GIFT OF
George b. Allen

BIOLOGY

LIBRARY

G

HOMO VERSUS DARWIN :

A

JUDICIAL EXAMINATION

OF

STATEMENTS RECENTLY PUBLISHED BY MR. DARWIN
REGARDING

"THE DESCENT OF MAN."

" Ascidians are marine creatures permanently attached to a support. They
hardly appear like animals, and consist of a simple, tough, leathery sac, with
two small projecting orifices."— ME. DAKWIN.

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.

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PHILADELPHIA:

CLAXTON, REMSEN & HAFFELFINGER,

819 & 821 MARKET STREET.
1872.

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6

GIFT

ASCIDIAN TADPOLES.

THE LARGEB FIGURE HIGHLY MAGNIFIED.

Given that the reader may form some idea of man's very remote
ancestors, according to Mr. Darwin. See page 13.

416516

PREFACE.

AT the beginning of this year the reading classes of
England were all, more or less, in a state of expectancy,
their attention being fixed on Mr. Darwin, who was
known to be engaged in bringing out a work which was
to mark a new era in Natural Science. It was confidently
believed by many that he had in his possession facts
which would enable him to establish his favourite hypo-
thesis on a sure basis, and lay all his opponents, whether
men or systems, defeated in the dust.

The work at length appeared, and was eagerly read by
thousands throughout our land. There is no difficulty
in getting through the two volumes of which it is
composed, for they abound in facts gathered from that
most interesting field of enquiry — Natural History ; and
where facts fail him, Mr. Darwin is able, in their
stead, to present suppositions quite as interesting, and
perhaps even more startling.

But to the mind of a serious reader this is all that can
be obtained from its perusal, for Mr. Darwin's style of

V

>i PREFACE.

reasoning is eminently unsatisfactory. One by one, with
cool indifference, he throws overboard, not only Chris-
tianity, but also the tried and sure methods of the
inductive philosophy of Bacon, which would have sunk
his light craft, and along with these the first axioms of
logic aiid common sense.

As a remonstrance against this unwarrantable outrage
on religion and philosophy, as well as on true science,
the present volume has been penned. The writer has
presented his thoughts on the main questions raised by
Mr. Darwin in the form of a judicial enquiry, in order
thus, more clearly, and in a more lively manner, to put
before his readers the important points at issue, and also to
bring Mr. Darwin face to face with those well-known
and acknowledged principles of investigation which he is
only too ready to ignore.

September 27th, 1871.

CONTENTS.

The Case is referred for arbitration to Lord C.
FIRST DAY'S SITTING. — Opening of the Case.

PAGB

Homo states his ground of complaint — Mr. Darwin
traces man's pedigree from the tadpole-like offspring of
ancient Ascidians through fishes, amphibians, reptiles,
and the lower mammal*, to Old World monkeys ; from
thence, through a long series of now vanished forms, to
man — Ascidians and their larvae — All intermediate forms
between ape and man extinct — Professor Huxley
knows of no new species having been originated by
selection — Mr. Darwin's former belief in the possibility
of black bears being changed into creatures like whales
— The historic period refuses its help to Mr. Darwin —
Geology unable to supply him with the missing links ... 9 — 32

SECOND DAY'S SITTING.— Mr. Darwin's Defence.

Discussion on evidence adduced by Mr. Darwin of
man's descent from some lower form — Bodily structure-
Embryology — Rudiments — The panniculus — The external
ear — M.B. cars — The third eyelid — S nse of smell — How-
man has ceased to inherit the hairy coat of his pro-
genitors ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 32 — 58

THIRD DAY'S SITTING. — Mr. Darwin's Defence. (ContJ

Discussion on rudiments continued — Occasional long
hairs of the eyebrow — Lanugo — Wisdom teeth — Tiie
great canine teeth of our progenitors used for tearing
their enemies — Mr. Darwin's iristakes — How did man
lose his tail ? — Has a Cr at or never intervened ? ... 59 — 76

FOURTH DAY'S SITTING. — Mr. Darwin's Defence. (Cont.)

Mr. Darwin's account of the way in which an ape-like
creature may change insensibly into man — It lives less
on trees and more on the ground — Finds it convenient
to become biped and erect — Hands suitable for climbing
trees, r.ot suitable for hur ing stones or spears — Hence
an ape's hands change in the human dircc. ion, and also
it* feet — Africa, the supposed c uctry of man's pro-

Yiii CONTENTS.

genitors, abounds with dangerous beasts — How man's
progenitors may have escaped them when losing their
brute-like powers — They may, however, have inhabited
some safer country — The brain of man in comparison
with the brain of the ape 77 — 88

FIFTH DAY'S SITTING. — Close of Mr. Darwin's Defence.

Man's mental and moral powers — The lowest savages
resemble us in the mental faculty — Points on whi -h man
is said to differ essentially from the lower animals —
Capacity for progressive improvement — The manufacture
of tools — The u;e of fire — The orang's first step in archi-
tecture— Language — General ideas, abstraction, &c. —
Sense of beauty — Belief in God — Beligion — Reasoning
power of Mr. Darwin's dog — Can a dog distinguish
between moral right and wrong ? — Mr. Darwin's views
of conscience and the moral sense — The new and
strange morality to which his principles lead — How
family murder might have been a sacred duty —
Sympathy for the we k and helpless causes a degene-
ration of the race of man — Probable effect of Mr.
Darwin's principles on the rising generation— V sionary
Speculations— The mystery of life 89—133

SIXTH DAY'S SITTING. Summing up by Lord C.

Ancient and more recent specu ations on the origin of
the universe and of man — No views hitherto put forth
on Evolution have been established — Mr. Darwin's
htvle of argument — He n w admits the existence of
unknown agencies — Past history and present experience
agai st him — Many living species have remained un-
cha.iged during 3000 generations — The sterility ot cross
ds — G-eology — Professor Huxley and the pedigree
of the horse— Professor Owen — Ru liments — A wonderful
transformation — Mr. Darwin's ape excepted, monkeys
have remained monkeys f >r millions of ages — The
mental faculty — The Darwin :m morality — What it in-
volves, jir.ctical atheism — The dogma of separate
creations not taught in Scripture — Darwinism and
-ty irreconcilable — Lord C.'s awar.l — Homo's
/oml for a xritlcmeut of the case— Lord C.'s closing
advice to Mr 1' ...134 l."5

HOMO VERSUS DARWIN.

FIRST DAY'S SITTING.

IT having been agreed, on the recommendation of the
Judge before whom this case was to have been tried, to

refer it for arbitration to Lord G , one of the ablest of

English Jurists, that the evidence on which Mr. Darwin's
statements rest might be thoroughly sifted, and also that
the Plaintiff and Defendant should each speak for himself ;
on the opening of the Court, Homo, was called on to state
his ground of complaint, and spoke as follows : —

My case, my Lord, may be stated in a very few words.
It is well known to your Lordship, and will not be denied
by the Defendant, that, during many centuries, it has been
acknowledged that my first ancestors derived existence
directly from a Divine source, and were, therefore, in a very
intelligible sense, the offspring of God. There are ancient
documents with which your Lordship is familiar, and which
many of the most powerful intellects our country has pro-
duced have regarded as divinely true, in which such is
certified to be the origin of my race. This sentiment is
confirmed by the traditions of all civilized nations, and it is
generally admitted by men of philosophic mind that my
nature bears on ittelf evident traces of its alliance with tht
Divine.

B 9

. DARWIN.

I have to complain, then, that the Defendant, following
in the track of some recent naturalists, has lately published
a work entitled "The Descent of Man," in which he
affirms that I am " certainly descended from some ape-like
creature." " Man," he says, " is descended from a hairy
quadruped, furnished with a tail and pointed ears, probably
arboreal in its habits, and an inhabitant of the old world."
(Vol. ii. p. 889.) " The early progenitors of man," he says
again, " were no doubt well covered with hair, both sexes
having beards ; their ears v ere pointed and capable of
movement ; and their bodies were provided with a tail,
having the proper muscles. . . . The males were provided
with great canine teeth, which served them as formidable
weapons." (Vol. i. pp. 206, 207.)

But this is not all, my Lord. Mr. Darwin further
«ffirms that my most ancient progenitors were creatures
resembling the larvse, or young of Ascidians — the Ascidians
being scarcely animals at all. They are classed by some
naturalists among the worms, while their young resemble
tadpoles. Mr. Darwin thus affirms that I am descended
from a tadpole, and am, in short, the offsj ring of a worm !

I have to complain, my Lord, that, in maintaining such
to be my origin, Mr. Darwin entirely ignores the general
sentiment and belief of my race regarding it, and also the
historical and philosophical evidence on which it rests, and
that he takes occasion, from some points in my bodily
structure in which it resembles those of the lower animals,
to affirm that I am sprung from the same stock with them,
and differ from them merely by virtue of processes which he
calls "Natural Selection" and "Sexual Selection." He
thus degrades me from being a creature made by the
Divine hand and bearing traces of the Divine image, to be
merely a more perfectly developed animal, and allied, rather

FIRST DAY'S SITTING. 11

to the apes and monkeys of the present day, than to the
Almighty Creator of all things. I have to complain, my
Lord, that this attempt of Mr. Darwin to give me a brutish
origin, not only degrades me in my own est;mation, but is
calculated to have an injurious effect on my youthful
offspring. Let them but be taught that they are the
relatives of apes and monkeys, instead of being the offspring
of God, and that their most ancient progenitor was a tadpole
and a worm, and it will take away from them one of the
most powerful motives to act a rational, worthy, and noble
part on the great stage of human life.

Lord C. As I understand tl.e matter, then, the head and
front of Mr. Darwin's offending is, that he affirms you to be
descended from a hairy quadiuped, and more remotely
from some creature like a tadpole, instead of having been
created immediately by the Divine Being. You also com-
plain of Mr. Darwin's statements as being not only untrue,
but also offensive and libellous, and likely to exert an
injurious influence on the youthful portion of your race.

Homo. Precisely so, my Lord. He affirms that " it is
only our natural prejudice, and that arrogance which made
our forefathers declare that they were descended from
demi-gods, which leads us to demur to this conclusion."
(Vol. i. p. 33.)

Lord C. The conclusion certainly is not a flattering one.
But I should like Mr. Darwin himself to state the view re-
garding our descent which he is endeavouring to propagate.

Darwin. My Lord, " I give" to man " a pedigree of pro-
digious length," if not " of noble quality." " The most
ancient progenitors in the kingdom of the Vertebrata at
which we are able to obtain an obscure glance, apparently
consisted of a group of marine animals, resembling the
larva? of existing Ascidians. These animals probably gave

B 2

12 HOMO t>. DAEWIN.

rise to a group of fishes, as lowly organized as the Lan-
celet ; and from these the Ganoids and other fishes like the
Lepidosiren, must have been developed. From such fish
a very small advance would carry us on to the amphibians.
. . . Birds and reptiles were once intimately connected
together, and the Monotremata now, in a slight degree,
connect mammals with reptiles. But no one can at present
say by what line of descent the three higher and related
classes, namely, mammals, birds, and reptiles, were derived
from either of the two lower vertebrate classes, namely,
amphibians and fishes. In the class of mammals the steps
are not difficult to conceive which led from the ancient
Monotremata to the ancient Marsupials ; and from these
to the early progenitors of the placental animals. "We may
thus ascend to the Lemuridae ; and the interval is not wide
from these to the Simiadse. The Simiadae then branched
off into two great stems, the New World and the Old World
monkeys, and from the latter, at a remote period, man,

the wonder and glory of the universe, proceeded

If a single link in this chain had never existed, man would
not have been what he now is. Unless we wilfully close
our eyes, we may, with our present knowledge, approxi-
mately recognize our parentage, nor need we feel ashamed
of it." (Vol. i. pp. 212, 213.)

Homo. I hope, my Lord, that Mr. Darwin will not charge
me with wilfully closing my eyes because I feel unable
to recognize my parentage either in monkeys or tad-
poles.

Darwin. I beg Homo's pardon, my Lord ; but, like Pilate
of old, " what I have written, I have written."

Lord C. Perhaps Homo is not yet sufficiently advanced
in knowledge to be able to make the recognition in question.
1 must confess that I find myself in a similar predicament.

FIRST DAY'S SITTING.

18

I never heard of these " ancient progenitors " of ours — the
Ascidians — till now. Will Mr. Darwin inform me what
Ascidians are ?

Darwin. Ascidians, my Lord, are " invertebrate, herma-
phrodite, marine creatures permanently attached to a sup-
port. They hardly appear like animals, and consist of a
simple, tough, leathery sac, with two small projecting
orifices. . . They have recently been placed by some natu-
ralists among the Yermes or worms. Their larvse some-
what resemble tadpoles in shape, and have the power of
swimming freely about." (Vol. i. p. 205.)

Homo. Mr. Darwin, my Lord, has not supplied us with
an engraving of an Ascidian in his book, but here is one
which I have been allowel to copy from Professor Huxley's
" Introduction to the Classification of Animals." The Pro-
fessor says, " They look very much like double-necked jars
At first sight you might hardly suspect the animal nature
of one of these organisms, when freshly taken from the sea ;
but if you touch it, the stream of water which it squirts

out of each aperture reveals the
existence of a great contractile
power within." Of the two
apertures, A serves as a mouth ;
B is the anal aperture, and c the
base of attachment, by which
it fastens itself to a bit of sea-
weed or to a rock. This is
called a "Solitary Ascidian,"
because it exists by itself;
others are called "Social,"
" Aggregate," or " Compound

Ascidians," because they exist in groups, a number of them
being united into a mass.

14 HOMO V. DARWIN.

Lord C. Foreshadowing, perhaps, the fami'y groups of
their remote human posterity !

Homo. Mr. Darwin, my Lord, does not tell us whether
ancient Ascidians were social, or not. It is their degenerate
posterity we are now looking at. Here (see Frontispimf)
is another engraving, showing the larvae of Ascidians. The
large one, from the "Penny Encyclopaedia," is highly
magnified, and shows the creature when newly hatched.
The smaller one is from " Chambers' Encyclopaedia." These
authorities state that " they resemble tadpoles in shape, and
swim by means of a vibratile tail, which they shake off
when they quit the larva state and assume the sessile
(sitting or fixed) condition."

Lard C. On what ground do you affirm, Mr. Darwin, that
we human beings are descended from creatures such as these?

Darwin. "If we may rely on Embryology," my Lord,
" which has always proved the safest guide in classification,
we have at last gained a clue to the source whence the
Vertebrata have been derived." It has lately been discovered
that " the larvae of Ascidians are related to the Vertebrata,
in their manner of development, in the relative position of
the nervous system, and in possessing a structure closely
like the chorda dorsalis of vertebrate animals. ... We
should thus be justified in believing that, at an extremely
remote period, a group of animals existed resembling in
many respects the larvae of our present Ascidians, which
diverged into two great branches — the one retrograding in
development, and producing the present class of Ascidians,
the other rising to the crown and summit of the animal
kingdom by giving birth to the Vertebrata." 'I may add
that " some observations lately made by M. Kowalevsky,
I confirmed by Professor Kuppfer," led to this discovery,
which will be one of "extraordinary interest, if still further

FIRST DAY'S SITTING. 15

extended, as I hear from M. Kowalevsky, in Naples, he has
now effected." (Vol. i. pp. 205, 206.)

Homo. Pray observe, my Lord, the remarkable mental
agility of Mr. Darwin. To reach his desired conclusion, he
leaps, at a bound, over all the recognized laws of reasoning.
First, he tells us that a foreign gentleman lately made
" some observations," which observations, it appears, another
foreign gentleman confirmed. Mr.Oarwin then hears from
thii first foreign gentleman that he has " further extended "
those observations. We are then unhesitatingly told that
those observations have led to the discovery that the tad-
pole-like Ascidians of the present day — which, for brevity's
*ake, we may, I presume, henceforth speak of simply as
tadpoles — are "related in descent to the Vertebrata." Another
element of uncertainty is then introduced into the argument.
" //," says Mr. Darwin, "a/ we may rely on Embryology. . .
we have at last gained a clue to the source whence the
Vertebrata have been derived." From these hypothetical
premises — a portion of which only I have detailed — he
draws the conclusion, " We shotild thus be justified in
believing "-'that we are descended from "a group of animals
resembling -the larvae of our present Ascidians.^> Now, even
were these premises of Mr. Darwin satisfactorily proved,
my Lord, they do not justify his conclusion. No reputable
man of science would dream of inferring from them that
there was an ancient race of tadpoles more respectable than
any now in existence, and that these ancient tadpoles were
the progenitors of man on the one hand, and of the de-
generate tadpoles of these days on the other. If such
reasoning be valid, why, then, one might undertake to prove
that Tenterden steeple is the cause of the Goodwin
Sands!

Lord C. You had better, Homo, let Mr. Darwin reason

16 HOMO V. DAHWI.V.

in his own way. Of course, you are not bound by his
conclusions.

Homo. But is it not necessary, my Lord, that the facts — so
called — on which he bases his hypothesis, should be verified ?
Mr. Darwin says himself that " false facts are highly in-
jurious to the progress of science." (Vol. ii. p. 385.) Can
the unverified observations then, of two foreign gentlemen,
afford a sufficient ground for the affirmation that the root
of human nature is to be found in a tadpole ; or that a
worm, by a numberless succession of improvements', has
developed into man ?

Lord 0. If, for the sake of argument, you will accept as
facts what Mr. Darwin advances as facts, we shall be the better
able to test the value of his hypothesis. Mr. Darwin, I am
sure, would not knowingly put forward false statements.

Homo. I do not suppose he would, my Lord, for exposure
would be certain ; but it is quite possible that over-fond-
ness for his hypothesis, the child of his own brain, might
make him less careful than he should be in accepting the
statements of others. Indeed, he repeatedly errs in this
direction, as I could easily show your Lordship. But I am
quite willing to adopt your Lordship's suggestion. We shall,
for the sake of argument, suppose Mr. Darwin's facts to be
real facts. But I shall take the liberty, when I think it
needful, of jointing out their unsatisfactory character.

Lord C. You will be quite right in doing so. To return
then to our argument. Mr. Darwin, it appears, maintains
that our line of descent, if traced backwards, as far as he
can reach, would lead us to creatures somewhat resembling
in shape the tadpoles of the present day.

Darwin. AVhat I say, my Lord, is this : "The most ancient
progenitors in the kingdom of the Vertebrata (to which
kingdom man belongs), at which we are able to obtain an

FIRST DAY'S SITTING. 17

obscure glance, apparently consisted of a group of marine
animals, resembling the larvae of existing Ascidians."

Lord C. And Ascidians " have been recently placed," you
say, "by some naturalists, among the Yermes or worms."
Job, then, would almost seem to have anticipated your
hypothesis when he said to the worm, " Thou art my
mother." There is, however, this difference Xjob meant it
figuratively, you mean it literally and in reality.^

Darwin. Precisely so, my Lord ; and thus, as I have
said, " we approximately recognize our parentage, nor need

we feel ashamed of it."

• -

Lord C. "Well, that is a matter of taste — I should rather
say, perhaps, of feeling or sentiment.

Homo. I should say, my Lord, the imagination has a
good deal to do with it.

Lord C'. We proceed now to look at the evidence. Is it
the case, then, Mr. Darwin, that in endeavouring to work
out the conclusion you have arrived at, you take no account
of evidence hostile to it, derived from such sources as Homo
has referred to — I mean such sources as revelation-tradi-
tion, the reasonings of philosophers, &c. ?

Darwin. My Lord, I am a naturalist, and I follow the
line of evidence with which my favourite study has made
me familiar.

Lord C. But is it wise to ignore other lines of evidence ?
In courts of law we feel bound to take note of evidence, from
whatever source it may come. It seems to me that the true
spirit of philosophy, which is just a sincere love of truth—
would lead you to pursue a similar course. How can you
justify yourself, in so serious a matter, in pooh-poohing
evidence which some of the greatest of your countrymen
have thought conclusive on the other side ?

Homo. Pardon me, my Lord, but I think that,, in wilfully

18 HOMO V. DARWi:.*.

closing his eyes to evidence that may be brought from
other sources, Mr. Darwin, makes himself, so far, like a horse
when we have put on its blinkers, and which, therefore, can
see only in one direction. There is just this difference ;
Mr. Darwin makes his own blinkers and puts them on him-
self. He is thus disabled from seeing in any line of obser-
vation but that of Natural History. He has, moreover,
become so blinded by the unnatural use he makes of his eyes,
that he cannot see very clearly with them anywhere.

Lord C. Yon mud; speak respectfully of Mr. Darwin,
Homo.

Homo. I beg your Lordship's pardon if I have trans-
gressed. I desire to cherish every kind feeling towards
Mr. Darwin, but hope, at the same time, that I may not be
prevented from fully speaking out my mind.

Lord C. I understand, then, that Mr. Darwin thinks the
evidence which he brings from Natural History as to our
descent from a hairy quadruped, and, more remotely, from
creatures resembling the larvae of Ascidians, to be so con-
clusive ae quite to set aside any evidence to the contrary
that might be brought from other sources, and, indeed, to
render it unworthy of any notice whatever. I understand
ulso that Mr. Darwin does not suppose man to have been
immediately produced by this hairy quadruped, but to be
merely his remote descendant ; that other races — each suc-
ceeding one, I presume, being less ape-like and more )
human-like — intervened ; and that each of these races,
through the power of Natural Selection, produced a fresh
race, less like the original, till at length the last of them
produced man.

Darwin. There must, my Lord, have been " a series of
forms graduating insensibly from some ape-like creature to
man as he now exists." (Vol. i. p. 235.)

FIEST DAY'S SITTING. 19

Lard 0. Do any of these intervening " series of forms,"
then, survive ?

Darwin. None of them, my Lord. Indeed, " the great
break in the organic chain between man and his nearest
allies, which cannot be bridged over by any extinct or
living species, has often been advanced as a grave objection
to the belief that man is descended from some lower form."
(Vol. i. p. 200.)

Lord C. I do not wonder at that, for, as the race of
man has proved hardy enough to survive, one would think
that some, at least, of his ancestral races would have
proved as hardy as himself. But perhaps you suppose that,
when the series that has ended in man branched away from
the stem of the Old World monkeys, all the members in each
successive series were travelling gradually towards the goal
of humanity, so that a time at length came, when each
surviving mother in the last series found herself strangely
producing man.

Darwin. My Lord, will you kindly observe that I spok«
of " a series of forms, graduating insensibly from some ape-l
like creature to man."

Homo. I should say, my Lord, that, if this "graduating"
process ever took place, it was a very sensible process,
though " insensibly " performed.

Lord C. Mr. Darwin's meaning is clear enough. He
means by "insensibly" that each step in the series of
changes by which, at length, ape became man, was trivial
in itself, though the whole combined has produced the result
which we now see. But I wish to learn from Mr. Darwin,
whether he supposes that each step in this series of changes
which he thinks resulted in the production of man, was
taken by all the mothers belonging to each series of forms.
Or, I may put it differently. After the line that produced

20 HOMO V. DARWIX.

man had branched away from the Old World monkeys, did all
the mothers in each succeeding " series of forms " produce
offspring " insensibly "in advance of themselves ; or was it
only some of the mothers that did so ? This question is
important, for, if only some of the mothers produced off-
spring in advance of themselves, then we might inquire
what bee ame of the descendants of the other mothers.

Darwin. You have an answer to that question, my Lord,
in my reference to " the great break in the organic chain
between man and his nearest allies, which cannot be
bridged over by any extinct or living species." This irr plies
clearly enough, that, of the intermediate species between
man and his nearest allies, all have become extinct.

Lord C. I quite understand that, Mr. Darwin. But if
you could have said that all the mothers in each succeeding
series produced an offspring insensibly in advance of them-
selves, your hypothesis would have accounted for each
successive series having become extinct. Suppose, for
example, that while some of the mothers in each succeediug
series produced offspring in advance of themselves — or, if
it suit you better, only one of the mothers — the other
mothers, being either not so thoughtful, or not so ambitious,
produced offspring in their own exact image and likeness,
it seems but fair to suppose further that some of those
intermediate series of forms would have survived, and that
we should thus have about us, at the present day, races of
creatures graduating, if not " insensibly," yet clearly and
unmistakeahly towards man. Or again ; if there were " a
series of forms graduating insensibly toward man," the
number of forms, in that series of forms, must have been
enormous ; the more insensible the process, the greater the
number of forms. Now, I want to know how you account
for the fact — for a fact it mubt be, if your hypothesis be

FIEST DAY'S SITTING. 21

true — that each of these numerous intermediate series of
forms has become extinct. Why have we no species of
living creature half-way between ape and man ? Why is
not the vast gap filled up by two or three, or more of
these supposed numerous intermediate forms?

Darwin. That, my Lord, " has often been advanced as a
grave objection to the belief that man is descended from
some lower form, but this objection will not appear of much
weight to those who, convinced by general reasons, believe
in the general principle of evolution. Breaks incessantly
occur in all parts of the series, some being wide, sharp, and
defined, others less so in various degrees ; as between the
orang and its nearest allies — between the Tarsius and the
other Lemuridae . . . but all these breaks depend
merely on the number of related forms that have become
extinct." (Vol. i. pp. 200, 201.)

Lord C. I have been arguing that, as these supposed
related forms graduated "insensibly" from ape to man,
their number must have been very great, but you seem to
make no difficulty of the circumstance of their all having
become extinct.

Darwin. It is certainly np difficulty whatever to me, my
Lord. "At some future period, not very distant as
mej.sjTe^_by__centurie8, the civilized races of man will
almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the
world the savage races. At the same time the anthropo-
morphous (man-shaped) apes, as Professor Schaaifhausen
has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break
will then be rendered wider." (Vol. i. p. 201.)

Homo. What Mr. Darwin says, my Lord, sounds very
learned, but it does not meet the difficulty suggested.

Lord C. It certainly does not. I can understand that
civilized man may, in the course of time, exterminate savage

22 HOMO V. DARWIN.

man and man-shaped apes, but I cannot so easily understand
why the numerous related forms between ape and man, if
they ever really existed, should all have perished. So far
as I understand Mr. Darwin's principle of Natural Selection,
it is the process by which the stronger races, and those best
fitted to succeed, are preserved in the struggle for life.
According to Natural Selection, therefore, each of the suc-
• cessive races of man's progenitors, from the " hairy quadru-
ped " on to man himself, must have been better fitted to
maintain its position in the world than any which preceded
it. We find, however, that, while many monkey tribes
survive, all of these have perished. Here, as it .seems to
me, is an exceedingly weak point in Mr. Darwin's reasoning.
According to his hypothesis, the fittest should survive;
according to his facts, the fittest have perished !

Homo. In reply to your Lordship's remarks, Mr. Darwin
would doubtless say that the fittest have survived; that
each successive race of man's progenitors, being superior to
that which preceded it, exterminated it, and eventually took
; its place. This, my Lord, is Natural Selection, i.e. " the
survival of the fittest."

Lord C. I quite understand that Mr. Darwin would say
BO, but the statement does not carry conviction with it.
Many of the supposed races of man's progenitors must have
been greatly in advance of any surviving species of monkey.

Hoino. My Lord, I defy Mr. Darwin to prove that any
one of these numerous related forms between man and
ape, which he says were originated by Natural Selection,
and have become extinct, ever existed, unless in his own
imagination. It is all very fine to talk of the "general
principle of evolution," but let Mr. Darwin, or any one of
those who say they believe in evolution, point to a sin^U',
cleur, and unmistakeable instance of it. Professor Huxley,

FIRST DAY'S SITTING. 23

who tells us that he has "assuredly no bias against Mr.
Darwin's views," distinctly states that " there is no instance
in which a group of animals, having all the characters
exhibited by species in nature, has ever been originated by
selection, whether natural or artificial."

Lord C. What say you, Mr. Darwin, to this statement of
Professor Huxley ?

Darwin. I cannot contradict it, my Lord ; but, in the
passage quoted, Professor Huxley is referring to a former
work of mine on THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES BY MEANS OF
NATURAL SELECTION ; or, The Preservation of Favoured
Races in the Struggle for Life. But Homo should have
stated what follows. The Professor adds, " "We will go so
far as to express our belief that experiments, conducted by
a skiifal physiologist, would very probably result in ob-
taining the desired production in a comparatively few years."

