.
(4) But in the course of evolution the inevitable result
is the weeding out of all such organisms as pursue life
destroying acts with pleasure, and there is thus produced
a gradual identification between the performance of life
preserving actions and the production of agreeable states
■of consciousness
It is in supplying us with these generalisations that the
•doctrine of evolution has placed morality upon a perfectly
secure and impregnable foundation, and ethics upon the
same level as other departments of scientific knowledge.
It makes morality incumbent upon the individual and
society alike by showing its identity with those processes
that make life worth living. That at present many find
pleasure in the performance of actions that lower the tide
of life, does not militate against the truth of the doctrine
.stated above. We are in a transitional state, partly
military and partly industrial, we have clinging to us
many traces of the savagery, from which we are just
�29
emerging, and there is necessarily a conflict between
many of our inherited instincts and present ideals. But
there can be little doubt that this conflict between what is
and what should be will decrease as the course of
evolution proceeds ; until becoming weaker by disuse,
the lower and undesirable instincts shall have finally
disappeared. Meanwhile a scientific ethic should do
precisely what a law of astronomy or of biology does—
describe what takes place and explain how it takes place.
Astronomical and biological laws give nothing new, they
merely formulate in comprehensible terms what takes
place in their separate departments. The function of a
science of ethics is, similarly, to describe accurately the
actions of men and why and how such actions take place ;
to trace the causes of morality, to formulate the con
ditions and nature of perfect conduct, and leave such
rules to be put into operation as rapidly as wisdom may
devise or circumstances permit.
IV.—The Nature and Authority of Conscience.
It may be asked, “ If the foregoing account of the
nature of morality is admitted to be correct, what becomes
of the authority of conscience ? Is it merely a name, or is
it, as the ordinary man believes, a divinely implanted
faculty enabling one to distinguish finally and decisively
between a right and a wrong action ? ‘ Ordinary experi
ence,’ it may further be said, ‘ shows that men do not
determine the rightness or wrongness of actions by any
mathematical calculation as to the pains or pleasures
resulting from them, but rather by a direct appeal to
conscience, and when conscience declares in favor of or
against a particular course of conduct there is no more to
be said upon the matter.
“ Upon this hypothesis man does right for pretty much
the same reason that a dog ‘ delights to bark and bite,’
because ‘ ’tis his nature to.’
Now, there is in the presentation of the case a certain
amount of truth, but it is entangled with a much larger
amount of error. For example, no one denies the exis
tence in man of a moral sense now ; all our language pre
supposes its existence. Neither is it denied that men are
swayed by the dictates of what is called ‘ Conscience.’
As Mill says:—‘The ultimate sanction of all morality is a
�30
subjective feeling in our minds.” A man will act as his
conscience directs, and provided that he has fulfilled
certain preliminary conditions, we hold that he is right in
doing so. The phrase—‘A conscientious man ’ has quite
as definite a meaning to the Utilitarian as to the Intuit
ionist. It is in the carrying out of these preliminary
conditions—i.e. instructing, checking, and improving our
conscience, comparing its deliverance with the deliverance
of that of others—upon which the dispute mainly turns.
The question really at issue is not the existence of a
moral sense, but whether this moral sense is always trust
worthy in its decisions ; whether it does not need to be
constantly checked and corrected ; and whether instead
of beiug a single indecomposable faculty it may not be
resolved into simpler parts, as a chemical compound is
shown to be made up of a number of simpler elements ?
This is substantially the whole of the matter in dispute
between the evolutionist and the intuitionist. The latter
regards the moral sense as innate and virtually indepen
dent of experience ; the former asserts that it has been
built up from much simpler feelings acquired during the
development of the race, and that examination proves
that, just as a single nerve centre is composed of clusters
of ganglia, which are again composed of fibres and cells,
so the apparently simple moral sense is really a highly
complex process, due to the gradual accumulation of the
experiences of simpler sensations acquired during ages of
past evolution. It would, indeed, be quite possible to
take successively all the vices and virtues upon which our
present moral sense passes a rapid and decisive verdict,
and show how gradually each feeling of approval and
disapproval has been built up. There is, for example,
no action upon which the moral sense of the cultured
European passes such a ready condemnation as the taking
of life. And yet it is quite certain that this special feeling
of aversion is a- comparitively late product in human
evolution. With many of the lower races the wrongness
of taking human life is confined almost entirely to the
family—and not always there; but within the tribe
personal vengeance is permitted, and even when that is
disallowed by public opinion the murder of the member
of another tribe only serves to exalt the murderer in the
eyes of his fellows. In the dark ages a man’s life was
�31
valued in an inverse ratio to his social importance, and
the church drew up a scale of punishments in accordance
with that estimate, murder of an ecclesiastic being
punished by torture and death, that of a serf by a fine of
a few pence. Even in modern civilised Europe, hundreds
or thousands of lives may be shed to satisfy political
passion or national vanity ; and only in the higher types
of the race is there a lively and constant repugnance to
the taking of life, whether if friend or foe. Indeed, the
fact that moral sense is acquired and not innate appears
on reflection, to be so plain as to cause some little surprise
that the opposite opinion should ever have been seriously
entertained for any length of time.
But apart from the historical aspect of the subject,
what we are more directly concerned with here is the
nature of those conditions which have resulted in the
growth of conscience. It would take too long to discuss
fully the nature of consciousness—even if it were not a
matter of psychology rather than of ethics—but we may
put the matter briefly in the following manner :—
Reflex action is of two kinds ; the first, irritability, is
due to the simple excitation of a piece of living matter,
and is shared by all living tissue wherever it may be
found. In virtue of this quality the organism responds
to certain stimuli and shrinks from others; and it is
plain that unless the stimuli to which the organism
responds are such as are beneficial the result will be death.
The second class of reflex actions is that in which actions
have become instinctive by frequent repetition. It is a
matter of common observation that any action frequently
performed tends to become organic, or instinctive : that
is, a purposive action is preceded by certain molecular
rearrangements in the fibres and cells, and centres of the
brain ; a repetition of the action means a repetition of the
disturbance; and by the frequent recurrence of such
rearrangements there is set up a line of least resistance
along which the nervous energy flows, with the final
result of a modification of nerve tissue, and the existence
of a structure which in response to a certain stimulus acts
automatically in a particular manner. “ The order of
events/’ says Maudesley, is presumably in this wise :
by virtue of its fundamental adaptive property as
organic matter, nerve-element responds to environing
�32
relations by definite action ; this action, when repeated
determines structure ; and thus by degrees new structure,
or—what it really is—a new organ is formed, which
embodies in its substance and displays in its function
the countless generalisations, so to speak, or ingredients
of experience, which it has gained from past and contri
butes to present stimulation,” * Now the mental side of
this physical acquirement expresses itself in the principle
known as the association of ideas. When in the course
of experience a certain set of ideas is constantly occurring
in the same order, the revival of any one of the term
will bring about a revival of the remainder of the series.
As illustrative of this we may note how when any par
ticular object is presented to the mind, as for example an
orange, the mind calls up the associated sensations of
taste and smell, neither of which is immediately presented
to it; and there may even be present the idea of certain
injurious or beneficial effects following the easing of the
fruit. Here it is evident the secondary sensations are
revived because they have always accompanied the primary
one, and it is clear that the mind has gone over a chain of
causes and effects, although we may not be conscious—
indeed we seldom are—of all the steps intervening
between the first and last term of the series. But to any
one who pays attention to the working of the mind it is
obvious that this power of rapid summing-up has been
acquired very gradually, and that what the mind now
does rapidly and decisively, it once did slowly and
hesitatingly; just as the firm steps of the man are pre
ceded by the faltering steps of the child, or the rapid
adding up of columns of figures by the trained accountant
becomes a long and wearisome process in the hands of
the amateur.
Now the verdict passed upon action by the moral sense
is merely another illustration of the same general principle.
Just as we have learned to associate a certain number of
qualities with an object the moment it is perceived, so we
have acquired by experience, individual or social,
the habit of associating a balance of pleasures or pains
with a particular action or course of conduct, even when
an entirely opposite conclusion is immediately presented
to the mind. Apart from certain actions which give rise
♦“Physiology
of
Mikd,” p. 397.
�33
to painful or pleasurable feelings as long as their effects
endure, experience has shown that certain actions while
directly painful are ultimately pleasurable, while others
immediately pleasurable are ultimately painful. This
experience has been repeated so frequently that the desire
attaching to the end has become transferred to the means :
as in the case of a man who begins by loving money because
of its purchasing power, and ends by loving it for itself,
the means to an end becomes thus all in all. Thus, the
means and the end become jammed together, so to speak,
in thought, and the mind having in view the after results
of an action, passes an instantaneous judgment upon it.
A trained biologist will draw from a very few facts a
conclusion which is by no means apparent to the untrained
mind ; long experience has familiarised him with the
process, and the conclusion suggests itself immediately to
the mind ; and one might as well postulate an innate
biological sense to account for the one process as postulate
an innate moral sense to account for the other.
The existence of a moral sense in man is simply an
illustration of the physiological law that functions slowly
acquired and painfully performed become registered in a
modified nerve structure, and are handed on from
generation to generation to be performed automatically or
to take their place as moral instincts.
Two things have prevented people seeing this clearly,
first, the problem has been treated as being purely psycho
logical, and, secondly, moral qualities have been viewed
as innate instead of acquired, and the question of develop
ment consequently ignored. Both of these causes have
helped to confuse rather than to clear. Underlying all
mental phenomena there is and must be a corresponding
physical structure; and it is only by carrying our
enquiries further and studying this physical structure
that we may hope to understand those mental qualities,
feelings, or emotions to which it gives rise, and, secondly,
it is not by contemplating the moral instincts of man as
they are to-day that we can hope to understand them.
This can be done only by reducing them to their simpler
elements and carefully studying the causes and conditions
of their origin and development. And when we analyse
the contents of our moral judgments, we find precisely
what the hypothesis of evolution would lead us to expect,
�34
namely, the majority of such actions as it sanctions are
found in the light of sober reason to be conducive to
individual and social welfare, while such as it condemns
are of a directly opposite character.
The decisions of the moral judgment are thus neither
more nor less than verdicts upon conduct expressed by
the summed-up experience of the race; and although such
judgments carry with them undoubted authority in virtue
of their origin, they, nevertheless need to be constantly
watched over and corrected when necessary. For, granting
that a certain presumption exists in favour of a verdict
passed by “ conscience,”—since it argues the possession of
a mental habit acquired by experience, and which would
never have been acquired had not such conduct as led to
its formation been once useful,—such verdicts cannot be
admitted to be final; for nothing is of commoner occur
rence than to find that habits and customs that are useful
at one stage of human development are dangerous at
others.
All that the existence of a moral instinct can prove
beyond doubt is that it was once useful, whether it is
useful now or not is a matter to be decided by ordinary
experience and common sense. A function owes its
value to its relation to a particular environment, and
therefore can only retain its worth so long as the condi
tions of life remain unchanged ; any alteration in the
condition of existence must involve a corresponding
change in the value of a function or in that cluster of
moral tendencies classed under the general name of
“ conscience.” While, therefore, conscience may urge us
to take action in a particular direction, it cannot give us
any guarantee that we are acting rightly. All that we can
be certain of is the existence of a feeling prompting a
particular action, and with that our certainty ends. To
discover whether the dictates of conscience are morally
justifiable we need to appeal to a higher court. The voice
of conscience is, as experience daily shows, neither uni
form nor infallible in its decrees ; its decisions vary not
only with time, place, and individual, but even with the
same individual at different times and under different con
ditions. In brief “acting up to one’s conscience,” to
use a common phrase, is indicative of honesty only,
not of correctness, it can mean merely that we
�35
are acting in accordance with certain feelings of
approbation or disapprobation that have been called
into existence during the evolution of the race and by
the early moral training of the individual. Nothing
is plainer than that the conscience needs correction
and admits of improvement; the fact of moral growth
implies as much, and this alone should be sufficient to
prove that conscience is an acquired and not an original
activity.
That conscience represents the stored up and consoli
dated experiences of preceding generations, subject of
course to the early training of the individual, there can
be little doubt. Given living tissue capable of responding
to certain stimuli and shrinking from others, and we
have the raw material of morality; for the only tissue
that can continue to exist will be such as responds to
stimuli favourable to its existence and shrinks from such
as are unfavourable. The reverse of this it is impossible
to conceive. Once the conditions under which life
persists becomes fairly understood, and the above con
clusion becomes almost a necessity of thought. There is
thus secured from the outset a general harmony between
actions instinctively performed and life-preserving ones;
and natural selection by preserving the lives of those
animals whose actions serve to establish the closest
harmony between themselves and their environment
serves to accentuate the formation of such habits as
render the performance of life-preserving actions certain
and instinctive. This feeling of moral approbation is, as
I have already said, not the only example of the principle
here emphasised, viz. : that separate and successive
acquisitions become so blended together as to form an
apparently single faculty. It is exemplified alike in the
skilled mathematician and the trained mechanic, and is,
indeed, co-extensive with the world of sentient life.
