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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
�96
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
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Pioneers of evolution from Thales to Huxley : with an intermediate chapter on the causes of arrest of the movement
Creator
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Clodd, Edward [1840-1930]
Description
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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'.
Publisher
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Watts & Co.
Date
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1902
Identifier
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RA1558
N127
N128
Subject
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Evolution
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (Pioneers of evolution from Thales to Huxley : with an intermediate chapter on the causes of arrest of the movement), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Evolution
NSS
Science
Scientists