Homo. The Professor is a skilful physiologist, my Lord ;
let him then try the experiment. I shall willingly wait a few
years to see the result. But numberless experiments have
unquestionably been made already. Mr. Darwin has no
doubt tried some himself— unsuccessfully of course, else we
should not yet have heard the. end of it. Let him try
again. To originate a new species would confer immor-
tality on any physiologist. But I suspect that like will
persist in producing its like, in spite of naturalists and their
experiments.

Lord C. Pray do not get excited, Homo ; keep calm.

Homo. I cannot help it, my Lord, when I find myself
led on such a wild-goose chase after ancestors that never
existed, and that would be no credit to me if they had.

Lord C. Do not be too confident ; perhaps Mr. Darwin
may find one of them for you yet. As I understand the
case so far, then, it stands thus. Professor Huxley, with

24 HOMO V. DARWIN.

assuredly no bias against Mr. Darwin's views — indeed, it is
well known that his bias is in favour of them — yet declares
that no instance can be adduced in which a distinct species
of animal has been originated by what you call Natural
Selection. It may be possible, the Professor believes, that a
skilful physiologist might in a few years succeed in origin-
ating a distinct species, but it has not yet been done.
Probably, as Homo suggests, experiments have been made
for the purpose of obtaining this desired production, but
hitherto without success. Nature has, as yet, proved too
stubborn for the physiologist. Nor is there any clear and
distinct proof that any species has ever been originated by
Natural Selection. No instance can be pointed to in which
the thing has certainly and unmistakeably been accom-
r plished. Those who " believe in the general principle of
' evolution" are "convinced by general reasons," not by
; tangible and indisputable facts.

Darwin. My Lord, " a large number of naturalists admit
that species are the modified descendants of other species ;
and this especially holds good with the younger and rising
naturalists. The greater number accept the agency of
Natural Selection; though some urge, whether with justice
the future must decide, that I have greatly overrated
its importance. Of the older and honoured chiefs in
natural science, many, unfortunately, are still opposed to
evolution in every form." (Vol. i. pp. 1, 2.)

Lord C. This is certainly "unfortunate" for your
hypothesis ; but whether it be unfortunate for the interests
of truth, the future, as you say, must decide. The point,
however, on which I am now remarking is this ; you have
absolutely no facts as a basis for your hypothesis. It is
supported, as I understand, not by facts, but by " general

I-

FIRST DAY'S SITTINO. 25

Darwin. Those " general reasons," my Lord, are based
n facts.

Lord C. Quite so, Mr. Darwin. Your book, I am well
aware, is full of facts. Of course, you reason from those
facts, and endeavour to build up your hypothesis on them ;
but " the older and honoured chiefs in natural science " see
nothing in your facts to sustain " evolution in any form."
You have no facts that directly and unmistakeab'y prove
evolution. The facts you find may be the remote descend-
ants of the facts you do not find, but we need to be
assured of their descent. By-and-by we shall consider
the " general reasons " which have led some to " believe in
the general principle of evolution." But, first, let me re-
quest you to observe that, when you speak of " breaks in
the organic chain as incessantly occurring in all parts of
the series ... as between the orang and its nearest
allies, between the Tarsius and the other Lemuridae," &c.,
you are taking for granted, instead of proving, the reality
of these breaks. They are breaks if your hypothesis is
true, but not otherwise.

Homo. It might help our progress in the argument, my
Lord, if Mr. Darwin will tell us whether he will undertake
to prove, regarding any animal of the present day, that it
is, however slowly, yet unquestionably, progressing towards
a higher form. In his work " On the Origin of Species,"
first edition, page 184, he says, " In North America the
black bear was seen by Hearne swimming for hours, with a
widely open mouth, thus catching, almost like a whale,
insects in the water. Even in so extreme a case, if the
supply of insects were constant, and if better adapted com-
petitors did not appear, I can see no difficulty in a race of
bears being rendered, by Natural Selection, more and more
aquatic in their structure and habits, with larger and larger

c

26 HOMO V. DARWIN.

mouths, till a creature was produced as monstrous as a
whale."

Lard C. I never heard of a whale catching insects in the
water, nor even of a bear doing so. What sort of insects
were they ?

Homo. That information, my Lord, Mr. Darwin does
not give us. It would manifestly require, however, a
prodigious quantity of any kind of insects that we are
acquainted with to fatten a bear into a whale. But I want
to know if Natural Selection is at present carrying on a
process of this kind with any race of animals whatever.

Darwin. Homo ought to have mentioned, my Lord, that
the passage he has just read is omitted from the subsequent
editions of the work in which it appeared.

Homo. I am aware it is omitted, my Lord, and also that
no reason for the omission is given. Mr. Darwin does not
pay whether he omitted it because he had seen reason to
change his mind regarding the power of Natural Selection,
or whether it was because some of his fellow naturalists
thought the statement so monstrous that they requested its
suppression. For one might think that, if Natural Selection
could turn black bears into creatures like whales, it might
also, especially when aided by the contrivances of human
reason, turn pigs into creatures like elephants.

Lord 0. Are you not going beyond Mr. Darwin, Homo,
in conceiving such an idea ?

Homo. I think not, my Lord. A pig is quite as like
an elephant as a black bear is like a whale. Indeed, the
pig has the advantage. Its habitat is on dry land, like
that of the bear. Then, its snout bears a remote resem-
blance to the trunk of an elephant. Lamarck supposed that
the giraffe acquired its long neck by having had originally
to seek its food in the overhanging hnmche-; of trees. The

FIRST DAY'S SITTIXQ. 27

neck was gradually lengthened by being constantly stretched.
Now, my Lord, there might surely be some contrivance by
which pigs, would have to stretch their snouts to reach
their food. If there is no difficulty — and Mr. Darwin sees
none— in a race of bears becoming changed by Natural
Selection into creatures as "monstrous" as whales, why
should there be any difficulty in a race of pigs being changed
by Natural Selection, aided by human reason, into creatures
as " monstrous " as elephants ? Mr. Darwin tells us in the
last edition of the work in question, page 89, that " pigs
have often been born with a sort of proboscis, like that of
the tapir or elephant." Let him, then, procure one of these
pigs, and he will have the work half done to his hand.

Lord C. Mr. Darwin has, no doubt, changed his opinion
on this point ; at all events, it is wisely appointed by the
Great Author of nature that men shall not be able to play
fantastic tricks with the established order of things. Species
may certainly be modified within a certain limited range,
but each appears to have its bounds, which it cannot pass.
If man were able, by crossing, or by placing animals under
new conditions, or in any other way, to produce new kinds,
why, the world would be full of all sorts of monsters — of
creatures more strange than fancy or imagination has ever
pictured. Let me now ask Mr. Darwin whether any fossil
remains of the "ape-like progenitors of man," or of the
" hairy quadruped " which, he says, is the common ancestor
of them all, have been found ?

Darwin. My Lord, " with respect to the absence of fossil
remains serving to connect man with his ape-like pro-
genitors, no one will lay much stress on this fact who will
read Sir Charles Lyell's discussion, in which he shows
that, fii^the ^vertebrate classes, the discovery of fossil
remains has been an extremely slow and fortuitous process.

C 2

28 HOilO V. DARWIN.

Nor should it be forgotten that those regions which are the
most likely to afford remains connecting man with soine
extinct ape-like creature have not, as yet, been searched by-
geologists." (Vol. i. p. 201.)

Lord G. To what regions do you refer as most likely to
contain such remains ?

Darwin. " It is probable," my Lord, " that Africa was
formerly inhabited by extinct apes, closely allied to the
gorilla and chimpanzee ; and as these two species are now
man's nearest allies, it is somewhat more probable that our
early progenitors lived on the African continent than else-
where. But it is useless to speculate on this subject, for
an ape nearly as large as a man . . . existed in Europe
I daring the Upper Miocene period ; and since so remote a
period the earth has certainly undergone many great revolu-
tions, and there has been ample time for migration on the
largest scale." (Vol. i. p. 199.)

Lord C. Man's progenitors, then, like this ape, may have
been Europeans.

Dani-in. AYhat I have said, my Lord, implies th; t.

Lord C. In which case, Europe ought to contain fossil
remains of our supposed progenitors ; yet you can point to
none that have been found in Europe.

Darwin. The discovery of fossil remains, my Lord, as Sir
\Charles Lvell says, has always " been an extremely slow ami
fortuitous pro

Lord C. Am I then to understand that, as yet, no fossil
remains of any kind have been found anywhere, which can
be produced in proof of your hypothesis — no fossil remains,
either of the immediate, or the remote, progenitors of man ?

hum-in. In answer to this question, I must refer your
Lo;dfchip to my quotation from Sir Charles Lyell.

Uoniu. Pray, atk him, my Lord, if geologihta have found

FIRST DAY'S SITTING. 29

fossil remains which they can prove to be those of the
progenitors of any race of animals now living on the earth.
Have they found fossil remains which they can prove to
belong to the progenitors of the eagle, or of the horse, or
of the donkey, or the whale — of any creature, in short,
from a mouse or a mole up to a man? I am aware, indeed,
that fossil remains of animals thought to resemble the
horse have been found, but Mr. Darwin might as easily
prove that the donkey is descended from the dromedary,
as that the horses of the present day are descended from
the Hippotherium.

Lord G. And yet some naturalists are of this opinion.

Homo. That, my Lord, may very easily be accounted for.

'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view ;

— distance, aided by these three most potent auxiliaries,
Ignorance, Imagination, and Presumption. TVhy, my
Lord, if these extinct forms were now living around us,
naturalists would no more venture to affirm them to be the
progenitors -of the horse, than they dare tell us that our
cats are descended from the Bengal tiger, or our dogs
from the African lion ; or — to take, perhaps, a more
apposite case — that the gorilla is the father race to the
gibbon and the chimoanzee. Why is it, my Lord, that
naturalists do not come into the light of existing facts, and
point out to us some living species that has sprung from
some other living species ? They know that existing facts
would not bear them out. Hence they grope their way, by
the aid of fossil bones, millions of ages back into the past ;
and there, amid its pitchy darkness, they fancy they see tho
desired transformations taking place. Worms become ^
fishes, and fishes change "insensibly " into fowls ! Amphi-
bians produce reptiles, and reptiles become the nurses

30 HOMO V. DARWIN.

quadrupeds ! Black bears turn into creatures like whales,
and the monster Hippotherium gives birth to the horse \ ,
Then comes the crowning marvel of all. Quadrupeds pro-
duce monkeys, and from monkeys " Man, the wonder and
glory of the universe, proceeds.'! All this, of course,
requires time. But there is no difficulty with them about
time. The pendulum of Mr. Darwin's clock swings but
once in a century. With men of his type of mind, a
thousand ages are but as a moment. They know perfectly
well what took place during the "Upper Miocene period,"
myriads of centuries ago. Our men of science can go back
almost a whole eternity, even to the time of the primeval
mist, when the foundations of the world were laid, and then
return and tell us how it was done ! Ugh ! ! I am sick of
them and their assumptions, and am reminded by them of
those ancient, but too true words, "Professing themselves
to be wise, they became fools."

Lord C. You are waxing rhetorical, Homo. I must
remind you that facts and calm reasoning have more weight
than rhetoric. Besides, must not periods of enormous
length have been necessary to work out the changes in
the condition of the earth revealed by geology ?

Homo. I do not question that at all, my Lord ; but I
object to men who call themselves "scientific," in order to
find support for a favourite hypothesis, leaving the light of
ascertained and indisputable facts, groping their way into
darkness, which would be felt by any but themselves, and
bringing us back from thence mere fancies of their own,
which they require us to accept as truths, and which, if
received, must tend to darken and degrade the noble nature
I God has given us.\ It is clear, my Lord, from the paintings
I on Egyptian monuments, and the mammies of sacred
animals found in Egyptian tombs, that, for thneg thousand

FIRST DAY'S SITTING. 31

years at least, there has been no change in certain species.
They have retained the same general form, and even the
same specific differences, for thirty centuries. And man
himself has not changed during that time.

Lord C. But is there not a great difference between
three thousand years and three million years ?

Homo. My Lord, if you multiply nothing by three
millions, or even by three hundred millions, it will be
nothing still. If three thousand years have literally done
nothing to develop one species into another — and this may
be demonstrated to be the fact — three thousand million
\ears would do as little.

Lord C. We must return now to the subject of fossil
remains. It is clear, Mr. Darwin, that none have as yet
been found anywhere, to which you can refer as proving
the truth of your hypothesis.

Homo. My Lord, England, and also the Continent,
abound in fossil remains. Our chalk hills are full of them,
and so are miles upon miles of the earth's strata all around
us. Railway contractors have been cutting through them
in every direction for nearly half a century ; yet geologists
cannot supply Mr. Darwin with a bone, or even a tooth,
which can help him to prove his assertions, not only as to
man's origin, but as to the origin of any species of creature
now living. He asserts that all living species have been
produced by Natural Selection from other species. Let him,
then, produce fossil remains which he can prove to be those
of the progenitors of any species of living animal, if he can.

Lord C. It is vain to abk for that, Homo; it appears it
can't be done.

//6//*0. So it seems, my Lord ; and thus, while, accord-
ing to Mr. Darwin, there has been not only a chain of
descent connecting man with this hairy quadruped, but

32 HOMO V. DARWIN.

also numerous other chains connecting the various monkey
and other tribes, now living, with some common pro-
genitor, not only does Mr. Darwin fail to produce those
chains, he cannot produce even a fossil link of one of them.
Now, my Lord, I submit that this can be accounted for only
on the supposition, either that these chains of descent are
entirely imaginary and never existed, or that the creatures
composing them were cannibals, and so devoured one
miother — bones and all

Lord C. A7e come, then, to this conclusion, Mr. Darwin ;
that as to " the ape-like progenitors of man," connecting
him with this " hairy quadruped," not only is the chain of
descent missing, but all the links of the chain as well. You
are unable to produce any one of those links. But further,-
according to your hypothesis, every distinct species of
animal now existing is descended from the same primary
stock with man. There must, therefore, have been " a
series of forms graduating insensibly " from the primary
creature, whatever it was, to each distinct kind of animal
now existing. In short, there must have been chains of
des ent as numerous as present living species. If you could
produce some of these chains of descent, or even one of
them, it would go so far towards rendering it probable
that man, also, has his chain of descent, though, un-
fortunately, every link of it is missing. But, as in the
case of man, so in the case of all other species — you cannot
{•how the chain of descent of one of them, or produce fossil
evidence that it ever existed.

Darwin. As I have already remarked, my Lord, " no one
will lay much stress on this fact, who will read Sir Charles
Lyell's discussion."

SECOND DAY'S SITTING.

Lend C. We come now, Mr. Darwin, to the "general
masons M which you regard as proving " the general principle
•>f evolution." Will you begin the statement of them ?

Darwin. First, my Lord, " there is the Bodily Structure of
Man. It is notorious that man is constructed on the same
general type or model with other mammals. All the bones
in his skeleton can be compared with corresponding bones
in a monkey, bat, or seal. So it is with his muscles, nerves, ^
blood-vessels, and internal viscera. The brain, the most
important of all the organs, follows the same law, as shown'
by Huxley and other anatomists." (Vol. i. p. 10.)

Homo. I freely admit, my Lord, the general correctness
of the statement Mr. Darwin has just made. There can be
no question as to man possessing an animal nature. Who
doubts it ? The belief of this is, I suppose, as ancient as
man himself. /Neither can there be any question as to
man's bodily frame being constructed on the same general
type as that of other mammals J How could it be otherwise ?
Like other mammals, man is made to live, and move, and
have his being on the earth. He eats and drinks like them.
He has numerous functions to perform, precisely similar to
theirs. Hence, necessarily, his bodily structure is similar.
I do not see how he could have been constructed otherwise.
Perhaps Mr. Darwin can suggest some better type after
which man's phjsieal nature might have been modelled.

34 HOMO f. DARWIN.

Darwin. That is a task, my Lord, which I have not
attempted.

Homo. And very wisely so, my Lord. He could as little
have succeeded in it, as in producing a new species from an
old one, or in finding the missing links of some one of the
.missing chains, f Every animal is adapted by its structure
for its habitat, and mode of life. Creatures of the ape kind,
for example, with a rude kind of hands, and feet which are
also hands, being fitted for clutching branches and climbing
trees, are essentially arboreal in their habits. They never
willingly leave the forest, where they find at once suitable
food and needful security: . Mr. Darwin would as little
succeed in showing, in the case of an ape, as in the case of
a man, that it might have been more suitably modelled than
it is. If he asks me why my bodily structure somewhat
resembles that of an ape, I reply-^Certainly not because
I am descended from an ape, but because I require, for my
hiil.itat and mode of life, precisely such a bodily structure
as 1 possess^J Mr. Darwin should show that man's bodily
structure might have been better modelled before he argues
from it that I am descended from an ape. If this argument,
in itself, be worth anything, it would prove, quite as con-
clusively, that the ape is descended from man.

Lord C. If you could show, Mr. Darwin, that man's bodily
structure is an inconvenience to him, or that it might have
been more suitably modelled, this would go so far towards
supporting your argument. On the supposition of man
having been separately created, we can imagine the Creator
moulding his animal nature after the same general type as
that of other mammals, though we can hardly suppose Him
following that type so far as then -by to subject this new
and superior creature to disadvantage. It appears to me
an important point that man's bodily structure should be

SECOND DAY'S SITTING. 35

so wonderfully — so perfectly adapted to the purposes for
which man requires it. On your hypothesis, man owes it
entirely to the power of Natural Selection that he is what
he is!

Hrnno. Mr. Darwin, my Lord, endows what he calls Natural
Selection, with all that power and wisdom which we are
accustomed to attribute to the Almighty. In his work on
" The Origin of Species," he says regarding it, " It may be
metaphorically said that Natural Selection is daily and
hourly scrutinizing, throughout the world, the slightest
variations ; rejecting those that are bad, preserving and
adding up all that are good ; silently and insensibly
working, whenever and wherever opportunity offers, at the
improvement of each organic being in relation to its organ c
and inorganic conditions of life." (p. 96.)

Darwin. My Lord, "the time will, before long, come
when it will be thought wonderful that naturalists, who
were well acquainted with the comparative structure and
development of man and other mammals, should have
believed that each was the work of a separate act of creation."
(VoL i. p. 33.)

Lord C. That, at all events, is, at present, the prevailing
belief of man himself as to his origin.

Darwin. " In my work," my Lord, " on ' THE ORIGIN OF
SPECIES,' I had two distinct objects in view : firstly, to show
that species had not been separately created ; and secondly,
that Natural Selection had been the chief agent of change-;"
. . . and if, in that work, " I have erred in giving to Natural
Selection great powers, which I am far from admitting, or in
having exaggerated its power, which is in itself probable, I
have, at least, as I hope, done good service in aiding to over-
throw the dogma of separate creations." (VoL i. pp. 152,
153.)

36 HOMO V. DARWIN.

Lord C. You should not allow your feeling against this
" dogma," as you call it, to influence you too strongly. If
you can show it to be a mere dogma, by establishing your
own belief on a basis of ascertained and indisputable facts,
it will soon wither and perish. But, as we have seen, you
are at present building your hypothesis, not on facts, but
on " general reasons."

Homo. My Lord, what is Mr. Darwin's hypothesis but a
dogma ? It is Darwin's dogma of man's development by
Natural Selection, against the Bible doctrine of man's
creation by the power of the Almighty.

Danvin. I should also mention, my Lord, that "man is
liiible to receive from the lower animals, and to communicate
to them, certain diseases, as hydrophobia, variola, the glanders,
&c. ; and this fact proves the close similarity of their tissues
and blood, both in minute structure and composition, far
more plainly than does their comparison under the best
microscope, or by the aid of the best chemical analysis.
Monkeys are liable to many of the same non-contagious
diseases as we are ... to catarrh . . . apoplexy, inflammation
of the bowels, and cataract in the eyes . . . Medicines produce
the same effect on them as on us. Many kinds of monkeys have
a strong taste for tea, coffee, and spirituous liquors ; they will
also, as I have myself seen, smoke tobacco with pleasure
. . . These trifling facts show how similar the nerves of taste
must be in monkeys and man, and how similarly their whole
nervous system is affected." (Vol. i. pp. 11, 12.)

Lord C. No one, I presume, will dispute the facts you
now state ; but similarity of nervous system in man and
monkey, and liability to some of the same diseases, is one
thing, their community of descent is quite another. I have
a horse that catches cold occasionally ; he has also a strong
relish for gooseberries ; he will follow me all over the field,

SECOND DAY'S SITTING. 87

drawn by the attraction of a ripe apple; but it never occurred
to me to infer from these facts that my horse is sprung from
the same progenitors with myself.

Homo. My Lord, the world has been familiar with such
facts for thousands of years. TVe must suppose, therefore,
I presume, that it has been man's " prejudice and natural
arrogance " that have hitherto prevented him from drawing
from them the conclusion which Mr. Darwin now draws
for him.

Darwin. The next line of proof to which I shall direct
your Lordship's attention is that of "Embryonic Develop-
ment. Man is developed from an ovule about the 125th of
an inch in diameter, which differs in no respect from the
ovules of other animals. The embryo itself, at a very early
period, can hardly be distinguished from that of other
members of the vertebrate kingdom." (Vol. i. p. 14.)

Lord G. Arn to understand you as affirm iug that the.
ovule from which man is developed " differs in no respect
from the ovules of other animals"?

Darwin. That is precisely what I do affirm, my Lord.

Lord C. It seems to me, then, I must say, that your
statement is most incautious. If you had said that the
human ovule differs in no resppot iliat you can discern from
that of other animals, I should not have objected to it.
But it is clear that, in objects so minute, there may be
differences, though you are unable to detect them. Indeed,
as it appears to me, there must be an essential difference,
for it is unquestionable that the ovule of a dog can pro-
duce but a dog, while the human cvule produces man. I
cannot see, then, what ground you have for affirming that
the human ovule " differs in no respect fiom the ovules of
other animals."

Homo. If Mr. Darwin believes, my Lord, that the .ovules

38 HOMO V. DARWIN.

of animals " differ in no respect " from one another, then he
must also believe that it is only because of the different
conditions under which they are developed, that different
creatures are produced from them. Under the same con-
ditions the result would be the same, and all born creatures
might be donkeys, monkeys, or men. It follows, also, that
in the germ, all creatures are not only similar, but abso-
lutely identical. Originally, there is no difference between
a man and a rhinoceros, or between a chimpanzee and a sheep.

Lord C. Mr. Darwin will doubtless think of this, end
will, perhaps, modify his language in subsequent editions
of his work.

Darwin. My Lord, " as some readers of my book may
never have seen a drawing of an embryo, I have given one of
man, and another of a dog, at about the same early stage of
development, carefully copied from two works of undoubted
accuracy." (Vol. i. pp. 14, 15.)

Lord C. (Examining the drawing.) The difference is
certainly quite as striking as the resemblance. Any
intelligent child could indicate the points of dissimi-
larity.

Homo. And yet, my Lord, the ovules from which such
developments proceed, " differ in no respect " from one
another.

Darwin. My Lord, " it would be superfluous on my part
to give a number of borrowed details, showing that the
embryo of man closely resembles that of other mammals.
It may, however, be added, that the human embryo likewise
resembles, in various points of structure, certain low forms
when adult." (Vol. i. p. 1G).

Lord C. I suppose that no one who has looked into the
matter will deny that, in the germs and embryonic be-
ginnings of all vertebrate m-.'iturcs, there are points of

SECOSD DAY'S SITTING.

89

Upper figure, a human embryo, much magnified, after Eclcer. Lover
figure, embryo of a dog, also magnified, after Bischojf. — Copied from
Mr. Darwin's work on " The Descent of Man"

40 HOMO V. DARWIN.

resemblance. This is not strange considering what we all
admit, viz., that man is constructed on the same general type
or model with other mammals. If there are points of resem-
blance between full-grown men and full-grown animals, it
would be singular indeed were there no points of resemblance
between their embryos while in process of development.
But these points of resemblance in their embryos do not
prove them to be sprung from the same progenitors.

Homo. My Lord, I was conversing on this subject the
other day with a gentleman who has long been engaged in
the manufacture of steam engines. Every one that he has
produced has been constructed on the same general type.
Each of them has a general resemblance to the others.
And this resemblance might have been detected while they
were being fabricated. The process of manufacture was
similar in the case of all of them. Why, then, may not the
All-wise Creator, in the building up of the material frame-
work of the successive creatures He has called into existence,
pursue a similar course ?

Lord C. That is a question for Mr. Darwin to
answer.

Homo. But which he has not answered, my Lord. The
same remark might be made regarding works of art. The
productions of a painter or sculptor, for example, in their
beginnings have many points of resemblance ; but are
they therefore developed one from another ? Are they not
all separate creations, though planned by the same mind,
an 1 elaborated by the same hand ? And does not the
painter or sculptor try that each of his productions shuuld
advance on those that have preceded it ? Dues he not also
bring forward, as far as he can, into each successive pro-
duction, all the knowledge, and skill, and power, that Lave
distinguished his former productions ? It seems to me

SECOND DAY'S SITTING. 41

my Lord, that, in the physical structure of man, and in the
building up of that structure, we see just a similar principle
at work. Mr. Darwin might as well maintain that all steam
engines have been developed from the tea-kettle, or all
paintings or sculptures from some common prototype, as
that njan, because of some points of resemblance in his
structure and development to those of the lower animals, is
sprung from the same stock with them.

Darwin. You know, my Lord, how I feel regarding that
dogma of "separate acts of creation," on which Homo seems
now to be falling back.

Lord C. I am well aware how you feel regarding it, Mr.
Darwin, but, as you see, Homo also has his feelings. He
evidently prefers believing that man has been created
immediately by the Divine Being, to believing that he is
descended from " a hairy quadruped, with a tail and
pointed ears," and more remotely from a worm. He thinks,
too, that he has good grounds for his belief. fc What is the
next point ?

Darwin. "Rudiments" my Lord. "Rudimentary organs
... are either absolutely useless, such as the mammae of
male quadrupeds, or the incisor teeth of ruminants which
never cut through the gums ; or they are of such slight
service to their present possessors that we cannot suppose
that they were developed under the conditions which now
exist . . . Kudimentary organs are eminently variable.
. . . They often become wholly suppressed. "When this
occurs they are nevertheless liable to occasional reappear-
ance through reversion. . . . Every one must have noticed
the power which many an'mals, especially horses, possess of
moving or twitching their skin ; and this is effected by the
panniculus carnosus. Remnants of this muscle, in an
efficient state, are found in various parts of our bodies ;

D

42 HOMO V. DARWIX.

for instance, on the forehead, by which the eyebrows are
raised . . Some few persons have the power of contracting
the superficial muscles on their scalps, and these muscles
are in a variable and partially rudimentary condition. M.
A. de Candolle has communicated to me a curious instance
of the long continued persistence or inheritance of this
power, as well as of its unusual development. He knows
a family in which one member, the present head of a family,
could, when a youth, pitch several heavy books from his
head by the movement of the scalp alone ; and he won
wagers by performing this feat." (Vol. i. pp. 17-20.)

Homo. I question, my Lord, whether Mr. Darwin could
produce any one of the lower animals capable of performing
this feat. I know there are horses that can win wagers by
racing, but I never yet heard of one that could do so by pitch-
ing heavy books from his head by the movement of the
scalp alone. No animal can do this. It is idle therefore
to refer to the case Mr. Darwin has adduced, as an ins'ance
of rudimentary structure. As to man's power of raising
his eyebrows and wrinkling his forehead, it is part of
the " power of face" with which his Maker has endued
him. But there is a great difference between a horse
twitching his skin, when tickled or stung by a fly, and a
naturalist raising his eyt brows when he thinks he hus
detected some fresh rudimentary structure in man which
will justify his classing him with the lower animals. Per-
haps Mr. Darwin will tell us how it happens that a man
can express high intelligence, deep thought, loving sym-
pathy, by the movements of the muscles of his face alone,
while a horse cannot eirress them by twitching his skin all
his body over.

Lanrin. My Lord, *' Professor Turner, of Edinburgh, has
informed me that he las occasionally detected nuibcular

SECOND DAY'S SITTING. 43

fasciculi in five different situations, namely, in the axilla),
near the scapulae, Ac., all of which must be referred to the
system of the panniculus." (Vol. i. p. 19.)