From monad to man progress has meant the acquisition
of such habits—physical, mental, and moral, Our moral
equally with our intellectual faculties have been built up
gradually during the course of human development. We
each start life with a certain mental and moral capital
that comes to us as a heritage from the past. Functions
that took generations to acquire are found as parts of our
structure, and their exercise has become an organic
�36
necessity.
Frequent repetition has converted certain
actions into habits ; physiologically these habits imply the
existence of a modified nerve structure demanding their
performance ; while mentally and morally such structures
and functions express themselves in the much debated
and misunderstood, moral sense.
V.—Society and the Individual.
In the foregoing pages morality has been dealt with
almost exclusively from the standpoint of the individual;
I have purposely omitted certain factors that aid moral
development in order that fundamental ethical principles
might not be obscured. I have shown the groundwork
of morality to lie in the very constitution of organic
matter; and that rules of ethics are merely generalized
statements of those courses of conduct which serve to
establish a harmony between organism and environment,
or, in other words, to maintain life.
Yet it must be evident to the student that one very im
portant factor—the social factor—must be considered if
our system is to btf complete. The influence of society in
developing morality must, it is plain, be considerable ;
for although the reason for right conduct, and the motives
that lead to it, must ultimately be found in the nature of
the individual, yet, if we seek for a full explanation of
the individual’s character, we must be referred back again
to the structure of that society of which he is a part. For
at bottom, the only reason why each individual should
possess a certain number of moral qualities of a particular
character, is that he belongs to a society that has developed
along special lines. The individual, as he is to-day, is a
product of the race, and would no more be what he is
apart from social organization, than society could be what
it is apart from the individuals that compose it. Each
quality or action is good or bad in virtue of its adaptation
or non-adaptation to an environment ; and to speak of
goodness or badness apart from such relations is to use
words that are void of all meaning. From whence do
such words as “honest,” “justice,” “duty,” Ac., derive
their significance if not from the relations existing between
the individual and his fellows ? Place a man upon a
desert island, and what becomes of ariy of these qualities ?
All moral conduct requires a medium ; in this case society
�37
is the medium in which morality lives and breathes ; and
it could no more continue without it than a bird could fly
without the atmosphere. The proof of this is seen in the
fact that any disturbance in the social structure involves a
corresponding change in the relationships of men and
women. All periods of change, religious or social, have
influenced for better or worse existing ethical institutions
and ideas, and few will doubt that should any great econ
omic change occur to-day there would ensue a speedy
re-arrangement of moral ideals.
*
It is therefore in the structure and development of the
social organism that we must seek for an explanation of
existing moral principles ; by this method only can we
understand how it is possible to obtain from a race of
beings, each of which is primarily moral by the instinct
of self-preservation, a social morality.
The general
manner in which this result has been attained has been
already indicated, but it remains to trace out the process
in greater detail.
In his profoundly suggestive book, “ Physics and
Politics,’’ Bagshot has pointed out that the great problem
early society had to face was, “ how to bend men to the
social yoke,” to domesticate him in short. Man untrained
and savage needed to have his energies checked, his im
pulses educated, and the whole of his nature practically
transformed before he could become either social or ethical.
A number of forces, natural, religious, social and political,
have contributed to bring about the desired result; and
although they overlap one another, still it is easy to deter
mine their position and approximate value.
Not to reckon with the possession of certain fundamental
life-preserving instincts, which are an inevitable product
■of the struggle for existence, and which must be the
common property of all sentient being, the struggle
against natural forces must early have driven men into
the adoption of additional life-preserving courses of con
duct. The conduct that furthered a fuller life may not
have been consciously adopted, but from the fact that all
who did not adopt it would disappear, its performance
would be rendered tolerably certain. Further, even were
not social organisation a heritage from man’s animal
* The fact of a movement of change proceeding from an ethical impulse
in no way affects this statement.
�38
ancestors, the struggle against nature would soon havedriven man into co-operation with his fellows. The
advantages of combination are too great not to give those
who are more amenable to the restraints of social life a
tremendous advantage over such as are not. The cohesion
and discipline of a tribe would be of far-greater importance
in the primitive than in the modern state. Natural selec
tion would, therefore, work along the lines of favouring
the preservation of the more social type of character. In
a tribe where some of its members showed but little in
clination to work with their fellows or submit to the
discipline laid down, such individuals would be weeded
out by a dual process. They would fall easy victims to
the tribal enemies, and the type would be discouraged by
public opinion. They would thus leave few or no des
cendants to perpetuate their qualities ; and by this dual
process of elimination the type would tend to die out,
and there would be gradually formed in its place one that
to some extent regarded individual and general welfare
as being inextricably blended. But this living together
necessarily implies the existence and cultivation of certain
sentiments and virtues that are not purely self-regarding.
If people are to live together and work together, there
must of necessity be some sense of duty, justice, confi
dence and kindness, let it be in ever so rudimentary a.
form; but these virtues must be present, or society disin
tegrates. Without confidence there could be no combina
tion, and without justice combination would be useless.
But the great thing in the first stage is to get the indi
vidual to obey the voice of the tribe and submit to its
judgments; and so long as a quality brings this end about
it is of service. It is in this direction that the fear of
natural forces, represented by early religions, and fear of
the chief as the representative of the gods on earth, have
played their part in domesticating man. The chief and
the priest both dictated and enforced certain lines of
conduct; where the conduct enjoined gave the tribe an
advantage over its competitors, it flourished ; where the
conduct enforced was of an opposite character, it was
either altered or the race went under in the struggle. So
that here again there would be brought about an identifi
cation of habitual and life-preserving conduct. The
discipline thus enforced was stern, the after results were
�39
disastrous, but it was useful then ; and, as Bagehot says,
“ Progress would not have been the rarity it is if the early
food had not been the late poison.”
Mr. Francis Galton has shown that a want of self*
reliance has been of great benefit to many species of
animals, inasmuch as it led to their presenting a united front
to an enemy that could not have been successfully resisted
by any other means; and undoubtedly, as he proceeds to
argue, a too great tendency to break away from custom
and initiate movements on one’s own responsibility, would
at the outset destroy whatever social life existed. Of
course these coercive forces by means of which man is
first domesticated, are not altogether consciously directed
or invented ; it cannot be said that any man invented a
custom, although it may be said humanity invented them.
Custom among savage races will grow out of the most
trifling circumstances or coincidences. Many customs
rise up and die out, and eventually out of a multitude
that are tried only a few survive; pretty much as out of
a number of seeds that may be scattered only those strike
root that find themselves amid favourable conditions.
The first step, then, in the growth of the state and
morality, is for each individual to recognise that living
with others implies that all his impulses shall not be
gratified promiscuously ; that it is wrong to go against the
expressed opinion of the tribe, or, better still, that his
interests are in some mysterious manner vitally connected
with the interests of the whole. This is secured, primarily, by the operation of natural selection, later by
conscious innovation ; the sphere of self unconsciously
extends until it takes in the whole of which the individual
is but a part. But apart even from those influences which
serve to foster moral feelings, the existence of family life
gives us a very definite point from which to commence
our investigations. It has been made pretty clear by
numerous investigators that the genesis of the state is to be
found in the family. From that it passes by natural
growth through the patriarchal and tribal stages to the
nation ; and therefore one must seek in the structure of the
family for the beginnings of much that is afterwards
expressed in the tribe.
*" Human Faculty,” pp. 70-79.
�40
The young human being has a longer period of infancy
and helplessness than any other animal. For several years
its existence, and consequently the existence of the species,
is dependent upon the unselfish feelings of others.
*
The family is, therefore, a much more powerful influence
in the moulding of the human character, than it is with
other animals, and it is consequently in the family that we
must look for the first clear outline of the social virtues.
Most of the virtues that are not purely self-regarding will,
I imagine, be found to have had their origin in this source.
Here must first have found clear expression the virtues of
forbearance, kindness, and a certain rough sense of justice.
The sense of justice is however very slight, being little
more than the arbitrary dictates of the head of the family,
a condition of things that lingers even when the family
has blossomed into the tribe. Still the main point to be
noted is that it is in the family that the individual is first
brought into constant relationship with creatures similar
to himself ; these others constitute a part, a very important
part of his environment, and he is necessarily compelled to
adjust his actions accordingly. It has been shown above
that “ Goodness ” consists essentially in a relation—the
maintenance of a balance between an organism and its
environment. Whether that environment be organic or
inorganic the principle remains the same, although in the
former case the influence of the environment is clearer and
more direct. As, however, in the family the surroundings
of each unit is partly made up of similar units, and,
further, as the medium of each is tolerably uniform,
adjustment will involve here (1) development along pretty
similar lines, and (2) adjustment in such a manner, that
the welfare of all the units becomes in some measure bound
up with and identical with that of each. Each one is
affected in somewhat similar manner by the same
influence, and the presence of pain in any member of the
family gives rise to similar representative feelings in self.
In this circumstance we find the beginning of sympathy
which plays such a large part in evolved conduct, and
which consists essentially in the process sketched above.
The next expansion of self occurs when the family
* I adopt the conventional terms here, but the precise meaning to be
attached to the words “Selfish” and “ Unselfish,” will be considered
later.
�41
developes into the tribe or state. Here the relations of
man become more varied, the interests wider; and the
constant clashing of interests renders necessary the
framing of laws for the general guidance. What had
already taken place in the family now takes place in the
state, a re-adjustment must be effected in order to establish
a more satisfactory relation between the individual and
the new environment. In particular, the ideas of justice
and duty must undergo a great expansion and elevation.
But even here the demands of right conduct are strictly
limited to the tribe; duties and obligations have no
reference to outsiders. Very plainly is this shown in the
Bible, “ Thou shalt not steal ” did not mean the Israelites
were not to “ spoil the Egyptians,” nor “ Thou shalt not
bear false witness ” mean that they were to be truthful to
their enemies; nor did the command “ Thou shalt not
commit murder” prevent the Jews putting to death the
people whose lands they had invaded. Virtue here was
purely local. It was not until a much later stage of human
development, when the tribe had grown into the state,
and the expansion of the state had given rise to a com
munity of nations with a oneness of interest running
through all, that the idea of virtue as binding alike upon
all was finally reached ; although we have still lingering
much of the tribal element in that narrow patriotism
which finds expression in the maxim, “ My country, right
or wrong.”
In the history of Rome we can trace these various stages
with tolerable clearness. One can watch Rome developing
from the patriarchal stage to the tribal, thence to the
nation, and finally to the world-wide Empire with its far
reaching consequences. At each of these stages we can
discern a corresponding development in moral ideals.
Confined at first to the tribe, morality grew until it
absorbed the nation ; and finally its universal dominion
involved as a necessity rules of ethics that should press
with equal force upon all, and which expressed itself
generally in the doctrine of human brotherhood. As
Lecky says, “ The doctrine of the universal brotherhood
of mankind was the manifest expression of those social
and political changes which reduced the whole civilised
globe to one great empire, threw open to the most distant
tribes the right of Roman citizenship, and subverted all
�42
those class distinctions around which moral theories had
been formed.” *
It is by such natural and gradual steps as those outlined
above that morality has developed. Its rise is upon
precisely the same level as that of the arts and sciences.
Given living tissue and the struggle for existence, and a
moral code of some sort is the inevitable result. Just as
inventions grew out of individual needs, so morality grew
out of social necessities. One feature in the process of
development is clear, and that is that the expansion of
moral theories, and their purification, has at each step
been dependent upon an expansion of the organic
environment. As this grew wider and more intricate
there was necessitated a re-adjustment of moral ideas.
Feelings that at first applied only to the family were
afterwards extended to the tribe, then to the nation, and
lastly, as a recognition of a oneness of interest indepen
dent of nationality began to dawn upon the human
reason, to the whole of humanity.
I have endeavoured to make this process of develop
ment as plain as possible by keeping clear of many con
siderations which, while bearing upon the subject, were not
altogether essential to its proper consideration. Yet, it is
obvious, that if the above outline be admitted as sub
stantially correct, the relation of the individual and society
is put in a new light; it is no longer the attributes of a
number of independent objects that we have to deal with,
but the qualities of an organism; and hence will result
very important modifications in the use of terms and in
the structure of our moral ideals.
In the first place the arbitrary division hitherto drawn
between self-regarding and social acts can no longer be
maintained, or at least not without serious modification.
The distinction usually drawn between self-regarding and
social conduct, although valuable enough for working
purposes, cannot be an ultimate distinction. It can mean
no more at bottom than the division of mind into emotion,
volition, and thought. Man’s moral, mental, and physical
nature forms a unity, and all divisions that may be made
are divisions erected to suit our conveniences and not such
as exist in nature. As the individual is an integral portion
Hist. European Morals. Ed. 1892. I. 340.
�43
of society, is indeed a product of social activity, his actions
have necessarily a double aspect, his fitness as an individual
determines his value in the social structure, and con
versely the perfection of the structure has a vital bearing
upon his own value ; and therefore although we may fix
our minds upon one portion of his conduct to the exclusion
of the other, such a state of things no more exists in
reality than the Euclidean line without breadth, or a point
without magnitude.
But it does not follow that because the distinction
usually drawn between the two classes of actions is
inaccurate that there is, therefore, no such thing as
gratifying individual preference at the cost of injury to
others. That is by no means the case. The important
thing is having a correct understanding of the sense- in
which the terms are used.
It has, I think, been made clear that however it may be
disguised the main end of the action is always the pursuit
of pleasure or the avoidance of pain; and therefore,
unless we choose to confuse ourselves with what Bentham
called “ question begging epithets,” it is plain that a man
can only desire the well-being of others in so far as their
happiness becomes in some manner bound up with his
own.
This result is brought about by two methods :
directly, by the growth of the sympathetic feelings which
makes the sight of suffering painful, and indirectly
through the desire of the good opinion and friendship of
those with whom we are living. Sympathy, although not
so important as many have imagined it to be, is yet an
extremely potent factor in moral evolution. Indeed, sym
pathy, which may be defined as the process of presenting
to the mind the pleasures and pains endured by others,
and making them our own, so to speak, is involved in the
very nature of knowledge and in the structure of society.
Social life is impossible, bearing in mind our fundamental
maxim, unless animals find some amount of pleasure in
the mere fact of being together. Were it otherwise there
would be disunion. This simpler form of sympathy
quickly gives rise to other forms of a much more complex
character. Beside the general circumstance that creatures
living amid the same general set of conditions come to
have nearly identical feelings aroused by similar stimuli,
it is obvious that a large part of the value of gregarious
�44
ness will depend upon the ability of certain individuals
to arouse by their actions feelings of a desired kind in
others. A member of a herd of animals scenting a special
danger, excites by its actions sympathetic feelings on the
part of the other members, thus enabling them to prepare
for defence in a similar manner. Otherwise the warning
that is given on the approach of danger would be of little
or no value. Thus, the development of a society involves
a capacity of entering into the pleasures and pains of
others ; and this power is further heightened by those
social sanctions which prescribe and enforce certain lines
of conduct—sanctions which are much more powerful in
primitive societies than in modern ones, owing to the
smaller individuality of its members.
The distinction, therefore, between a selfish and an
unselfish act is not that in the latter case egoistic feelings
have no place; this would be impossible ; it is simply
that in the evolution of society a transfusion of the
egoistic feelings occurs owing to which their distinctive
features are lost, pretty much as the special properties of
a number of elements are lost when merged into a
chemical compound. In the conflict of mutual self
regarding interests a number of re-adjustments and
compromises occur, until the result assumes a different
character from that presented by the individual elements.
The discussion about egoism and altruism has, as a result
of ignoring these considerations, been largely a barren one.
It is impossible to live for others unless one lives for self,
it is equally impossible to live wisely for self and ignore
duties to others. Therefore, as Maudesley says, “It is
not by eradication but by a wise direction of egoistic
passions, not by annihilation but by utilisation of them, that
progress in social culture takes place ; and one can only
wonder at the absurdly unpractical way in which
theologians have declaimed against them, contemning and
condemning them, as though it were a man’s first duty to
root them clean out of his nature, and as though it were
their earnest aim to have a chastity of impotence, a
morality of emasculation.” *
A second and no less important consideration is one that
has been already pointed out generally, namely, that a
* “Body and Will” p. 167.
�45
science of ethics can only reach safe generalisations by
taking into consideration the social structure of which the
individual is a part. To separate man from society and then
hope to understand his moral nature, is like attempting
to determine the function of a leg or an arm without
reference to the body. Such qualities as duty and justice
are, as I have said, purely social, and therefore the reason
for their existence cannot be found in the nature of the
individual considered apart from his fellows, any more
than the movements of the earth could be understood
apart from the influence of the rest of our planetary sys
tem. Indeed, a great many of the objections commonly
urged against a scientfic system of ethics will be found to
be based upon this short-sighted view of the matter ; and
thus as Mr. Stephens has pointed out, must lead to error
and confusion.
That man is a social animal is a statement frequently
made and easily illustrated, although few of those who use
the phrase have apparently considered all that is involved
in the dictum. Yet in that sentence lies the key to the
whole problem. As G. A. Lewes says, “ The distinguishing
feature of human psychology is that to the three great
factors, organism, external medium and heredity, it adds a
fourth, namely, relation to a social medium, with its product
the general mind.”* It is this “ fourth factor ” which gives
rise to a purely human morality and psychology, and so
speak, lifts the individual out of himself and merges him
in a larger whole.f From the first moment of his birth
man is dependent upon the activities of others for ninetenths of those things that render life endurable, and the
feelings engendered in the course of evolution bear an
obvious relation to this dependence. The love of offspring,
regard for the feelings of others, readiness to act in
unison with others, all form part of those conditions that
make the perpetuation of the specieS possible ; and conse
quently without such instincts and sentiments the
individual as he now exists would be an impossibility.
And in such cases where these sentiments were absent—the
+ To live for self is as scientifically and ethically absurd as to live for
others. The true ethic consists in giving to self-regarding and other re
garding claims their due weight, while at the same time demonstrating
their interdependence.
* “ Study
of
Psychology.”
�46
love of offspring for example—these individuals would
leave few behind to perpetuate their qualities, and the type
would thus tend to disappear. On the other hand, the
kindly disposed person, the sympathetic, or such as come
up to the tribal ideal of excellence, would be held up for
imitation and respect; and thus by a dual process of
weeding out anti-social specimens, and by cultivating
social ones, the development of a higher type would
proceed. Indeed, we can scarcely conceive the cause of
evolution to have been otherwise. Natural selection
works by favouring the possessors of such qualities as
establish a more perfect balance between organism and
environment, and in developing customs and instincts
the course of social evolution has been to bring out and
cultivate such as were favourable to the welfare of social
structure and repress those of a contrary character. Each
of the social virtues may have its rise traced in this
manner, by showing how it has contributed to individual
and social development.
*
The tendency of natural
selection in preserving those communities in which the
members are most at one in feeling and action is to bring
about not merely an ideal, but an actual identification of
individual and social welfare, and this in such a manner
that each one finds the fullest expression of his own wel
fare in the combined happiness of all around him.
This truth, that man might properly be regarded as a
cell in the “ social tissue,” was recognised in a vague and
rather fanciful manner long ago ; t but it is owing to the
unparalleled scientific activity of the last half century that
this conception of man has been placed upon a solid
foundation, and a scientific view of human life and conduct
made possible. We now see that the phrase “social
organism ” or “ social tissue” is something more than a
mere figure of speech, that it expresses a fundamental fact
and one that must be constantly borne in mind in the
consideration of social problems. What, indeed, is society
or the social medium but a part of the individual ? One’s
whole being, intellectual and moral, is composed of
* A very interesting inquiry might here be opened concerning the
influence upon the general character of leading or much admired
individuals.
+ Plato, Republic, book v. 462.
�47
innumerable relations between it and others. My nature
has been and is being so continually moulded by this social
medium that my pleasures and pains have become indis
solubly connected with the pleasures and pains of others
to such an extent that I could no more be happy in
a society where misery was general than 1 could travel in
comfort or indulge in the pleasures of art, science, or
literature, apart from the activities of those around me.
The mere fact of being brought up in a society so
identifies all our ideas and customs with that society as to
defy their separation from it. This is well illustrated in
the case of young men and women who are brought up
within the pale of a particular church. They become part
of its organisation, they identify themselves with it, and its
losses and gains become their own. If all this is witnessed
in a single generation, how much more powerful must the
co-operate feeling become when society has been constantly
developing along the same lines for countless generations
with its sanctions enforced by organic necessity ? The
process must obviously result in the direction above
indicated, that of bringing about a union of individual
desires and actions with social well-being; while the
growing intelligence of man, by perceiving the reason and
value of this mutual dependence of the unit and society,
must be constantly taking steps to strengthen the union
and increase its efficiency.
Here, then, w have reached a conclusion, or at least to
e
*
go further would involve a lengthy discussion of matters
into which we have no desire to enter. But if the fore
going reasoning be sound, we have reached a point from
which the reader will be enabled to lay down a clear and
satisfactory theory of morals such as will place the
subject upon the same level as any of the arts and
sciences.
The principles involved in the preceding pages may be
briefly summarised as follows :—
(1) Maintenance of life depends upon the establish
ment and continuance of a definite set of actions between
the organism and its environment.
(2) In the ceaseless struggle for existence this is
secured by the preservation of all those animals whose
�48
habits and capabilities best equips them to meet the
demands of their environment, natural selection thus
the
*
accentuating
value of all variations in this direction.
(3) As all conduct has as its immediate object the pur
suit of pleasurable, and the avoidance of painful feelings,
and as life is only possible on the condition that pleasur
able and beneficial actions shall roughly correspond,
there is set up a general and growing agreement between
pleasure-producing and life-preserving conduct.
(4) As experience widens and intelligence develops,
those actions that make for a higher life become more
certain and easy of attainment; while the pleasures
formerly attached to the end of action become transferred
to the means, these becoming an end in themselves.
(5) The conditions of life bearing upon all with a
certain amount of uniformity, and therefore demanding
a like uniformity of action, leads to a gradual modification
of nerve structure and the creation of corresponding
general sentiments, which, handed on and increased from
generation to generation, express themselves in our exist
ing moral sense.
(6) The moral sense, therefore, while possessing a
certain authority in virtue of its origin, needs to be con, tinually tested and corrected in accordance with the
requirements of the age.
(7) All progress involves the specialisation and integra
tion of the various parts of the organism, individual and
social. By the operation of this principle there is
brought about an identification of individual and general
interests ; inasmuch as each one finds his own happiness
constantly dependent upon the happiness of others, and
that a full expression of his own nature is only to be
realised in social activity.
Frcm all of which we, may conclude that:—
“ The rule of life drawn from the practice and opinions
of mankind corrects and improves itself continually, till
at last it determines entirely for virtue and excludes all
kinds and degrees of vice.
*
For, if it be correct to say
Hartley, “Observations on Man,” II. p. 214.
�49
that the moral formula is the expression of right relations
between man and the world, then it follows that the pres
sure urging man to the performance of right actions—i.e.,
actions serving to broaden and perpetuate life—must on
the whole be more permanent than those impelling him
to the performance of wrong ones. This, it will be
observed, is merely making the broad and indisputable
statement that evolution tends to maintain life.
The course of evolution is therefore upon the side of
morality. By the operation of the struggle for existence
we can see how “ the wicked are cut off from the earth ; ”
and the more righteous live on and perpetuate the species.
Right conduct is one of the conditions of existence, and
is as much the outcome of natural and discoverable laws
as any of the sciences to which we owe so much. What
has prevented it assuming a like positive character has
been the extreme complexity of the factors joined to the
want of a proper method. Here, again, we are deeply
indebted to the doctrine of evolution for having thrown
a flood of light upon the subject, and making tolerably
clear what was before exceedingly obscure. Under its
guidance we see the beginnings of morality low down in
the animal world in the mere instinct of self-preservation,
and its highest expression in the sympathetic and kindred
feelings of men living in society. And between these
two extremes there are no gaps ; it is an unbroken
sequence right through. As I have said, the process has
practically assumed the shape of an expansion of self,
from the individual to the family, from the family to the
state, and from the state to the whole of humanity.
Morality thus rises at length above the caprice of the
individual or the laws of nations, and stands a law
giver in its own right and in virtue of its own inherent
majesty. That which was a matter of blind instinct
at the outset, and later of arbitrary authority, becomes
in the end a matter of conscious perception pressing upon
all alike with the authority of natural law.
The outlook, then, to the rationalist is a perfectly
hopeful one. From the vantage ground afforded him by
modern science he can see that a constant purification of
conduct is part of the natural order of things, and
although in a universe of change one can hardly picture
�50
a time when there will cease to be a conflict between
good and bad motives, yet the whole course of evolution
warrants us in looking forward with confidence to a time
when the development of the permanently moral qualities,
or of such powers as serve to keep men moral, will be
sufficient to hold the immoral and anti-social tendencies
in stern and complete subjection ; for however much the
forms of morality may change with time and place, that
in virtue of which right conduct gains its name, must
ever remain the same.