Lord C. You have just said that " rudimentary organs are
eminently variable." Is it not also so with the muscles of the
human body ? Do they not vary in different individuals ?

Darwin. " The muscles " of the human body " are emi-
nently variable," my Lord. " Thus, those of the foot were
found by Professor Turner not to be strictly alike in any
two out of fifty bo lies. . . Mr. J. Wood has recorded the
occurrence of 295 muscular variations in thirty-six subjects,
and in another set of the same number, no less than 558
variations, reckoning both sides of the body as one. . . .
A single body presented the extraordinary number of
twenty-five distiuct abnormalities. . . . The famous old
anatomist, Wolff, insists that the internal viscera are more
variable than the external parts. . . . He has even written
a treatise on the choice of typical examples of the viscera
for representation." (Vol. i. p. 109.)

Lord C. I presume that, as to his physical structure, man
varies as much internally as he does externally ?

Darwin. " It is manifest," my Lord, " that man is now
subject to much variability. No two individuals of the
same race are quite alike. We may compare millions of
faces, and each will be distinct. There is an equally great
amount of diversity in the proportions and dimensions of
the various parts of the body ; the length of the legs be.ng
one of the most variable points." (Vol. i. p. 108.)

Lord C. How do you think those variations are to be
accounted for ?

Darwin. " With respect to the causes of variability," my
Lord, " we are in all cases very ignorant ; but we can see
that in man, as in the lower animals, they stand in some

D 2

44 HOMO V. BAR W IX.

relation with the conditions to which each species has been
exposed during several generations. Domesticated animals
vary more than those in a state of nature ; and this is
apparently due to the di verbified and changing nature of
their conditions. The different races of man resemble in
this respect domesticated animals. . . . We see the influence
of diversified conditions in the more civilized nations. . . .
The uniformity of savages has often been exng^'rated, and,
in some cases can hardly be said to exist." (Vol. i. p. 141.)

Lord C. No one can doubt the existence of numerous
variations in man and the lower animals, but we need not
at present inquire further into its causes. Doubtless, as
you say, "we are in all cases very ignorant" as "to the
causes of variability." The point now to be considered is —
Does the existence of such variations, as you have just told
us Professor Turner, of Edinburgh, has infbimed you of,
prove man to be allied to the lower animals ? Do they
bhow him to be descended from the "hairy quadruped" you
speak of, or from the larvae of ancient Ascidians ?

Darwin. " In order," my Lord, " that an ape- like
creature should have been transformed into man, it is
necessary that this early form, as well as many successive
links, should all have varied in mind and body. It is
impossible to obtain direct evidence on this head ; but if it
can be shown that man now varies — that his variations are
induced by the same general causes, and by the same
general laws, as in the case of the lower animals — there can
be little doubt that the preceding intermediate links varied
in a like manner." (Vol. i. p. 107.)

Lord C. I should say there can be no doubt whatever
that if "the preceding intermediate links" ever really
existed, tl^-y " varied" just as men and anim;ils vary now.
But you Lave first to prove that they really have

SECOND DAY'S SITTING. 45

The fact that man now varies shows that he has got an
animal nature, but I cannot, for the life of me, see how
this circumstance proves him to be connected with the
lower animals in descent. On the supposition that man
exists as the result of a separate act of creation, it mi^ht be
expected that, exposed as he is to so many diversified and
changing conditions, his bodily structure would exhibit,
both internally and externally, quite as numerous variations
as are found in it.

Homo. My Lord, Mr. Darwin, after stating what he calls
" the laws of variation," tells us that they apply, " most of
them, even to plants." (Vol. i. p. 113). Now, we know that
plants of the same kind vary among themselves endlessly.
The oak, for example, varies both in its roots below and in its
branches above. I suppose that, as in man, " the length
of the legs is one of the most variable points," so in the oak
is the length of its roots and branches. Will Mr. Darwin
maintain, then, that the variations in an oak tree, and among
them the different lengths of its roots and branches, prove
the oak to be descended from some lower vegetable form ?

Darwin. My Lord, allow me to remind you that my
argument, derived from rudimentary muscles connected
with tiie panniculus, referred to by Professor Turner, has
not been answered.

Lord 0. What has Homo to say in reply to it ?

Homo. I would say first, my Lord, in Mr. Darwin's own
words, that " with respect to the causes of variability we
are in all cases very ignorant ;" and secondly, that as " the
muscles are eminently variable," and as " a single body
presented the extraordinary number of twenty-five distinct
abnormalities," it should hardly surprise us that these
"variations" and "abnormalities" sometimes take the
direction pointed out by Professor Turner. I may als

46 HOMO V. DARWIN.

remind your Lordship of the gentleman Mr. Darwin told us
of, who "could pitch several heavy books from his head by the
movement of the scalp alone." No horse has got muscles
connected with the panniculus which could enable him to per-
form this feat ; nor has any other animal that I ever heard
of. Perhaps, however, Mr. Darwin may think that some
animal, now extinct, possessed this extraordinary power.

Lord C. We had better confine our attention to what Mr.
Darwin says. We need not take what he may think into
account. Will he now go on ?

Darwin. My Lord, " the extrinsic muscles which serve to
move the whole external ear, and the intrinsic muscles
which move the different parts, all of which belong to the
system of the panniculus, are in a rudimentary condition in
man ; they are also variable in development, or at least in
function. I have seen one man who could draw his ears
forwards, and another who could draw them backwards, and
from what one of these persons told me it is probable that
most of us, by often touching our ears, and thus directing
attention to them, could, by repeated trials, recover some
power of movement. The faculty of erecting the ears, and
of directing them to different points of the compass, is, no
doubt, of the highest service to many animals, as they thus
perceive the point of danger ; but I have never heard of a
man who possessed the least power of erecting his ears —
the one movement which might be of use to him. . . . The
ears of the chimpanzee and orang are curiously like those
of man, "and I am assured by the keepers in the Zoological
Gardens that these animals never move or erect them ; so
that they are in an equally rudimentary condition, as far as
function is concerned, as in man. Why these animals, as
well as the progenitors of man, should have lost the power
of erecting their curs, we cannot say. It may be, though I

SECOND DAY'S SITTING. 47

am not quite satisfied with this view, that, owing to their
arboreal habits and great strength, they were but little
exposed to danger, and so, during a lengthened period,
moved their ears but little, and thus gradually lost the
power of moving them." (Vol. i. pp. 20-22.)

Homo. You were asking Mr. Darwin, a little while ago,
my Lord, whether man suffers any inconvenience from
his bodily structure being modelled like that of an ape. It
now appears that he does ; he has lost the power of
"erecting his ears, the one movement which might be of
use to him ! " Why should he not try, " by often touching
his ears, and directing his attention to them," to recover
this lost power ? Our national schoolmasters might occa-
sionally exercise their pupils in this direction. " Erect your
ears, boys," might come in as part of the daily drill. If
this faculty, which Mr. Darwin tells us we have lost, could
be recovered, and man were able, like a donkey, or a horse,
to direct his ears to different points of the compass, he
would so far have the advantage over his relations in the
Z oological * G ardens.

Lord C. The schoolmaster had better leave this matter
to Mr. Darwin and the younger naturalists. As to the
power of erecting his ears being a faculty that would be of
uss to man, I should think he possesses a more useful
faculty in being able easily to turn his head in any
direction he pleases. When you say, Mr. Darwin, that you
cannot tell " why the progenitors of man should have lost
the power of erecting their ears," are you not taking for
granted what should first be proved, viz., that man has
had progenitors which possessed the power in question ?

Homo. Perhaps, my Lord, Mr. Darwin will tell us how
man's supposed progenitors came to have external ears at
all. I should like him to trace the development of the

48 HOMO V. DARWIN.

external ear from the Ascidian to the ape, or at least to
explain the process to us, and show some proof that his
account of it is anything more than a mere p:oduct of
his imagination. As to the whole external shell of the ear
^>eing a rudiment, and therefore useless, I should like to
know how man would look without it ; yet, if Mr. Darwin's
principles be true, we must, I suppose, eventually lose our
ears, just as we have lost our tails !

Lord C. That does not follow, Homo. Mr. Darwin's
principle of " Sexual Selection " would, I presume, come
into play here. Ladies would certainly object to a husband
with a tail ; hence the tail must go : but as they would
hardly choose one without ears, the ears, I suppose, must
remain.

Homo. And thus, ray Lord, the fact of man having re-
tained his ears while losing his tail would be accounted for.

Lord C. At all events, Mr. Darwin, quite apart from the
question of rudiments, humanity would certainly object to
losing its ears.

Darwin. My Lord, " the celebrated sculptor, Mr; Woolner,
informs me of one little peculiarity in the external ear,
which he has often observed both in men and women, and
of which he perceived the full signification. . . . The pecu-
liarity consists in a little blunt point, projecting from the
inwardly folded margin or helix. Mr. Woolner made an
exact model of one such case, and has sent me the accom-
panying drawing. These points not only project inwards,
but often a little outwards, so that they are visible when
the head is viewed from directly in front or behind. They
are variable in size and somewhat in posi;ion, standing
either a little higher or lower, and they sometimes occur on
one ear and not on the other. Now the meaning of these
projections is not, I think, doubtful. . . . The helix ob-

SECOND DAY'S SITTING. 49

viously consists of the extreme margin of the ear folded
inwards ; and this folding appears to be in some manner
connected with the whole external ear being permanently
pressed backwards. In many monkeys, which do not stand
high in the order, as baboons and some species of macacus,
the upper portion of the ear is slightly pointed, and the
margin is not at all folded inwards ; but if the margin were
to be thus folded, a slight point would necessarily project
inwards, and probably a little outwards. This could actually
be observed in a specimen of the A teles Beelzebulh in the
Zoological Gardens ; and we may safely conclude that it is
R similar structure — a vestige of formerly pointed ears —
which occasionally re-appears in man." (Vol. i. pp. 22, 23.)

Lord C. The ladies will not thank you, Mr. Darwin, for
finding " the Mark of the Beast" on so prominent a bodily
member. Those of them who, unfortunately, have it, will
now be covering it over from observation. We have heard
a good deal of late about M.B. coats ; we shall be hearing
next, I suppose, of M.B. ears. But how do you account,
Homo, for those points to which Mr. Darwin directs atten-
tion, as occasionally appearing on the ear ?

Homo. Why should not the ear, my Lord, like other
portions of man's structure, be modelled after preceding
types ? The figure of this organ, drawn by Mr. Woolner,
looks reputable enough, even though it may have a point.
Mr. Darwin has told us that the famous old anatomist,
Wolff, wrote *' a treatise on the choice of typical examples
of the viscera." Perhaps some rising naturalist may favour
us, some day, with a treatise on typical examples of the
ear. As to this point appearing only occasionally, I can no
_.ore account for it than I can account for other variations
which appear only occasionally. If, in no two persons is
the shape of the ear exactly alike, neither is the colour of

50 HOMO V. DARWIX.

the eye. Some persons have black eyes, some have blue
eyes, and some have them grey, or even green ; but I don't
suppose that the fact of some of the lower animals having
eyes similarly coloured would prove them to be our relations.
Mr. Darwin speaks of " the whole external ear being per-
manently pressed backwards," but he does not tell us how,
or by whom, this was done.

Lord C. Is not that portion of the ear called the lobe,
occasionally wanting ? I have seen persons with scarcely
any lobe whatever to their ears. "Would Mr. Darwin argue
from this fact that the hairy quadruped — man's progenitor
— while he had pointed ears, was unprovided with the ap-
pendage to which ladies are so fond of attaching ornaments ?
Homo. Mr. Darwin, my Lord, will perhaps reply to that
question in some subsequent edition of his work. But I
beg to suggest another point for his consideration. It is
well known that the nose varies in development, as well as
the ear, and that, occasionally, persons have what is called
the aquiline nose. Are we to regard this as a vestige of a
formerly aquiline nose possessed by our ape-like progenitors,

or as an indication that we are
allied to the eagle and the
parrot, the beaks of these crea-
tures, and even the mandibles
of the cuttle-fish, often having
this peculiar curve ? I beg also
to remark that there are other
points on the ear besides the one
in question, which Mr. Woolner
does not show on his model, and
to which .Mr. Darwin does not
refer. In this engraving, Mr. Woolner's point is shown at
A, the o her points at B and c.

SECOND DAY'S SITTING. 51

Lord C. Natural Selection would thus seem to be rather
fond of developing points on the ear. But those additional
points to which you direct attention, are probably of some
use to us.

Homo. Your Lordship forgets that Mr. Darwin considers
the whole exten al shell of the ear to be a rudiment, and
therefore useless.

Darwin. My Lord, " the nictitating membrane, or third
eyelid, with its accessory muscles and other structures, is
especially well developed in birds, and is of much functional
importance to them, as it can be rapidly drawn across the
whole eyeball. It is found in some reptiles, and amphi-
bians, and in certain fishes, as in sharks. It is fairly well
developed in the two lower divisions of the mammalian
series, namely, in the Monotremata and Marsupials, and in
borne few of the higher mammals, as in the walrus. But
in man, the quadrumana, and most other mammals, it exists,
as is admitted by all anatomists, as a mere rudiment, called
the semilunar fold." (Vol. i. p. 23.)

Homo. As with man's ears, my Lord, so with his eyes.
Why should they not be modelled after the type of pre-
ceding forms ? Mr. Darwin ttlls us that this membrane
is of " much functional importance to birds, as it can be
rapidly drawn across the whole eyeball." But this is only
like telling us that the eye is of much functional importance
to them, as they can see with it ; or the wing, as they can
fly with it ; or the stomach, as they can digest their food
with it. Mr. Darwin should rather have told us how it
comes to pass on the principle of Natural Selection, that
while birds and sharks and kangaroos have this membrane,
men and monkeys should be destitute of it. Their having
the semilunar fold can easily be accounted for by the

&2 nemo v. DARWIN.

doctrine of typical forms ; but I do not see how Natnral
Selection can have robbed them of the third eyelid, sup-
posing they had ancient progenitors who possessed it.

Lord C. No doubt, Mr. Darwin, by the exercise of a little
ingenuity, could give some explanation of this point.

Homo. Imagination, my Lord, is a great power with Mr.
Darwin, but very probably he would say-1-" With respect
to the causes (of the loss of the third eyelid by the mam-
malia) we are in all cases very ignorant."

9

Darwin. " The sense of smell," my Lord, " is of the
highest importance to the greater number of mammals —
to some, as the ruminants, in warning them of danger ; to
others, as the carnivora, in finding their prey ; to others,
as the wild boar, for both purposes combined. But the
sense of smell is of extremely slight service, if any, even to
savages, in whom it is generally more highly developed
than in the civilized races. It does not warn them of
danger, nor guide them to their food ; nor does it prevent
the Esquimaux from sleeping in the most foetid atmosphere,
nor many savages from eating half-putrid meat. Those
who believe in the principle of gradual evolution will not
readily admit that this sense, in its present state, was
originally acquired by man, as he now exists. No doubt
he inherits the power in an enfeebled, and so far rudi-
mentary condition, from some early progenitor, to whom it
was highly serviceable, and by whom it was continually
used. We can thus, perhaps, understand how it is, as Dr.
Maudsley has truly jemaiked, that the sense of smell in
man * is singularly effective in recalling viviJly the ideas
and images of forgotten scenes and places ;' for we see in
those animals which have this sense highly developed, such
B8 dogs and horse?, that old recollections of persons and

SECOND DAY'S SITTIXO. 53

places are strongly associated with their odour." (Vol. i.
PP. *3, 24.)

Homo. How can Mr. Darwin say, my Lord, that our
sense of smell is of " extremely slight service " to us, or
that we have it in a " rudimentary condition " ? The
odours wafted from the flowers in his own garden might
have taught him otherwise. We shculd be in constant
danger of being blown up by gas, or poisoned by the
effluvium from sewers, were it not for our having this
sense. But I forgot that Mr. Darwin believes that our
forefathers were savages, and that there were neither
gardens, gas, nor sewers in their days.

Lord C. I am surprised, Mr. Darwin, at what you say
regarding the sense of smell. If it does not assist us, as
it does the carnivora, in finding our prey, it certainly warns
us of danger, and is often a source of enjoyment. But if it
were more fully developed than it is, it might often be a
cause of annoyance to us. One would not like, for example,
to be always smelling a rat, even when rats are near ; or to
be reminded, by certain odours, of places and persons we
would rather forget.

Homo. My Lord, Mr. Darwin may not find this sense of
much use to himself, but he will find few among his human
allies of his opinion regarding it. Will you observe, my
Lord, how constantly Mr. Darwin recurs to savage life in
illustrating his subject ? He seems to forget that he is a
member of civilized society, and has to do with civilized
men.

Lord C. You must remember, Homo, what you have just
said. "Mr. Darwin believes that our forefathers were
savages;" he argues therefore on this supposition.

Homo. I know he does, my Lord ; but, according to
him Natural Selection, which has done such wonders in

54 HUMO V. DARWIN.

developing man's intellect and perfecting his bodily struc-
ture, has made a great mistake with the sense of smell. It is
" of extremely slight service,'' he tells us, " even to savages."
Aa to ourselves, he seems to regard it as of use to us only
in helping memory. Natural Selection has thus dealt un-
wisely with us, according to Mr. Darwin, as regards the
sense of smell. Now, I think, my Lord, that this opinion
of his arises from his contemplating man too exclusively from
a savage point of view. Those who believe that man was
not originally a savage, and that he was created with
physical powers much the same as he pos.c esses now, can
find no fault with the development in him of the sense in
question.

Lord C. You mean that what Mr. Darwin says regarding
the sense of smell in man, seems to indicate that he thinks
himself wiser than Natural Selection.

Homo. Precisely so, my Lord. He evidently thinks that,
had he been counsellor, he could have taught Natural
Selection better. He would have advised tbat man should
not inherit this sense in so "enfeebled, and so far rudi-
mentary a condition " as that in which he possesses it.

Lord C. In this case, then, I think Mr. Darwin's counsel
would not have been good. But what is the next point
that comes before us ?

Darwin. " There can be little doubt," my Lord, " that
the hairs scattered over the body" of man " are the rudi-
ments of the uniform hairy coat of the lower animals."
(Vol. i. pp. 21, 25).

Homo. I think there is great doubt of this, my Lord ;
but perhaps Mr. Darwin will now tell us how it happens
that man has lost the hairy coat of his progenitors ?

Darwin. I shall willingly do so, my Lord. A "most
conspicuous di '» renei !M kin • n \\\-,\\\ !'>Tor nniinuls

SECOND DAY'S SITTING. 55

is the nakedness of his skin. Whales and dolphins (Cetacea),
dngongs (Sirenia), and the hippopotamus are naked, and
this may be of advantage to them in gliding through the
water ; nor would it ba injurious to them from the loss of
-warmth, as the species which inhabit the colder regions are
protected by a thick layer of blubber, serving the same
purpose as the far of seals and otters. Elephants and
rhinoceroses are almost hairless ; and as certain extinct
species which formerly lived under an arctic climate were
covered with long wool or hair, it would almost appear as
if the existing species <,f both genera had lost their hairy
covering from exposure to heat. This appears the more
probable, as the elephants in India which live in cool and
elevated districts are more hairy than those in the lowlands.
May we then infer that man became divested of hair from
having aboriginally inhabited some tropical land ? (Vol. i.
pp. 148, 149.)

Homo. That question is very modestly put, my Lord ;
but how about the hair of the he&d ?

Darwin. I was going to remark, my Lord, that " the
crown of the head'* in man "offers a curious exception, for
at all times it must have been one of the most exposed
parts, yet it is thickly clothed with hair. In this respect,
man agrees with the great majority of quadrupeds, which
generally have their upper and exposed surfaces more
thickly clothed than the lower surface. Nevertheless, my
Lord, the fa<-t that all the other members of the order
of Primates,* to which man belongs, although inhabit-
ing various hoc regions, are well clothed with hair, gene,
rally thickest on the upper surface, is strongly opposed

* The Primal o*. affording to Linnaeus include man, mon ey,
lemur, anil hat.

5C HOMO V. DARWIN.

to the Frppcsili<n that nan bcctnie naked through the
action of the sun." (Vol. i. p. 149.)

Lord C. That is a very candid admission, Mr. Darwin.

Homo. Doubtless it is, my Lord ; and also a very
wise admission, the thing being almost self-evident. But
will Mr. Darwin now tell us how man lost his hairy
covering ?

Darwin. " I am inclined to believe," my Lord, " as we
shall see under Sexual Selection, that man, or rather, pri-
marily woman, became divested of hair for ornamental
purposes ; and according to this belief, it is not surprising
that man should differ so greatly in hairiness from all his
lower brethren, for characters gained through Sexual
Selection often differ, in closely related forms, to an extra-
ordinary degree." (Vol. i. pp. 149, 150.)

ffomo. A most extraordinary supposition, my Lord !
Mun was originally a hairy animal himself, and hence other
hairy animals were his "brethren." Probably, in those
days, the whale, and the dolphin, and the hippopotamus,
had not become so hairless as they are now. It seems
somewhat singular, then, that female whales, female
elephants, female rhinoceroses, and female savages, should
all of them have become possessed of the desire to get rid
of their hairy coverings ; that they should have induced
the same desire in the other sex ; and that, in obedience
to this desire, the hair on the bodies of all should have
become "small by degrees, and beautifully less" !

Darwin. I did not say, my Lord, that whales were ever
covered with hair.

Homo. I beg Mr. Darwin's pardon, rny Lord, but I
supposed that, belonging as they do to the mammalia,
whales might, in former time?, have been hairy, like their
"bretluen" of that order; but I do not insist on this

SECOND DAY'S SITTING. 57

even though, as I believe, whales retain a few bristles about
the mouth.

Darwin. Neither did I say, my Lord, that the elephant
and hippopotamus "had become divested of hair for orna-
mental purposes." I said, "It would almost appear as if
they had lost their hairy covering from exposure to heat."

Homo. Very true, my Lord, he said so ; but he seems
not quite sure about its being true.

Lord C. Neither is he as to the way in which man ceased
to be hairy. He merely says he is " inclined to believe "
it happened in the way he states.

Homo. Then, my Lord, it is altogether supposition.
But, granting for the moment that we had such savage
maternal progenitors as Mr. Darwin catches an obscure
glimpse of, in the dim and far distant past, I question
whether they would have wished to lose their hairy
covering. Ladies clothe themselves with the furs of
animals now. The skin of fine-looking wild beasts is prized
by them for its beauty, and used for ornamental purposes.
There were neither silks, nor satins, nor coloured prints
in those primitive times. It seems to me, therefore, that,
if the matter had depended on the savage ladies of those
days, the human race would have been hairy still.

Lord C. Mr. Darwin would find it difficult to account
for the beauty of the vegetable world on the principles of
either Natural or Sexual Selection.

Homo. Or of both of them combined, my Lord.

Darwin. Nevertheless, my Lord, " the early progenitors
of man were no doubt once covered with hair, both sexes
having beards." (Vol. i. p. 20G.)

58

THIRD DAY'S SITTING.

Lord C. What is the next point ?

Darwin. "I am informed by Mr. Paget," my Lord,
" that persons belonging to the same family often have a
few hairs in their eyebrows much longer than the others,
BO that this slight peculiarity seems to be inherited. These
hairs apparently represent the vibrissae, which are used as
organs of touch by many of the lower animals." (Vol. i.
p. 25.)

Lord C. That seems a rather far-fetched inference, Mr.
Darwin. Some animals have long hairs about the mouth
and face — as, for example, rats and cats — which they u^e
as feelers, and which they eeitainly inherit. Some men
have occasionally long hairs projecting from the eyebrows,
which they do not use as feelers, and which they seem to
inherit. We should, therefore, you argue, regard animals
possessing these vibrissas, as co- descendants with us from
some ancient progenitor ! Your premises certainly do not
seem to conduct to your conclusion.

Homo. Perhaps, my Lord — as Mr. Darwin remarked re-
garding the power of erecting the ear — those persons who
have these long hairs projecting from their eyebrows, " by
often touching them, and directing attention towards them,
could by repeated trials recover some power in them," and
so be able to use them as feelers. This would be a good
fact for Mr. Darwin, if he could find it so. He would not

THIRD DAY'S SITTING. 59

then have to say, " these hairs apparently represent the
vibrissae." It is clear he is not quite certain on this
point.

Lord C. Why, then, does he put it forward as evidence ?

Homo. A drowning nian, my Lord, will catch at a straw,
or even at a hair, if he can find one to catch at.

Darwin. "In a young chimpanzee," my Lord, "I ob-
served that a few upright, rather long hairs projected above
the eyes, where the true eyebrows, if present, would have
scood." (Vol. i. p. 25.)

Homo. I do not see, my Lord, that this fact helps Mr.
Darwin in the least. Nor does the farther fact — on which,
however, he makes no comment — that man possesses eye-
brows at all. He has told us " rudimentary organs " are
" either abFolutely useless," or of very " slight service to
their present possessors." Now, our eyebrows, while con-
tributing much to the comeliness and beauty of the human
frame, are certainly of no use to us whatever. We could
get on very well without them. How came we then to
possess them ? On the principle of Natural Selection, we
ought to have been destitute of these hairy appendages to
the brow.

Lord C. Perhaps Sexual Selection will account for the
eyebrows.

Homo. That is very questionable, my Lord. Some savage
tribes eradicate their eyebrows, and, according to Mr. Darwin,
man was originally a savage.

Darwin. My Lord, " the fine wool-like hair, or so-called
lanugo, with which the human foetus, during the sixth
month, is thickly covered, offers a more curious case. It
is first developed during the fifth month on the eyebrows
and face, and especially round the mouth, where it is much

longer than that on the head The whole surface,

E 2

CO HOMO V. DARWIX.

including even the forehead and ears, is thus thickly clothed ;
but it is a significant fact that the palms of the hands and
the soles of the feet are quite naked, like the inferior
surfaces of all four extremities in most of the lower animals.
As this can hardly be an accidental coincidence, we must
consider the woolly covering of the foetus to be the rudi-
mental representation of the first permanent coat of hair
in those mammals which are born hairy." (Vol. i. pp. 25, 26.)

Homo. I suppose, my Lord, that the palms of our hands
and the soles of our feet — like the inferior surfaces of all
four extremities in most of the lower animals — being de-
signed for walking or working, were not intended to be
covered with hair, as, in fact, they never are. But how
the circumstance of our resembling the lower animals in
this respect, can prove the woolly covering of the human
embryo to be the rudimental representative of the first
permanent hairy coat of the hairy mammals, I cannot
comprehend.

Lord 0. But how do you account, Homo, for this fine
wool-like hair, which covers you before birth ?

Homo. My Lord, why may not man have hair upon his
body, both as an embryo and as an adult, without being
indebted for it to the lower animals ? As to accounting
for it, I shall be able to do so when Mr. Darwin can account
FMtisfactorily for the fine wool-like hair which covers the
tender shoots of many a giant tree when they first spring
up from the ground.

Darwin. My Lord, " it appears as if the posterior molar
or wisdom-teeth were tending to become rudimentary in
the more civilized races of man. These teeth are rather
smaller than the other molars, as is likewise the case with
the corresponding teeth in the chimpanzee and the or.:

THIRD DAY'S SITTING. 61

and they have only two separate fangs. They do not cut
through the gums till about the seventeenth year, and I
am assured by dentists that they are much more liable to
decay, and are earlier lost than the other teeth. It is also
remarkable that they are much more liable to vary, both in
structure and in the period of their development, than the
other teeth. In the Melanian races, on the other hand, the
•wisdom teeth aie usually furnished with three separate
fangs, and are generally sound ; they also differ from the
other molars in size less than in the Caucasian races.
Professor Schaaffhausen accounts for this difference between
the races, by * the posterior dental portion of the jaw being
always shortened ' in those that are civilized ; and this
shortening may, I presume, be safely attributed to civilized
men habitually feeding on soft, cooked food, and thus using
their jaws less. I am informed by Mr. Brace that it is
becoming quite a common practice, in the United States,
to remove some of the molar teeth of children, as the jaw
does not grow large enough for the perfect development of
the normal number." (Vol. i. pp. 26, 27.)