�
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An outline of evolutionary ethics
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Cohen, Chapman [1868-1954]
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Ethics
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Ethics
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SCIENTIFIC PROPAGATION.
BY JOHN HUMPHREY NOYES.
T is generally agreed among the highest thinkers that sociology
is the science around which all other sciences are finally to be
organized. But this nucleus is manifestly complex, and we may
still inquire, where is the nucleolus ?—which of the departments
into which sociology is divisible is the center of the center ? The an
swer, if it has not yet been uttered, is fast forming in the general
mind. The vital center of sociology, toward which all eyes are turn
ing, is the science which presides over reproduction. It is becoming
clear that the foundations of scientific society are to be laid in the sci
entific propagation of human beings.
In perfecting animals we attend to two things, viz., blood and train
ing ; and we put blood first. But in the case of human beings we
have thus far left blood to take care of itself, and have given all of our
attention to training. Education is well advanced, but we are begin
ning to see that it is like the ancient writing of manuscripts, a slow
process, with many drawbacks. We labor to perfect the individual, but
what we want is the art of multiplying copies of our work. Educa
tion is waiting for its printing-press, and its printing-press is to be
scientific propagation.
The duty of the human race to improve itself by intelligent pro
creation has certainly been seen, in some dim way, from the earliest
ages. The analogy between breeding animals and breeding men is so
obvious, that it must have thrust itself upon the reflections of the wise
at least as long ago as when Jacob overreached Laban by cunningly
managing the impregnation of his flocks. Four hundred years before
the Christian era, Plato represented Socrates as urging on his pupils
this analogy and the duty resulting from it, in the following plain
terms:
Z
“ Tell me this, Glaucon; in your house I see both sporting dogs and a great
number of well-bred birds ; have you ever attended to their pairing and bringing
forth young?”
“ How? ” said he.
“ First of all, among these, though all be well-bred, are not some of them far
better than all the rest ? ”
“ They are.”
“ Do you breed, then, from all alike; or are you anxious to do so, as far as pos
sible, from the best breeds ? ”
“ From the best,”
�98
SCIENTIFIC
PROPAGATION.
“But how? from the youngest or the oldest, or from those quite iu their
prime ? ”
From those in their prime.”
“ And if they are not thus bred, you consider that the breed, both of birds and
dogs, greatly degenerates ? ”
“ I do,” replied he.
“ And what think you as to horses,” said I, “ and other animals ; is the case
otherwise with respect to them ? ”
“ It were absurd to think so,” said he.
“ How strange, my dear fellow! ” said I; “ what extremely perfect government
must we have, if the same applies to the human race ! ”
“ Nevertheless it is so,” replied he.
Republic, Book 5, Chap. 8.
Perhaps Socrates died for this bold criticism; but his thought did
_ not die. This same argument from analogy, which has thus been
pressing on the human conscience in all ages, has become actually
clamorous in modern times. The physical sciences, as they have been
successively developed, have all turned by inevitable instinct toward their
predestined center. Their drift has constantly been from the inorganic
to the organic, and from the organic to. the reproductive. Agassiz passes
from geology to biology, and finds the secret of biology in embryology.
Darwin gathers all he finds in the botany and zoology of all ages into
the demonstration that plants and animals can be molded ad libitum
by attention to the laws of reproduction.
His object was to establish a theory looking backward to the origin
of species, but the practical result of his labors has been to establish a
theory looking forward to the duty of scientific propagation. His great
theme is the plasticity of living forms. He shows, first, how nature
alone, in the countless ages of the past, has slowly transmuted plants
and animals; then how the unsystematic care of man, since the dawn
of intelligence, has hastened these changes; and finally how modern
science and skill have rapidly perfected the races that are subservient to
human use. In all this he has been at work on Plato’s argument. He
has not dared to make the application, but others have not dared to
ignore it, and to them Darwin has been an awful preacher of the law
of God.
Along with the evolution of the physical sciences, there has been
an enormous growth of zeal and skill in practical breeding. Every
plant and animal that man can lay hands upon has been put through a
course of variations and brought to high perfection. And every suc
cess in practical breeding has added emphasis to the law that com
mands man to improve his own race by scientific propagation. Every
melting pear, every red-cheeked apple, every mealy potato that modern
skill presents us, bids us go to work on the final task of producing the
best possible varieties of human beings. Every race-horse, every
straight-backed bull, every premium pig tells us what we can do and
what we must do for man. What are all our gay cattle fairs, but eloquent
reminders of the long-neglected duty of scientific human propagation ?
�SCIENTIFIC • PR OF A GA T IO N.
99
And this preaching has not been wholly without effect. There is
evidently much resulting conviction among those who read and thiuk
on scientific subjects. Nobody really attempts to obey the law pro
pounded, or even expects to ; but all approve of it. In this as in other
cases, we “ consent unto the law that it is good, but how to perform
that which is good we find not.”
Phrenologists, popular physiologists, and reformers of various kinds
have long been busy carrying over the laws of Darwin into the public
conscience, translating analogy into application ; and it is remarkable
how common it has become for books and newspapers to acknowledge
the duty of scientific propagation, and confess that in this matter “ we
are all miserable sinners.” In a rapid run through a mass of popular
literature nearest at hand, we have met with the following specimens
of out-cropping conviction:
“ With the acceptance by scientific thinkers of the principles of structural
transformation upon which Mr. Darwin’s theory is based, must needs come their
recognition by men of unscientific education, and their application to individual
life. No scientific thought, thoroughly established and wrought into the belief of
the common people, can be without its influence upon their life. Men have as
much need to apply the doctrine of Mr. Darwin to themselves as to their horses
and cattle.”—American Exchange and Review.
“ Consider agriculture, horticulture, flori-culture, the stock-raisers, even the
‘ fanciers,’ and borrow from them the lessons they practice so accurately. Think of
it! Years of study have resulted in volumes of registered observations and deduc
tions for the improvement of the brute races. The horse, the ox, the swine, and
every other domestic animal has been raised to a higher type of physical being.
Even flowers and vegetables are thought worthy of this same care ; yet the pre
cious casket of the human soul is left to dwindle down from one stage of degen
eracy to another, till a large proportion of the human race are employed in the
vocations that can only flourish upon human decay.”—Dr. Chaklotte Loziek, in
the Tribune.
“Agricultural reports have teemed with lessons for breeding and taking care of
all our stock except the most precious—that of ourselves and our children. The
Atlantic cable sinks to insignificance compared with the science of the develop
ment of man. We exhibit beautiful animal stock, but deformed, erysipelatory,
rickety, narrow-chested, dyspeptic, teeth-rotten, flabby-muscled, scrofulous, crook
ed-backed, bad-jointed girls and boys, with diseased kidneys, diseased livers, and
bad nerves. Let all agricultural orators open their mouths against these terrible
evils of the land.”—American Institute Transactions for 1858, p- 160.
“What is needed, in order to improve the physical characteristics of American
children, is. in the first place, to find out wherein they deviate from the true model,
and then to set at work influences which, under the laws of reproduction, shall
directly tend to induce conformity thereto, instead of deformity. It is just as easy
to improve the breed of children as the breeds of domestic animals ; for the human
organism is as impressible in this respect as the organisms of animals, and, I think,
rather more so—the susceptibility in this direction being in ratio to the rank.
“ If it be true that, in the case of a sheep, you can, by proper heed to certain
laws, including as these do certain conditions of living, so change a species of that
animal that, from being a small animal with a small quantity of wool, it, shall be
come a large animal with only a small quantity of wool; or from being a large ani
mal with a small quantity of wool, it shall become less in size, but with a larger
�100
SCIENTIFIC PROPAGATION.
fleece, you have reached a point in the modification of the animal structure which
may seriously affect all its vital conditions. If this can be done in the case of one
species of animals, it can in others—in truth, in all others—and man forms no ex
ception to the rule.”—Dr. Jackson, in ‘'Laws of Life.”
We ask our friends to read our extracts from Darwin attentively, and see if
they do not discern, looming in the background of the facts here presented, a most
gigantic question affecting the future of human society—that, namely, relating to
its scientific propagation. If the races of plants and animals have been so far im
proved as is there shown, by attention to selection in breeding, the question comes
up in force, what is man about at this late day, that he is not applying the same
principles and observations in a scientific manner to the improvement of his own
race ? If the farmer achieves with perfect certainty the elevation of his flocks and
herds to a certain standard of form and size, beauty and disposition, by observing
the fixed laws of propagation, why should not something be done systematically
for man in the same way ? Why should not beauty and noble grace of person, and
every other desirable quality of men and women, internal and external, be propa
gated and intensified beyond all former precedent, by the application of the same
scientific principles of breeding that produce such desirable results in the case of
sheep, cattle and horses ? Farmers and herdsmen all over the civilized world are
enthusiastic in regard to matters that relate to the improvement of stock. Socie
ties are founded, principles are discovered and practically applied, and the ends of
the earth are ransacked for desirable animals with which to cross and develop new
excellencies. But while this is true of the animals below us, man leaves the infi
nitely higher question of his own propagation to the control of chance, ignorance,
and blind passion. The place where science should rule most of all, is ruled by the
least science ; the subject around which the highest enthusiasm should cluster, is
viewed with the most indifference. Human Breeding should be the foremost ques
tion of the age, transcending in its sublime interest all present political and scien
tific questions, and should be practically studied by all. May the time hasten wheD
this shall be ! ’’—Religious Paper.
A writer in the Galaxy (a popular monthly) closes a brilliant account
of horse-breeding with the following argumentitm ad hominem :
“ In the language of the clergy, permit me to make a personal application:
At this moment ten times as much care and thought and money are devoted
to the production of perfect horses or pigs, as to men and women. By observance
of the sgme care, and application of the same rules, as above stated for horses, it is
possible to produce a race of men and women which shall be healthy, spirited, hand
some and enduring. The world is full of weedy, homely, suffering human beings,
and who is to blame ? A man has as good a right to be handsome as a pig, a
woman as a horse, certainly.
“Are we then demented? It is a very curious question, one which we com
mend to the careful consideration of the ‘ Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
Animals.’ ”
So far we have come since Plato; and yet all this is only an appli
cation of the little Socratic argument that we quoted, written two
thousand years ago.
Let us not make too much of these confessions. This swelling
flood of conviction has burst no barriers yet. It is well known that
the present constitution of society absolutely precludes, in man’s case,
anything like what has been done for plants and animals; and these
confessors have no idea of changing the constitution of society. They
�SCIENTIFIC
PROPAGATION.
101
cry aloud for what ought to be done; but when they come to the how,
their voices grow feeble. Thus the writer in the Exchange and Review,
whose doughty preaching stands first among the above quotations, im
mediately after it falls off into such mumbling as this:
“ Passion ancl ignorance have too long held sway over the motives which prompt
the best of us to assume the relation upon which our own as well as the happiness
of our children depends. That ordinary mortals shall consider the future advance
ment of the race in the selection of their wives, is rather more than our knowl
edge of human nature justifies us in hoping. Nor are we quite prepared to adopt
the extreme materialistic view, and relinquish the institution of marriage in
favor of a selected class whose sole duty it shall be to improve and elevate the type
of the race. But in a general way we can suffer ourselves to be influenced in the
choice of our wives by the knowledge that the mental and physical qualities we
bring to the union must be blended and intermixed in the natures of our children ;
and the reflection that the habits of our life and thought, and the various condi
tions into which we are driven, or suffer ourselves to drift, have their immediate
and necessary outgrowth in those natures, should produce some effect upon our
own self-conduct and control.”
Galton, alate English writer, has actually gone forward a step beyond
Darwin in the Platonian argument. He demonstrates by elaborate sta
tistics that genius and all other good qualities are hereditary in human
families. Nobody doubted this before; but it is a satisfaction to have
such a point seized and fortified by science. He passes over from anal
ogy to the beginning of direct proof that human nature is as plastic
and obedient to the laws of reproduction as that of animals and plants,
and therefore as properly the subject of scientific treatment. The ob
ject of his book, he says, is to show “ that a man’s natural abilities are
derived by inheritance, under exactly the same limitations as are the
form and physical features of the whole organic world. Consequently,
as it is easy, notwithstanding those limitations, to obtain by careful
selection a permanent breed of dogs or horses gifted with peculiar
powers of running or of doing anything else, so it would be quite
practicable to produce a highly gifted race of men by judicious mar
riages during several consecutive generations.” So far Galton advances
beyond Darwin’s line. But when he comes to the point where it is
necessary to look beyond his theory to the duties it suggests, he sub
sides into the meekest conservatism. “ It would be writing to no use
ful purpose,” he says, “ were I to discuss the effect that might be pro
duced on population by such social arrangements as existed in Sparta,
[which arrangements were only a distant approach to the system which
all breeders of animals pursue.] They are so alien and repulsive to
modern feelings that it is useless to say anything about them; so I
shall confine my remarks to agencies that are actually at work, and
upon which there can be no hesitation in speaking.” Then he goes
on to show what can be done by wise marriages, much in the vein of
the phrenologists.