Homo. Admitting, my Lord, the correctness of Mr.
Darwin's statement regarding our wisdom-teeth, I do not
see that it at all helps his argument. Our tetih may
resemble those of the chimpanzee or the orang, as the
result of our having an animal nature like theirs, with-
out our being blood relations of these animals. As for
the teeth and jaws of civilized man becoming somewhat
- modified by their " habitually feeding on soft, cooked food,"
what has this to do, I should like to know, with our being
descended from apes ? No one doubts that man's physical
structure is, to use Mr. Darwin's own words, "eminently
variable," and that this variation arises, in part, from causes
connected with our peculiar civilization. Will Mr. Darwin

62 HOMO V. DARWIN.

undertake to prove that, if man exists as the result of a
separate act of creation, he either cannot possibly vary at
all, or must vary in quite different directions from those in
which he does vary ? As for the modification of the jaw
which Mr. Brace says is taking place in the United States
of America, it is no doubt the result of causes in the
peculiar physical conditions of the people of that country.
If they had to live on nuts, and crack them with their
teeth, the modification would unquestionably take another
direction. The fact is, my Lord, that Mr. Darwin is
reasoning here with his imagination, instead of his intellect,
for in no other way than by the aid of that soaring faculty
could he reach his conclusion from such premises.

Lord C. You cannot surely mean, Mr. Darwin, that the
circumstance of our teeth and jaws becoming somewhat
modified through our civilization proves us to be descended
from the same stock with the lower animals — for that is
the point you are now endeavouring to prove. Would
" the younger and rising naturalists " even be satisfied with
such evidence ?

Homo. I should think, my Lord, none of them could,
unless such as have not yet cut their wisdom-teeth.

Darwin. My Lord, " the early male progenitors of man
were . . . probably furnished with great canine teeth ; but
as they gradually acquired the habit of using stones, clubs,
or other weapons, for fighting with their enemies, they
would have used their jaws and teeth less and less. In
this case, the jaws, together with the teeth, would have
become reduced in size, as we may feel sure from innumer-
able analogous cases." (Vol. i. p. 144.)

Homo. No doubt, my Lord, if man has had such pro-
genitors as Mr. Darwin imagines, with great canine teeth
for fighting, their teeth and jaws would become reduced as

THIRD DAY'S SITTING. C3

they learned to fight after a more rational manner. But
Mr. Darwin here takes it for granted that, in older times,
brutes could manufacture "clubs" and "other weapons,"
which implies, of course, that they could also manufacture
tools. Think of wild beasts manufacturing tools, my
Lord ! We shall be< hearing next of manufactories set up
in the dens and cages of the Zoological Gardens !

Darwin. My Lord, " he who rejects with scorn the belief
that the shape of his own canines, and their occasional
great development in other men, are due to our early
progenitors having been provided with these formidable
weapons, will probably reveal, by sneering, the line of his
descent. For, though he no longer intends, nor has the
power, to use these teeth as weapons, he will unconsciously
retract his ' snarling muscles,' (thus named by Sir Charles
Bell), so as to expose them ready for action, like a dog
prepared to fight." (Vol. i. p. 127.)

Homo. Mr. Darwin is becoming very oracular, my Lord ;
but it would help his argument more if he could show any
rational ground on which it might be believed that the
canines of man, and the tusks of the wild boar, or of the
elephant — a single one of which, he tells us, " has been
known to weigh 180 pounds" — have been developed from
the same common prototype. No intelligent person sneers
when told that the earth turns on its axis, and travels with
almost inconceivable rapidity in its orbit round the sun ;
he feels that there are good grounds on which he may
believe this ; but Mr. Darwin requires us to believe, without
any evidence whatever, that the canine teeth of man, the
tubks of hogs and elephants, and, I may add, the horns of
stags and antelopes — all of them once lay concealed in the
head of a tadpole !

Darwin. "This tooth," my Lord, "the canine, no longer

64 HOMO V. DARWIN.

serves man as a special weapon for tearing his enemies or
prey ; it may, therefore, as far as its proper function is
concerned, be considered as rudimentary." (Vol. i. p. 126.)

Homo. Mr. Darwin has not proved, my Lord — nor can
he prove — that the proper function of this tooth in man is
for " tearing his enemies." No one, I should think, could
share this belief of Mr. Darwin but a semi-savage.

Darwin. " In every large collection of human -skulls,"
my Lord, " some may be found, as Hackel observes, with
the canine teeth projecting considerably beyond the others,
in the same manner, but in a less degree, as in the anthro-
pomorphous apes. In these cases, open spaces between the
teeth in the one jaw are left for the reception of the canines
belonging to the other jaw." (Vol. i. p. 126.)

Homo. That shows, my Lord, that nature works after
an ideal plan. There is a typical form which she ever keeps
in view.

Lord G. Mr. Darwin would, I presume, regard the cases
in question as instances of " reversion to some former and
ancient type of structure."

Homo. They are certainly, so far, cases of resemblance, my
Lord ; but when Mr. Darwin insists that the projecting
canines which some few men exhibit, show reversion to a
former type, he is taking for granted cur descent from some
brutal progenitor. Now if, at times, man were to approxi-
mate unmistakeably to the image and likeness of the brute ;
if he were to come into existence occasionally with " a tail
and pointed ears," or with the hoofs of some quadruped,
or with feet like an ape's, there would be some show of
reason for this assumption. But there is certainly none in
the circumstance that, now and then, a man develops a
tooth which bears a remote resemblance to that of some
lower animal. The fact is, my Lord, that we know far too

THIRD DAY'S SITTING. C">

Hi tie of the forces and materials with which Nature works,
or of the laws and manner of her working, to be able to
pronounce any decision in a case like this. Mr. Darwin is
probably as far wrong in his statements on this point as he
now acknowledges he was in what he wrote some years
ago about t!:e supernumerary inammaa of females and fingers
of men.

Lord C. Pray, what was that ?

Homo. Why, my Lord, in a former work he "attributed
the not very rare cases of supernumerary mammae in women
to reversion, from their being generally placed Byrametri-
cally on the breast." He now fiads, however, that they
" have been known to occur in other situations, even on the
back," by which fact, he says, " the force of my argument
is greatly weakened, or perhaps entirely destroyed." (See
note, Vol. i. p. 125.) It sometimes happens also that persons
are born with supernumerary fingers. If they are cut off,
others will grow in their stead. This also he attributed to
" reversion." Unable, however, to find that there was any
ancient form to which such reversion was possible, and
finding " the highest authority in Europe on such a point "
against him, he very candidly, though reluctantly, acknow-
ledges himself to have been in error also on this point.
" This extraordinary fact of their re-growth," he says,
" remains inexplicable, if the belief in reversion to some
extremely remote progenitor must be rejected." (See cote,
Vol. i. p. 126.) But why should he not suppose, my Lord,
that " some extremely remote progenitor " occasionally had
supernumerary digits ? No authority could forbid him the
consolation of such a belief.

Lord C. Very true ; but -it would not help his argument.
Let us hear, however, what Mr. Darwin has to say on other
points.

66 HOMO r. 1URWIN.

Darwin. " Considering," my Lord. " how few ancient
skulls have been examined in comparison with recent
skulls, it is an interesting fact that, in at least three cases,
the canines project largely, and in the Naulette skull they
are spoken of as enormous." (Vol. i. p. 126.)

Homo. I do not see, my Lord, that these cases help Mr.
Darwin in the least. He is now taking it for granted that
man was originally a savage. That I do not believe. I
regard savages as having originated, if not in all cases,
certainly in most, from some portion of our race having
drained away, by its own inherent tendencies, from a higher
and more genial life, to the low, wretched, death-like level
at which we find it. If Mr. Darwin, therefore, could pro-
duce three hundred such skulls, instead of three, the larger
development of their canines might be referred with far
greater probability to degradation than to reversion.

Darwin. " To believe," my Lord, " that man was abori-
ginally civilized, and then suffered utter degradation in so
many regions, is to take a pitiably low view of human
nature." (Vol. i. pp. 184, 185.)

Homo. It is, nevertheless, a correct view. We see, un-
happily, too much around us to prove its correctness. Are
there not many, in all our great cities, that exhibit a
tendency to sink into utter barbarism. Let them but be
transported to some uninhabited island, or to some
desert, and there left to themselves, and, in a very few
generations, every trace of what civilization they have
would disappear.

Darwin. " In the Quadrumana," my Lord, " and some
other orders of animals, especially in the Carnivora, there is
a passage near the lower end of the humerus called the
eupra-condyloid foramen, through which the great nerve of
the fore-limb passes, and often the great artery. Xow, in

THIRD DAY'S SITTING. G7

the humerns of man, as Dr. Struthers and others have
shown, there is generally a trace of this passage, and it is
sometimes fairly well developed, being formed by a de-
pending hook-like process of bone, completed by a band of
ligament. When present, the great nerve invariably passes
through it, and this clearly indicates that it is the homo-
logne and rudiment of the supra-condyloid foramen of the
lower animals. Professor Turner estimates, as he informs
me, that it occurs in about one per cent, of recent
skeletons ; but during ancient times it appears to have
been much more common. . . . The fact that ancient races,
in this and several other cases, more frequently present
structures which resemble those of the lower animals, than
do the modern races, is interesting. One chief cause seems
to be that ancient races stand somewhat nearer than
modern races in the long line of descent to their remote
animal-like progenitors." (Vol. i. pp. 28, 29.)

Homo. T/ie Quarterly Revieiv, for July, says, my Lord,
that Mr. Darwin "mistakes the supra-condyloid foramen
of the humerus for the inter-condyloid perforation. Did
the former condition frequently occur in man — as, through
this mistake, Mr. Darwin asserts — it would be remarkable
indeed, as it is only found in the lower monkeys, and not
in the higher." (P. 64.) I leave Mr. Darwin then, to
settle the account on this matter with The Quarterly.

Darwin. " The os coccyx in man," my Lord, " though
functionless as a tail, plainly represents this part in other
vertebrate animals. At an early embryonic period it is
free, and, as we have seen, projects beyond the lower
extremities. In certain rare and anomalous cases, it has
been known, according to Isidore Geoffrey Sfc.-Hilaire, and
other?, to form a small external rudiment of a tail. (Vol.
i. p. 29.)

68 HOMO V. DARWIN.

Homo. I should like, my Lord, to see the man with a
tail. It is singular enough, if such a creature ever existed,
that anatomies have not possessed themselves of his
skeleton. We may be sure that, if one existed now,
Barnum would have got hold of him long ago. Why, it
would make the fortune of a showman to be able to exhibit
a man with a tail. Crowds would flock to see him.
He would be regarded as a curiosity even among
savages.

Lord 0. I fear it will not be easy to produce such a
specimen of humanity. The friends of a Homo cautlalus
would be very likely to remove the appendage, unless,
indeed, they meant to make capital out of the thing. I
think, therefore, Mr. Darwin, you must produce either the
commodity itself alive, or tangible evidence of its existence,
ere we can accept the statement of the French gentleman
you refer to.

Homo. I believe, my Lord, Voltaire once said that a
Frenchman is a cross-breed between a tiger and a monkey.

Lord C. Meaning thereby, I presume, that the average
Frenchman is too often, in character, a compound of
frivolity and ferocity. But Mr. Darwin states that, "at an
early embryonic period, the os coccyx projects beyond the
lower extremities."

Homo. I presume, my Lord, that is because the parts
that eventually surround it are not, at the early period
referred to, sufficiently developed.

Darwin. "The os coccjx," my Lord, "is short, usually in-
cluding only four vertebrae ; and these are in a rudimental
condition, for they consist, with the exception of the basal
one, of the centrum alone. They are furnished with some
small muscles ; one of which, as I am informed by Pro-
fessor Turner, has been expressly dcscribrd by Theile as a

THIRD DAY'S SITTING. 69

rudimentary repetition of the extensor of the tail, which is
so largely developed in many mammals." (Vol. i. p. 2i).)

Homo. The muscles to which Mr. Darwin now refers, my
Lord, have long been well known to anatomists. If what
Theile says of one of them be true, the fact could not
have escaped the notice of " the older and honoured chiefs
in natural science." I place their judgment against that
of Theile. As to the os coccyx being short, having only
four vertebrae, and consisting, with the exception of the
basal one, of the centrum alone, this may be quite true, but
how does it prove us to be descended from apes ? Without
Mr. Darwin's lively imagination, it is impossible to reach
his conclusions.

Darwin. "The following fact," my Lord, "for which
I am also indebted to Professor Turner, shows how close*ly
the os coccyx corresponds with the true tail in the lower
animals. Luschka has recently discovered, at the extremity
of the coccygeal bones, a very peculiar convoluted body,
which is continuous with the middle sacral artery ; and this
discovery led Krauss and Meyer to examine the tail of a
monkey (Macacus), and of a cat, in both of which they
found, though not at the extremity, a similarly convoluted
body. (Vol. i. p. 30.)

Homo. This, my Lord, is surely very illogical reasoning.
At the extremity of the coccygeal bones a very peculiar
convoluted body is found. A similar convoluted body is
found in the tail of a monkey, and of a cat, though not at
the extremity. Therefore man is descended from the same
progenitors as the monkey and the cat ! This reasoning is
about as conclusive as the specimen we had a little while
ago. Some persons belonging to the same family have a
few long hairs in their eyebrows, which they don't use as
feelers. Cats and rats have long hairs on their upper lips

70 HOMO V. DA11WIX.

and faces, which they do use as feelers. Man, therefore, is
descended from the same primal stock as cats and rats ! In
spite, moreover, of all that Mr. Darwin has said, it is a fact
that the os coccyx in man is never a tail ; it has no joints;
nor has it muscles that can move it, as a tail must have.

Danvin. " According to a popular impression," my Lord,
" the absence of a tail is eminently distinctive of man ; but
as those apes that come nearest to man are destitute of this
organ, its disappearance does not especially concern us.
Nevertheless, it may be well to own that no explanation, as
far as I am aware, has ever been given of the loss of the
tail by certain apes and man." (Vol. i. p. 150.)

Lord C. That is a very candid admission.

Darwin. " Its loss, however, is not surprising," my Lord,
"for it sometimes differs remarkably in length in species of
the same genera. Thus, in some species of Macacus the tail
is longer than the whole body, consisting of twenty-four
vertebrae ; in others it consists of a scarcely visible stump,
containing only three or four vertebrae. . . . This great
diversity in the structure and length of the tail in animals
belonging to the same genera, and following nearly the
same habits of life, renders it probable that the tail is not
of much importance to them ; and if so, we might have
expected that it would sometimes have become more or less
rudimentary, in accordance with what we incessantly see
with other structures." (Vol. i. p. 150.)

Homo. Mr. Darwin, my Lord, is again reasoning on
hypotheses. The length of the tail, he tells us, differs in
enimals belonging, not to the same species, but to the same
genera, therefore it is "})robable" that the tail is not of
much importance to them ; " if s0," we might expect it to
become more or less rudimentary. This hypothetical
reasoning, my Lord, is very unsatisfactory.

THIRD DAY'S SITTING. 71

Lord C. True science, certainly, cannot be built upon
suppositions.

Homo. Moreover, my Lord, he is accusing the god he
believes to have built up the world around us — I mean
Natural Selection — of the folly either of having given a tail
where it was unnecessary, or of having withheld it where it
should have been present. In short, he finds that Natural
Selection, in giving a tail to one species of monkey, and
withholding it from another similar species, has not acted
consistently, nor in a way that suits his argument. I think
I could suggest to Mr. Darwin a way in which he might
account, consistently with his own principles, for the loss of
the tail by man. He must surely, when writing on this
point, have forgotten a fact regarding the larvas of Ascidians
— those representatives of our " most ancient progenitors."
He knows very well that these larvas cast off their tails
when they become sessile. Why may not man have done
the same when he emerged into humanity from the last of
his ape-like progenitors, and thus became, if not so sessile
as the Ascidian, at least more so than the ape ? The loss
of the tail by man might thus be attributed to "reversion
to a former and ancient type of structure."

Lord C. That would be an approach to Lord Monboddo's
idea, namely, " that man rubbed off his tail by sitting
on it."

Darwin. My Lord, " the occurrence of such rudiments "
in man, " is difficult to explain on the belief of the separate
creation of each species." (Vol. i. p. 30.)

Homo. I beg to say, my Lord, that those points of
similarity in bodily structure between man and the lower
animals, which Mr. Darwin calls "rudiments," are suffi-
ciently accounted for, if we regard the Creator as modelling
his creatures after the same ideal plan, and bear in mind

72 HOMO V. DARWIN.

that " man is subject to much variability," and that " no
two individuals of the same race are quite alike."

Darwin. "'On any other view," my Lord, " than their
descent from a common progenitor, together with their
subsequent adaptation to diversified conditions, the simi-
larity of pattern between the hand of a man or monkey,
the foot of a horse, the flipper of a seal, the wing of a bat,
&c., is utterly inexplicable. It is no scientific explanation
to assert that they Lave all been formed on the same ideal
plan." (Vol. i. pp. 31, 32.)

Homo. Allow me, my Lord, to reply to Mr. Darwin here,
in the language of his reviewer in The Times. When Mr.
Darwin says, " It is no scientific explanation to assert that
they have all been formed on the same ideal plan," " he is
simply begging the question. If Mr. Darwin starts with
the preliminary assumption that every fact in nature is
capable of scientific explanation — in other words, that no
causes have ever operated except natural causes, he will, of
course, reject any other causes. But this assumption is the
very thing to be proved. To argue from it is to assume
the whole doctrine of evolution. The assertion in question
is scientific or not, according as it is true or not. The only
scientific question is whether, as a matter of fact, species
have been developed, by force of circumstances, out of other
species, and man out of an ape. It is certainly unscientific
argument to assume that they must have been so developed.
Does the investigation of the various forms of Nature lead
us up to a number of distinct points of departure ? This
is the question at issue. Mr. Darwin, unless he believes
the world to be eternal, must admit a single point of de-
parture, and there is nothing more essentially unscientific
in the recognition of a dozen co-ordinate points of departure
than in the recognition of one."

THIRD DAY'S SITTING. 73

Lord C. Do you think, Mr. Darwin, that science alone
will account for the existence of man ? Has a Creator
never intervened ?

Darwin. I do not assert, my Lord, that a Creator has
never intervened.

Homo. In his work on "The Origin of Species," my Lord,
Mr. Darwin says, " There is a grandeur in this view of life,
with its several powers, having been originally breathed by
the Creator into a few forms or into one." I do not find,
in his present work, any such acknowledgment of the in-
tervention of a Creator. He says, " the idea of a universal
and beneficent Creator of the universe does not seem to
arise in the mind of man, until he has been elevated by
long-continued culture." (Vol. ii., p. 395.) But whether or
not he now regards this idea of a Creator as a correct one,
does not appear.

Lord C. It will be but just to Mr. Darwin to regard him
as retaining Ms formerly avowed belief in a Creator, until
he expressly repudiates it

Homo. I quite agree with your Lordship, and have certainly
n ->t the least desire to do injustice to Mr. Darwin. I cannot
understand, however, why, in his present work, which seems
as much as his former one to lead to the subject, he does
not afain indicate his belief in the intervention of the
Creator. I suppose he feels that the weak point of his
argument is ju.-t here. For, if he admits that the
Creator must have breathed life "into a few forms," why
may not man have been one of these forms ? I might,
besides, ask Mr. Darwin if it be a "scientific explana-
tion" to assert that the Creator has breathed life into
any form whatever? Mr. Darwin himself falls away
from "scientific explanation" when he brings in the
Creator.

74: HOMO V. DARWIN.

Lord C. I quite think so, though I am glad to find Mr.
Darwin's system recognizes the Creator.

Darwin. " With respect to development," my Lord, " we
can clearly understand, on the principle of variations super-
vening at a rather late embryonic period, and being in-
herited at a corresponding period, how it is that the embryos
of wonderfully different forms should still retain, more or
less perfectly, the structure of their common progenitor."
(Vol. i. p. 32.)

Lord C. You speak of " variations supervening at a rather
late embryonic period, and being inherited at a corresponding
period," but what proof have you that such variations ever
either supervened or were inherited ? Are you not here in-
troducing a new hypothesis to sustain your old one ?

Danvin. "No other explanation," my Lord, "has ever
been given of the marvellous fact that the embryos of man,
dog, seal, reptile, &c., can at first hardly be distinguished
from each other." (Vol. i. p. 32.)

Homo. My Lord, why should Mr. Darwin make anything
of this " marvellous fact," when it results from another yet
more marvellous fact, which he would have us accept, viz.,
that the germ from which man is developed " differs in no
respect from the germs of other animals." If the germs
" differ in no respect," this would lead us, d priori, to
expect that the embryos proceeding from those germs,
instead of being hardly distinguishable from each other,
would not be distinguished from each other at all. But
this is only another of the reckless statements put forth by
Mr. Darwin. Your Lordship has seen in the drawing he
has supplied to us, that the embryos of man and dog, at an
"early stage of development," present differences which
might be pointed out by a child. Besides this, the ten-

THIRD DAY'S SITTING. 75

dencics in each germ are towards the development of the
ultimate form, whatever that form may be. A dog-germ
will become a dog, a bat-germ a bat, a seal-germ a seal, a
reptile -germ a reptile, and a human-germ a man, in spite
of Mr. Darwin and the rising naturalists. They might as
well attempt to pluck the sun from the heavens as to
change this order of things.

Darwin. "In order," my Lord, "to understand the
existence of rudimentary organs, we have only to suppose
that a former progepitor possessed the parts in question in
a perfect state, and that, under changed habits of life, they
became greatly reduced, either from simple disuse, or
through the Natural Selection of those individuals which

O

were least encumbered with a superfluous part, aided by
the other means previously indicated." (Vol. i. p. 32.)

Lord C. That is just the difficulty, Mr. Darwin. If we
suppose a former progenitor of man, we suppose your
hypothesis to be true, and thus make it prove itself. "We
take for granted the poiut in dispute, in order to prove the
point in dispute. This is mere reasoning in a circle. We
cannot suppose a former progenitor until you prove this
former progenitor to have really existed.

Darwin. " Thus we can understand," my Lord, "how it
has come to pass that man, and all other vertebrate
animals, have been constructed on the same general model,
why they pass through the same early stages of develop-
ment, and why they retain certain rudiments in common.
Consequently, we ought fran1: ly to admit their community
of descent : to take any other view is to admit that our
own structure, and that of all the animals around us, is a
mere snare laid to entrap our judgment." (Vol. i. p. 32.)

Homo. I have read, my Lord, in an old book, about the
" wise being taken in their own craftiness." If there be a

F 2

76 HOilO V. DARWIX.

snare in connection wi:h this matter, it has been laid by Mr
Darwin's own hand. He has allowed himself to become so
enamoured of the venerable pair of hairy quadrupeds, with
tails and pointed ears, from whom he thinks himself de-
scended, that he skips over mountains more impassable
than the Himalayas, and flies on the wings of imagination
across separating and unfathomable abysses, that he may
embrace them.

Lord C. Mr. Darwin is more probably carried away by
fondness for his hypothesis. He would like to find that all
animated existence has been developed from some prirm.l
form, and that there is thus a grand unity in nature. Now,
there is doubtless unity in natuie, but it is worthy of con-
sideration whether it does not lie deeper than Mr. Darwin
seeks it ;— not in all kinds of creatures having been de-
veloped from one primal form, but in all of them having
derived existence from one common source, that is, from
God Himself. An over-anxious desire to find unity else-
where than in the Creator, may become a source of error.
One may thus be led to imagine there is unity where there
is none, and to seek it \\here it cannot be found. I shall
be glad to hear, at our next sitting, what Mr. Darwin lias
to say as to the way in which man, or rather the progenitors
of man, became erect. How did the ape-like creature ac-
quire a human-like posture ?

77

FOURTH DAY'S SITTING.

Darwin. " As soon," my Lord, " as some ancient member
in the great scries of the Primates came, owing to a change
in its manner of procuring subsistence, or in the conditions
of its native country, to live somewhat less on trees and
more on the ground, its manner of progression would have
been modified ; and, in this case, it would have had to
become either more strictly quad, upedal or bipedal." (Vol.
i. pp. 140, 141.)

Homo. My Lord, according to Mr. Darwin's hypothesis,
after four-footed beasts had been developed from the primi-
tive worm, a portion of them were changed by Natural
Selection into four-handed animals, able to climb and live
on trees. One would think that the monkeys must have
been vain of their elevation. But Mr. Darwin now supposes
them brought down from it, and changed into four-footed
beasts again !

Lord C. Or into men ; rather, perhaps, into man's pro-
genitors. His words were, " quadrupedal or bipedal."

Homo. True, my Lord, and, at present, men only are
bipedal. Still, the changing of two of the creature's paws
from hand-feet into feet pure and simple, must have been
a loss to which it would very reluctantly submit. One
•would think that, while the change was going on, it must
have looked with regretful eyes to the trees and their
tempting fruit, as it found itself becoming unable to cliinb
them.

78 HOMO V. DARWIN .

Lord 0. You forget, Homo, that Mr. Darwin spoke of
" a series of forms graduating insmsilly from some ape-like
creature to man as he now exists."

Homo. My Lord, I cannot understand this "graduating
insensibly " from ape to man. Let us look at it in con-
nection with the point now before us. Here is an " ape-like
creature with tail and pointed ears," and " arboreal in its
habits," for it lives on trees. The four paws which its pro-
genitors had as quadrupeds, for carrying them along the
ground, have become changed in to a kind of hands with which
it can clutch trunks and branches, and make its way from
tree to tree with beautiful agility. Its tail also has probably,
as in the case of many kinds of monkeys, became modified
for twisting and grasping. Sometimes it may use its tail
for balancing itself; sometimes, with easy grace, it may
coil it round a branch to aid its security or assist its pro-
gress ; possibly even, the extremity of its tail, like that of
the spider-monkey, may have acquired a sensitiveness
similar to that of the human finger, so that it may be thrust
into holes in its forest haunts, in search of the eggs of birds
to give an additional relish to its fruity meal. Such a
creature must have been happy enough in its way. It was
suited for its habitat, and its habitat was suited for it. The
one answered perfectly, admirably, to the other. Can it be
believed, then, that Natural Selection would have induced
a change in this creature, which should have gone on
sensibly, or " insensibly," through successive generations of
its descendants, till they had become unfitted for their
forest life, and had forsaken the trees for the ground, and
their juicy fruits for such scanty roots as they might be
able to grub up from the soil ?

Lord C. You must remember, Homo, that Mr. Darwin
supposes its living "less on trees and more on the ground,"

79

to have arisen from " a change in its manner of procuring
subsistence, or in the conditions of its native country."

Homo. Mr. Darwin has a remarkable capacity for making
suppositions, my Lord, but his present supposition is
neither ingenuous nor ingenious. It is not ingenuous, for
it is manifestly made for the purpose of helping him out of
a difficulty, the existence of which he had better have
frankly acknowledged. And it is not ingenious. I could
myself have easily helped him to a better. Your Lordship
will at once perceive that a change in the mode of this
creature's procuring subsistence must have arisen from a
change in the conditions of its native country. Now
Africa, according to Mr. Darwin, was the native country
of man's progenitors. But we know that no change of the
kind supposed has taken place in Africa, for the forests of
that country abound in monkeys to the present day.

Lord C. But may there not have been an era during
which Africa ceased to grow forests ?

Homo. There cannot have been such an era, my Lord,
else, on Mr. Darwin's principles, all its monkey tribes must
either have perished, or been changed either into quadru-
peds or into men.

Darwin. My Lord, "Baboons frequent hilly and rocky
districts, and only from necessity climb up high trees ; and
they have acquired almost the gait of a dog." (Vol. i. p.
141.)

Homo. It is not with tailless baboons that we are at
present concerned, my Lord, but with a tailed ape, "arboreal
in its habits." Will Mr. Darwin kindly keep to the point ?
As to baboons having " acquired almost the gait of a dog,"
can he prove that they ever had any other gait ?