A writer in the new English journal of science called “ Nature,”
�102
SCIENTIFIC
PROPAGATION.
even discusses, after a fashion, the possibility of improving the human
race by applying the Darwinian principles. But it is curious to see
how gingerly he touches the practical part of the subject. After show
ing that in the case of wild animals which mate without interference,
any improvement by variation must be exceedingly slow, and that in
the case of domestic animals, owing to scientific propagation, the prog
ress is incomparably more rapid, he speaks thus cautiously and mys
teriously of the human problem :
“ The case of man is intermediate in rapidity of progress to the other two.
The development of improved qualities can not be insured by judicious mating,
because as a rule human beings are capricious enough to marry without first
laying a case for opinion before Mr. Darwin. Neither would it be easy, nor perhaps
even allowable, to extend any special protection by law or custom to those who may
be, physically and intellectually, the finest examples of our race. Still, two things
may be done ; we may vary the circumstances of life by judicious legislation, and
still more easily by judicious non-legislation, so as to multiply the conditions favor
able to the development of a higher type ; and by the same means we may also
encourage, or at least abstain from discouraging, the perpetuation of the species by
the most exalted individuals for the time being to be found.”
This last hint is the boldest we have seen; and yet it is but a hint.
Thus we find the public generally, and even the most advanced
'writers, simply under conviction in the presence of the law of scientific
propagation. The commandment has come; we all acknowledge it
and preach it, and “delight, in it after the inward man, but we see
another law in our members warring against the law of our minds.”
Duty is plain; we say we ought to do it—we must do it; but we cam
not. The law of God urges us on ; but the law of society holds us
back. This is a bad position. Either our convictions ought to become
stronger and deeper till they break a way into obedience, or we ought
to be relieved of them altogether.
The boldest course is the safest. Let us take an honest and steady
look at the law. Let us march right up to this terrible analogy which
has been so long troubling the world, and find out exactly what it is,
and how far the obligation which it suggests is legitimate. What
ought to be done can be done. It is only in the timidity of ignorance
that duty seems impracticable.
In order to get clearer ideas of the analogy which is pressing upon
us, and of the duty which results from it, we propose for fresh consid
eration the following questions: 1. What has been done for plants and
animals ? 2. How has it been done ? 3. How far and by what means
can the same be done for human beings ? This last question will
require a survey of the special difficulties in the case of man, and will
lead to some criticism of existing institutions. Without much formal
ity the remainder of this article will be devoted to the discussion of
these questions.
To show what has been done for plants and animals, we cannot do
better than to put Darwin on the stand. His testimony is known to
�SCIENTIFIC
PROPAGATION-
103
philosophers, but it ought to be familiar to everybody. The following
are quotations from his late work on the results of Domestication :
“ As to plants, no one supposes that our 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 increasing size of the common gooseberry may be
quoted. We see an astonishing improvement in many florists’ flowers, when the
flowers of the present' day are compared with drawings made only twenty or thirty
years ago. * * * And the gradual process of improvement through longer
periods may plainly be recognized 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. The art which
has produced such splendid results from such poor materials 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 onward. * * *
11 Let us now briefly consider the steps by which domestic races of animals have
been produced, either from one or from several allied species. Some little effect
may, perhaps, be attributed to the direct action of the external conditions of life,
and some little to habit; but he would be a bold man who would account by such
agencies for the differences of a dray and a race-horse, a grayhound and blood
hound, a carrier and tumbler-pigeon. One of the most remarkable features in our
domesticated races is that we see in them adaptation, 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 teazle, with its hooks, which cannot be rivalled by any mechanical con
trivance, is only a variety of the wild Dipsacus; and this amount of change may
have suddenly 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 dromedary 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 set, and with
the bantam so small and elegant; when we compare the host of agricultural, culi
nary, orchard and flower-garden 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 sud
denly 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
accumulation ; 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 realize 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 ani
mal’s organization 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
�104
SCIENTIFIC
PROPAGATION.
competent authorities. Youatt, who was probably better acquainted with the
works of agriculturists than almost any other individual, 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 character 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 mold he pleases.’ Lord Somerville, 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
skillful 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.’ * * *
“ What man has effected within recent times in England by methodical selec
tion, is clearly shown by our exhibitions of improved quadrupeds and fancy birds.
With respect to cattle, sheep, and pigs, we owe their great improvement to a long
series of well-known names—Bakewell, Colling, Ellman, Bates, Jonas Webb, Lords
Leicester and Western, Fisher Hobbs, and others. Agricultural writers are unani
mous on the power of selection : any number of statements to this effect could be
quoted; a few will suffice. A great breeder of shorthorns says : ‘ In the anatomy
of the shoulder modern breeders have made great improvements on the Ketton
shorthorns by correcting the defect in the knuckle or shoulder-joint, and by laying
the top of the shoulder more snugly into the crop, and thereby filling up the hol
low behind it. * * * The eye has its fashion at different periods ; at one time
the eye high and outstanding from the head, and at another time the sleepy eye
sunk into the head; but these extremes have merged into the medium of a full,
clear, and prominent eye with a placid look.’
“Again, hear what an excellent judge of pigs says: ‘The legs should be no
longer than just to prevent the animal’s belly from trailing on the ground. The
leg is the least profitable portion of the hog, and we therefore require no more of it
than is absolutely necessary for the support of the rest.’ Let any one compare the
wild boar with any improved breed, and he will see how effectually the legs have
been shortened.
“Few persons except breeders are aware of the systematic care taken in select
ing animals, and of the necessity of having a clear and almost prophetic vision into
futurity. Lord Spencer’s skill and judgment were well known ; and he writes: ‘ It
is therefore very desirable, before any man commences to breed either cattle or
sheep, that he should make up his mind as to the shape and qualities he wishes to
obtain, and steadily pursue this object.’ Lord Somerville, in speaking of the mar
velous improvement of the New Leicester sheep effected by Bakewell and his suc
cessors, says : ‘ It would seem as if they had first drawn a perfect form, and then
given it life.’ Youatt urges the necessity of annually drafting each flock, as many
animals will certainly degenerate ‘from the standard of excellence which the
breeder has established in his own mind.’ Even with a bird of such little importtance as the canary, long ago (1780-1790) rules were established, and a standard of
perfection was fixed, according to which the London fanciers tried to breed the
several sub-varieties. A great winner of prizes at the pigeon-shows, in describing
the short-faced almond tumbler, says : ‘ There are many first-rate fanciers who are
particularly partial to what is called the goldfinch beak, which is very beautiful;
others say, take a full-size round cherry; then take a barley-corn, and judiciously
placing and thrusting it into the cherry, form as it were your beak ; and that is not
all, for it will form a good head and beak, provided, as I said before, it is judi
ciously done; others take an oat; but as I think the goldfinch-beak the hand
somest, I would advise the inexperienced fancier to get the head of a goldfinch, and
keep it by him for his observation.’ Wonderfully different as is the beak of the
rock-pigeon and goldfinch, undoubtedly, as far as external shape and proportions
are concerned, the end has been nearly gained.
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“ Not only should our animals be examined with the greatest care whilst alive,
but, as Anderson remarks, their carcasses should be scrutinized, ‘ so as to breed
from the descendants of such only as, in the language of the butcher, cut up well.’
The ‘ grain of the meat’ in cattle, and'its being well marbled with fat, and the
greater or less accumulation of fat in the abdomen of our sheep, have been attended
to with success. So with poultry ; a writer, speaking of Cochin-China fowls, which
are said to differ much in the quality of their flesh, says, ‘ the best mode is to purcliase two young,brother cocks, kill, dress, and serve up one; if he be indifferent,
similarly dispose of the other, and try again ; if, however, he be fine and wellflavored, his brother will not be amiss for breeding purposes for the table.’
“ The great principle of the division of labor has been brought to bear on selection. In certain districts ‘ the breeding of bulls is confined to a very limited num
ber of persons, who. by devoting their whole attention to this department, are able
from year to year to furnish a class of bulls which are steadily improving the gene
ral breed of the district.’ The rearing and letting of choice rams has long been, as
is well known, a chief source of profit to several eminent breeders. In parts of
Germany this principle is carried with merino sheep to an extreme point. ‘ So im
portant is the proper selection of breeding animals considered, that the best flock
masters do not trust to their own judgment, or to that of their shepherds, but em
ploy persons calied “ sheep-classifiers,” who make it their special business to attend
to this part of the management of several flocks, and thus to preserve, or, if possi
ble, to improve, the best qualities of both parents in the lambs.’ In Saxony, when
the lambs are weaned, each in his turn is placed upon a table, that his wool and
form may be minutely observed. ‘The finest are selected for breeding, and receive
a first mark. When they are one year old, and prior to shearing them, another
close examination of those previously marked takes place : those in which no defect
can be found receive a second mark, and the rest are condemned. A few months
afterwards a third and last scrutiny is made ; the prime rams and ewes receive a
third and final mark ; but the slightest blemish is sufficient to cause the rejection
of the animal.' These sheep are bred and valued almost exclusively for the fine
ness of their wool; and the result corresponds with the labor bestowed on their
selection. Instruments have been invented to measure accurately the thickness
of the fibres ; and ‘ an Austrian fleece has been produced of which twelve hairs
equalled in thickness one from a Leicester sheep.’ * * *
“ The care which successful breeders take in matching their birds is surprising.
Sir John Sebright, whose fame is perpetuated by the ‘ Sebright Bantam,’ used to
spend ‘two and three days in examining, consulting, and disputing with a friend
which were the best of five or six birds.’ Mr, Bult, whose Pouter-pigeons won so
many prizes, and were exported to North America under the charge of a man sent
on purpose, told me that he always deliberated for several days before he matched
each pair. Hence we can understand the advice of an eminent fancier, who writes,
‘ I would here particularly guard you against having too great a variety of pigeons;
otherwise you will know a little of all, but nothing about one as it ought to be
known.’ Apparently it transcends the power of the human intellect to breed all
kinds : 1 it is possible that there may be a few fanciers that have a good general
knowledge of fancy pigeons ; but there are many more who labor under the delu
sion of supposing they know what they do not.’ The excellence of one sub-variety,
the almond-tumbler, lies in the plumage, carriage, head, beak, and eye ,’ but it is
too presumptuous in the beginner to try for all these points. The great judge
above quoted says, ‘there are some young fanciers who are over-covetous, who go
for all the above five properties at once; they have their reward by getting noth
ing.’ We thus see that breeding even fancy pigeons is no simple art: we may
smile at the solemnity of these precepts, but he who laughs will win no prizes.”—
Da/rwin’s Animals and Plants under Domestication.
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Our primary object in these citations was to show what has been
done for plants and animals; but they also partly answer our second
question as to the how. It is necessary, however, to bring into more
prominence two or three of the practical measures by which the domes
tic races have been perfected.
The art of the animal-breeder, so far as mere propagation is con
cerned, is all contained in two precepts, viz.: Breed from the best, and
Breed in and in; and these precepts are reducible to one; for, after a
choice stock has been commenced, breeding in and in is breeding from
the best. The second precept simply prescribes for choice varieties
what the first prescribes for choice individuals. Now it happens that
these are the very precepts of the scientific law of propagation which,
if applied to human generation, would impinge most violently on the
constitution and feelings of society. Breeding from the best means in
tolerable discrimination—suppression for some, and large liberty for
others ; and breeding in and in means incest. In order, therefore, to
get the law derived from, analogy honestly before us in all its bearings
on human interests, we must enlarge on these features of scientific
propagation.
The negative part of breeding from the best, which is the suppres
sion of the poorest, is effected in the case of the lower animals by two
measures, viz.: 1. Castration; and 2. Confinement. The positive part
of the process is carried on by selecting for propagation the best indivi
duals of both sexes, but especially males.
The special importance of selection in respect to males is founded
on the constitutional difference between the sexes as to the amount of
reproduction of which they are respectively capable. For example, a
mare can produce, at the very most, only about fifteen colts in her
whole lifetime. But a stallion can produce a hundred in a single year.