Darwin. " Man," my Lord, " could not have attained his
present dominant posi ion in the world without the use of

80 HOMO V. DARWIX.

his hands, which are so admirably adapted to act in obedi-
ence to his will. . . . But the hands and arms could hardly
have become perfect enough to have manufactured weapons,
or to have hurled stones and spears with a true aim, so
long as they were habitually used for locomotion and for
supporting the whole weight of the body, or as long as they
were especially well adapted .... for climbing trees."
(Vol. i. p. 141.)

Homo. Mr. Darwin, my Lord, cannot rise above the
idea of man having been originally a savage, perpetually
manufacturing weapons, and hurling stones and spears
against his enemies. If this was the condition of his pro-
genitors, and they had enemies against whom they required
defence, one would suppose that Natural Selection would
have led them to seek it in the trees on which they had been
wont to make their habitation, and that so they would not
have lost their power of climbing. Mr. Darwin's hypothesis
is thus inconsistent and self-contradictory. Listen to it,
my Lord. Man's progenitors were apes, and lived on trees.
They found sustenance in their fruits, and security on their
lofty branches, moving easily from one to another as they
were inclined. In process of time, however, they gradually
lost their power of climbing, and had to " live less on trees
and more on the ground." They thus became exposed to
the attacks of beasts of prey, yet, strange to s*y, the suc-
cessive generations of them were preserved through many
long eras of our earth's history, as they "gradually and
insensibly " advanced in form towards man. Natural Selec-
tion thus put the heads of these poor beasts into the lion's
mouth, and yet was able, somehow, to prevent the lion from
biting them oil' !

Lord C. There might have been no lions in those
im;i:nii;iry times.

FOURTH DAY'S SITTING. 81

Homo. Possibly, my Lord, but then there would have
been other kinds of brutes, quite as terrible to a poor
rheumatic ape, whose hind-hands were stiffening into
human feet, and which was, therefore, unable to run up a
tree for security.

Darwin. "No country in the world," my Lord, "abounds
in a greater degree with dangerous beasts than Southern
Africa. ... but it is quite conceivable that they (the early
progenitors of man) mighfc have existed, or even flourished,
if, whilst they gradually lost their brute-like powers, such
as climbing trees, &c., they at the same time advanced in
intellect." (Vol. i. p. 157.)

Homo. I should say, my Lord, that it is quite ^con-
ceivable that the ape-like progenitors of man should have
" lost their brute-like powers," especially that of climbing
trees, in so dangerous a country as Southern Africa. Natural
Selection would have proved a harder nurse to them than
she has done even to the gorilla, had she so treated them.
Then, why should she not — their circumstances being the
same — have treateJ all the monkey tribes alike ?

Darwin. " Granting," my Lord, " that the progenitors
of man were far more helpless and defenceless than any
existing savages, if they had inhabited some warm con-
tinent or large island, such as Australia or New Guinea, or
Borneo . . . they would not have been exposed to any
special danger." (Vol. i. p. 157.)

Homo. How can Mr. Darwin make such a supposition,
my Lord, when he says elsewhere, " the fact that they
(man's progenitors) belonged to this (the Catarhine) stock,
clearly shows that they inhabited the Old World ; but not
Australia, nor any oceanic island, as we may infer from the
laws of geographical distribution" ? (Vol. i. p. 199.) This
fcee-saw mode of reasoning might have suited

82 HOMO r. DARWIN.

progenitors when they were losing their brute-like powers
and advancing in intellect, but it cannot be allowed now that
the human and scientific era has unquestionably arrived.
I have already, my Lord, mentioned one way in which, on
Mr. Darwin's principles, the loss of the tail by man's pro-
genitors might be accounted for. Allow me now to mention
another. As they became unable to climb and live on
treep, this appendage would become increasingly incon-
venient to them. Sometimes they might be caught by it in
the very act of escaping. Being thus a useless and even a
dangerous article, it would gradually get into a rudimentary
condition, and might eventually drop away. Or, it might
have been got rid of "through the Natural Selection of
those individuals who were least encumbered with a super-
fluous part."

Darwin. " From these causes alone," my Lord, which
I have just mentioned, "it would have been an advantage
to man to become a biped."

Lord C. Do you think, Mr. Darwin, that man was ever
anything else than a biped ? You would surely not
maintain that our suppo ed ape-like progenitors were men ?

Homo. Mr. Dai win, my Lord, often gets a little into the
fog on this point. At page 235 he says, "Whether primeval
man, when he possessed very few arts of the rudest kind,
and when his power of language was extremely imperfect,
would have deserved to be called man, must depend on the
definition which we employ." lie was doubtful, when
writing this passage, whether man should be called " man,"
even when he had become somewhat endowed with speech ;
now, he unhesitatingly calls our progenitors "man" before
they had become bipeds, and were as yet progressing on all-
fours !

Darwin. I was going to add, when jour Lordship inter-

FOURTH DAY'S SITTING. 83

rupted me, that " for many actions it is almost necessary
that both arms and the whole upper part of the body "of
man " should be free ; and he must, for this end, stand
firmly on his feet. To gain this great advantage the feet
have been rendered flat, and the great toe peculiarly modified,
though this has entailed the loss of the power of prehension.
... If it be an advantage to man to have his hands and
arms free, and to stand firmly on his feet — of which there
can be no doubt from his pre-eminent success in the battle
of life — then I can see no reason why it should not have
been advantageous to the progenitors of man to become
more and more erect or bipedal." (Vol. i. pp. 141, 142.)

Lord C. In reasoning as you do, Mr. Darwin, you are
begging the question in dispute. TTe expect you to prove
that man has had progenitors ; instead of doing so, you take
it for granted ! I must say, moreover, that your account
of the way in which you suppose the ape to have been
changed into man is far from satisfactory. It is, no doubt,
" an advantage to man " to be erect and bipedal ; but, that
it should have been an advantage to an ape-like creature,
accustomed to live on trees and find its sustenance on their
produce, to lose its power of climbing them in order to
attain the erect posture of man — this is, to my mind, more
than doubtful. As we have already seen, and you your-
self admit, it would thus have become exposed to the
attacks of enemies which it would have been impossible for
it to resist, and quite as impossible for it to escape. I think,
therefore, you quite fail to show the possibility of such a
transmutation of species as you suppose.

Darwin. My Lord, "if the gorilla and a few allied forms
had become extinct, it might have been argued, with great
force and apparent truth, that an animal could not have
been gradually converted from a quadruped into a Liped ;

84 HOMO V. DARWIN.

as all the animals in an intermediate condition would have
been miserably ill-fitted for progression. But we know,
and this is well worthy of reflection, that several kinds of
apes are now actually in this intermediate condition ; and
no one doubts that they are, on the whole, well adapted for
their conditions of life. Thus, the gorilla runs with a side-
long, shambling g it, but more commonly progresses by
resting on its bent arms. (Vol. i. pp. 142, 143).

Homo. Here, my Lord, is an engraving of a gorilla.
Though it does not show the brute as it " progresses," it
gives a very fair idea of its general appearance. Your
Lordship is aware that the gorilla belongs to the stem of
the Old World monkeys from which, Mr. Darwin tells us,
" man proceeded," and is now one of our " nearest allies."

Lord C. Perhaps it may be my moderate acquaintance
with the science pf Natural History, but I am unuble to
recognize the relationship. Will Mr. Darwin proceed ?

Darwin. " The long-armed apes," my Lord, occasionally
use their arms like crutches, swinging their bodies forward
between them ; and some kinds of Hylobates, without having
been taught, can run or walk upright with tolerable quick-
ness, yet they move awkwardly and much less securely than
man. We see, in short, with existing monkeys, various
gradations between a form of progression strictly like that
of a quadruped, and that of a biped or man." (Vol. i.
p. 143.)

Lord C* But is not that just what we might expect, Mr.
Darwin ? As monkeys are, in outward form, intermediate
between quadrupeds and man, and are, moreover, as you
tell us, "on the whole, well adapted for their conditions
of life," you surely do not mean to maintain that they were
ever better adapted, or less adapted, for their conditions
of life, and are actually, now, undergoing a process of

Gur'dla, note one of our "nearest alliet **/

86 HOMO V. DARWIN.

transformation. Yet your language sounds ambiguously.
If, however, you mean to assert, for example, that the
gorilla ever ran or progressed in a way different from
that in which it "runs" or "progresses" now, I must call
on you to prove your assertion.

Homo. A vain call that would be, my Lord. Mr. Darwin
would only furnish your Lordship with another curious
specimen of reasoning. AVhen Mr. Darwin is reasoning —
will your Lordship pardon the remark ? — he reminds me
of those apes he has been speaking of, which use their long
arms like crutches, swinging their bodies forward between
them. The premises that Mr. Darwin reasons from are
certainly not facts, but merely monkey-like crutches. He
plants them, however, as firmly as he can on some imagin-
ary basis, and then swings himself forward between
them, through all the acknowledged laws of human science
and logic, to the position he wishes to occupy. Mr.
Darwin's intellectual movements, my Lord, in conducting
the reasoning process, are far more ungainly than those
bodily movements of the gorilla which he has just described.
Natural Selection, my Lord, may have endowed Mr. Darwin
with considerable power of imagination, and with a capacious
memory for the facts of Natural History, but she has certainly
denied him the gift of being able to reason justly, and that
yet higher gift — the true spirit of philosophy — which, as
your Lordship remarked, is just a " sincere love of
truth."

Lord C. Have you anything to say, Mr. Darwin, re-
garding the size of the brain in mau compared \\ii\\ its
size in the lower animals ?

Darwin. My Lord, "Dr. J. Barnard Davis lists proved by
many careful measurements, th;it the mean internal cnpnciiy
of the skull in Europeans is 'J_'-;J cubic inches ; in Americans,

FOURTH DAY'S SITTING. 87

87 5 ; in Asiatics, 87-1 ; and in Australians only 8 1 '9
inches." (Vol. i. p. 146.)

Lord G. That is not the point about which I enquire.
I ask, What is the size of the brain in man compared with
its size in the lower animals — in the ape, for example ?

Homo. Mr. Darwin, my Lord, gives no answer to that
question. He merely mentions some trifling facts about
the size of the brains and skulls of domestic rabbits, and
tells us how disease may modify the shape of the skull in
man. But Mr. Wallace mentions, at page 338 of " Con-
tributions to the theory of Natural Selection," that the
proportions are " represented by the following figures —
anthropoid apes, 10 ; savages, 26 ; civilized man, 32."
Mr. Wallace remarks (page 342) that man is able to " form
and use weapons and implements which are beyond the
physical power of brutes ; but having done this, he cer-
tainly does not exhibit more mind in using than do many
lower animals. What is there in the life of the savage (he
asks), but the satisfying of the cravings of appetite in the
simplest and easiest way ? What thoughts, ideas, or
actions are there, that raise him many grades above the
elephant or the ape ? Yet he possesses, as we have seen,
a brain vastly superior to theirn in size and complexity ;
and this brain gives him, in an undeveloped state, faculties
which he never requires to use."

Lord C. These are most important considerations.

Homo. My Lord, a writer in The Edinburgh Revieiv for
July, 1871, page 204, remarks on this : " It is clear, therefore,
that the brain of savage man is far beyond his needs. How
can this be accounted for by the principle of Natural Selec-
tion, or by the accumulation of small variations good for
the individual ? The large size " of the brain of the savage
" cannot be traced to circumstances of life, because it is quite

83 HOMO V. DARWIN.

disproportionate to the actual requirement ; and even if
once originated, it ought, according to Mr. Darwin's theory,
to have been lost by disuse. For if Natural Selection
tends in some instances to raise a race of beings, it might
tend in others to lower it. To a savage, the organs and
instincts of an animal might be more useful than the latent
brain power of a sage."

Lord C. And yet the savage often has the latent brain power
of the sage! Mr. Darwin should tell us how the savage has
acquired this power, seeing that he could not have inherited
it either from his savage or from his ape-like progenitors.

Homo. It would have been more to the purpose, my
Lord, for Mr. Darwin to have tried to reconcile these facts
with his hypothesis, than for him to have entertained us
with the fancy pictures he has just been exhibiting.

Lord C. I fear he would the a have been attempting an
impossibility.

Horro. It has been remarked, my Lord, that the title of
Mr. Darwin's book is a misnomer, and that it should have
been, not "The Descent of Man," but "The Ascent of
Man." I think it should rather have been, " The Evolu-
tion of Man from a Tadpole taken for granted, and the
steps by which * we may confidently believe ' it came about."

89

FIFTH DAY'S SITTING.

Lord C. Will Mr. Darwin now inform us what further
evidence he has to offer in support of his hypothesis ?

Darwin. Your Lordship has already heard the whole of
the evidence I have to adduoe in support of the views
which I maintain regarding the origin of man. That
evidence is exhausted in the first two-and-twenty pages
of my book ! The first chapter is entitled, " The evidence
of the descent of man from some lower Jorm" In the second
and third chapters I compare the mental powers of man and
the lower animals. The fourth chapter is On the manner of
development of man from some lower form. The fifh
chapter, On the, development of the intellectual and moral
families, during primeval and civilized times. The sixth,
On the affinities and genealogy of man. Chapter seventh is
On the races of man. I then proceed, in the second part
of my work, to the subject of Sexual Selection; which
occupies the remainder of the first volume and nearly the
whole of the second. In this part I speak mostly of
changes which I suppose sexual preference to have intro-
duced into the animal kingdom.

Lord C. It will not be necessary for us to hear you on
that portion of your work, inasmuch as we have to do only
with your assertions as to man's descent from some lower
form.

Homo. May I, however,* call your Lordship's attention
to the fact that, while Mr. Darwin tries to account for the

a

90 HOMO V. DARWIX.

many forms of beauty that meet the eye among living
creatures around us, by what he calls Sexual Selection, he
leaves unaccounted for the fact that we find quite as many
and as wonderful forms of beauty in the floral world, where
Sexual Selection can have no play. For I suppose that
flowers, in producing their kind, exercise no preference as
to their partners.

Lard C. From which I suppose you infer that, while
Sexual Selection may have something to do in modifying
the creatures among whom it comes into play, Mr. Darfrin
makes too much of it, and attributes to it a power which it
does not possess.

Homo. That is precisely what I think, my Lord. I do
not believe that Sexual Selection, even with the aid of
Natural Selection, could have raised, from the tadpole
offspring of a worm, the forms of beauty which meet the
eye everywhere in the world of living things around us —
among insects, fishes, birds, reptiles, and mammals.

Lord C. I suppose the next point that claims attention
is the mental and moral powers possessed by man, and the
seemingly impassable gulf fixed, by his possessing those
powers, between him and the lower animals. How does
Mr. Darwin treat this part of his subject ?

Homo. Most unsatisfactorily, my Lord. We might expect
that, in attempting, as he does, to prove that the mental
powers of man and animals are the same in kind, and differ
only in respect of development, he would b?gin by giving
us a minute and careful analysis of those powers. He does
not seek even so far to enlighten us. Without having
kindled any torch to jjuide either himself or his readers, he
heedlessly plunges into what men of the highest intellect
nave always felt to be a grout jfnd mysterious dec]), to be
explored, then-fore, with awe and reverence. He manages,

FIFTH DAY'S SITTING. 01

however, after a most uncomfortable fashion, to flounder his
"way through it, but not without giving one the impression
that he is more at home in studying the instincts and
habits of the beasts of the earth than in discussing the
wondrous nature and noble faculties of man.

Lord C. Does he not define and explain what he means
by instinct and reason, and endeavour to point out the
separating line between them ?

Homo. He does nothing of the sort, my Lord. In his
work on "The Origin of Species," however, referring to
instinct, he says, "An action which we ourselves should
require experience to enable us to perform, when performed
by an animal, more especially by a very young one, and
when performed by many individuals in the same way,
without their knowing for what purpose it is performed, is
usually said to be instinctive." To this he adds, " I could
show that none of these characters of instinct are universal.
A little dose, as Pierre Huber expresses it, of judgment or
reason often comes into play, even in animals low in the
scale of nature." (Pp. 256, 257.)

Lord C. Here we feel our need of definition. "What
does Mr. Darwin mean by " reason " ? Does he mean such
reason, or reasoning power, as man possesses ? Many
contend that the lower animals — dogs, for instance — possess
an inferior kind of reason, which helps, in some cases, to
guide them. When, for example, they have to decide
to which of two contending instincts they shall yield,
some would say that it is by an inferior kind of reason
that they decide ; others, that it is the more powerful
instinct that sways them. When, again, they imitate the
actions of man, apparently to accomplish a certain end, e. g.,
the opening of a door— a dog will use his paws for this
purpose — it will be said by some that they act from an

G 2

92 HOMO v. DAHWI.V.

inferior k''nd of reason. Now, even granting that in such
cases a dog acts from a principle higher than instinct,
which principle may be called reason, such reason is cer-
tainly very different from the reason that influences a man
when he compares ideas, weighs motives, prepares for the
future, determines on some course of action, or engages ia
the study of Philosophy or of Natural History. We cannot
conceive such faculties as a dog possesses, however highly
developed, turned to such subjects as those on which man
employs his faculties habitually. Bat I will now hear what
Mr. Darwin has to advance as evidence that the mental
and moral powers of man may have arisen by development
from the faculties of the lower animals.

Darwin. " No doubt," my Lord, " the difference in this
respect," respect of mental power, "jsjmonnoiis, even if we
compare the mind of one of the lowest savages, who has no
words to express any number higher than four, and who uses
no abstract terms for the commonest objects or affections,
with that of the most highly organised ape. The difference
would, no doubt, still remain immense, even if one of the
higher apes had been improved or civilized as much as a
dog has been, in comparison with its parent form, the wolf
or jackal. The Fuegiansrank among the lowest barbarians;
but I was continually struck with surprise how closely the
three natives on board II. M.S. " Ik-agio," who had lived
some years in England and could talk a little English,
resembled us in disposition, and in most of our mental
faculties." (Vol. i. p. 34.)

Homo. He supposes, my Lord, that it would be possible
for us to improve and civilize MI :ipc as we can a dog.
Now, it is clear that the dog m;iy he improved, and, in a
certain sense, civilized, but wo have no evidence that the
ape can. Had the civilizing of this cn-iitun- been possible,

FIFTH DAY'S SITTING. 93

it would, doubtless, long ago have been adopted as a pet
by the ladies. An ape might spend its lifetime in our
country without acquiring one word of English, and it will
be long before Mr. Darwin will be able to train one to
resemble us either in disposition or mental faculty.

Lord C. So far, then, Mr. Darwin has been but indicating
a boundary line which no one of the inferior animals ever
has crossed, while a savage can cross it easily. The differ-
ence here, even between a savage and any animal, may, not
improperly, be said to be infinite. What Mr. Darwin says
of the Fuegians, who " rank among the lowest barbarians,"
is most important, viz., that, " after they had lived some
years in England, and had acquired a little of our language,
he was continually struck with surprise at how closely they
resembled us in disposition and in most of our mental
faculties."

Homo. That clearly shows, my Lord, that the mental
faculties of man are not inherited, as, on Mr. Darwin's
hypothesis, they should be. From whom could the
Fuegians have inherited their mental powers ? According
to Mr. Darwin, if we go back from any savage race in
the line of its progenitors, we shall find it savage still.
Yet it is a fact that, though they may not exercise them,
savage races poss3ss all the mental powers of civilized races.
But they cannot have become possessed of them through
Natural Selection and the laws of inheritance, for, on Mr.
Darwin's supposition, their progenitors never exercised those
powers. Here, as it seems to me, Mr. Darwin contradicts
and disproves his own hypothesis.

Lord C. Clearly so. According to Mr. Darwin's hypo-
thesis the faculties man now possesses should have been
gradually acquired by mau's progenitors through Natural
{Selection, and transmitted by inheritance to his posterity.

04 HOMO V. DARWIN.

According to facts observed and recorded by Mr. Darwin,
those faculties are possessed by savages who " rank among
the lowest barbarians," and who could therefore have had
no progenitors who exercised those faculties, or were
capable of transmitting them !

Homo. Thus, my Lord, as with the brain of savage man,
so also with his mental powers. Mr. Darwin is utterly
unable, on his hypothesis, to account for the savage pos-
sessing them. If we suppose, with Mr. Darwin, that the
savage is descended from savage progenitors, the fact of
his possessing a brain — and mental powers which he could
not possibly have inherited from those progenitors, seeing
they never possessed them — this fact would show that the
savage was made for a far higher condition of life than
that which he occupies. Though he himself is not aware
of it, and though his progenitors could not possibly have
imagined such a thing, the savage possesses an intellect
capable of ranging through the universe, and penetrating
into the deepest secrets of nature. Now, Divine purpose
could have given him such an intellect, but, certainly,
Natural Selection could not.

Lord C. From which, I suppose, you would infer, either
that the savage is descended from an ancestry superior to
himself, and has sunk from a higher position into a lower
one ; or that he was created that he might occupy a far
higher level of life than that on which we find him.

Homo. Precisely so, my Lord, but either supposition is
opposed to Mr. Darwin's hypothesis.

Lord C. What is the m xt point ?

Darwin. "If no organic being, excepting man," my Lord,
"had possessed any mental power, or if his powers had been
of a wholly different nature from those of the lower animals,
then we should never li;i\c lx en able to convince ourselves

FIFTH DAY'S SITTING. 95

that our high faculties had been gradually developed. But
it can be clearly shown that there is no fundamental
difference of this kind. We must also admit that there is
a much wider interval, in mental power, between one of the
lowest fishes, as a lamprey or lancelet, and one of the
higher apes, than between an ape and a man ; yet this
immense interval is filled up by numberless gradations."
(Vol. i. pp. 34, 35.)

Homo. The lamprey, or stone-sucker, my Lord, is a kind
of eel which attaches itself by the mouth to stones or rocks,
to prevent the tide or current from carrying it away. This
I hold to be a very sensible operation on its part, and one
that man himself, in a similar difficulty, might perform
with advantage. The lancelet is a similar kind of fish,
smaller in size. These creatures have just the amount of
instinct, or u mental power" — if Mr. Darwin prefers calling
it so — which they require. Perhaps, if Mr. Darwin were to
take pome pains with a lamprey, he might, to some extent,
succeed in improving, or even in civilizing it — which is
more than he can do with an ape ; but he would be unable
to teach either the one or other to talk English, or count
four, or understand an abstract term; nor could he bring
them to resemble us in disposition and mental faculty. This
of itself is sufficient to prove that the interval, in mental
power, between either of them and man, is practically
infinite. It is the merest folly, then, to compare them with
man. Bat this is only another of the follies to which Mr.
Darwin is driven by the stress of his argument.

Lord C. Mr. Darwin says that " there is no fundamental
difference," in mental faculty, between man and the lower
animals. Does he explain what he means by a "funda-
mental difference ?" — what, in his view, would constitute
such a difference ?

96 HOMO V. DARWIN.

Hwmo. My Lord, Mr. Darwin says that his object, in
the second chapter of his work, " is solely to show that
there is no fundamental difference between man and the
higher mammals in their mental faculties," but he nowhere
tells us what he would regard as such a difference. He
maintains, however, that man's faculties do not differ in
kind from those of the lower animals, und that man's
superiority arises entirely from his being more perfectly
developed.

Lord C. Development, then, alone, is to account for man's
superiority.

Homo. Just so, my Lord. The lofty faculties of man
were once in embryo in a thing like a tadpole ! The mind
of Newton once lay hid in a creature which "hardly
appeared like an animal " — which consisted merely of " a
simple, tough, leathery sac, with two small projecting
orifices," and which stuck to a rock or bit of seaweed that
it might not be carried away by the tide. Then, my Lord,
HS to the development which Mr. Darwin thinks would turn
the faculties of a brute .into human reason, we have no
evidence that it is a possible thing.

Lord C. Mr. Darwin has certainly adduced none. It
will not be necessary for us to consider the instincts which
are common to man with the lower animals. You admit, 1
suppose, Homo, that there are many points in which those
instincts resemble one another ?

Homo. Unquestionably, my Lord. Man has an animal
nature, like the inferior creatures around him, and must
consequently, in many respects, resemble them. The
question is, whether man has not also a higher nature
which they do not partake of, and cannot comprehend, and
with which they can have no sympathy. We may therefore
pass by what Mr. Darwin says on "instincts which are

FIFTH DAY'S SITTING. 97

common to man with the lower animals." I might object
to statements he makes regarding " the emotions, curiosity,
imitation, memory," &c., but we had better proceed at once
to what he refers to as points in which man is supposed to
differ essentially from all other animals.

Lord C. Will Mr. Darwin mention what these points
are?

Darwin. " It has been asserted," my Lord, " that man
alone is capable of progressive improvement ; that he alone
makes use of tools or fire ; domesticates other animals ;
possesses property, or employs language ; that no other
animal is self-conscious, comprehends itself, has the power
of abstraction, or possesses general ideas ; that man alone
has a sense of beauty, is liable to caprice, has the feeling of
gratitude, mystery, &c. ; believes in God, or is endowed
with a conscience. I will hazard a few remarks on the
more important and interesting of these points. Archbishop
Sumner formerly maintained that man alone is capable of
progressive improvement." (Vol. i. p. 49.)

Homo. It is clear, my Lord, that by "progressive im-
provement," the Archbishop meant mfoftnito progressive
improvement. He meant that man has gone on advancing,
as Mr. Darwin himself admits, from the earliest dawn of his
existence until now ; and that there is apparently no limit
to his capacity for advancement. Man alone inherits, and
is able to use, the accumulated knowledge of the past, and
to transmit it augmented to the future.

Lord C. Precisely so ; Mr. Darwin himself cannot doubt
this.

Darwin. My Lord, "everyone who has had experience
in setting traps, knows that young animals can be canght
more easily than old ones ; and they can be much more
pMsily Approached by an enemy. Even with respect to old

98 HOMO V. DA11WIX.

animals, it is impossible to catch many in the same place,
and in the same kind of trap, or to destroy them by the
same kind of poison ; yet it is improbable that all should
have partaken of the poison, and impossible that all should
have been caught in the trap. They must learn caution by
seeing their brethren caught or poisoned. . . If we look to
successive generations, or to the race, there is no doubt
that birds and other animals gradually both acquire, and
lose, caution in relation to man or other enemies ; and this
caution is certainly, in chief part, an inherited habit or
instinct, but, in part, the result of individual experience.
. . . Our domestic dogs . . . have progressed in certain
moral qualities, such as affection, trustworthiness, temper,
and probably in general intelligence. The common rat has
conquered and beaten several other spe'jies throughout
Europe, in parts of North America, New Zealand, and
recently in Formosa, as well as on the mainland of China.
Mr. Swinhoe, who describes these latter cases, attributes the
victory of the common rat to its superior cunning ; and this
latter quality may be attributed to the habitual exercise of
all its faculties in avoiding extirpation by man, as well as
to nearly all the less cunning or weak-minded rats having
been successively destroyed by him. To maintain, inde-
pendently of any direct evidence, that no animal, during
the course of ages, has progressed in intellect, or other
mental faculties, is to beg the question of the evolution of
Bpecies." (Vol. i. pp. 49, 51.)

Lord C. It may be quite true, Mr. Darwin, that the
instinct of self-preservation in birds, and rats, and other
animals, mny become more or less keen as it is more or less
ised, but you surely cannot mean that this circumstance
shows them to be capable of indefinite improvement, and to
possess the same kind of mental powers that man possesses

99

Homo. Pray, observe, my Lord, the singular way in
which Mr. Darwin reasons. He is replying to Archbishop
Stunner's remark, "that man alone is capable of progressive
improvement," meaning, clearly enough, such an improve-
ment as has been going on among men for thousands of
years, is going on now, and, for aught we can tell, may go
on for ever. In reply to this, Mr. Darwin urges that the
common rat is superior in cunning to other rats, and that
it may owe this superiority to the habitual exercise of all
its faculties in avoiding extirpation by man. He thus
makes the supposed improvement of an instinct in rats to
be parallel to the advancement of the whole human race in
knowledge. The Archbishop says, " Man alone of all
animals is capable of indefinite progressive improvement,
and therefore differs in faculty from aU other animals."
Mr. Darwin replies, "The common rat is superior in cunning
to all other rats, and may perhaps have become so through
contact with man ; the common rat, therefore, is capable of
indefinite, progressive improvement." This, surely, is
reasoning with the imagination. Mr. Darwin talks of our
44 begging the question of the evolution of species " ! He
is begging it himself by such reasoning.

Lord C. You say, Mr. Darwin, that "the superior
cunning of the rat may be attributed to the exercise of all
its faculties to avoid being extirpated by man." Will you
mention ths faculties it has exercised to this end ? I
should like to know what faculties, in addition to its five
senses, you ascribe to the rat.

Homo. Mr. Darwin does not go so minutely into his
subject as your Lordship's question supposes. Probably,
however, he would say that, in addition to the usual
senses, a rat has memory, perhaps also curiosity, imita-
tion, attention, imagination, and reason. He supposes

100 HCilO V. DAKVV1X.

other animals to possess these faculties ; then, why not
the rat ?

Lord C. Mr. Darwin speaks of the dog having "pro-
gressed in affection, trustworthiness, temper, and probably
in general intelligence." Does he try to show that the
dog of to-day is in advance of the dog of a thousand years
ago in these qualities ?

Homo. Mr. Darwin, my Lord, does not attempt to show
that the dog has advanced. I believe it would be impossible
for him to show that any animal whatever, from the Ascidian
up to the ape has advanced, unless it be those that have done
to through the skill and care of man himself, or by their
otherwise coming into contact with him.

Lord C. On this point, then, we come to the conclusion
that, while certain of the lower animals are capable of
improvement in some- of their instincts or faculties, within
a certain limited range, we have no proof that any of them
are capable of indefinite progressive improvement as man is.
"What is the next point ?

Darwin. "The Duke of Argyll remarks," my Lord,
" that the fashioning of an implement for a special purpose
is absolutely peculiar to man ; and he considers that this
forms an unmeasurable gulf between him and the brutes.
It is no doubt a very important distinction, but there
appears to me much truth in Sir J. Lubbock's suggestion,
that when primeval man first used flint stones for any
purpose, he would have accidentally splintered them, and
would then have used the sharp fragments. From this step
it would be a small one to intentionally break the flints,
and not a very wide step to rudely fashion them." (Vol. i.
pp. 52, 53.)

Lord C. Granting what you say to be true, Mr. Darwin,
it neither closes, nor bridges over, the gulf between man

FIFTH DAY'S SITTING/' lot

an.l the brute to which the Duke refers. Apes have existed
quite as long as man, but no one of them has ever taken
the steps in question, nor, so far as I can see, is ever likely
to do so.

Darwin. " It has often been said," my Lord, " that no
animal uses any tool ; but the chimpanzee, in a state of
nature, cracks a native fruit, somewhat like a walnut, with
a stone." (Vol. i. p. 51.)

Lord C. If the chimpanzee does so now, he has doubtless
done so for thousands of years. How is it that, during all
that time, he has not learned to fashion a tool for breaking
nuts, and that he cannot supply you with this proof of his
possessing mental qualities like those of man ?

Homo. And how is it, my Lord, that even Mr. Darwin
himself cannot teach an ape to fashion a tool ? The brute
is too obstinate for him. Yet he talks of animals, during
the course of ages, progressing in intellect ! Will he
undertake to teach an ape or any kind of monkey, or any
animal whatever, the use of -fire ?

Lord C. I presume Mr. Darwin will rather decline the
task.

Homo. Why should he, my Lord, if, as he maintains,
animals are capable of progressive improvement ?

Lord C. I shall be glad, however, to know what Mr.
Darwin does say on this point — the fact that man alone
makes use of fire.

Homo. He says nothing about it whatever, my Lord —
a circumstance which I can account for only by supposing
that he is as much afraid of fire, in connection with this
subject, as an anthropomorphous ape would be afraid
of fire, were it consuming the tree in which it has sought
refuge.

Lord C. Then I must say that Mr. Darwin gives the

102 HOilO V. DARWIN.

"go-by" to a most important branch of evidence which
tells strongly against his hypothesis. He has himself
mentioned the fact that man alone makes use of fire.
. Homo. Very true, my Lord. He also refers repeatedly
to the fact of man having " discovered the art of making
fire," but he says nothing of the farther fact that no one of
the lower animals has either discovered, or can be taught to
use this element.

Lord C. What comes next ?

Darwin. " The anthropomorphous apes," my Lord,
" guided probably by instinct, build for themselves tem-
porary platforms ; but, as many instincts are largely con-
trolled by reason, the simpler ones, such as this of building
a platform, might readily pass into a voluntary and
conscious act." (Vol. i. p. 53.)

Homo. Here, again, my Lord, Mr. Darwin is dealing, not
with facts, but with probabilities. The apes of which he
speaks were " guided probably by instinct ;" this instinct
might pass into "a voluntary and conscious act." There
is nothing certain here, my Lord. Mr. Darwin is again
using his imagination in reasoning with us. Besides, if
the instinct of an ape, in building a platform, might pass
into a voluntary and conscious act, might not the instinct
of a bird in building a nest do the same ; or the instinct of
a mole in burrowing in the ground ?

Darwin. "The orang," my Lord, "is known to cover
itself at night with the leaves of the pandanus ; and Brehm
states that one of his baboons used to protect itself from
the heat of the sun by throwing a straw mat over its head.
In these latter habits we probably see the first steps towards
some of the simpler arts, namely, rude architecture and
dress, as they arose amongst the early progenitors of man,"
Vol. i. p. 53.)

FIFTH DAY'S SITTING. 103

Lord C. It would be to some purpose if Mr. Darwin could
Bhow that the orang's covering itself with leaves is a recent
invention on its part ?

Homo. I have known a dog, my Lord, to work its way
under straw, and even under a blanket, to keep itself warm
in cold weather, and it is well known that cattle will seek
the shade of trees as a screen from the heat of the sun. As
for the baboon, we may regard it as taking a first step in
architecture when it makes the straw mat for the purpose
of screening itself from the heat, or improves on this
method of protection by some new invention of its own.

Lord C. How is it if the orang has taken a first step in
architecture, that it does not proceed to take a second ?

Homo. And how is it, my Lord, that even man himself
cannot teach the brute to do so ? But Mr. Darwin has no
answer for such questions.

Lord 0. What have you to say, then, Mr. Darwin, re-
garding language ?

Darwin. " Articulate language," my Lord, " is peculiar
to man ; but he uses, in common with the lower animals,
inarticulate cries to express his meaning, aided by gestures
and the movements of the muscles of the face." (Vol. i.
p. 54.)

Homo. I presume, my Lord, it is to articulate language
you are now referring, and not to the inarticulate cries
either of man or animal. The question is not whether
man has certain instincts and powers corresponding with
those of the lower animals. No one doubts that. In so
far as man is an animal, he must, of course, have qualities
resembling those of animals. But the question is whether
man, while an animal, is not also more than an animal, and
whether, therefore, he does not possess powers which no
animal either does or can possess. Mr. Darwin is leading

104 HOMO V. DARWLV.

us away from the point when he talks about the inarticu-
late cries of man and animals. Le6 him tell us whether
any creature on this earth, except man, can rationally use, or
be taught rationally to use, articulate language.

Darwin. " It is not the mere power of articulation," my
Lord, " that distinguishes man from other animals, for, as
every one knows, parrots can talk ; but it is his largo
power of connecting definite sounds with definite ideas ;
and this obviously depends on the development of the
mental faculties." (Vol. i. p. 54.)

Lord G. That is just the point, Mr. Darwin ; let us
therefore confine ourselves to it. Of course, parrots may
be taught to utter a few articulate sounds, and so may
starlings. But the question is, Do any of the lower
animals possess " man's large power of connecting definite
sounds with definite ideas ?" Can you mention one that
Las this power, or in which it may certainly be developed ?

Homo. You will not find it easy, my Lord, to hold Mr.
Darwin to the point, lie knows very well what the point
is, for he states it clearly enough ; but he no sooner does
so than he starts away from it like a scared animal, and
never ventures to look near it again. Would you believe
it, my Lord ? He gives us nine pages on language, without
once attempting to discuss in them that peculiarity which,
he says, distinguishes man from other animals — "his large
power of connecting definite sounds with definite ideas."

Lord C. What then are the points he takes up ?

Homo. He tells us, my Lord, that the dog baiks in four
or five different tones, to express so many different feelings
that may influence him ; that the sounds uttered by birds
offer, in several respects, the nearest iiiuilogy to language ;
and he gives details which he thinks shows that an in-
stinctive tendency to acquire an art is not a peculiarity

FIFTH DAY'S SITTING. 105

confined to man. All this, your Lordship will at once
perceive, falls far short of the mark. He then gives us a
dissertation on the origin of articulate language ; tells us
that " some early progenitor of man probably used his voice
largely, as does one of the gibbon-apes of the present day,
in producing musical cadences ;" that "monkeys certainly
understand much tint is said to them by man," and " utter
signal cries of danger- to their fellows ;" and, in this, he
finds what would have been " a first step in the formation
of a language." (Vol. i. pp. 54-57.)

Lord C. What are Mr. Darwin's own words on this
point ?

Darwin. " As monkeys in a state of nature," my Lord,
" utter signal cries of danger to their fellows, it does not
appear altogether incredible that some unusually wise ape-
like animal should have thought of imitating the growl of
a beast of prey, so as to indicate to his fellow monkeys the
nature of the expected danger. And this would have been
a first step in the formation of a language." (Vol. i. p. 57.)

Homo. It is rather singular, my Lord, that this " unusu-
ally wise ape-like animal," which Mr. Darwin cannot prove
ever existed, but to which, nevertheless, the thought oc-
curred of imitating the growl of a beast of prey, to warn
his fellow monkeys of danger, should not have thought
also of imitating the hiss of the serpent, to intimate to them
the proximity of that- reptile, of which, according to Mr.
Darwin, monkeys have an instinctive dread. The organs
of an ape are as fit for hissing as for growling.

Darwin. " As the voice," my Lord, " was used more and
more, the vocal organs would have been strengthened and
perfected through the principle of the inherited effects of
use ; and this would have reacted on the power of speech.
But the relation between the continued use of language,

H

.106 HOMO V. DARTVIX.

and tlie development of the brain, has no doubt been f;»r
more important. The mental powers, in some early pro-
genitor of man, must have been more highly developed
than in any existing ape, before even the most imperfect
form of speech could have come into use ; but \ve may
confidently believe that the continued use and advancement
of this power would have reacted on the mind by enabling
and encouraging it to carry on long trains of thought."
(Vol. i. p. 57.)

Hqmo. In this passage, your Lordship will perceive that
Mr. Darwin takes for granted what he cannot prove— viz.,
that man had ape-like progenitors, and that some one of
them possessed mental powers more highly developed than
those of any existing ape. Reasoning from this highly-
developed, hypothetical ape, he tells us that, by exercising
what power of utterance it had, the brain enlarged and the
in i ml improved, and the vocal organs strengthened, gene-
ratii n after generation, till this series of changes in a race
of apes culminated in man l> But all this is purely
imaginary. Mr. Darwin cannot produce even the shadow
of a proof that this "unusually wise ape-like animal" ever
existed to transmit his wisdom to his descendants, or that
he had descendants to inherit it. Yet he tells us we may
"confidently believe" it ! Instead of trying to prove to
ns that such development has occurred, he asks us "confi-
dently to believe " that it has occurred !

Lord 0. Mr. Darwin certainly reasons very strangely.
It is a singular circumstance, moreover, that, if the " unus-
ually wise ape-like animal" which he supposes took the
first step in the formation of a language, ever really existed,
there should not have arisen other "unusually wise" apes
to take farther steps in the same direction, so that there
should have been speaking apes at the present day. But

FIFTH DAY'S .SITTING. 107

no existing race of apes seems to have got beyond the
" growl " of which Mr. Darwin has spoken.

Homo. Nor even so far as that, my Lord. No existing
race of apes ever had this " unusually wise " progenitor
to teach them to imitate the growl of a beast of prey to
warn their "brethren" of danger. Only the race which
developed into man was so favoured !

Lord C. What follows after this ?

Homo. Mr. Darwin goes on, my Lord, through page after
page, telling us, among other things as little to the point,
that, " as Home Tooke observes, language is an art, like
brewing or baking," and not an instinct ; that " the sounds
uttered by birds offer in several respects the nearest analogy
to language," and what he " cannot doubt " as to the origin
of language ; that ants communicate among themselves
" by means of their antennae ;" that "we might have used
our fingers " for speech, but that the loss of our hands,
while thus employed, would have been a serious incon-
venience ; that " the fact of the higher apes not using their
vocal organs for speech, no doubt results from their intel-
ligence not being sufficiently advanced ;" that, in this
respect, they are like those "birds which possess organs fitted
for singing, though they never sing ;" and that the crow
has " vocal organs similarly constructed " to those of the
nightingale, though it uses them merely for " croaking."
He thus wanders from one unimportant point to another,
always avoiding the real point, and then winds up as
follows : — " From these few and imperfect remarks I con-
clude that the extremely complex and regular construction
of many barbarous languages, is no proof that they owe
their origin to a special act of creation. Nor, as we have
seen, does the faculty of articulate speech, in itself, offer any
insuperable objection to the belief that man has been

H 2

108 HOMO V. DARWIN.

*

developed from some lower form.*' (Vol. i. p. 62.) Now, the
question, my Lord, is, not whether languages owe their
origin to a separate act of creation, but whether any inferior
animal possesses " man's large power of connecting definite
sounds with definite ideas." Moreover, when Mr. Darwin
says that " the faculty of articulate speech, in itself," does
not " offer any insuperable objection to the belief that man
has been developed from some lower form," he is begging
the question in dispute.

Lord O. Clearly so. Put in another form, the question
at present is, Does not man's possession of the faculty
of articulate speech offer an insuperable objection to the
belief that he has been developed from some lower
form?

Homo. Mr. Darwin, my Lord, ventures to say, " we have
seen that it does not ;" but we have seen nothing of the
kind. Here again his imagination comes into play. First
he imagines a thing ; then he thinks he sees it ; then, that
others see it as well as himself. Finally, he writes it down
as a scientific fact, and thus builds up his hypothesis.

'Lord C. What points come next ?

Darwin. " Self-consciousness" my Lord ; " Indiri<luality,
Abstraction, General Ideas, &c. It would be useless to
attempt discussing these high faculties, which, according
to several recent writers, make the sole and complete dis-
tinction between man and the brutes, for hardly two authors
agree in their definitions. Such faculties could not have
been fully developed in man until his mental powers had
advanced to a high standard, and this implies the use of a
perfect language." (Vol. i. p. 62.)

Homo. If Mr. Darwin, my Lord, had wished to discuss
these faculties, he might easily have found definitions which
would have answered the purpose. But, after giving us

FIFTH DAY'S SITTING. 109

nine pages on language, without coming to the point, he
gives us one page on " these high faculties" which, he tells
us, " several recent writers make the sole and complete
distinction between man and the brutes." This looks more
like again avoiding a difficulty than boldly meeting it.
Will your Lordship observe, also, that here again Mr.
Darwin is begging the question he professes to discuss ?
He takes it for granted that man's mental powers were
gradually developed, which is just the point now in debate.
He thus, as usual, tries to prove his hypothesis by assuming
it to be true.

Lord C. It would be more satisfactory, certainly, if Mr.
Darwin would bring forward proof of the gradual develop-
ment of man's mental powers. But it would be difficult to
show that we moderns, notwithstanding all the advantages
we unquestionably have over the ancients, possess loftier
mental powers than were displayed by them. Mr. Darwin
will not venture to say that Homer, Plato, Aristotle, and
many others, were not, in this respect, fully abreast of
ourselves.

Darwin. " No one supposes," my Lord, " that one of the
lower animals reflects whence he comes or whither he goes
— what is death or what is life — and so forth. But can we
feel sure that an old dog, with an excellent memory and
some power of imagination, as shown by his dreams, never
reflects on his past pleasures in the chase ? and this would
be a form of self-consciousness. On the other hand, as
Biichner has remarked, how little can the hard-worked wife
of a degra^od Australian savage, who uses hardly any
abstract words, and cannot count above four, exert her self-
consciousness, or reflect on the nature of her own existence ! "
(Vol. i. p. 52.)

Lord C. If your hypothesis is to stand, Mr. Darwin, it

110 HOMO V. DARWIN.

must be sustained by facts. Now, you are not stating a
fact when you ask, " Can we feel sure that an old dog never
reflects on his past pleasures in the chase ? " You yourself
merely suppose he does, but are evidently not certain of it.

Homo. Mr. Darwin is thus unable, my Lord, even when
taking the argument his own way, to find self- consciousness
in a dog. The huntsman is self-conscious when he recalls
the events of the chase, and the part he himself took in it,
anck-discusses them with his friends ; but can Mr. Darwin
himself imagine a hound remembering the circumstances
even of yesterday's chase, and reasoning on them with his
fellow hounds ? Has he ever seen a pack of hounds con-
ferring together on the events of the chase when it is over,
each showing himself conscious, by the tone in which ho
barks, of the part he has had in it ? As to the hard-worked
wife of the Australian savage, Mr. Darwin does not venture
to deny to her, degraded though she be, the power of
exerting self-consciousness, and reflecting on her own ex-
istence. Even granting that she uses hardly any abstract
words, and cannot count above four, the fact that she does
use some abstract words, and can count four, is sufficient to
prove that she possesses the power of abstraction, and can
form general ideas. She can also do what Mr. Darwin tells
us no one of the lower animals can do — she can reflect on
"whence she comes and whither she goes— what is death
and what is life, and so forth." We have here then, on
Mr. Darwin's own showing, even in the lowest form of
savage life, all the high faculties of which he speaks, — Felf-
consciousness, Abstraction, General Ideas, and also Indi-
viduality, for the others imply this ; but Mr. Darwin fails
to show even the dawn of any one of these faculties in any
brute whatever.

Darwin. My Lord, "that animals retain their mental

FIFTH DAY'S SITTING. Ill

individuality is unquestionable. "When my voice awakened
a train o: old associations in the mind of my dog, he must
have retained his mental individuality, although every
atom of his brain had probably undergone change more
than once during the interval of five years. This dog
might have brought forward the argument lately advanced
to crush all evolutionists, and said, 'I abide amid all
mental moods and all material changes.' " (Vol. i. p. 63.)

Homo. No doubt, my Lord, Mr. Darwin's dog was the
same dog he had been five years before, but, unquestionably,
the dog did not possess that consciousness of his own
mental individuality that would have enabled him either to
reflect on it, or to affirm it. Mr. Darwin puts the words,
" I abide amid all mental moods and all material changes,"
in his dog's mouth ; but he cannot suppose either this
thought, or this consciousness, to have existed in the dog's
mind.

Lord C. It thus appears, Mr. Darwin, that you cannot
prove any of the inferior animals to be possessed of the
high faculties in question — Self -consciousness, Abstraction,,
General Ideas, or Individuality. When apes, and dogs, and
horses become capable of abstraction, and can form general
ideas, they will be able to use their powers of reason and
imagination to better purpose than at present.

Darwin. The next point, my Lord, is " The sense of
beauty. This sense has been declared to be peculiar to
man. But when we behold male birds elaborately dis-
playing their plumes and splendid colours before the
females, while other birds, not thus decorated, make no
such display, it is impossible to doubt that the females
admire the beauty of their male partners." (Vol. i. p. 63.)

Homo. I willingly grant, my Lord, that the beauty of
birds is a source of enjoyment to them, but this is quite a

112 HOMO V. DARWIN.

different thing from their having such a sense of beauty ns
man possesses. A bird can admire only itself, or others of
its own species. Its sense of beauty has a very narrow
range, though, within that range, it serves an evident and
necessary purpose. But is any bird conscious of the beauty
of flowers ? Can a peacock, or a peahen, admire, or be
taught to admire, a lily or a rose ? Mr. Darwin himself
says, " Obviously no animal would be capable of admiring
such scenes as the heavens at night, a beautiful landscape,
or refined music." " Such high tastes," he adds, " are not
enjoyed by barbarians o uneducated persons." But bar-
barians and uneducated persons may easily be so cultured
as to have these high tastes developed in them. This
is more than can be said of any animal. In animals, the
sense of beauty is but a confined and narrow instinct, which
remains the same age after age ; in man it is a high and
complex faculty, which may be cultured and improved, and
transmitted onwards, purified and refined, from generation
to generation.

Lord 0. I think, Mr. Darwin, you must admit that the
sense of beauty which certain animals possess is a mere
unimproveable instinct, operating within a very narrow
range, and incapable of extension beyond that range ; while,
in man, this sense may be so trained as to become one of
the loftiest faculties of his nature. Man can speak not
only of a beautiful bird, or a beautiful flower, or a beautiful
landscape, but of a beautiful poem, a beautiful chain of
reasoning, the beautiful machinery of nature, and so on.
I think you must wait till you find some animal going
beyond itself and its own species, in its admiration of
beauty, before you compare its sense of beauty with that
possessed by man. What is the next point ?

Darwin. " Belief in God" my Lord ; " Heliyiun. There

FIFTH DAY'S SITTIXQ. 113

is no evidence that man was aboriginally endowed with the
ennobling belief in the existence of an Omnipotent God.
On the contrary, there is ample evidence derived, not from
hasty travellers, but from men who have long resided with
savages, that numerous races have existed, and still exist,
who have no idea of one or more gods, and who have no
•words in their languages to express such an idea. This
question is, of course, wholly distinct from that higher one,
whether there exists a creator and ruler of the universe ;
and this has been answered in the affirmative by the highest
intellects that have ever lived." (Vol. i. p. 65.)

Homo. In what Mr. Darwin has just said, my Lord, he
sets aside the Bible as having any claim whatever to be
regarded as, in any sense, a revelation from God. Yet, if
the highest intellects that ever lived have affirmed the
existence of Go i, the highest intellects that have had the
opportunity of investigating the question have affirmed the
Bible to be his Word. We are not, however, going to
discuss this question. But I wish to remark that, whether
or not the Bible contain a revelation from God, even Mr.
Darwin, I presume, will admit that it contains much true
history. Now, in the early records of the Jews, we see a
people who, unquestionably, at a very remote period, were
" endowed with the ennobling belief in the existence of an
Omnipotent God," casting this belief aside, and falling
under the influence of the impure superstitions of the
nations that surrounded them. It is well known, moreover,
that, with a pure and elevating theism in their most ancient
sacred books, the Hindoos rank among the most debased
idolaters in the world. We see also, in cur own country,
that with this "ennobling belief " in the Divine existence
within their reach, multitudes practically disregard and
reject it. I make these remarks, my Lord, to show that,

114 HOMO V. DARWIN.

if there be races of men so degraded that they have no
knowledge of God, their ignorance arises, far more pro-
bably, from their remote ancestors having lost this know-
ledge, than from man having been originally destitute of
it. I beg to say, further, that when Mr. Darwin affirms
there is- no evidence that man originally possessed this
belief, he is, as usual, taking for granted what he ought
first to prove.

Lord C. There can be no doubt thafmany of the highest
intellects that adorn our country would differ most de-
cidedly from Mr. Darwin in his opinion on this question.
But is it necessary for us to debate it ?

Homo. Mr. Darwin, my Lord, does not debate it. He
satisfies himself with dogmatically settling it in favour of
his own side of the argument. Disbelieving, if not the
existence of God, yet the intervention of God in human
affairs, and maintaining that man is descended from an
ape, he believes also, of course, that when man emerged
from ape he was a savage. " Tne Creator and Ruler of the
universe, whose existence has been affirmed by the highest
intellects that ever lived," has never thought fit, according
to Mr. Darwin, to reveal himself to the only creature on
this earth capable, in some measure, of comprehending
Him. Man has, all unaided and uncared for by the
" Omnipotent God," struggled by his own efforts into the
light and knowledge he now possesses. It is, moreover,
altogether uncertain that the light which man possesses
on " God " and " religion " is true light, or that his
knowledge on these subjects is based on reality. Such
is the conclusion to which Darwinism points us, my
Lord!

Ixini-ui. Allow me, ray Lord, to state how it appears to
me that religion has come to exist among men.

FIFTH DAY'S SITTING. 115

Lord C. By all meaus, Mr. Darwin ; let us have your
views on this point.

Darwin. " If," my Lord, " we include under the term
* religion ' the belief in unseen or spiritual agencies . . .
this belief seems to be almost universal with the less
civilized races. Nor is it difficult to comprehend how it
arose. As soon as the important faculties of the imagina-
tion, wonder, and curiosity, together with some power of
reasoning, had become partially developed, man would
naturally have craved to understand what was passing
around him, and have vaguely speculated on his own
existence. ... It is probable that dreams may have first
given rise to the notion of spirits ; for savages do not
readily distinguish between subjective and objective im-
pressions. When a savage dreams, the figures which appear
before him are believed to have come from a distance and
to stand over him ; or 'the soul of the' dreamer goes out
on its travels, and comes home with a remembrance of
what it has seen.' But, until the above-named faculties of
imagination, curiosity, reason, &c., had been fairly well de-
veloped in the mind of man, his dreams would not have
led him to believe in spirits any more than in the case of a
dog. . . . The belief in spiritual agencies would easily pass
into the belief in the existence of one or more goJs. For
savages would naturally attribute to spirits the same
passions, the same love of vengeance or simplest form of
justice, and £ne same affections which they themselves
experienced." (Vol. i. pp. 65-67.)

Homo. Let us suppose, my Lord, for the sake of argu-
ment, that such religion as savages possess arose among
them in the \\.Ty which Mr. Darwin suggests, their dreams
having had mucn to do with it. Will he now explain how
it has happened that the dreams of dogs and horses — for

1 1C HOMO V. DAK WIN.

he tells us that they also dream — have not resulted in their
having some kind of religion ? For, be it remembered, my
Lord, that Mr. Darwin is now endeavouring to prove that
the fact of man being capable of religion does not separate
him by an impassable gulf from the lower animals. Is
there evidence, then, that any of the lower animals are
finding their way across the gulf, by this bridge of dreams ?

Lord C. The point at present in debate, Mr. Darwin, is
not how religion at first originated among savages, but
whether the fact of man's capacity for religion does not
show him to be possessed of a nature in which the lower
animals do not share. The observations you have just
made do not bear on this point. They show, however, that
a belief in the supernatural is present in savages, which
is more than can be said of dogs and horses. They,
certainly, neither believe in the supernatural, nor are
capable of such belief. Hence, religion is with them an
impossibility.

Homo. Mr. Darwin, my Lord, has told us of one ape
taking a first step in the formation of language, and of
another taking a first step in architecture ; can he fiud, or
even imagine, one taking a first step in religion ?

Darwin. "The tendency in savages," my Lord, " to
imagine that natural objects and agencies are animated by
spiritual or living essences, is perhaps illustrated by a little
fact which I once noticed : My dog, a full grown and very
sensible animal, was lying on the lawn during a hot and
still day ; but at a little distance a slight breeze occasionally
moved an open parasol, which would have been wholly
disregarded by the dog had any one stood near it. As it
•was, every time that the parasol slightly moved, the dog
growled fiercely and barked. He must, I think, have
reasoned to hirr.F.clf in a rapid and unconscious manner,

FIFTH DAY'S SITTING. 117

that movement, without any apparent cause, indicated the
presence of some strange living agent, and no stranger had
a right to be on his territory." (Vol. i. p. 67.)