The thorough-bred horse Messenger, in the course of his life, begot a
thousand; Hambletonian begot eleven hundred; and a descendant of
Hambletonian begot twelve hundred. And for proof that the male
transmits his special qualities on this great scale, it is recorded that the
English racer, Eclipse, begot three hundred and thirty-four horses that
won races; and King Herod begot four hundred and ninety-four suc
cessful racers. So that, with reference to direct action on the character
of a single generation, the male has the advantage over the female in
the ratio of more than fifty to one. And although the female may pro
duce very great results in the second generation—since any one of her
male offspring taking her place, may produce his thousand, conveying
her characteristics—yet it must ever remain true that the principal
means of breeding choice stocks is by the selection of males. Thus the
present generation of fine horses in this country, numbering probably
its millions, is said to have come mainly from less' than a half dozen
famous stallions. A writer in the Galaxy, before referred to, gives the
following account of the process by which our national trotting horse
has been created:
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“ England has produced or perfected the race-horse; America, the road-horse.
England, by great care, great skill, and vast expenditure of money, has perfected
the race-horse ; wonderfully fine, and altogether useless. America, by great care,
great skill, and a considerable expenditure of money, has produced the trotter;
altogether valuable—that is the difference.
“ This quality—the swift trot—has been, in a sense, created by man, and is now
transmitted and perpetuated. How ?
“ By breeding from such horses as showed such a tendency, and by training the
progeny so as to create increased speed, which increased speed has been transmitted
and intensified. It has now reached a single mile in 2 minutes 171 seconds, and
twenty miles within the hour. What more can be done ? No man can tell.
“ The history of tiffs achievement in breeding can be traced. I said to Mr.
Goldsmith, the great horse-breeder at Walnut Grove, ‘ Whence comes tiffs tremen
dous trotting action, as shown in the American road-horse. Racing men assert that
the natural feist gait of the horse is the run, and that no high-bred horse trots fast
naturally.’
“ ‘ I will show you a little of the natural fast gait,’ said he.
“ Then were brought in succession three young horses, three-year-olds. They
were turned loose in the open field, and went trotting away at a great stride, head
and tail erect. Then they were scared along by running at them ; the dog went
after them, and still they trotted fast; if they broke into a run, they came down
again almost instantly; it was evident that they had a fast trot, which was the
gait they preferred.
“ ‘ What is your explanation of this matter ?’ said I.
“ ‘ I will tell you. There have stood in this country the following stallions, all,
except Bellfounder and Abdallah, thoroughbreds, and they nearly so :
Messenger, about 1795.
Baronet, about 1795.
Seagull, about 1820.
Bellfounder, about 1831-32.
American Star, about 1840.
Abdallah, about 1848-50.
And some others. Of these, Messenger, Bellfounder, American Star, and Abdallah
were natural trotters, and it is asserted that Messenger has come in at the end of a
running race on a fast trot. Out of these natural thoroughbred trotters have come
our great road horses.’ ”—G-alamy, March, 1869.
We must remind the reader that we are not now attempting to lay
down the law for human propagation, but only to give a clear idea of
the methods pursued by animal-breeders. Perhaps reasons may be
found for treating man exceptionally; and possibly the breeders have
not yet found the very best way of treating animals. However these
things may be, our present business is to exhibit without disguise or
suppression the processes by which animals are being perfected; and
for this purpose we ask some further attention to the principle of
selecting males, and the physiological facts upon which that principle
is founded.
In the propagation of any race, of course two things must be kept
in view, viz., Quantity and Quality—increase of numbers and increase
of value. And it will be seen from what we have stated above, in
regard to the difference between the sexes as to the power of reproduc
tion, that the function of the female bears a special relation to the in
crease of numbers, and that of tlie male to increase of value. To sim
plify the matter, suppose we have a hundred males and a hundred
females to breed from. Now it is evident that in order to produce the
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greatest number, we must keep all the females breeding up to their full
capacity. But it is not necessary to keep all the males thus breeding.
If ninety-nine of them out of the hundred were castrated, the one left
might fertilize all the germs in the hundred females, and the numbers
produced would be the same as if all the males were in full potency
and doing their best. Hence it is clear that, without diminishing the
quantity of production, we may exercise a very stringent discrimina
tion in selecting males. The whole doctrine of the matter may be
reduced to the following general formula : The quantity of production
will be in direct proportion to the number of fertile females; and the
value produced, so far as it depends on selection, will be nearly in in
verse proportion to the number of fertilizing males.
These are the first principles of animal breeding as it stands.
Whether and how far they will be found to be transfer able to human
generation may remain an open question. But it is best for us, at all
events, to know exactly what we are talking about when we use the
Platonian argument for scientific propagation.
Let us now look at the second precept of the animal breeders, which
requires breeding in and in. Darwin says that the object aimed at by
eminent breeders is always “to make a new strain or sub-breed, supe
rior to anything previously existing.” This, let us observe, is quite a
different matter from general efforts to improve whole races. It is one
thing to seek in any existing race the best animals we can find to breed
from, which has always been done more or less, and which implies no
segregation; and it is another tiling to start a distinct family and keep
its blood pure by separation from the mass of its own race. It is this
last method that has produced the Ayrshires and the Shorthorns and
the Leicesters. The terms “thorough-bred,” “blooded-stock,” “pure
blood,” etc., have no meaning except as they refer to this method of
segregation. This indeed is the principal work of modern science in
propagation, as distinguished from the unsystematic improvements
made in all past ages. It deserves a distinct name, and we will take
the liberty to call it. Stirpiculture.
Now it is obvious that this method of breeding must begin with a
pair, or, at most., with a small number of chosen animals, and must
proceed by propagating exclusively, or nearly so, within its own circle.
In fact it is a return to the conditions which are generally supposed to
have existed at the beginning of all species, the human race included.
It is an attempt to create a new race by selecting a new Adam and Eve,
and separating them and their progeny from all previous races. This
process implies breeding in and in, in two senses. First there must be,
in the early stages, mating between very near relatives, as there was in
Adam’s family; and secondly, there must be, in all stages, mating be
tween members of the same general .sfocZ; who are all related more or
less closely. This last kind of mating is properly called breeding in
and in, though it may not be incest in the human sense of the word.
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As a matter of fact it is well known that animal breeders pay very little
attention to the principles of the law of incest in any stage of their pro
ceedings. It is even a matter of doubt and disputation among them
whether there is any harm in the closest and longest breeding between
relatives. Darwin and the best authorities among the breeders incline
to the opinion that long-continued mating of relatives, near or remote,
leads finally to weakness of constitution and infertility. But they all
agree that breeding in and in must be the general law for choice
stocks, and that whatever infusion of foreign blood may be necessary
must be altogether exceptional. And the general opinion among them
is that the necessity of infusion of foreign blood may be obviated alto
gether by keeping several flocks of the same family in conservatories
at some distance from each other, and exchanging breeders between
them. Darwin has a long chapter on the effects of close interbreeding
and crosses, from which we quote the following specimens:
“ That evil directly follows from any degree of close interbreeding has been
denied by many persons ; but rarely by any practical breeder ; and never, as far as
I know, by one who has largely bred animals which propagate their kind quickly.
Many physiologists attribute the evil exclusively to the combination and conse
quent increase of morbid tendencies common to both parents : that this is an active
source of mischief there can be no doubt. It is unfortunately too notorious that
men and various domestic animals endowed with a wretched constitution, and with
a strong hereditary disposition to disease, if not actually ill, are fully capable of
procreating their kind. Close interbreeding, on the other hand, induces sterility;
and this indicates something quite distinct from the augmentation of morbid ten
dencies common to both parents. The evidence I have collected convinces me that
it is a great law of nature, that all organic beings profit from an occasional cross
with individuals not closely related to them in blood; and that, on the other hand,
long-continued close interbreeding is injurious.
* * * “ The evil consequences of long-continued close interbreeding are not
so easily recognized as the good effects from crossing, for the deterioration is
gradual. Nevertheless it is the general opinion of those who have had most expe
rience, especially with animals which propagate quickly, that evil does inevitably
follow sooner or later, but at different rates with different animals. No doubt a
false belief may widely prevail like a superstition ; yet it is difficult to suppose that
so many acute and original observers have all been deceived at the expense of much
cost and trouble. A male animal may sometimes be paired with his daughter,
granddaughter, and so on, even for several generations, without any manifest bad
results; but the experiment has never been tried of matching brothers and sisters,
which is considered the closest form of interbreeding, for an equal number of gen
*
erations
There is good reason to believe that by keeping the members of the
* The degrees of consanguinity, as reckoned by animal-breeders, are different
from those of either the common or the civil law. When Blackstone asks “ Why
Titius and his brother are related,” and answers, “ Because they are both derived
from the same father,” he presents but half the truth. They are related because
they are both descended from the same father u/itZ the same mother. This addition
doubles the relation, and brings them nearer to each other than they are to either
of their parents. A son has fifty per cent, of the blood of his father; but he has
one hundred per cent, of the blood of his brother; for they both have fifty per cent,
of the blood of their father and fifty per cent, of the blood of their mother, making
iu each one hundred per cent, of the same combination. Brothers having thus
absolutely the same blood, it follows that uncles have the same relation to nephews
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same family in distinct bodies, especially if exposed to somewhat different condi
tions of life, and by occasionally crossing these families, the evil results may be
much diminished, or quite eliminated.
* * * “ With cattle there can be no doubt that extremely close interbreed
ing may be long carried on, advantageously with respect to external characters,
and with no manifestly apparent evil as far as constitution is concerned. The same
remark is applicable to sheep. Whether these animals have gradually been ren
dered less susceptible than others to this evil, in order to permit them to live in
herds—a habit which leads the old and vigorous males to expel all intruders, and
in consequence often to pair with their own daughters—I will not pretend to de
cide. The case of Bake well’s Longhorns, which were closely interbred for a long
period, has often been quoted; yet Youatt says the breed ‘had acquired a delicacy
of constitution inconsistent with common management,’ and ‘ the propagation of
the species was not always certain.’ But the Shorthorns offer the most striking
case of close interbreeding ; for instance, the famous bull Favorite (who was him
self the offspring of a half-brother and sister from Foljambe) was matched with his
own daughter, granddaughter, and great-granddaughter; so that the produce of
this last union, or the great-great-granddaughter, had
or 93.75 per cent, of the
blood of Favorite in her veins. This cow was matched with the bull Wellington,
having 62.5 per cent, of Favorite blood in his veins, and produced Clarissa; Clarissa
was matched with the bull Lancaster, having 68.75 of the same blood, and she
yielded valuable offspring. Nevertheless Collings, who reared these animals, and
was a strong advocate for close breeding, once crossed his stock with a Galloway,
and the cows from this cross realized the highest prices. Bates’s herd was esteemed
the most celebrated in the world. For thirteen years he bred most closely in and
in ; but during the next seventeen years, though he had the most exalted notion of
the value of his own stock, he thrice infused fresh blood into his herd: it is said
that he did this, not to improve the form of his animals, but on account of their
lessened fertility. Mr. Bates’s own view, as given by a celebrated breeder, was,
that ‘to breed in and infiw a bad stock was ruin and devastation; yet that the
practice may be safely followed within certain limits, when the parents so related
are descended from first-rate animals.’ We thus see that there has been extremely
close interbreeding with the Shorthorns; but Nathusius, after the most careful
study of their pedigrees, says that he can find no instance of a breeder who has
strictly followed this practice during his whole life. From this study and his own
experience, he concludes that close interbreeding is necessary to ennoble the stock ;
but that in effecting this the greatest care is necessary, on account of the tendency
to infertility and weakness.®
and nieces as that of fathers to children ; and cousins, having each fifty per cent,
of the blood of brothers, i. e., of the same blood, are in the same relation to each
other as that of half-brothers. Thus, according to the breeders’ reckoning, incest
between father and daughter is precisely the same as between uncle and niece;
and incest between half-brother and sister is the same as between cousins, and so
on.—J. H. N.
* It is worth mentioning that the finest collection of thoroughbred cattle in
America—that of Walcott and Campbell, at the New York Mills, near Utica, N. Y.
—is a herd of Shorthorns descended from these very animals bred in England by
Collings and Bates. The writer of this article has a copy of the herd-book in which
their pedigrees are given. The bull Favorite is often mentioned among their pro
genitors ; and one of the finest of them is a descendant of the triple incest men
tioned above. The writer has also had the pleasure of inspecting the herd, under
the polite guidance of its manager, Mr. Gibson, and can testify, as an eye-witness,
to their wonderful size and beauty. One of the cows measures twenty-eight inches
in breadth across the hips. Eleven thousand dollars have been refused for another.
Breeding in and in is still going on in this American branch of the Shorthorn
family, as it has been for many generations in the original English stock.—J. H. N.
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* * * “ With sheep there has often been long-continued interbreeding within
the limits of the same flock; but whether the nearest relations have been matched
so frequently as in the case of Shorthorn cattle, I do not know. The Messrs.