Lord C. The fact you mention, Mr. Darwin, though in-
terestiDg, does not bear on the question before us. If you
could sho*w that he reasoned himself into a belief of the
supernatural, it would be a case in point. Bat why should
you suppose that your dog "reasoned" on this occasion ?
Might he not simply have felt as if the parasol itself,
moving without any apparent cause, were some "strange
living agent ? "

Homo. Will your Lordship allow me to quote here a
passage from an able review of Mr. Darwin's book, which
recently appeared in The Times, and which bears on the
point now before us : — " The nearest approach to reasoning
which Mr. Darwin can adduce is furnished in two analogous
stories respecting dogs. * Mr. Colquhoun winged two wild
ducks, which fell on the opposite side of a stream ; his
retriever tried to bring over both at once, but could not
succeed ; she then, though previously never known to
ruffle a feather, deliberately killed one, brought over the
other, and returned for the dead bird.' The case is cer-
tainly remarkable ; but it appears to us a very hasty
conclusion that the act was rational. The retriever possesses
the instinct of not permitting a bird to escape as well as
the instinct of not injuring it, and her act would seem
simply an instance of one instinct overpowering another.
This interpretation is strongly confirmed by the other
story. In that case two parti idges were shot, one being
killed, the other wounded. The latter ran away, and was
caught by the retriever, who, on her return, came across the
dead bird ; * she stopped, evidently greatly puzzled, and
after one or two trials, finding she could not take it up

118 HOMO V. DARWIN.

without permitting the escape of the winged bird, she con
sidered a moment, and then deliberately murdered it by
giving it a severe crunch, and afterwards brought away
both together. This was the only known instance of her
ever having wilfully injured any game.' ' Here/ says Mr.
Darwin, * we have reason, though not quite perfect, fur the
retriever might have brought the wounded bird first, and
then returned for the dead one, as in the case of the two
wild ducks.' Precisely so ; if she had really reasoned she
would not have killed the duck. But two instinctive
impulses were working in her — one impelling her to bring
both birds, the other impelling her not to let either bird
escape ; and, not being able to reconcile the two by means
of reason, the latter instinct overpowered her habit of not
injuring the game. It is not by such instances that the
result of a wide induction respecting the difference between
the faculties of men and brutes can be overthrown. We
should have been, indeed, in no way surprised if Mr. Darwin
had been able to adduce cases far more difficult of explanation.
Nothing is better recognized than that inferior faculties,
when acting alone, acquire a perfection of development
which enables them in many cases to act even more effi-
ciently ihan higher faculties. A blind man will perceive by
the mere sense of touch that which the philosopher could
only observe by the aid of a microscope ; and a dog, by his
acute sen^e of smell, will surpass the utmost exertions of
human sagacity in tracking his prey. Consequently, even
if it could be shown that animals perform certain actions
which men could only perform by the aid of reason, it would
by no means necessarily follow that animals perform tin. -m
by its aid. It would be perfectly conceivable that their
power was derived from the development of a lower and
diverse faculty to an extent of which men have on

FIFTH DAY'S SITTING*. 119

experience. Snch a consideration is alone enongh to show
that the question needs to be treated with infinitely more
care and research than Mr. Darwin has thought worth
while to bestow upon it."

Darwin. " I have to say yet farther," my Lord, " on this
subject, that the feeling of religious devotion is a highly
complex one, consisting of love, complete submission to an
exalted and mysterious superior, a strong sense of de-
pendence, fear, reverence, gratitude, hope for the future,
and perhaps other elements. No being could experience so
complex an emotion, until advanced in his intellectual and
moral faculties to at least a moderately high level. Never-
theless, we see some distinct approach to this state of mind
in the deep love of a dog for his master, associated with
complete submission, some fear, and perhaps other feelings.
The behaviour of a dog, when returning to his master after
an absence, and, as I may add, of a monkey to his beloved
keeper, is widely different from that towards their fellows.
In the latter case the transports of joy appear to be some-
what less, and the sense of equality is shown in every
action. Professor Braubach goes so far as to maintain that
a dog looks on his master as on a god." (Vol. i. p. 68.)

Homo. Which would imply, my Lord, that the dog has
formed the idea of a god. If Mr. Darwin could show this
to be the case, it would afford some help to his argument.
But though he quotes this professor's language, and evi-
dently would gladly endorse it if he could, he does not
venture on the absurdity. Professor Braubach should bring
out a dog's catechism, in which, in reply to the question,
" Who made you ?" the creature should be taught to reply,
" My master ! "

Lord C. You do not, Mr. Darwin, mention regard for
truth, purity, and rectitude, as minglin^ in "the highly

120 HOMO V. DARWIN.

complex feeling of religious devotion," of which yon speak.
Yet, would not these elements also have a place in it ?

Homo. In page 182, my Lord, Mr. Darwin speaks of
"the highest form of religion — the grand idea of God
hating sin and loving righteousness." For this idea he is
of course indebted to the book he so persistently ignores in
discussing this question. I presume he omitted this idea
in the description he has just given of religious devotion,
because he intended to exhibit the dog as showing " some
distant approach " to a religious state of mind, and knew
that he would search in vain, in any dog, for the faintest
shadow of hatred to sin and love to righteousness.

Lord C. To bring in this idea here would certainly
encumber his argument. Nevertheless, it must be brought
in, if the whole case is to be before us. Do you object,
Homo, to what Mr. Darwin has just said regarding the
dog — his "deep love for his master, associated with com-
plete submission, some fear, and perhaps other feelings ? "

Homo. By no means, my Lord ; the dog is a most noble
animal, and Mr. Darwin, I think, has spoken quite correctly
regarding him. But he is nothing more than an animal
endowed with instincts that lead him to attach himself to
man. He acts from instinctive impulses, and neither
reflects nor reasons on his conduct. I cannot see that a dog
has any end in view in attaching himself to man, or that
he knows why he does so. I need not say to your Lordship
that the feeling of religious devotion, even as Mr. Darwin
has described it, can arise only from the exercise of reason.
Mr. Darwin himself indeed allows this, for he tells us that
"no being could experience so complex an emotion until
advanced in his intellectual and moral faculties to at least
a moderately high level." While, in the feelings of a dog
towards his master, thon, we see merely the working of

FIFTH DAY'S SITTING. 121

instinct; in the feeling of religious devotion in man, the
loftiest reason comes into play. If a dog's feelings may
thus, in the case before us, be compared to a man's, it is
not because they proceed from the working of the same, or
even of similar faculties. The instinct, or — if you will —
the reason of a dog is no more identical with the reason of
a man than a shadow is identical with the substance from
which it is thrown.

Lord G. You have said nothing, Homo, on the grand
idea of hatred to sin and love to righteousness, which we
proposed to bring into the discussion of this point.

Homo. I beg your Lordship's pardon for the omission.
Of course a dog, or any animal whatever, is utterly inca-
pable either of understanding or feeling the power of this
grand idea. A dog's attachment to his master is altogether
irrespective of either\sin or righteousness. He will be as
much attached to Bill Sikes, if he be his master, as to
William \Vilberforce. As to a dog approaching to any-
thing like a conception, or a consciousness of a pure and
righteous God, such a thing should not even be named ; nor
will it be unless by men who have a stronger tendency down-
ward towards communion with the brute creation, than up
towards God.

Lord C. Mr. Darwin, I presume, advances nothing more
than what has come before us to prove that the capacity of
man for religion does not separate him by " an impassable
barrier from all the lower animals."

Homo. Nothing more that I am aware of, my Lord. Hfs
second chapter concludes with this subject. In his third
chapter he discusses the moral sen^e.

Lord C. AVe shall now hear- what he has to say regard-
ing it.

ix. " I fully subscribe," my Lord, " to the judgment

I

i-2'2 HOMO V. DARWIN.

of those writers who maintain that, of all the differences
between man and the lower animals, the moral sense or
conscience is by far the most important. This sense, as
Mackintosh remarks, ' has a rightful supremacy over every
other principle of human action ;' it is summed up in that
short but imperious word ought, so full of high significance.
It is the most noble of all the attributes of man, leading
him without a moment's hesitation to risk his life for that
of a fellow creature ; or, after due deliberation, impelled
simply by the deep feeling of right or duty, to sacrifice it
in some great cause. Immanuel Kant exclaims, 4 Duty !
wondrous thought, that workest neither by fond insinuation,
flattery, nor by any threat, but merely by holding up thy
naked " law in the soul," and so extorting for thyself always
reverence, if not always obedience ; before whom all appe-
tites are dumb, however secretly they rebel ; whence thy
original ?'" (Vol. i. pp. 70, 71.)

Lord C. I heartily assent to your quotations from Mack-
intosh and Kant, and also to your own remark that the
moral sense *' is summed up in the short but imperious
word ought ;" but do you find anything answering to the
moral sense or conscience in the lower animals ?

Darwin. " The following proposition," my Lord, " seems
to me in a high degree probable, namely, that any animal
whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, would
inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience, as soon as
its intellectual powers had become as well developed, or
aearly as well developed, as in man." (Vol. i. pp. 71, 72.)

Lord C. Cannot jou give us facts, Mr. Darwin, instead
merely of a proposition which seems to you in a high
degree probable ? Your hypothesis should be sustained on
something more substantial than probabilities — proba-
bilities, moreover, which may seem such only to yourself.

FIFTH DAY'S SITTING. 123

Homo. Your Lordship doubtless perceives that, in order
to find these probabilities, Mr. Darwin takes it for granted
that the intellectual powers of an animal possessing social
instincts may become " as well developed," or nearly as well
developed, " as they are in man." He thus seems unable
to take a single step towards proving his hypothesis without
taking it for granted.

Lord C. I understand you then to admit, Mr. Darwin,
that a moral sense or conscience is impossible unless in a
creature whose intellectual powers are at least nearly as
well developed as man's.

Darwin. What I say, my Lord, clearly implies this.

Lord C. We are thrown back, then, on your previous
argument, for you have certainly not proved that any
animal possesses intellectual powers capable of bein<* de-
veloped into anything approaching to equality with those
of man.

Homo. Your Lordship is perfectly correct. Mr. Darwin
has clearly put himself out of court on this question by
admitting — what, indeed, he cannot help admitting — that a
moral sense is impossible without human reason. But it
may help to bring this case to a more satisfactory settle-
ment if your Lordship will listen while Mr. Darwin states
the process by which he supposes animals may acquire a
moral sense, and while he mentions his views regarding the-
nature of the moral sense.

Lord C. I am quite ready to hear what Mr. Darwin has
to say on these points.

Darwin. What I have to say, my Lord, is this, "Any
animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social in-
stincts, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or con-
science, as soon as its intellectual powers had become as
well developed, or nearly as well developed, as in man.

I 2

124 HOMO r. DAK WIN.

For, Firstly, the social instincts lead an animal to take
pleasure in the society of its fellows, to feel a certain amount
of sympathy with them, and to perform various services for
them. The services may be of a definite and evidently
instinctive nature ; or there may be only a wish and readi-
ness, as with most of the higher social animals, to aid their
fellows in certain general ways. But theso feelings and
services are by no means extended to all the individual of
the same species, only to those of the same association,
Secondly, as soon as the mental faculties had become
highly developed, images of all past actions and motives
would be incessantly passing through the brain of each
individual ; and that feeling of dissatisfaction which in-
variably results, as we shall hereafter see, from an unsatisfied
instinct, would arise, as often as it was perceived that the
enduring and always present social instinct had yielded to
some other instinct, at the time stronger, but neither
enduring in its nature, nor leaving behind it a very vivid
impression. It is clear that many instinctive desires, such
as that of hunger, are in their nature ol short duration ;
and after being satisfied are not readily or vividly recalled,
Thirdly, after the power of language had been acquired,
and the wishes of the members of the same community
could be distinctly expressed, the common opinion, how
each member ought to act for the public good, would
naturally become to a large extent the guide to action.
But the social instincts would still give the impulse to act
for the good of the community, this impulse being strength-
ened, directed, and sometimes even deflected by public
opinion, the power of uhirh rests, as we shall presently
§ee, on instinctive sympathy. Laslltj, habit in the indi-
vidual would ultimately play a very important part in
guiding the conduct of each member ; for the social

FIITH DAY'S SITTIXG. 12.5

instincts and impulses, like all other instincts, would be
greatly strengthened by habit, as would obedience to the
wishes and judgment of the community." (Vol. i. pp.
71, 73.)

LordC. And in this way you imagine that from irrational
and irresponsible brutes were developed rational, thought-
ful, and responsible men. But all this is mere supposition,
without even a tittle of evidence to sustain it. It would
be more to the purpose if you could refer us to any species
of animals which is passing through the process you
describe. Can you point to any instance, among the lower
animals, in which a moral sense or conscience is now being
developed ?

Homo. Mr. Darwin cannot do that, my Lord. "The
common rat," to which he has referred as having had " all
its faculties habitually exercised " through man, does not
serve him here ; yet, I believe it is a social animal. No
ape, nor monkey of any kind, gives the least sign of
advancement in this pathway to humanity, which Mr.
Darwin has sketched for them. Even the dog, though, as
Professor Braubach maintains, he is so advanced in intellect
that " he looks on his master as on a god," refuses his help
on this subject. In vain would Mr. Darwin lecture him on
conscience and the moral sense. All that the poor brute
could do would be to look interested and wag his tail,
pleased at the notice taken of him, and perhaps wondering
what it meant — for, as Mr. Darwin tells us, " all animals
feel wonder " — but not one step nearer to the possession of a
conscience or moral sense would he advance. Let Mr.
Darwin try the experiment even with that dog of hig,
which "growled fiercely and barked" every time that
the open parasol was slightly moved by the wind, " reason-
ing to himpolf, in a ra»>id and unconscious manner that

126 HOMO V. DAUW1N.

movement, without any apparent cause, indicated the pre-
sence of some strange living agent, who had no right to
be on his territory," thus arriving almost at a conception
of the supernatural — let Mr. Darwin, I say, try the ex-
periment even with this " very sensible animal," and he
will find it vain.*

Darwin. "It may be wel first to premise," my Lord,
" that I do not wish to maintain that any strictly social
animal, if its intellectual faculties were to become as active
and as highly developed as in man, would acquire exactly
the same moral sense as ours. In the same manner as
various animals have some sense of beauty, though they
admire widely different objects, so they might have a sense
of right and wrong, though led by it to follow widely
different lines of conduct. If, for instance, to take an
extreme case, men were reared under precisely the same
conditions as hive-bees, there can hardly be a doubt that
our unmarried females would, like the worker-bees, think
it a sacred duty to kill their brothers, and mothers would
strive to kill their fertile daughters, and no one would
think of interfering. Nevertheless, the bee, or any other
social animal, would, in our supposed case, gain, as it
appears to me, some feeling of right or wrong, or con-
science. For each individual would have an inward sense
of possessing certain stronger or more enduring instincts,
and others less strong or enduring, so that there would
often be a struggle, which impulse should be followed, and
gatisfaction or dissatisfaction would be felt, us past im-
pressions were compared during their incessant passa^;
through the mind. In this case an inward monitor would
tell the animal that it would have been better to have fol-
lowed the one impulse rather than the other." (Vol. i. p. 73.)

Lord C. You seem now, Mr. Darwin, to t>tke a different

FIFTH DAY'S BITTING. 127

view of morality from what you did at the outset. You
have but just spoken of conscience as " the most noble of
all the attributes of man, leading him, without a moment's
hesitation, to risk his life for that of a fellow creature."
Now you suppose it possible that sisters might be impelled
by conscience to murder their brothers, and mothers their
daughters !

Darwin. This doubtless is " an extreme case," my Lord,
but, if men were reared under precisely the same con-
ditions as hive-bees, there can hardly be a doubt that the
members of the same family would think it a sacred duty
to kill one another, and that no one would think of
interfering.

Lord C. You reason in a most extraordinary manner, Mr.
Darwin. You suppose an impossible case, and you expound
to us a system of morals founded on this impossible case,
which morals are not morals at all, but acts arising from
instinctive impulses, and followed by different feelings
as the animal compares the impressions that pass through
its mind one with another. But all this is entirely
imaginary.

Homo. I call it reasoning with the imagination, my
Lord, an operation which Mr. Darwin performs with great
facility. But, in his supposed case, the development goes
the wrong way, for it makes man develop into a bee,
instead of making the bee develop into a man. Mr.
Darwin might suppose other cases quite as probable as the
one before us. He might suppose man reared under pre-
cisely'the same conditions as rooks, or jackdaws, or
starlings ; or as dogs, horse?, sheep, or rabbits — all of
which animals he goes on to speak of as social in their
habits — and he might exhibit to us a new system of morals
as springing from each case. We should have .thus

12S HOMO V. DAIIWIX.

rook- morality, and rabbit- morality, and horse and dog-
morality, &c., as well as bee-morality and man-morality.

Lard C. Such supposed cases do not throw one spark of
light on the question before us — Can any animal whatever
acquire a moral sense or conscience ?

ffonto. Very true, my Lord ; but they illustrate Mr.
Darwin's views on morals. There is another passage in his
work bearing on this subject, to which I must beg your
Lordship's attention. At page 168, treating of "Natural
Selection as affecting Civilized Nations," he says, " With
savages the weak in body or mind are soon eliminaterl,
and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state
of health. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our
utmost to check the process of elimination ; we build
asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick ; we
institute poor laws, and our medical men exert their utmost
skill to save the life of every one to the last moment.
There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved
thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly
have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the \\eak members of
civilized societies propagate their kind. Xo one who has
attended to the breeding of domestic animals will douU
that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It
is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly
directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race ; but
excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is BO
ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed."

Lord C. Does Mr. Darwin mean to say then that, in
building asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, the sick;
in^iitutirig poor laws; enforcing vaccination — endeavouring
thus to prolong the lives of our fellow-creatures — we are
directing our care wrongly, and causing a degeneration of
the race of man ?

FIFTH DAY'S SITTCtO. 129

Homo. I have read what Mr. Darwin says, and must
leave your Lordship to form jour own judgment regard-
ing it.

Lord C. Why, had it not been for vaccination, we our-
belves might have fallen victims to small-pox !

Homo. Mr. Darwin might, most assuredly, my Lord.
May I say that I heard it stated lately that Mr. Darwin had
been prevented from attending to some public engagement
by ill health ? Probably that was not the first time he had
suffered in this way. Now, had the process of elimination
been adopted in his own case, his work on " The descent of
man,'' might never have been written, and we should not
now be engaged in these proceedings.

Lord C. I think, Homo, you are becoming a little too
personal in making such a remark. It may be questioned,
however, whether, even from a scientific point of view, it
would be wise to disregard the weak and feeble, or have
them put cut of the, way. Xewton himself was born pre-
maturely, and as an infant, was of extremely diminutive
size. Intellectual energy and physical strength do not
cecessarily go together.

Darwin. My Lord, Homo ought in fairness to state what
follows. I add that, " We could not check our sympathy,
if so urged by hard reason, without deterioration in the
noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden
himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that
lie is acting for the good of his patient ; but if we were
intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could
only be for a contingent benefit, with a certain and great
present evil. Hence we must bear without complaining
the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving ana
propagating their kind." (Vol. i. pp. 168, 169.)
Homo. Would these passages from Mr. Darwin's work,

130 HOMO V. DARWIX.

my Lord, be suitable for a lesson-book to be introduced
into our National Schools ? "Would it help to educate
the rising race in morals, were they led to consider the
case in which it might be a sacred duty with sisters to kill
their brothers ? Would it also tend to strengthen their
compassion for the maimed, the suffering, and the sick,
were they taught that, though their care would be wrongly
directed, if directed towards them, and would tend to the
deterioration of the race, yet they could not check their
feelings of sympathy towards them without deterioration in
the noblest part of their nature ? Would such lessons in
morals, my Lord, given to the rising generation, tend to
their advancement and elevation ?

Lord C. I fear it would not be easy to induce any English
constituency to elect Mr. Darwin to the Sjhool Board.

Homo. Especially, my Lord, if, in his address to the
electors, he were to quote these passages as setting forth
his views on conscience and morals. The common sense
of Englishmen would revolt from them. Mr. Darwin, my
Lord, has more faith in " Natural Selection," and in the
process of " Elimination," by which the weak in body and
mind are gradually killed off — he has more faith in these
processes as tending to human advancement than he has in
the " Omnipotent God," whom he tells us it is " ennobling "
to believe in.

Lord C. Are you not rather hard on Mr. Darwin in
saying so ? '"•'•-/

Homo. I think not, my Lord. The whole tendency
of his book is to eliminate the Divine Being from among
his works, and to set up Natural Selection in his place.
According to Mr. Darwin, the " Omnipotent God" does
nothing, except, perhaps, create at first. He then withdraws
from the universe, and, for aught that appears, goes to

FIFTH DAY'S SITTING. 131

sleep like the Brahma of the Hindoos. Meanwhile, Natural
Selection, assisted by Sexual Selection and Evolution, steps
in and does the work. We have thus to do, not with the
" Omnipotent God," but with the inferior deities discovered
by Mr. Darwin, of whose existence he tells us in his book.
It is they alone who are to be our fear and our dread.

Darwin. I have said, my Lord, that we could not check
the feelings of sympathy towards the weak and helpless
without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature.

Homo. Very true, my Lord, he has said so ; but what are
our sympathies, according to him, but merely feelings
which have arisen from the process of Natural Selection,
and which, if we had been reared as hive-bees, would never
have existed in us. And does he not plainly tell us our
sympathies are wrongly directed, and tend to the degenera-
tion of the race, when bestowed on the objects that most
need them ? It had thus been better for our race, on Mr.
Darwin's principles, that we had had no such sympathies as
Natural Selection has unfortunately given us.

Darwin. I have also spoken, my Lord, of "the grand
idea of God hating sin and loving righteousness."

Homo. Very true, he has, my Lord ; but then, on his
hypothesis, righteousness is not a great, living, necessary
reality, based on the nature of God, and therefore un-
changeable and enduring as God himself ; but a mere
accidental and unstable quality, generated by the social in-
stincts of brutes, and which might have been quite different
from what it happens to be, and led to widely different,
and even opposite lines of conduct, and yet been righteous-
ness still. I do not see, for my part, how one can believe
in an " Omnipotent God," the " Creator and Ruler of the
universe," and in this God as "hating sin and loving
righteousness," and yet fail to see that the moral sense and

132 HOMO V. DARWIN.

conscience, in snch a creature as man, when rightly
exercised, must have reference to God's will.

Lord C. Will Homo inform me if he has now anything
farther to advance ?

Homo. Your Lordship has now before you the whole of
the particulars of the libel of which I complain. After
the patient attention given to those particulars by your
Lordship, I shall not attempt a review of the case. I leave
it with your Lordship, satisfied that I shall be indemnified,
so far as is in your Lordship's power, for the injury inflicted
on me by the publication of the Defendant's book. I may
observe, however, that Mr. Darwin's speculations are in-
jurious also in this way — they lead others who are dissatisfied
with them into speculations of their own quite as wild and
visionary. Some scientific gentlemen are now actually en-
gaged in trying to create life ! Other men of science are
not so daring in their experiments, but they are quite as
audacious in their suggestions. They tell us that life may
have been imported into this planet on a meteoric stone !
I suppose, my Lord, that after some more time has been
vainly expended in searching for the missing links of Evo-
lution, we shall be hearing that the first human pair were
charioted into our world on a shooting star !

Lord C. Speculations on the mystery of life are generally
BO absurd that they speedily refute themselves. It is indeed
possible that germs of life may have been conveyed in
meteoric stones, but that life in our world was thus origin-
ated can never be proved. Besides, such a supposition
dees not solve the mystery of life ; it but removes it one
step back, and renders it more than ever difficult for us to
deal with. If life was not originated in our world, but
merely imported into it, our naturalists would require to
vibit the world where it fir t ?>]>; ''"?•<• tlu-y could he

FIFTH DAY'S SITTING. 133

competent for dealing satisfactorily with the subject. Yet,
though such speculations are unsatisfactory, probably, it
will only be through speculation and experiment that the
truth will be reached at last. The human mind seeks after
unity in creation — tries to find some definite point from
which all has sprung. My own belief is that the unity and
starting-point of creation will be sought after in vain till
they are sought for in God. To my mind, there is more
light and wisdom in those grand old words of the Psalmist,
" With Thee is the fountain of life " — " Thou sendest forth
Thy Spirit, they are created : Thou renewest the face of the
earth " — than there is in all such speculations of philoso-
phers. I will deliver my judgment at our sitting to-morrow.

SIXTH DAY'S SITTING.

THE JUDGMENT OF LORD C.

Having carefully considered the evidence that has been
adduced, and having also carefully examined Mr. Darwin's
book, I can have no hesitation in saying that his
hypothesis does not account for the existence of man.
According to that hypothesis we are to believe that all the
yaricd forms of animal life existing on this earth have been
produced by the action of laws now in operation around us,
from some one, or from a few, primary forms. We are to
believe that, by minute variations of this form or forms —
which variations went on accumulating, generation after
generation, through a period of time incalculably long —
one species of creature after another has been produced ;
that the larvae of ascidians developed into fish ; fish into
amphibians ; amphibians into reptiles and birds ; these
into mammals, including the Old World monkeys, through
which the climax was at last reached in man.

Such hypotheses are not new. They are as old as the
history of human thought. In ancient times men of specu-
lative tendencies discussed the origin of the universe and
of man; and development and evolution, in one form or
another, were employed to account for what they saw around
them. In more recent times Lamarck supposed species to
have been produced by the operation on organized creatures
of the conditions and circumstances in which they were
placed— the giraffe, for example, as alluded to by Homo,

SIXTH DAY'S SITTING. 135

acquiring its long neck, and other corresponding peculi-
arities of its frame, from having to stretch its body in order
to feed on the lofty branches of trees ; and monkeys, I
presume, acquiring their powers of climbing by having to
ascend still higher to find the fruit. To pass over Lord
Monboddo's opinions on the origin of man, Mr. Darwin's
own grandfather, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, is known to have
entertained somewhat similar views. Mr. Darwin has ad-
vanced on these ideas by introducing Natural Selection as
the primary modifying agent. Starting from the position
of Malthus, with regard to man, Mr. Darwin maintains
that many more living creatures are produced on this earth
than can possibly survive. It is well known, moreover,
that, by what may be called the law of variation, each
living creature produced differs, to some extent, from every
other of its kind. Xo two human beings are exactly alike,
and these variations extend, not only to the features, but
every separate member and portion of the frame. So it is
with the lower animals. Mr. Darwin supposes that those
individuals, in which the variations are of a favourable
character, will be more vigorous, or, at least, more fit for
the conditions in which they are placed ; and that, conse-
quently, in the struggle for existence with their own kind,
with other animals, and with external circumstance?, they
will survive in greater numbers, and that, by the laws of
inheritance, they will transmit their peculiarities to their
offspring ; and that thus the struggle for existence, and
the survival of the fittest being continually renewed, by the
gradual accumulation of favourable peculiarities, through
numerous generations, separate and distinct species are
eventually produced.

The lengthened time — 3,000 years at least — during which
COFmologieal speculations have been cherished, has given

136 HOMO V. DARWIN.

ample opportunity for testing them ; and had the develop-
ment hypothesis been based on fact, and supported by
observation and experience, it must long, ere now, in some
form or other, have found its way to the general belief of
mankind. Within a much shorter period — 300 years instead
of 3,000 — such theories as those of gravitation, the circula-
tion of the blood, the influence of the moon on the tides,
have established themselves in the convictions of all persons
of intelligence. No views put forth on Evolution, however,
have gained such acceptance, and the idea is entertained
only by some men of speculative mind, through the opera-
tion of tendencies characteristic of the present age. These
facts I take as, at least, primd facie evidence that the
basis of proof is not only insufficient, but unsatisfactory so
far as it goes.

That Mr. Darwin's hypothesis rests on no stable basis is
shown, moreover, by the fact that he has himself, oftener
than once, shifted its supports. In his earlier works,
Natural Selection was the all-sufficient power by which
everything was accomplished. Through the wide field of
organized existence, from its origin, myriads of ages ago,
until now, Mr. Darwin could see no power in operation but
that of Natural Selection. Not only were Divine wisdom
and purpose unrecognized — except, indeed, that God was
supposed to have at first " breathed life into a few forms
or into one " — but all other laws and powers whatever were
put in abeyance. Natural Selection was the one presiding
Deity in the world of animated and organic existence.

Mr. Darwin now acknowledges himself to have been
mistaken. " I probably attributed too much (he says) to
the action of Natural Si-1-rtion, or 'the survival of the
fittest;" and he, therefore, now brings in ''Sexual Selection,"
with " the nature and constitution of the organism itself,"

SIXTH DAY'S SITTING. 137

aiH also "unknown agencies," as playing an important part
in the production of the changes for which he formerly
maiatained that Natural Selection alone was sufficient to
account. Thus, as Mr. Darwin's knowledge of the world
of animated nature increases, so does his consciousness of
ignorance as to the powers and processes working in con-
nection with it. He finds life to be a greater mystery than
ever. After the researches of a lifetime, he finds it obsti-
nately refusing to reveal itself to him, and ever retreating
farther and farther from his gaze. And thus he comes to
learn, what all his predecessors have learned, and what,
most probably, his contemporaries also will have to learn —
that there are powers and agencies at work in connection
with life which baffle the keenest pursuit, and that there
is something in "the nature and constitution" of every
living creature which we cannot comprehend. The acknow-
ledged mystery which thus veils life, in its nature and origin,
from human research, should induce modesty in those
whose studies lead them to consider it, and restrain
them from the formation of rash and vain hypotheses.