Brown, during fifty years, have never infused fresh blood into their excellent flock
of Leicesters. Since 1810 Mr. Barford has acted on the same principle with the
Foscote flock. He asserts that half a century of experience has convinced him that
when two nearly related animals are quite sound in constitution, in-and-in breed
ing does not induce degeneracy; but he adds that he ‘ does not pride himself on
breeding from the nearest affinities.’ In France the Naz flock has been bred for
sixty years without the introduction of a single strange ram. Nevertheless, most
great breeders of sheep have protested against close interbreeding prolonged for too
great a length of time. The most celebrated of recent breeders, Jonas Webb, kept
five separate families to work on, thus ‘ retaining the requisite distance of relation
ship between the sexes.’ ”
We have now perhaps a sufficient view of what has been done for
the lower races, and how it has been done. The laws of scientific
propagation, so far as analogy can teach them, are before us. It is time
to inquire how far and by what means these laws can be applied to
the human race.
In the first place, there can be no rational doubt that the laws of
physiology are in general the same for man as for other animals. In
deed the most important of these laws, so far as our present subject is
concerned, has just been scientifically fastened upon man by Mr. Galton. He demonstrates that not only the physical qualities of individ
uals and races, but their intellectual, artistic, and moral characteristics,
and even their spiritual proclivities, are as transmissible as the speed of
horses. There can be no doubt that if it were possible for men and
women to be directed in their propagation by superior beings, as ani
mals are, or by their own sincere enthusiasm for science, the results of
suppressing the poorest and breeding from the best would be the same
for them, as for cattle and sheep. There can be no doubt that, if it
were compatible with public morality and with the proper care of
women and children, to “ give special privileges to the most exalted in
dividuals in the perpetuation of the species,” as the English journal of
science suggested, the elevation of the human species would be as rapid
as that of any of the lower races. Indeed the difference between the
sexes in regard to the power of reproduction, which is the reason for
special selection of males, is even wider in the case of man than in that
of horses; and, though existing institutions wholly ignore it, we may
be sure that, in the nature of things, it gives man superior possibilities
of improvement of blood. Finally, there can be no doubt that by
segregating superior families, and by breeding them in and in, superior
varieties of human beings might be produced which would be compar
able to the thoroughbreds in all the domestic races.
We have in history at least one splendid demonstration of the
powrer of segregation and breeding in and in, which goes far toward
establishing the entire parallelism between man and the lower animals
in respect to the laws of propagation. The Jews may fairly be regarded
�112
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c i A' /v r ii>'i c n. ft o r a <.
i ti
on
as a distinct and superior variety of the human race. Here is an exhi
bition of the interbreeding out of which that stock issued:
The curved, broken lines indicate marriages. They show that
Abraham married his sister (though she was only a half-sister, accord
ing to Genesis xx. 12); that Nalior married his niece; that Isaac mar
ried the daughter of his cousin, Bethuel, who also was son of Milcah,
another cousin ; that Lot, the progenitor of Ruth, who was a progeni
tress of David and Christ, propagated by his own daughter; that Jacob
married two of his first cousins on his mother’s side, who were also the
granddaughters of one of his father’s cousins, and great-granddaughters
of another; that Bethuel was grandson of Terah by his father, and
great-grandson by his mother; that Rebecca and Laban, the children
of Bethuel, could thus trace their lineage to Terah by two lines, i. e.,
through Nahor and Haran; that Isaac could trace his lineage to Terah
by two other lines, i. e., through Abraham and Sarah ; and conse
quently that Jacob, the child of Isaac and Rebecca, could trace his
lineage to Terah through four lines, i. e., through all four of Terah’s
children. \
These probably are not half the connections that actually existed
between the first generations of the Jewish stock. We are not in
formed where Haran, Bethuel, Lot, and Laban got their wives ; but we
may presume, from the fashion of the family, that they found them, or
some of them, within the circle of their own kindred.
Thus it is evident that the Jewish stock was at first established by
a very complicated system of breeding in and in. Afterward Moses
made laws against marriages of relatives; but it should be observed also
that the rite of circumcision and the whole moral force of the Mosaic
economy favored segregation, and was opposed to foreign marriages.
The policy of the Jewish institutions, as seen in the times of Ezra and
Nehemiab, was as severe against marriage with the heathen as against
/'a...,,
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113
incest. The truth, therefore, is, that the original practice of breeding
in and in, though ultimately prohibited in reference to individual rela
tionships, was continued and enforced on the national scale. The
Jews, as a people, have always been breeding in and in. Mating be
tween very close relatives was necessary at the beginning, and not
necessary afterward; and so it is and must be in every development of
a new stock. As the numbers increase, close relationships can be
avoided, and yet the blood can be kept pure.
We conclude, therefore, that breeding in and in was the first and
general law of Jewish stirpiculture. At the same time it is evident
that there was an exceptional policy at work by which foreign blood
was introduced from time to time into the Jewish stock. This policy
is seen in the cases of Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba, etc., and doubtless ex
isted to a large extent in less notable cases that are not seen. Infusion
of the best Gentile blood has always been an important incidental of
Jewish stirpiculture.
We have, then, as the result of this historical view, two principles
contrasted and yet cooperative—breeding in and in the first law, and
foreign infusion the second; the first controlling, the second excep
tional. These are precisely the two laws, as we have seen, that Darwin
and the cattle-breeders are promulgating. And to complete the par
allel, we can even discern in the two widely-separated colonies of
Terah’s descendants, and the interbreeding between them in the times
of Isaac and Jacob, an arrangement exactly like the separate conserva
tories recommended by our modern authorities to eliminate the evils of
breeding in and in. So that the essential laws of scientific propaga
tion, as developed in animal breeding, have, in this renowned instance,
already been carried over to human beings, and have produced the
most perfect race in history.
Though it must be conceded that, in the present state of human
passions and institutions, there are many and great difficulties in the
way of our going back to the natural simplicity of the Hebrew fathers
or forward to the scientific simplicity of the cattle-breeders, yet it is
important to know and remember that these difficulties are not physio
logical, but sentimental. As the old theologians used to say, our in
ability to obey the law of God is not natural, but moral. We are too
selfish and sensual and ignorant to do for ourselves what we have done
for animals, and we have surrounded ourselves with institutions cor
responding to and required by our selfishness and sensuality and igno
rance. But for all that we need not give up the hope of better things,
at least in some far-off future. If the difficulties in our way were
natural and physiological, no amount of science or grace could ever
overcome them; but as they are only passional and institutional, we
may set the very highest standard of thorough-breeding before us as
our goal, and believe that every advance of civilization and science is
carrying us toward it.
�114
SCIENTIFIC
PROPAGATION.
The advantage of holding on to our birthright of hope lies in the
fact that it keeps us in the way of free thought and free discussion.
We cannot agree with Galton that “it would be writing to no useful
purpose to discuss social arrangements that are alien and repulsive to
modern feelings,” and that we must confine our attention “ to agencies
that are actually at work.” True science does not thus wait on human
movements. We hold that the very highest premiums ought to be
offered for new social inventions favorable to the scientific propagation
of human beings. And the freest discussion of such inventions would
not necessarily involve any treason to existing society, while it would
gradually and safely prepare transitions which are inevitable.
And now,, as liege subjects of that great law which we have, been
bringing to view, and which is manifestly pressing on all men both by
analogy and by direct demonstration, we propose to set an example of
free thought and free discussion, by criticising some of the institutions
that confront that law, and by looking beyond them as far as we can
toward measures which in time to come may lead on to full obedience.
1. Undoubtedly the institution of marriage is an absolute bar to
scientific propagation. It distributes the business of procreation in a
manner similar to that of animals which pair in a wild state ; that is,
it leaves mating to be determined by a general scramble, without attempt
at scientific direction. Even if the phrenologists and scientific experts
had full power to rearrange the pairs from time to time according to
their adaptations, there would still be nothing like the systematic selec
tion of the best and suppression of the poorest, which is perfecting the
lower animals. How much progress would the horse-breeders expect
to make if they were only at liberty to bring their animals together in
exclusive pairs ?
As we have already intimated, marriage ignores thé' great difference
between the reproductive powers of the sexes, and restricts each man,
whatever may be his potency and his value, to the amount of produc
tion of which one woman, chosen blindly, may be capable. And while
this unnatural and unscientific restriction is theoretically equal for all,
practically it discriminates against the begt and in favor of the worst ;
for while the good man will be limited by his conscience to what the
law allows, the bad man, free from moral check, will distribute his seed
beyond the legal limits as widely as he dares. Moreover there is a
fundamental fallacy in the pet theory of the halfwayists that science
may somehow be insinuated into marriage by instructing the upper
classes how to mate judiciously. For what is gained in one quarter by
such management must be lost in another. The principle of the case
may be seen better in a small example than in a large one. Suppose
we have simply four candidates for pairing instead of four millions—
viz., a superior man and a superior woman, and an inferior man and
an inferior woman. The advocates of judicious mating would bring
about a union between the superior man and the superior woman ; and
�SCIENTIFIC
PROPAGATION.
115
this pair doubtless would have some fine children. But this arrange
ment would also compel a union between the inferior man and the
inferior woman, and they would certainly have some very poor chil
dren. How much would be gained on the whole by this operation,
especially if, as generally happens, the inferior pair should prove to be
most prolific ? So on the large scale, the lucky ones who get the good
mates of course leave the refuse to the unlucky ones; and the result is
simply no progress, except that of “making the rich richer, and the
poor poorer.” We are safe every way in saying that there is no possi
bility of carrying the two precepts of scientific propagation into an in
stitution which pretends to no discrimination, allows no suppression,
gives no more liberty to the best than to the worst, and which, in fact,
must inevitably discriminate the wrong way, so long as the inferior
classes are most prolific and least amenable to the admonitions of sci
ence and morality.
What then ? Are we necessarily the enemies of marriage because
we say these things ? By no means. We still concede that marriage
is the best thing for man as he is. It is the glory of marriage that it
utilizes the passions of men so as to make them provide homes for
women and children. This is a prime necessity of propagation, scien
tific or unscientific, and must be well cared for at all events, even if we
have to postpone the application of science to improvements in repro
duction. Animals are perfected, as we said at the beginning, by atten
tion to two things—training and blood. Thus far training, with home
as the indispensable means of training, has been necessarily the main
object of human institutions, and doubtless marriage has been the best
arrangement that could be devised for this single end. But it certainly
is not adapted to the final and superior object of improving blood.
We give marriage the credit that belongs to it, and hope it may remain
till institutions shall be devised that shall provide for both training
and blood.
2. As the general law of marriage forbids breeding from the best, so
the special law and public opinion against consanguineous marriages
forbids breeding in and in. And as there is no sure line of demarca
tion between incest and the allowable degrees of consanguinity in mar
riage, the tendency of high-toned moralists is generally to extend the
domain of the law of incest, and so make all approach to scientific
propagation as difficult as possible. Thus there have been movements
in various quarters within a few years to place marrying a deceased
wife’s sister under the ban of law; and the State of New Hampshire
has quite recently forbidden the marriage of first cousins as incestuous.
At the same time it must be acknowledged that an opposite tendency
has manifested itself among scientific men in Europe and in this coun
try. The pressure of analogy from animal-breeding has led physiolo
gists and ethnologists to re-examine the old doctrines in regard to con
sanguineous connections, and venture on some resistance to the pre
�116
SCIENTIFIC
PROPAGATION.»
vailing ideas of incest. This is done very carefully, of course, so as not
to give shocks. The most that has been attempted has been to defend
the marriages of cousins, dropping an occasional hint in extenuation
of the pairing of uncles with nieces. A memorable controversy on this
line was in progress some years ago among the savants of France, in
the course of which Dr. E. Dally read before the Anthropological
Society of Paris a learned article, entitled “ An Inquiry into Consan
guineous Marriages and Pure Races,” which article was afterwards pub
lished in the “Anthropological Review” of London (May, 1864), and
was pronounced “excellent” by Mr. Darwin. To show how far the
scrutiny of the old doctrines has proceeded, we extract from this article
as follows:
“ A distinguished pupil of the Paris hospitals, M. B----- , has communicated to
me a case of consanguineous marriage drawn from his own family. I here give a
copy of his note on the subject:
“ ‘ It seems, from information which has been handed down to me by my family,
relating to a period of about one hundred and fifty years (i. e., counting from the
great-grandfather of my father), that five generations have married among their
first cousins; the degree of relationship has never descended beyond the first
cousins, excepting in two cases, where the daughters of first cousins have been mar
ried by their second cousins. These five generations have contracted a certain num
ber of marriages which I am not able to particularize, and in which the mean num
ber of children has been three or four. The total number of branches as direct as
collaterals has been one hundred and twenty to one hundred and forty. There has
been no idiot or deaf-mute, met with. I may add that the number of branches
is the more surprising since a great number of them have devoted themselves to a
life of celibacy, or have made religious professions.’
* * * “M. Périer has mentioned, according to M. Yvan, the beauty of the
inhabitants of the island of Reunion, who descend from a few couples only, and yet
have known how to preserve their purity of blood. Most of the French colonies,
where they are prosperous, offer the same character ; in fact, we may remark even
in France itself, isolated spots or isolated groups of individuals in the heart of a
mixed population ; there are very few travelers who have not noticed it, and this
has never been with a view of establishing their degeneracy. Among this number
are most of the little fishing villages on the coast of France, where the sailor-popu
lation lives side by side with the agriculturists, without ever marrying among
them. Such is Pauillac (Gironde), about which my friend, Doctor Ferrier, has
written me a letter, from which I take this extract: ‘Pauillac contains one thou
sand seven hundred inhabitants ; most of them are robust, vigorous, and well-made
sailors ; the women are renowned for their beauty aud the clearness of their com
plexion. There is, perhaps, no other place in France where consanguineous mar
riages are more frequent, and where the case of military exemption is more rare.’
The inhabitants of Batz are either workers in salt-pits or fens. Their hygienic con
dition is admirable, and misery is unknown in the country. I find, besides, from
my notes, that there are very few of the inhabitants who are relatives beyond the
sixth degree; for the most part their relationship is of the third or fifth degree:
the children are numerous, and average from two to eight in each marriaga1
“ M. Subler, in a recent journey, has been able to establish the extraordinary
beauty of the inhabitants of Gaust, in the valley of Assau, in the midst of the
Pyrenees. The custom of marrying relations is so inveterate among them that,
before marrying an inhabitant of another commune, the young men of Gaust ask
permission of the chief men of the place. Our friend, M. Maximin Legrand, has
mentioned the same facts about the town of Ecuelles, near Verdun-sur-Saone : and
�SCIENTIFIC PROPAGATION.
117
I tliink I could quote a hundred, perhaps a thousand, places in France which fulfill
the same conditions.”
*
In the course of his article Dr. Dally discusses the pure races, such
as the European aristocracies and the Jews, and concludes that in
these examples vital power and beauty have been the result of close
interbreeding.
There has been quite recently a notable tendency to similar discus
sions and conclusions among physiologists in this country; and we
have late news from England that Parliament has finally legalized the
marriage of a deceased wife’s sister. So far there is certainly a weaken
ing of the barriers against scientific propagation.
3. Besides the general difficulties which science has to contend
with in the laws of marriage and incest, defended by the whole mass
of religionists and moralists, there are particular sects which sin against
tbe law of scientific propagation in special ways, and with a high hand.
Let us look at some of them.
The Catholic Church forbids its priests to marry. But its priests
are its best men. Therefore the Catholic Church discriminates directly
and outrageously against the laws of scientific propagation. In effect
it castrates the finest animals in its flocks. It encourages the lowest
scavenger to breed ad libitum, and forbids Father Hyacinthe to leave a
single copy of himself behind him. We join Galton in the following
invective:
“ The long period of the dark ages under which Europe has lain, is due, I
believe, in a very considerable degree to the celibacy enjoined by religious orders
on their votaries. Whenever a man or woman was possessed of a gentle nature
that fitted him or her to deeds of charity, to meditation, to literature, or to art, the
social condition of the times was such that they had no refuge elsewhere than in
the bosom of the Church. But the Church chose to preach and exact celibacy.
The consequence was that these gentle natures had no continuance, and thus, by a
policy so singularly unwise and suicidal that I am hardly able to speak of it with
out impatience, the Church brutalized the breed of our forefathers. She acted pre
cisely as if she had aimed at selecting the rudest portion of the community to be,
alone, the parents of future generations. She practiced the arts which breeders
would use who aimed at creating ferocious, currish, and stupid natures. No won
der that club-law prevailed for centuries ovei’ Europe ; the wonder rather is, that
enough good remained in the veins of Europeans to enable their race to rise to its
present very moderate level of natural morality.”
The Shakers are in the same position with the Catholics. They
claim to be the noblest and purest people in the world, a sacred gene
ration, raised by grace high above the rest of mankind; and yet, with
full powers to propagate their kind, they virtually castrate themselves,
and expend their labors and wealth on their own comfort and on mis
begotten adopted children, leaving the production of future genera
tions to common sinners.» Doubtless they excuse themselves by appeal
ing to the examples of Jesus and Paul; but they wrong those martyrs
of the past. Jesus and Paul were soldiers who had not where to lay
their heads, and well they might refrain from taking women and chil
dren into their terrible warfare. But the Shakers live in peace and
�118
SCIENTIFIC
PROPAGATION.
plenty, having the best of houses, farms and barns, and actually breed
the best of horses and cattle. So that they have no such excuse as the
early Christians had for refusing to breed men. We doubt not that
they are sinning in ignorance; but that only makes it the more our
duty to tell them that, with their large communistic conservatories,
and their material and spiritual wealth, they are just the people to take
hold of scientific propagation in earnest, and in advance of the rest of
the world; and they could not do a better thing for themselves or for
mankind than to expend the vast fund of self-denial and cross-bearing
purity which they have accumulated in celibacy on a conscientious and
persevering effort to institute among themselves the noble art of breed
ing from the best.
It is curious to observe that while the law of scientific propagation
on the one hand thus criticises some of the holiest institutions and
sects, on the other it finds traces of good in some of the vilest forms of
existing society. For instance, polygamy, so far as the fact of obtain
ing and supporting many wives implies that a man is superior to his
fellows, is an approximation at least to nature’s wild form of breeding
from the best, which is more than can be said of monogamic mar
riage. Again, slavery is always more or less a system of control over
propagation; and so far as the interest of masters leads to selection,
like that practiced in animal-breeding, it tends to the elevation of the
subject race. Probably the negroes have risen in the scale of being
faster than their masters, for the same reason that horses and cattle
under man’s control rise faster than man himself. Even common
licentiousness, cursed as it is, is sometimes not without compensations
in the light of the propagative law. It is very probable that the feudal
custom which gave barons the first privilege of every marriage among
their retainers, base and oppressive though it was, actually improved
the blood of the lower classes. We see that Providence frequently
allows very superior men to be also very attractive to women, and very
licentious. Perhaps with all the immediate evil that they do to morals,
they do some good to the blood of after generations. Who can say
how much the present race of men in Connecticut owe to the number
less adulteries and fornications of Pierrepont Edwards ? Corrupt as he
was, he must have distributed a good deal of the blood of his noble
father, Jonathan Edwards; and so we may hope the human race got a
secret profit out of him. Such are the compensations of nature and
Providence.
Dare we now look beyond present institutions to the possibilities
of the future ? We may at least point out briefly the main boundaries
of what is needed and must come. The institutions that shall at some
future time supercede marriage and its accessories, whatever may be
their details, must include certain essentials, negative and positive,
which can be foreseen now with entire certainty.
In the first place they must not lessen human liberty. Here we
touch the main point of difference between the cases of animals and
�SCIENTIFIC PROPAGATION.
119
men, and the point of difficulty for our whole problem. Animals,
under the unlimited control of man, can easily be kept apart and
brought together as science prescribes. But man as a race has no
visible superior. That fact declares that his destiny is self-government.
And in accordance with that destiny, the institutions that scientific
propagation waits for must be founded on self-government. The
liberty already won must not be diminished, but increased. If there
is to be suppression, it must not be by castration and confinement, as
in the case of animals, or even by law and public opinion, as men are
now controlled, but by the free choice of those who love science well
enough to “make themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s
sake.” If mating is to be brought about without regard to the senti
mental specialities that now control it, this must be done only for those
whose liberty consists in obeying rational laws, because they love truth
more than sentimentalism.
There is another thing that the institutions of the future must not
do; they must not injure home. Here we touch another point of
difference between the cases of animals and human beings. Man has
a social nature that demands very different treatment from that of
animals. The best part of human happiness consists in sexual and
parental love, and the best part of human education consists in the
training of these passions in the school of home. That school must
not be superceded or weakened by the new arrangements, but must be
honored more than ever.
Can this be done consistently with the changes which scientific
propagation requires ? That is the hard question which science has
now to solve. We offer but a hint toward its solution. If home
could be enlarged to the scale, for instance, of the Shaker families, and
if men and women could be taught to enjoy love that stops short of
propagation, and if all could learn to love other children than their
own, there would be nothing to hinder scientific propagation in the
midst of homes far better than any that now exist. The Shakers claim
that by making the Church the unit of society, they have the best of
homes even now, without enjoying sexual and parental love in the
direct way. How much more complete might be their home-life if
they should some time heed our suggestion, to introduce home-propa
gation in the self-denying way which science requires, and for which
their long cross-bearing has prepared them.
Something of this kind, undertaken by intelligent and conscien
tious men, endowed with abundant wealth, and under the sanction of
government, may ultimately combine home and liberty, with scientific
propagation. And it is for such inventions as this, or others more per
tinent and hopeful, that discussion ought to be set free, and kings and
congresses, social science societies, ethnological societies, philanthro
pists of all kinds, and rich men who wish to dispose well of their
money, should be offering the very highest premiums.
At all events the practical difficulties of our problem must not turn
�120
SCIENTIFIC- PROPAGATION.
us away from the study and discussion of it. The great law which
Plato and Darwin and Galton are preaching, is pressing hard upon us,
and will never cease to press till we do our duty under it. And the
need of doing something' for the radical improvement of humanity is
imminent. Galton calls earnestly for a new race. Hear his appeal:
“ It seems to me most essential to the well-being of future generations, that the
average standard of ability of the present time should be raised. Civilization is a
new condition imposed upon man by the course of events, just as in the history of
geological changes new conditions have continually been imposed on different, races
of animals. They have had the effect either of modifying the nature of the races
through the process of natural selection, whenever the changes were sufficiently
slow and the race sufficiently pliant, or of destroying them altogether, when the
changes were too abrupt or the race unyielding. The number of the races of man
kind that have been entirely destroyed under the pressure of the requirements of
an increasing civilization, reads us a terrible lesson. Probably in no former period
of the world has the destruction of the races of any animal whatever been effected
over such wide areas, and with such startling rapidity, as in the case of savage man.
In the North American continent, in the West Indian islands, in the Cape of Good
Hope, in Australia, New Zealand, and Van Diemen’s Land, the human denizens of
vast regions have been entirely swept away in the short space of three centuries,
less by the pressure of a stronger race than through the influence of a civilization
they were incapable of supporting. And we too, the foremost laborers in creating
this civilization, are beginning to show ourselves incapable of keeping pace with
our own work. The needs of centralization, communication, and culture call for
more brains and mental stamina than the average of our race possess. We are in
crying want for a greater fund of ability in all- stations of life, for neither the classes
of statesmen, philosophers, artisans, nor laborers are up to the modern complexity
of their several professions. An extended civilization like ours comprises more in
terests than the ordinary statesmen or philosophers of our present race are capable
of dealing with, and it exacts more intelligent work than our ordinary artisans and
laborers are capable of performing. Our race is overweighted, and appears likely
to be drudged into degeneracy by demands that exceed its powers.”
In another point of view, a tremendous crisis is upon us. The
socialisms and spiritualisms which have engaged public attention in
the last thirty years seem to have weakened the very constitution of
society. Free love, easy divorce, foeticide, general licentiousness, and
scandalous law-trials in high life, are the symptoms of the times.
Many believe that marriage is dying. • Is it not remarkable that in this
state of things the loud call for scientific propagation is rising ? Is
there not a rational and even Providential connection between these
phenomena ? If the powers above are summoning us to the great en
terprise of peopling the planet with a new race, why should not the
old institutions, which are too narrow for such an enterprise, be pass
ing away ? The birth of the new always comes with agony and rup
ture to the old. At all events, whether the time for the decease of
marriage has come or not, let us not doubt that it must come before
the will of God can be done on earth as it is in heaven; and let us be
ready, when it does come, to make sure that the formative idea of the
dispensation to come after it shall be nothing less than scientific
propagation.
�
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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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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Scientific propagation
Description
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Place of publication: [New York]
Collation: [97]-120 p. ; 26 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Printed on blue paper. From Modern Thinker, no. 1, 1870. John Humphrey Noyes was an American preacher, radical religious philosopher, and Utopian socialist.
Please note that this pamphlet contains language and ideas that may be upsetting to readers. These reflect the time in which the pamphlet was written and the ideologies of the author.
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Noyes, John Humphrey, 1811-1886
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[1870]
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[American News Company]
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Eugenics
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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 (Scientific propagation), 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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Text
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English
Biology
Conway Tracts
Eugenics
Evolution