Taking Mr. Darwin's hypothesis, however, as it is now
presented to us, it is confessedly destitute of anything like
proof. Professor Huxley, with assuredly no bias against
it, yet admits that he can point to no " group of animals,
having all the characters exhibited by species in nature,
that has ever been originated by Selection, whether natural
or artificial ;" and Mr. Darwin himself can give us no facts
that prove even the possibility of the evolution for which
he contends. History and the experience of living men
are equally appealed to in vain for help on this subject.
Yet, if this process of " Selection " be one which, as Mr.
Darwin contends, is ever going on in nature, it might reason-
ably be expected that some unmistakeable phenomena in

K

138 HOA10 V. DARWIN.

connection with it would, some time or other, have forced
themselves on the observation of mankind. It is not \ At-
tended, however, that anything like this has ever occurred
and when this consideration is adduced as tending to dib-
prove the hypothesis, refuge is always sought from it in the
enormous periods of time requisite for the formation of new
species.

There is one consideration which, so far as I am aware,
has not been urged in connection with this branch of
the argument. Why are enormous periods of time re-
quired for the production of new species, but that there
may be numerous successive generations, each of which may
be supposed to have advanced on its predecessors ? Now
it is clear that, in the case of numerous animals, the period
of time required for this purpose would be much less than in
the case of man. We may suppose that three generations
of men are produced in a century. This would give ninety
generations in 3,000 years, which may be regarded as the
historic period in connection with this subject. Bat, within
the same period, we must have had not less than 3,000
generations of those numerous species of creatures which
produce a fresh progeny every year, or even oftener than
that. There have thus been 3,000 successive generations
of many of the lower animals within a period during which
men may have been expected to observe and record any
remarkable changes occurring among them. What, then,
is the sum of the changes which Mr. Darwin is able to point
to within the historic period as tending to prove his
hypothesis ? It amounts absolutely to nothing ! Yet Mr.
Darwin tel's us that Natural Si-lrrtion is a kind of god that
never slumbers nor sleeps ; that scrutinizes everything; is
ever selecting what is useful and profitable, in animal
existence, and preserving it, that it may be transmitted to

SIXTH DAY S SITTING, 139

future generations"; and that, through these accumulated
and inherited useful variations in animal life, new species
are developed.

Take the case, then, of any species of animal which pro-
duces young within a year of its birth. We have references
in the writings of ancient naturalists to many of them.
We have pictures of them on ancient monuments. We find
skeletons of them in ancient tombs, and in mounds and
caves. There are thus many animals living now which can
be compared with their progenitors of the 3,000th genera-
tion back. Can Mr. Darwin show, then, in the case of
any one of them, that, by successive variations accumulated
during 3,000 generations, it has sensibly advanced towards
some higher form ? Can he show that 3,000 generations
have, in any instance, done aught towards proving the
truth of his hypothesis ? It appears that he cannofc point
to a single such case as yielding him support. 3,000 gene-
rations have done literally nothing for his hypothesis. If
so, neither would 30,OuO, nor 300,000 ; for, as Homo truly
remarked, if you multiply nothing by a million, it will be
nothing still.

Taking this view of the historical period, such evidence
as it affords does not assist Mr. Darwin's hypothesis. But
what of experiments made by naturalists — Natural Selection
aided by human reason ? Men have long been engaged in
the breeding of cattle. We have records of human skill
and ingenuity in this department during a longer period
than 3,000 years. We know, moreover, that dome-tic
animals, and animals dependant on man, can easily be
modified. Important modifications have been produced
even within the present century. But has anything been
accomplished towards the production of a new species ?
Professor Iluxley, somewhat reluctantly it would appear,

K 2

140 HOMO V. DARWIX.

answers " No." Even by crossing different species, nothing
has been effecteJ. The curse of sterility rests on all
creatures produced beyond the bounds set by Nature. They
are unable to propagate their kind. Thus, so far as ob-
servation and experiment go, they are both against Mr.
Darwin.

The appeal to geology is equally vain. Though, if Mr.
Darwin's hypothesis be true, there must have been a series
of forms graduating from some lower form, not only up to
man, but up to every kind of creature at present living on
the earth, no one of these series of forms can be found ;
nor even such a portion of one of them as to afford ground
for belief that the series was a reality.

If a few successive links in some one of these innumer-
able chains of descent could be produced, they would
speak, so far, convincingly on behalf of Mr. Darwin's
hypothesis. But, of the myriads of successive links, in
myriads of chains of animal descent which must have
existed if this hypothesis be true, not even two links can
be produced which so fit as to show that they once were
joined. I am aware that Professor Huxley, in a lecture
delivered by him on "The Pedigree of the Horse," stated
that the rocks show transitional forms, but he would entirely
fail in attempting to prove that the horse is descended from
any form different from itself.

There are thus absolutely no facts either in the records
of geology, or in the history of the past, or in the expe-
rience of the present, that can be referred to as proving
evolution, or the development of one species from another
by selection of any kind whatever. Mr. Darwin himself is
so conscious of this that the whole of the evidence he
adduces in proof of his hypothesis is derived from those
points of similarity that exist between the bodily structure

SIXTH DAY'S SITTING. 141

of man and that of the lower animals. It appears to ma
that his argument, founded on the existence of those
resemblances, has been fairly and satisfactorily answered.
As man possesses an animal nature, and has to live on this
earth, it is not strange that his bodily frame should be
constructed after the model of other animals.

As to Mr. Darwin's argument from the resemblances
between the embryos of man and those of the lower animals,
it is sufficient to reply to it that, as there are resemblances
in their bodily structures when mature, there must neces-
sarily be resemblances in them when in process of develop-
ment. We have the authority of Professor Owen for
affirming that " the embryo " of man " does not pass through
the lower forms of animals," and in the drawing which
Mr. Darwin produces to show the similarity between the
embryos of man and dog, the differences are so apparent as
to make one wonder how he could have imagined that such
an exhibition would help his argument.

He points us, moreover, to the existence of what he
calls "rudimentary structures" in the human body —
structures which are found fully developed only in some of
the lower animals ; and he attributes the occasional
existence of such structures in man to a tendency in him
to "revert" to the type of some ancient progenitor. The
instances which he adduces, however, are so trivial and
uncertain that I am amazed they could aid in justifying,
even to his own mind, the astounding inference that the
ape is father to the man. They are sufficiently accounted
for, to my mind, by a reference to the unity of conception
and plan traceable among the whole of the mammalia, and
to the fact that the variations of structure that occur in the
human body are almost innumerable. Mr. Dai-win has
told us of " 558 muscular variations in thirty-six subjects,"

142 HOMO V. DARWIN.

and of " a single body presenting the extraordinary number
of twenty-five distinct abnormalities." If all these varia-
tions and abnormalities were in the direction of the
monkey, and the body of man was thus manifesting a con-
stant tendency toward the monkey type, there would be
some show of reason for seeking its origin in that quarter ;
but when it is only occasionally — I may say, rarely — that
the variations in question glance towards the simian tribe,
and when it is but a very few out of the large number of
the*e variations that do so, to argue from so trivial a
circumstance that man is descended from the ape, is an
abuse both of lo^ic and common sense.

Besides, if a few of those variations look towards the ape,
in what direction do the many look ? It is not pretended
that they also point us downward. Are they pre-intima-
tions, then, of some higher form yet to be developed from
man ? In writing regarding those cases which he calls
" reversions," Mr. Darwin should have kept in mind his
own word-*, "With respect to the causes of variability, we
are, in all cases, very ignorant." But he invariably forgets
those words when, now and then, he meets with some
variation which he imagines points in the direction of the
brute. Then, he knows the cause perfectly ! It lies in the
fact that we are descended from apes ! Mr. Darwin should
be more consistent. I think, therefore, that, until we know
more about those "causes of variability," of which, as he
tells us, "we are in all cases very ignorant," or until we
have some more reliable evidence of the truth of his
hypothesis, we must, in all fairness, set down those in-
stances which he quotes as proving our descent from the
luwt-r animals, as instances, not of re version,, but of simple
variation.

It will not be necessary for me to refer at any length to

SIXTH DAT* 8 SITTIXQ. 143

the changes, or series of changes, through which Mr. Darwin
supposes the " ape-like progenitors of man " to have entered
on this fatherly relation. The account he gives of the
matter certainly does not lack romance, for, while " some
ancient member in the great series of the Primates'*
becomes strangely plastic, Nature also becomes plastic, and
in such a way as to assist in the transformation. There is
a change in this creature's " manner of procuring sub-
sistence, or a change in the conditions of its native country."
Perhaps the climate changes ; it blows cold instead of hot ;
or it grows fewer trees ; or such fruits as are produced are
not tempting enough to the creature's taste. However this
may be, it becomes convenient for the creature to *'live
somewhat less on trees and more on the ground," and
hence to "become either more strictly quadrupedal or
bipedal." One might suppose that the former direction,
ns being the easier of the two, would be chosen, in
which case it would simply revert to a former type,
its ancestors having been quadrupeds ; but somehow it
takes the bipedal direction, and having ceased to climb
trees, begins to climb up towards man. Everything
conspires to help its progress. As the conditions of its
nat ve country have changer1, it* bodily structure changes
to correspond with them. Before this creature, or rather,
I should say, its progeny, can attain to intelligent and
civilized manhood, they must pass through the savage state.
They must therefore b2come able to "manufacture weapons,"
to " hurl stones and spears with a true aim," " to defend
themselves with stones or clubs, to attack their prey, or
otherwise obtain food." It will therefore be "advantageous"
to them "to become more and more erect or bipedal."
"Both arms and the whole upper part of the body should be
tree," Tney " must, for this end, stand firmly on their

144 HOMO V. DARWIN".

feet." These creatures, therefore, "assume the erect
attitude ! " Their feet are " rendered flat, and the great
toe peculiarly modified, though this has entailed the loss
of the power of prehension." The hands, now used less for
such rough work as climbing trees, acquire a human,
delicateness of touch. " The pelvis " is " made broader,
the spine peculiarly curved, and the head fixed in an altered
position. The brain increases in size, and rational intellect
is developed. They become "divested of hair for orna-
mental purposes," and at length the tail — now a rather
inconvenient appendage of the brute — is somehow got rid
of, leaving only a "few basal and tapering segments,"
which "become completely embedded within the body."
Thus, from the ape, by a series of " insensible " gradations,
there rises, at length, the man ! Such, at least, expressed in
very nearly his own words, is Mr. Darwin's avowed belief.
It would be humiliating, though curious, were Mr.
J)ar\vin's hypothesis true, to reflect on the strange and
merely animal contingencies on which the existence of the
human race has depended. If the bo lily structure of some
ancient member of the Primates had not been wonderfully
plastic ; — if he had not wooed and won for himself a mate of
like plastic frame ; if their posterity had not inherited
their plastic qualities ; if there had not been a change in
their manner of procuring subsistence, or in the conditions
of their native country ; if they had not thus become some-
what less arboreal in their habits; if they had not then
begun to change in a bipedal, and not in a quadrupedal
direction ; if any one of these contingencies had not
occurred, the human raco had never existed ; there would
still have been the hairy quadruped, with tail and pointed
ears, living on the trees of African forests, but man, "the
wonder and glory of the universe,*' had not come forth to

SIXTH DAY'S SITTING*. 145

subdue the world and fill it with monuments of his art
and skill. There would have been no naturalist devoting
a life-time to the study of the instincts, and habits, and
anatomy of the lower animals ; fancying he has discovered
that he himself, instead of having a celestial origin, is one
in nature with those lower animals, and sprung from the
same primal stock : hence, searching among extinct brute
species for his pedigree ; persuading himself, and trying to
persuade others, that he has found it ; and then writing
down the links of which he imagines the chain of his descent
to be composed, though he is unable to find a fossil
skeleton, or even a fossil bone, to prove that any one of
those links is a reality !

Those who accept Mr. Darwin's account of the descent of
man must accept along with it not a little that is, if
possible, even more incredible. For example, while a
certain monkey race has, by a series of insensible gradations,
occurring during a period of enormous length, developed
into man, other monkey races, during a yet longer period,
have remained monkeys, making no progress whatever !
Mr. Darwin, I presume, would maintain that at least half
a million of years have passed since man emerged into
humanity from the last of his ape-like progenitors. How
far remote, then, must be the time when the ape from
which man has descended, branched away from the stem of
the Old World monkeys ! But during this period — so long
that, to us, it is practically an eternity — Old World monkeys
have remained Old World monkeys, with the solitary
exception of that wonderful member of the ancient series of
the JPrimates, with his plastic frame, of which Mr. Darwin
catches " an obscure glance" through the dim vista of ages.

In accepting Mr. Darwin's hypothesis then, we must
believe that, since this creature, millions upon millions of

H6 HOMO V. DARWIN.

ages ago, began its journey from monkey hood to humanity,
there have been none of his relatives either among the Old
World monkeys or the New World monkeys that have had
the capacity or the ambition to imitate his example ; or that,
if any there were, they perished in the attempt ! Perhaps,
as in the case of Mr. Darwin's ape, the progeny destroyed
the parents, in other cases the parents may have destroyed
the progeny. At all events, while the stem of Old World
monkeys and the stem of New World monkeys survives
and flourishes to the present day, no branch proceeding
from either of them has been so favoured, except the branch
that has blossomed into man. Such being the case, then,
Old World monkeys and New World monkeys having, on
Mr. Darwin's own showing, continued to be Old World and
New World monkeys for millions upon millions of ages,
in spite of the constant watchfulness and incessant and
powerful working of Natural Selection — Mr. Darwin's god
that never slumbers nor sleeps — can it be believed that this
ancient member of the Primates ever existed to secede from
their society and cross the gulf which now separates all of
them from man ? I should hope, for the credit of our
common rationality, that there are but few of " the younger
and rising naturalists " who possess credulity enough to
accept such a belief.*

If Mr. Darwin thus fails on the field of Natural History,

• The writer has just had his attention drawn to the following
notice in The Academy, of September 1st, 1871. The fact men-
tioned great Ij strength* ns the position taken above. " Fossil Ba ». —
At the meeting of the Br.tish Association, Professor Ya i Bcned. n. of
Lou ain.nad a paper on ' The i:.-iN c f the Mammoth Period com-
pared with existing species.' The learned Professor, afier devoting
znuch study to the remains of species collected in the caves of Belgium,
finds that they do not differ in any way from those now existing in
the Kame country."

SIXTH DAY'S SITTING. 147

igrh FO familiar with it, it is not wonderful that he
6h<mld fail yet more sk-nally in attempting to show that
" there is no fundamental difference between man and the
higher mammals in their mental faculties." By an unfortu-
nate omission he doe* not tell ns what, iu his view, would
on>titute-such a difference. Now, not to rerer again to
the question as to the difference between reason and instinct,
it may be fairly maintained that, whatever mental faculties
the higher mammals may possess — even granting that they
possess all Mr. Darwin would contend for — if it be the case
that man possesses, besides those faculties, other higher
mental faculties of which they exhibit not the slightest
trace, here we have a difference that is both fundamental
and vital. But, on Mr. Darwin's own admission, this is
the case. "While he fails to show that any one of the lower
animals exercises self-consciousness, or possesses the power
of abstraction, or is able to form general ideas, or is capable
of progressive improvement, or has "man's large power ofcon-
ntclnig d+finite sounts with definite ideas," he does not omit
to tell us that " no one supposes that any one of the lower
animals reflects on whence he comes and whither he goes,
what is life, and what is death, and so forth." But why do
not the lower animals exercise such reflection ? Clearly
because no one of them posses es those mental powers by
which man is able so to reflect. This power of refle tion,
and of taking action as the result of such reflection, is one
of the grand distinguishing characteristics of man. Mr.
Darwin thus contradicts himself. He fir.-t tells us that
"theie is no fundamental difference between man and the
higher mammals in their mental faculties," and then he
points ns to where such a difference lies ! " £uch a dif-
ference has no existence," he says; "none whatever ;" then,
after a vain attempt to throw a veil of mist over the point,

148 HOMO V. DAEWIN.

it shines out so clearly, even to himself, that he is forced
to exclaim, " Lo, here it is, after all 1"

This " fundamental difference " appears again in Mr.
Darwin's utter failure to show that any one of the lower
animals is capable of conceiving the thought of God, of
eternity, or of immortality ; of exercising the " highly
complex feeling of religious devotion," or possessing "the
grand idea of God hating sin and loving righteousness."
Why does man possess this capacity while all the lower
animals are not only entirely destitute of it, but have
manifestly no tendency in them to develop it ? There can
be but one answer to this question. While man possesses
an animal nature, he possesses also a higher nature, endowed
with higher faculties, in which none of the lower animals
share. Even admitting, then, that some of the inferior
animals possess such faculties as Mr. Darwin contends for —
imitation, attention, memory, curiosity, wonder, &c. — they
are but brute faculties after all. They are the faculties of
creatures whose nature is essentially and fundamentally
inferior to that of man — faculties, therefore, which can be
exercised only on the low and limited level on which the
brute lives and moves and has its being. There is thus all
the difference in mental faculty between man and the
highest of the lower animals, that there is between a nature
that is rational and a nature that is irrational ; between a
creature that is under a law of force and impulse, and one
that is under a law of motive and moral obligation and
duty ; a creature limited in its capacity for improvement,
and one capable of endless progression ; a creature whose
aims and impulses all relate to the body and that cannot
possibly conceive the thoughts of God, accountability,
retribution, immortality, eternity — and a creature that can
derive its motives and aims from unseen Fpiritual realities,

SIXTH DAY'S SITTING. 140

and that can. hold high and blessed fellowship with
God.

If Mr. D-irwin made a mistake in carrying his hypothesis
into the domain of mind, he has made a yet greater
mistake in carrying it into that of conscience and the moral
sense, for, as he himself informs us, this sense is possible
only where there is human reason. " Any animal what-
ever," he says, "endowed with well-marked social instincts
would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience as
soon as its intellectual powers had become as well developed,
or nearly as well developed, as in man." But if an animal
must thus become an intellectual creature before it can
become a moral creature, Mr. Darwin must show that such
intellectual development is possible to it, before his argu-
ment can have the least weight. As we have just seen,
however, he not only fails to show that brute intellect is
essentially the same as human intellect, but indicates
various points of fundamental difference between them.

I should be justified, therefore, in altogether declining to
notice what he says in this part of his subject, and would
certainly do so, were it not for the very serious error
involved in the views he puts forth, and the very serious
consequences that must result should those views find their
way into the popular mind. According to Mr. Darwin, con-
science is based on the social animal instincts, and is merely
the result of their fuller development in an animal in which
the mental faculties are being developed as well. But he
tells us further that he does " not wish to maintain that
every strictly social animal . . . would acquire exactly the
same moral sense as ours ;" that, " to take an extreme case,
if men were reared under precisely the same conditions as
hive-bees, there can hardly be a doubt that our unmarried
females would think it a sacred duty to kill their brothers,

150 HOMO V. DARWIN.

and mothers would strive to kill their fertile daughters ;
and no one would think of interfering !" What is this but
to tell us that there is no stable and unchanging rule of
duty ; that our notions of right and wrong are merely the
result of the conditions und, r which we have lived, and
would, under other conditions, be entirely different from
what they are ; nay, that we might have been so reared that
family murder would be a " sacred duty," and that a mother
would he fulfilling her highest moral and social obligations
in taking the life of her hapless babe !

It is easy to see how such sentiments may be abused, and
how, under the stimulus of such Malthusian notions as
Mr. Darwin has imbibed, and on which, indeed, his book
is largely based, a more convenient mode of getting rid of
our surplus population, or preventing its increase, might be
advocated and introduced. Mr. Darwin seems darkly to
hint at something of the kind when he tells us how, among
" savages, the weak in body and mind are soon eliminated,"
that is — to express it in plain English — killed off, if not by
murder, by cruelty and neglect ; while those who "survive
commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health ;" that we
civilized men "check the process of elimination" by our
asylums, hospitals, poor laws, medical skill^ vaccination,
&c. ; that " thus the weak members of civilized 'society
propagate their kind ;" that, "except in the case of man
himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst
animals to breed ;" and that all this is "highly injurious
to the race of man !"

Such were formerly the private sentiments of Mr. Darwin.
They are now his advanced opinions — the scientific teaching
which he offers to the British public, — the new and better
li^ht \\hich he has discovered by his life-long studies of
animal existence, and which he holds up to guide us into a

SIXTII DAY'S SITTING. i:>l

more excellent way. He tells us indeed that " we could
not check our sympathy " towards the poor, and weak, and
Buffering, " without deterioration in the noblest part of our
nature ;" but what avails such a hint when he puts into the
mouths of such as might be disinclined to take it, such a
reply as the following to the promptings of any kindly
impulses of their nature ? — the exercis? of them would
be " highly injurious to the race of man."

If such sentiments were generally adopted — which,
happily, we have little reason to fear— in the course of a
fe v generations they would assuredly open the flood-gates
of irreligion and immorality in our land, and cause such an
outburst of selfi hness and impiety as would overturn our
so.ial institutions from fieir lowest foundations, and intro-
duce a moral disorder and anarchy w Jch might be lon^ in
passing away. Such a change has been brought about in
Franc? by the working of a false and irrational religion on
the one hand, aid by the rash speculations of (so-called)
philosophers and men of science on the other ; an 1 what
has occurred in France is possible in England. We cannot
reasonably expect a people to be bett r than the God they
believe in. To be like the object of their faith and worship
is about as high an ambition as can influence them. Lst
our countrymen, t'.en, learn to believe in the deity which
Mr. Darwin introduces to them — let them discard the God
and Redeemer of Christianity for the powers which he tells
them have founded and built up the rational world — Natural
Selection and Sexual Selection — and \vhat could we expect
as the result but the upturning of the foundations of both
religion and morality ; the destruction of all that is pure,
and gentle, and loving, and sympathetic in the re ations of
life as they at present subsist among us ; and the substitu-
tion of force, and passion, and cunning, for benevolencj and

152 HOMO V. DARWIN.

self-restraint. There would then be a case of what Mr.
Darwin might regard as "reversion" indeed ; civilized men
would become civilized savages, and the world would go
back into the darkness of the deepest moral night.

I can have no wish to charge Mr. Darwin with atheism,
but, certainly, his work now before us, while it speaks of
" a Creator and Ruler of the universe," and of the question
as to his existence having been "answered in the affirmative
by the highest intellects that have ever lived," contains no
clear and definite acknowledgment of belief in Him as
cherished by Mr. Darwin himself. Practically, Darwinism
— as it has been called — in this latest exposition of it, is
atheism, and atheism of the most dreary and hopeless kind.
If it does not deny God, it ignores God. Its tendency is to
remove the Divine Being entirely from the view of man,
and to lead to disbelief in his having any connection what-
ever with, or interest in, human affairs. The world is given
up by Him to the hard, conscienceless, unsympathetic power
and rule of Natural Selection. There is no beneficent pro-
vidence.* For anything that God now does in the province
of Nature and of man, there might as well be written over
it, "No God is here." If man come to have " the idea of
a universal and beneficent Creator of the universe," it is
not " until he has been elevated by long-continued culture."
If " the feeling of religious devotion" inspire man, it is
but the result of the development in him of facult:es
which the lower animals possess as well as himself; — for,
" in the deep love of a dog for his master " " we see

In reply to Professor As i Gray, Mr. Darwin maintains that, although
we might wish to find proof that a benefic.-nt providence ha 1 jjuiil,-,!
the evolution of animal forms, we have no evidence th it a b iicfin-iit
providence has done so even in the case of man himself. Seethe
cloning sentriii-f.« of Mr. I);'r\viu'd work on "The Variation of Animals
t.nd Plants under Doni'^t cati 11."

SIXTH DAY'S SITTING. 153

some di tant approach to this state of mind/' On Mr.
Darwin's hypothesis, Divine benevolence, if it exist at all,
has never been exercised towards man ; Divine revelation is
a fable ; man is an inscrutable mystery ; he is an enigma,
insoluble even by himself; his hope of immortality is a
dream !

I must add to what I have said that, in my judgment,
Homo himself is not free from error. He seems anxious to
uphold " the dogma of separate creations," as Mr. Darwin
calls it. But this is not — though Homo seems to think
so — a dogma contained in the Bible. I read there, after
the formation of the heavens and the earth, of but one
separate act of creation, and that has reference to man.
Scripture nowhere teaches that the Divine Being created
each kind of creature separately. In the first chapter of
Genesis He is represented as issuing the command, " Let
the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that
hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the
open firmament of heaven." " Let the earth bring forth
the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping
thing, and beast of the earth after his kind : and it was
so." Farther light is given in the words, " The Spirit of
God moved " brooded " upon the face of the waters," as the
source and fountain of life. While the inferior creatures
are thus summoned into existence by God, man is repre-
sented as having been created separately — by himself. We
read concerning him, "And the Lord God formed man
of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils
the breath of life ; and man became a living soul." But
no one would understand these words as meaning that the
Divine B.-ing appeared visibly upon this earth, and that,
taking a handful of its dust, he moulded it into human
form, and then breathed into it the spirit of life. All that

L

154 HOMO V. DARWIN.

we can rightly deduce from such language is this : man
Irs derived existence from God ; his body was formed by
Divine power from the mateiial of the earth which he
inhabits ; the life inspiring him has come from his
Creator. "We are told nothing -of the forces by which
Divine power wrought in building up the material structure
of man. Any such reference would have been unsuitable
for the time in which those writings were prepared, and for
those into whose hands they were first to come. Kingsley
has well remarked that, if Scripture had spoken of the
material world, and of its creation, in language that would
have been unintelligible to early man — and it would have
done so, had it spoken in the langucge of modern science —
it could not have spoken of unseen things so as to com-
mand his belief.

The Darwinian notion of man's having had a series of
bestial progenitors is certainly irreconcilable with the sacred
narrative of Genesis, as it is also with tho^e fundamental
ideas of Revelation — the Fall, and the Redemption of Man.
Whether it is consistent with any form of religion, I need
not here consider ; but it is utterly inconsistent with
Christianity. I am aware that an attempt has been made
to modify Mr. Darwin's hypothesis with respect to man.
It has been suggested that, though man's body may have,
for the most part, a brutish origin, yet that Divine power
may have miraculously interfered to strip it of its hairy
covering, to increase the size of the brain, and produce
other changes. Such an idea — in itself ridiculous — if it be
intended to reconcile Mr. Darwin's hypothesis with Christi-
anity, is useless and futile. Revelation clearly supposes
man's pristine, God-derived purity, and the possibility of
his being restored to that purity again. It teaches that
man was created in the image of God, and that that image

SIXTH DAYS SITTING. I.--.',

may again be impressed on him. Few will deny the possi-
bility of this as to man. It is utterly inconceivable in the
ca e of the brute. I very deeply regret that Mr. Darwin
should think otherwise.

I c.m now have no hesitation in pronouncing the
Defendant guilty with respect to the charge made ag^in^t
him by Homo, and, considering the injurious consequences
likely to result from Mr. Da-rwin's statements, I award
to the Plaintiff

Homo. My Lord, will you allow me to say that, as your
Lordship has so clearly shown the justness of my cause,
and as I am not influenced by any vindictive feeling toward
Mr. Darwin, I shall be amply satisfied if he will publish a
retractation of the libel, and also of the errors whkh his
book contains.

Lord C. It is not for me to object to such an arrange-
ment. I will therefore defer the award which I was about
to make, in order that Mr. Darwin may have time to
reconsider the matter, and to frame — as I trust he will —
an ample and complete retractation. Should he still con-
tinue his studies in Natural History, he will do well hence-
forth to confine himself to that department in which he has
hitherto been so succ-essful. By all means let him go on
collecting facts, but let him see that what he records as facts
are sufficiently verified. Seeing, however, that his attempts
at theorising have been so unsatisfactory, and might lead
to such dep'orable results, let him now put a restraint on
his imagination. I hope he will henceforth take f.-r his
motto, the words of one of the most illustrious philosophers
winch Englmd or the world has ever produced,

FIXGO HYPOTHESES."

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